Balanced: Emotional Health and Eating Habits

Food is oftentimes a comfort for people, yet emotional eating can be a sign of poor emotional health. Feeding your feelings might make you feel better in that instant, but when your waistband gets a little too snug, you may begin feeling guilty and upset, which may make you eat emotionally again and the cycle continues.

Jane Jakubczak, a registered dietitian at the University of Maryland reminds patients "emotional eating is eating for reasons other than hunger. Instead of the physical symptom of hunger initiating the eating, an emotion triggers the eating."

How to recognize emotional eating:

1. Emotional "hunger" comes on suddenly while true physical hunger occurs gradually.
2. Feeding a physical hunger does not leave you with feelings of guilt like emotional eating can.
3. Even if you are full, when eating simply to fill the emotional need, you are more likely to overeat rather than stopping when you're full.
4. When you're feeding feelings, you crave specifics; when you eat for true hunger, you're open to options.
5. Physical hunger can wait if it needs to; emotional hunger needs to be satisfied immediately.

You can minimize and manage emotional eating in the following ways:

1. Identify your emotional eating triggers: Does stress make you crave gummy bears? When you're depressed do you reach for a bag of potato chips? After a great date, do you gorge on chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream? By recognizing when you emotionally eat, you can begin to break the habit.
2. Keep a list of "activities to do when not hungry" near you at all times. When you feel like eating but know that you're not physiologically hungry, pull out this list and do something else instead. Take a walk, do some yoga, call a friend and catch up, just don't mindlessly eat.
3. If you're dieting and need to cut "comfort foods," instead of fully eliminating them, moderate them. Have 10 gummy bears instead of the whole package. Buy the 100-calorie snack packs of chips and indulge.
4. Begin eating "mindfully." Sit in a place meant for eating (the breakfast bar, a kitchen table, not your desk) and eat slowly. Enjoy the taste of the food and feel the textures in your mouth. If you take at least twenty minutes to eat a meal, it gives your brain time to signal your stomach "I'm full!" preventing overeating.
5. If these tips aren't enough to help your emotional eating, seeking help may be an option for you. See if there are group therapies offered in your area as these are frequently less expensive than one-on-one therapies.

May's mental health awareness reminds us that we need to take care of our mental and emotional health. Eating well is one of the 30 Ways to Celebrate National Mental Health Month and again I encourage you to pick five of those thirty ways and celebrate your own health.

(** In honor of Nurse Appreciation Month, check out my Scrubs and Beyond giveaway! **)

When she's not writing for Savings.com, Sarah teaches health and science to high schoolers. You can also find Sarah at WEGO Health, where she is an advocate of improved health conditions for women and children of both the United States and globally and on her personal blog, Sarahndipitea.