When you're happy, your food of choice
could be steak or pizza, when you're sad it could be ice cream or cookies, and when you're bored it could be potato chips.
Food does more than fill our stomachs -- it also satisfies feelings, and when you quench those feelings with comfort food
when your stomach isn't growling, that's emotional eating.
"Emotional
eating is eating for reasons other than hunger," says Jane Jakubczak, a registered dietitian at the University of Maryland.
"Instead of the physical symptom of hunger initiating the eating, an emotion triggers the eating."
What are the telltale signs of emotional eating, what foods are the most
likely culprits when it comes to emotional eating, and how it can be overcome? Experts help WebMD find the answers.
How to Tell the Difference
There are several differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger,
according to the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center web site:
1. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly; physical hunger occurs gradually.
2. When you are eating to fill a void that isn't related to an empty stomach, you crave a specific food, such as
pizza or ice cream, and only that food will meet your need. When you eat because you are actually hungry, you're open to options.
3. Emotional hunger feels like it needs to be satisfied instantly with
the food you crave; physical hunger can wait.
4. Even
when you are full, if you're eating to satisfy an emotional need, you're more likely to keep eating. When you're eating because
you're hungry, you're more likely to stop when you're full.
5.
Emotional eating can leave behind feelings of guilt; eating when you are physically hungry does not.
Comfort Foods
When emotional hunger rumbles, one of its distinguishing characteristics is that you're focused on a particular food,
which is likely a comfort food.
"Comfort foods are
foods a person eats to obtain or maintain a feeling," says Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Food and Brand Lab at
the University of Illinois. "Comfort foods are often wrongly associated with negative moods, and indeed, people often
consume them when they're down or depressed, but interestingly enough, comfort foods are also consumed to maintain good moods."
Ice cream is first on the comfort food list. After ice cream, comfort
foods break down by sex: For women it's chocolate and cookies; for men it's pizza, steak, and casserole, explains Wansink.
And what you reach for when eating to satisfy an emotion depends on the
emotion. According to an article by Wansink, published in the July 2000 American Demographics, "The types of
comfort foods a person is drawn toward varies depending on their mood. People in happy moods tended to prefer ... foods such
as pizza or steak (32%). Sad people reached for ice cream and cookies 39% of the time, and 36% of bored people opened up a
bag of potato chips."
Overfeeding Emotions
"We all eat for emotional reasons sometimes," says
Jakubczak, who has talked to college students at the University of Maryland about emotional eating.
When eating becomes the only or main strategy a person uses to manage emotions, explains Jakubczak,
then problems arise -- especially if the foods a person is choosing to eat to satisfy emotions aren't exactly healthy.
"If you eat when you are not hungry, chances are your body does
not need the calories," says Jakubczak. "If this happens too often, the extra calories get stored as fat, and too
much fat storage can cause one to be overweight, which may present some health risks."
According to an interview with Jakubczak on the University of Maryland web site, 75% of overeating
is caused by emotions, so dealing with emotions appropriately is important.
Recognizing Emotional Eating
"The
first thing one needs to do to overcome emotional eating is to recognize it," says Jakubczak. "Keeping a food record
and ranking your hunger from 1-10 each time you put something in your mouth will bring to light 'if' and 'when' you are eating
for reasons other than hunger."
Next, you need to
learn techniques that help manage emotions besides eating, explains Jakubczak.
"Oftentimes when a child is sad, we cheer them up with a sweet treat," says Jakubczak. "This behavior
gets reinforced year after year until we are practicing the same behavior as adults. We never learned how to deal with the
sad feeling because we always pushed it away with a sweet treat. Learning how to deal with feelings without food is a new
skill many of us need to learn."
Managing
Emotional Eating
Here are a few tips to
help you deal with emotional eating:
- Recognize emotional eating
and learn what triggers this behavior in you.
- Make a list of things to
do when you get the urge to eat and you're not hungry, and carry it with you, according to the Tufts Nutrition web site. When you feel overwhelmed, you can put off that desire by doing another enjoyable
activity.
- Try taking a walk, calling a friend, playing cards, cleaning
your room, doing laundry, or something productive to take your mind off the craving -- even taking a nap, according to the
Tufts Nutrition web site.
- When you do get the urge to eat when you're
not hungry, find a comfort food that's healthy instead of junk food. "Comfort foods don't need to be unhealthy,"
says Wansink.
- For some, leaving comfort foods behind when they're dieting
can be emotionally difficult. Wansink tells WebMD, "The key is moderation, not elimination." He suggests dividing
comfort foods into smaller portions. For instance, if you have a large bag of chips, divide it into smaller containers or
baggies and the temptation to eat more than one serving can be avoided.
- When
it comes to comfort foods that aren't always healthy, like fattening desserts, Wansink also offers this piece of information:
"Your memory of a food peaks after about four bites, so if you only have those bites, a week later you'll recall it as
just a good experience than if you polished off the whole thing." So have a few bites of cheesecake, then call it quits,
and you'll get equal the pleasure with lower cost.
Lastly,
remember that emotional eating is something that most people do when they're bored, happy, or sad. It might be a bag of chips
or a steak, but whatever the food choice, learning how to control it and using moderation are key.
