Emotional Eating: Watch out for the signs

Experts estimate that 75% of overeating

is caused by emotions.

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is the practice of consuming large quantities of food - usually "comfort" or junk foods - in response to feelings instead of hunger.

Frequent emotional eating can easily become a destructive cycle. Emotional eating becomes entrenched in the lives of its sufferers when they use food to regulate their mood, cope with stress or overcome feelings of anxiety or boredom.


This type of behaviour can easily lead emotional eaters to become overweight or obese because many of them feel hungry most of the time.

Common signs of emotional eating:

• Eating when not physically hungry
• Eating during times of strong emotions, like anger or depression
• Eating when bored
• Rapid eating
• Eating immediately after arriving home from work
• Eating alone out of embarrassment at the quantity or type of food being eaten
• Eating until uncomfortably full
• Feelings of disgust, depression, or guilt after overeating

How to manage Emotional Eating? 

• Identify what triggers our eating

Through this process, we can substitute more appropriate techniques to manage our emotional problems and take food and weight gain out of the equation.

• Eat healthy foods for when you're stressed out

Alternatively, you can fight emotional eating and reduce stress by opting for the "right" food. To read more, go to my post about Foods that help reduce stress.

Want to find out if you are an Emotional Eater:

Take my Quiz