Are You An Emotional Eater?

We all understand how we eat when we feel happy, or we feel sad, we grab the nearest comfort food that makes us feel better for a short while until we move onto the next bit of food, but we never think to realize what our emotional eating habits is costing us?

But first before we get into the cost of an emotional eater, let’s do a quick rundown of what an emotional eater really is. So, what is an emotional eater?

What is an emotional eater?

An emotional eater is someone who uses food as a way of easing their pain, their suffering, their stress, and other emotions that they may be feeling and don’t know how else to be able to deal with their emotions and what to do with them, so they use food, not as something nutritional or for fuel but to make them feel better.

There have been countless studies and research on this exact topic and what it has to do with weight gain and obesity. Studies have shown that weight gain and obesity goes well beyond the basic concept of eating more calories makes you gain weight and less to lose weight, doctors, psychologists and other medical minds couldn’t quite understand why people were gaining more and more weight, they thought it was really simple, but the fact of the matter is that it was never that simple, it went beyond what they thought, it was a much deeper psychological issue that caused most people to over eat day after day after day.

They figured out that people went to food as a comfort, as a way of easing their pain and suffering for a short period, not because of hunger, but because it made them feel better. The doctors and medical minds decided to sit and listen to the people for once and talk to them about their weight gain and eating habits, most of the people had some deep emotional issues connected to their past, their childhood and how they were raised and brought up, mainly memories that caused them quite a lot of trauma, from parents divorcing, family members dying, sexual abuse, emotional abuse the list is endless.

A lot of the emotional eating comes from the person, how they think and feel about themselves, their beliefs too. The only way to fully be free of emotional eating is to accept and love yourself for who you are, not clinging on to all the bad things in your life, letting go and accepting.

3 Major reasons you’re an emotional eater

1. Modern day culture

In today’s modern day culture there are tons and tons of pressure on people to be a certain way and to look a certain way. Every time you look in a clothing magazine there are tons and tons of pictures of fit and healthy individuals showing off the clothing that you may or may not want to buy for yourself, your looking at this person thinking the cloths look amazing, but really, you’re only seeing them on the model, not yourself.

So, you go and buy the clothes the model was wearing, you run upstairs to try them on, you look yourself in the mirror and you instantly dislike what you see, why? Because in your mind you had an image of how it was going to look, comparing to the individual in the magazine, you don’t feel sexy, you don’t feel as good and in your mind you think that what you’re seeing in the magazine, in movies, tv programs is the desired look that people want to see, which in turn creates what we call our “body image” the way we see ourselves and the way we see others, what is or isn’t normal causing a rush of emotional issues, never thinking your good enough or desired

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Everything we see is modified in some way, from extensive makeup, lighting, special effects, and digital editing using machines and computers, made all for you to buy their products, making you think you will look like that when no one really looks like that, once you break out of this train of thought you will be opened to a whole new world, it will help you accept yourself.

We use food not just for sustaining our life and body but in today’s culture food is used for many more things, from entertainment to competitions making food all over the place making it a part of our everyday lives.

1. Emotional Trauma

A lot of the time emotional eating comes from deep emotional issues either with something causing you serious mental trauma in the present and in the past. A lot of the time its people’s childhoods or teenage years where the emotion starts to hide and build up inside them, coming from bad backgrounds with abusive family, seeing parents or family die, parents breaking up, being put in care Holmes, or even your current life and partner.

Maybe you’re not where you want to be in life, watching old friends and people you know gaining their dream jobs, achieving something that you wish you could achieve, so you use food as a way of helping you deal and forget about it, it’s not the type of food it’s your relationship with the food.

All these things cause trauma, even if you didn’t fully know it, your past could be the reason.

It slowly creeps into your life, you almost never realize it until it’s too late. Forcing you to go to food as your source of comfort when food itself was only ever meant to be a way of sustaining your life and body, food was never meant to be something more. Food is an unhealthy relationship determined by suffering and pain of the individual.

1. Family Genetics

Research has been coming up with evidence which supports that some emotional eaters are the cause of family genetics. DRD2 and OPRM1 are genes in the brain “reward” system. Different variations of these two types of genes are associated with emotional eating and weight gain, which can cause a small percentage of risk to binge eating. https://www.gbhealthwatch.com/GND-Emotional-Eating-Genes.php

So, if your trying to pin point why you’re always eating and you have ruled out trauma and modern day culture, and maybe an addiction to food then it could likely be genetic.

The cost of being an emotional eater

Being an emotional eater is hard enough on your life as it is, making you gain weight, making you feel awful and depressed but when you find out how much being an emotional eater is costing you, you may be surprised.

It has been researched that trying to eat a healthy balanced diet could cost you a lot more than eating an unhealthy diet, the price of healthy food is about $1.50 more than unhealthy foods per day for a 2000 calorie a day diet.

Which doesn’t make it exactly easy for people especially ones on a low income. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-unhealthy-diet-costs-1-50-more/

But for an emotional eater, the prices would vary quite a bit. Heathier foods may be more expensive that unhealthy foods but that all depends on how much food is bought. If an emotional eater went food shopping for healthy foods they wouldn’t have a big varied amount of options to choose from, vegetables, lean meats, 0% fat free foods and yoghurts, things that don’t always taste the best, so their shopping cart wouldn’t be too full, they can’t have delicious snacks like potato chips and fizzy drinks, fatty foods, sugary foods, only healthy food options, leaving snacks and comfort food quite unappetizing.

But if you switched it around and let them do a normal shop for food getting anything they want then the results would be different and cost them more because of their own temptations, cravings, and addictions of being an emotional eater.

There are endless amounts of products for an emotional eater to choose from, they would buy their normal meals for the day plus their snacks, their treats, drinks in quite large quantities making their shop cost more because of their freedom to choose what they desire not what they need.

It doesn’t just stop there, imagine you’re going out for a walk and you’re in a park and see a food van, you notice you have some money in your bag/wallet, which was supposed to be for your rent which is due, but you’re having a bad day, your tired, stressed out, what are you more likely to do? That’s right you’re going to risk it and buy yourself some food leaving you short on rent, costing you overall more money, even getting yourself into trouble.

Just stop and have a think, if you didn’t go spending loads of money on snacks and other unhealthy foods what could you be doing with it?

5 things you could do with your saved money

1. You could save for a family holiday, take a break, and have a rest.

2. Buy yourself a new car, clothes, household items, mobile phone.

3. Exercise equipment and gym memberships.

4. Take your children to activities giving them hobbies.

5. Paying off your debts making you debt free.

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