Emotional Overeating
For many, overeating is a state of mind. Find out why overeating is often emotional, how to cope and how to stop yourself.
I get so emotional, baby … and I think of food
By Jeff Schnaufer CTW Features
You’ve had a bad day at work. Or maybe someone cut you off in traffic. Or perhaps you found a handful of bills in the mailbox.Whatever the case, you walk through the front door and head straight for the freezer and devour a carton of frozen goodies to relieve that emotional angst gnawing at you.
Sound familiar?
No matter age, weight or gender, emotional overeating is an equal opportunity offender affecting millions of us. But is it an eating disorder? “Emotional eating is not in itself a specific eating disorder, though emotional eating occurs in eating disorders,” says Dr. Jennifer Taitz, co-author of “End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food” (New Harbinger Publications, 2012).
Taitz, who is a clinical psychologist and director of the dialectical behavior therapy program at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York, says emotional eating is associated with binge eating, obesity and bulimia doctors suggest to follow the best diets to fight this, if you are interested check these blood sugar ultra reviews. In the United States, nearly 10 million females and 1 million males are fighting a life and death battle with an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). Millions more are struggling with binge eating disorder.
So why do we emotionally overeat? Health, psychological and nutrition experts give a variety of reasons.
“Eating may serve as a temporary distraction, facilitating moving away from boredom, sadness, anxiety or other distressing feelings,”Taitz says.“In addition to helping you briefly escape an uncomfortable emotion, eating may also add a positive emotion. So it’s doubly rewarding — takes away a negative and adds a positive.”
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