Emotional hunger is not love. It is a strong emotional
need caused by deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing
which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of
aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be fully satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet people refuse to
bear their pain and to face the futility of gratifying these primitive needs and dependency. They deny the fact of their
own ultimate death and do everything in their power to create an illusion that they are connected to other persons. This
fantasy of belonging to another person allays the anxiety about death and gives people a sense of immortality. Hunger is
a powerful emotion, which is both exploitive and destructive to others when it is acted out. People identify this feeling
with love and mistakenly associate these longings with genuine affection. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Feelings of emotional hunger are deep and are like a dull but powerful
aching in your insides. You may often find yourself reaching out and touching others or expressing affection and loving movements
in order to attempt to kill off this aching sensation. People often give physical affection and attention when they feel
the most need for it themselves. This type of physical affection is draining of the emotional resources of loved ones, particularly
one's children, rather than enhancing their development psychologically. It is wise
to be suspicious of your own use of the word "love" or "I love you." If you search yourself truthfully
you may discover that you say these words most often, not when you feel the most for others, but rather when you experience
strong dependency needs and feel the need for reassurance.
Because
of the confusion between emotional hunger and love, both on the part of parents and outside
observers, much innocent damage is perpetrated on children in the name of love. In my book, Compassionate
Child Rearing, we noted that if parents are genuinely loving, and attuned they will have
a nurturing effect on the child, which has a positive effect on his or her ongoing development. That child will tend to be
securely attached, harmonious in his /her relationships, and tolerant of intimacy as an adult.
In contrast, contact with an emotionally hungry parent leaves a child impoverished, anxiously attached, and
hurting. The more contact between this type of parent and the child, the more the parent is damaging to the child's security
and comfort. This style of relating--excessive touching, over-concern for the child or over-involvement in the child's life--not
only violates the child's boundaries but also promotes withholding responses in the youngster. This can result in serious
limitations in both the child's later career and personal life, can threaten his or her
sense of self and autonomy, and can be more destructive than more obvious abuses.
Parents who are emotionally hungry
act compulsively in relation to their children in much the same manner as an addict. Their exaggerated attention and involvement
have an ongoing negative impact on the child's development. These parents often find it difficult to reduce the intensity
of their contact even when they recognize that the contact is damaging.
Emotionally hungry parents are often overly protective of their children. They limit a child's experience and ability
to cope with life and instill an abnormal form of dependency. In being overly concerned with his or her physical health,
they induce excessive fear reactions and tendencies toward hypochondria. Some overly
protective parents may attempt to isolate their children from peers or other extra-familial influences that might have a
negative impact. However, when carried to an extreme, such exclusion limits the child in his or her exposure to a variety
of different attitudes and approaches to life, and is detrimental to a child's trust in other people and ability to function
in the world.
Many parents overstep the personal boundaries of their
children in various ways: by inappropriately touching them, going through their belongings, reading their mail, and requiring
them to perform for friends and relatives. This type of parental intrusiveness seriously limits children's personal freedom
and autonomy. Many mothers and fathers speak for their children, take over their productions as their own, brag excessively
about their accomplishments, and attempt to live vicariously through them.
The difference between loving responses and those determined by emotional hunger can be distinguished by an objective observer,
but it is difficult for parents themselves to make the distinction. Three factors are valuable in ascertaining the difference:
(1) the internal feeling state of the parent, (2) the actual behavior of the parent in relating to the child, and (3) the
observable effect of the parent's emotional state and behavior on the child's demeanor and behavior.
A parent who is capable of giving love typically has a positive self-image
and maintains a sense of compassion for the child and for himself, yet remains separate and aware of the boundaries between
them. Such a parent acts respectfully toward the child, and is not abusive or overprotective. The tone and style of communication
is natural and easy and indicates a real understanding of the individuality of the child. The loved child actually looks
loved. He or she is lively and displays independence appropriate to his or her age level. He or she is genuinely centered
in himself or herself. The child subjected to emotional hunger is desperate, dependent, and either emotionally volatile
or deadened. An onlooker can observe these important differential effects on children and can often trace them to the specific
feeling states of the parent.
Although there are some exceptions,
the concept of emotional hunger has not been sufficiently investigated in the psychological literature. Yet it is one of
the principal factors negatively affecting child-rearing practices. The immaturity of many parents manifested as a powerful
need to fulfill themselves through their children has serious negative consequences on a child's development and subsequent
adjustment. By recognizing important manifestations of this core conflict within themselves, many parents in the Compassionate
Child-Rearing Parent Education Program have changed responses to their offspring that
were based on incorrect assumptions, and have significantly improved the quality of their family relationships. Finally,
from our studies of family interactions, we have begun to question the quality of the maternal-infant bond or attachment
formed in the early hours and days of an infant's life. As students of human behavior, we feel it is incumbent on us and
on developmental psychologists to clarify the extent to which this bond or attachment may be based on emotional hunger and
the needs of immature parents for an imagined connection to the child rather than on genuine concern and love for the child.
It is painful but bearable for people to experience these feelings of hunger
and face their own emotional needs. Unfortunately, most individuals choose to deny or avoid this pain as they did when they
were young. They seek outlets or choose courses of action that help them deny their pain or kill off the sensations of aloneness.
They create fantasies of connecting themselves to others and imagine that they belong to each other. When these fantasy bonds are formed, real love goes down the drain. The emotions of love and respect for others disappear
as we become possessive and controlling and as we make use of one another as a narcotic to kill off sensations of hunger
and pain.
A fantasy bond can become a death pact in which the individuals
narcotize each other to kill off pain and genuine feeling. Often it serves as a license to act out destructive behavior
because the individuals belong to each other and have implicitly agreed that their relationship will last forever. The myth
of the family love and regard for the individuals that comprise it is a shared conspiracy to deny the aloneness and pain
of its members. It is a concerted refusal to acknowledge the facts of life, death and separateness and live with integrity.
