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Is your ‘hunger” physical or emotional?
Many people with weight concerns eat because of stress, boredom, anger, loneliness, joy , or to provide a sense of reward. Often, one may not be aware that their eating is emotionally driven. Perhaps some of your “hunger” is emotional and not physical. At times it can be hard to tell the difference between the two. So, answer the following questions to see if you may be eating for emotional reasons. When you answer, consider what happens most of the time.
- Do you eat when you are not hungry?
- Do you tend to snack more when you are alone?
- Do you eat more when you are at home?
- Is it a habit to snack at a certain time of the day?
- Do you treat yourself routinely with food?
- Is eating a favorite food one of the most pleasant things you do for yourself?
- Do you routinely ‘clean your plate’, even if you are full?
- Do you have a hard time recognizing when you are physically hungry or full?
- Do you pay attention to whether you are hungry or full before eating?
- Do you eat when you are stressed, even if you are not hungry?
- DO you ‘feel’ hunger in your mouth, rather than your stomach?
Do you often eat for emotional reasons?
If you answered ‘yes’ to three or more of the questions, you may be doing more than occasional emotional eating. The more ‘yes’ answers, the more likely you are an emotional eater. It is important to recognize when you eat for emotional reasons because this type of eating can lead to many unneeded calories. For many people, cutting out most of the emotional eating (occasional emotional eating is normal) can lead to a slow, natural weight loss.
Distinguishing between the two ‘hunger’ types
One quick way to tell the difference between emotionally driven ‘hunger’ and true physical hunger is to see where in your body you feel hungry. True physical hunger should be felt in the stomach. IF you “feel” hunger in the chest, throat or mouth, what you may be feeling is emotional hunger, actually. The absence of physical hunger signals may mean you want to eat for emotional reasons.
Difficulty stopping at ‘comfortable fullness’
If you are chronically unable to stop eating at a comfortable fullness, even though you recognize when you are full, then you are most likely overeating for emotional reasons. Just because something tastes good doesn’t mean you have to finish it! Common reasons for eating past comfortable fullness are:
- Personal history of food deprivation (during times of dieting or “cutting back,” for example)
- Parental history of food deprivation (especially if they were concerned about your weight as a child)
- Procrastinating something that’s coming after the meal
- Depression, or other brain chemistry imbalance