Emotional Eating

Why You Eat – It’s More Than Just Hunger

September 22, 2009
By J White

Most people think that the only reason that you eat is because you are hungry. Even though the hunger you feel does play a part, the choices of the foods that you eat and how you eat has very little to do with hunger. The fact is that most of these decisions are based on learned behavior and how you feel at the moment rather than the hunger itself.

For example, a breakfast of egg whites and oatmeal would satisfy your hunger in the morning, but most people would prefer pancakes covered with syrup and sausage. It is these types of emotional eating that drive your decisions when making choices on how to satisfy your hunger. The fact is that you are not just satisfying your hunger, but also satisfying a psychological need as well, and it is this and similar needs that you must become aware of if you are to control your hunger.

The only obstacle that remains now is to identify, other than hunger, what factors drives your choices of what you eat and how you eat. Once you do this, you can work on developing coping skills to deal with these factors and hopefully start to make better eating choices.

To help you determine what factors effect your decision of how and what you eat, the following is a list of common causes that influence your eating behavior.

Eating Behavior Influences

Emotions

By far the number one reason for why people eat is because of emotion. This shouldn’t be too surprising since eating can bring about a consistent feeling of pleasure. Whether you are sad or lonely, eating can bring about a temporary sense of pleasure that can help you forget your troubles.

Triggers

Triggers are anyone, anything, or any situation that brings about a desire to eat. This can be a pizza commercial, or that bag of cookies on top of your refrigerator. Learning to recognize what your eating triggers are will assist you in better being able to control your eating behavior.

Associations

Associations are similar to triggers, but are worth mentioning separately since being aware of them can further help you understand why you eat in certain situations. For instance, some people are in the habit of having a bag of chips when they are watching TV. Not having the chips would seem strange to them. This is because watching TV and eating chips have become associated with each other. You can better learn how to deal with bad eating behavior once you learn how to identify these associations.

Learned Behavior

Another factor that influences your eating behavior has to do with the habits that you have been programmed with throughout all your life. This of course has to do with the foods that you learn to love as a child and continue to eat till this very day. Even though this behavior may seem as though that it is ingrained in your DNA, you can learn new eating practices. To change these practices, you must first and foremost, become aware that they exist, which is what you are doing now.

Signals To Stop

Not only do you need to become aware of what influences you to eat, you also need to become aware of what factors signal you to stop eating. The appropriate time to stop eating is when you are no longer hungry. However, most people continue to eat until they are full. To eat healthier and to better understand their influences on your eating behavior, you must learn to distinguish between the two.

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