WHAT IS EMOTIONAL HUNGER?
WHAT IS EMOTIONAL HUNGER?
In daily life, at work, at school, with family or close friends, we share different emotions every day. Sometimes we want to keep some feelings to ourselves and don’t want to feel our feelings to others.
These suppressed emotions sometimes erupt with anger, sometimes with crying, and sometimes with an unlimited desire to eat… Even if this situation sounds innocent at first, emotional hunger is an eating disorder and needs to be treated.
Emotional hunger; It is trying to overcome the trauma experienced, the subconscious thoughts acquired from childhood, the challenging situations experienced in adolescence, the emotional emptiness felt by eating even though no hunger is felt. There is definitely a trigger factor in people with this eating disorder. For this reason, the person wants to relieve himself for a moment by eating in order to ignore his own feelings and not to face them. Triggering emotions can occur not only in depressive or angry moments, but also in happy moments. Individuals who were promised toys in return for eating in childhood thought eating as a way to reach rewards when they become adults.
Eating disorders are very serious disorders that progress insidiously and take the body and soul of the person captive. Emotional hunger also creates a vicious circle. Eating suddenly and without feeling hungry, gaining weight after this becomes permanent, loss of self-confidence, experiencing unhappiness and eating again to suppress it… The way to break this cycle is correct living of the feelings.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PHYSICAL HUNGER AND EMOTIONAL HUNGER? HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH THEM?
Physical hunger is a natural warning mechanism that people feel from the moment they are born. The stomach completes digestion and sends a signal to the brain, making the person feel hungry. The urge to eat sweets, which is caused by stomach rumbling, dizziness, tremors, and a decrease in insulin levels, accompanies this situation. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, is an impulsive craving for food, completely different from these situations. The desire to eat carbohydrates and snacks is more dominant. Because whatever the emotional state is, the person wants to suppress it with a food that he will enjoy.
If you are not available to eat at the moment when physical hunger is felt, the body can tolerate it, but when emotional hunger is experienced, the person feels as he has to eat something and feels great relief as soon as he eats.
Constantly thinking about food, not being aware of what you are eating while eating, ignoring the feeling of fullness may be a sign of emotional hunger. Emotional hunger is not just an eating disorder, it’s a social disorder. It is a disease that affects the behavior of the person, can cause depression, affects human relations, and is considered among the causes of obesity.
HOW CAN WE CONTROL EMOTIONAL HUNGER WITH REGULAR NUTRITION?
The key to this discomfort: Being aware. If the person is aware of what he is doing and is uncomfortable with it, he needs to take a step to heal. It would be a good decision to get support from psychological counselors in this regard. The underlying cause of this eating disorder needs to be examined and treated.
When such a trigger is experienced, consuming fruit/vegetables instead of high-calorie foods, as is always done, and drinking plenty of water creates a feeling of satiety in the stomach.
Eating patterns should be established and meals should not be skipped. In order to get rid of this discomfort, it is necessary to proceed in a planned manner. Creating a routine always makes the person feel safe and prevents attacks.
In addition to the eating pattern, doing exercise regularly takes the eating disorder under control.
Habits such as alcohol and cigarettes maintain the feeling of evasiveness in this process. For this reason, while controlling emotional hunger, such harmful habits should be reduced as much as possible.
