Understanding Emotional Eating: When Food Becomes an Emotional Crutch
Childhood Emotional Eating: A Potential Cause for Concern
The consumption of food as a means to cope with stress, depression, or boredom is known as emotional eating. It is a behavior where individuals turn to food, even when not particularly hungry, as a way to alleviate negative moods. However, excessive emotional eating leading to weight gain can be a cause for alarm.
A recent study suggests that even children may engage in emotional eating. For instance, a child who tends to eat more when bored may exhibit signs of emotional eating. This behavior should not be overlooked, as emotional eating can have detrimental effects on a child’s physical and mental well-being.
Identifying Emotional Eating in Adults
If you find yourself resorting to food as a means to manage stress, it is essential to consider the possibility of emotional eating. While seeking comfort in delicious food is a natural human instinct and can indeed help alleviate stress, it becomes a concern when it becomes an uncontrollable habit or a response to mental illness.
Emotional eating can be caused by various factors, including an excessive focus on dietary control or dieting, abnormalities in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and emotional problems. Proper management of one’s diet involves consuming fewer calories, regular meal patterns, and opting for healthier food choices. However, the stress and hunger associated with dieting often trigger episodes of emotional overeating.
Abnormalities in the HPA axis can also contribute to emotional eating. The HPA axis is responsible for regulating stress-induced appetite modulation in the human body. While acute stress may suppress appetite, chronic stress leads to the secretion of appetite-enhancing hormones, giving rise to emotional eating tendencies.
Furthermore, emotional eating can be observed in individuals with emotional problems. Those who have difficulty recognizing and expressing their emotions, as well as those who resort to impulsive methods or suppression to cope with stress, are more susceptible to emotional eating. Disturbingly, recent studies indicate that emotional eating is not just limited to adults but can also be observed in children as young as four to five years old.
Childhood Emotional Eating Study
Researchers from the UK’s Aston University recently conducted a study involving children aged four to five years old. The study aimed to evaluate their eating habits and moods in different everyday situations. Particularly, the researchers investigated their response to boredom.
The results of the study revealed that when bored, children consumed an additional 94 calories even when they were already full. Furthermore, children who exhibited highly emotional behavior and whose parents frequently used food as a means to calm them consumed up to five times more calories when bored. This suggests that excessive caloric intake in response to boredom can have significant implications, especially in food-rich environments.
Rebecca A. Stone, Ph.D., emphasized the importance of children learning how to experience boredom without turning to food. Parents should encourage alternative activities to divert their children’s attention when boredom strikes, rather than relying on food as a crutch.
It is crucial to note that providing food based on a child’s emotions can lead to a pattern of emotional eating in the future.
The findings of this study were published in the journal ‘Food Quality and Preference’ in the field of sensory and consumer studies.
Overcoming Emotional Eating: A Holistic Approach
Effectively managing stress is paramount in overcoming emotional eating and cultivating healthy eating habits. Individuals must examine how they express and conceal their emotions and address any underlying issues, such as depression or difficulties in interpersonal relationships. Additionally, it is essential to assess if emotional eating is a result of food addiction.
Signs of food addiction include consuming excessive amounts of food until discomfort, constantly seeking food when not hungry, deliberate vomiting after eating, weekend or evening binge eating, and experiencing self-disgust, depression, or guilt after overeating. If these symptoms appear, it is crucial to address the possibility of food addiction.
It is important to distinguish between obesity caused by food addiction or binge eating disorder and general obesity. Appetite suppressants may worsen the condition in cases of severe food addiction, leading to yo-yo dieting or depression due to a rebound effect. In such cases, comprehensive psychiatric treatment, primarily cognitive-behavioral therapy, should be provided to address the underlying mental health issue. However, the primary focus should be on finding alternative ways to cope with stress and emotions, rather than relying solely on food.
By adopting a holistic approach that incorporates stress management techniques and healthier coping mechanisms, individuals can overcome emotional eating and establish a balanced relationship with food.
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The behavior of trying to relieve someone’s mood through food when someone is stressed, depressed or bored is called emotional eating. Even if you’re not particularly hungry or your body doesn’t want nourishment, when stress builds up, it tries to resolve it through appetite. If this type of emotional eating is repeated too much or leads to weight gain, you need to be alarmed.
A child who eats more whenever he is bored may have emotional eating Source: Getty Image Bank
If you turn to food when you’re stressed, you should suspect ’emotional eating’
Pursuing and eating delicious food is actually a very normal and natural instinct, and it helps to some extent to manage emotions and relieve stress. However, if you try to calm your mind by eating alone or if you eat too much to the point where you can’t control yourself, you may have a mental illness.
Causes of emotional eating include dietary control (dieting), abnormalities in the HPA axis, and emotional problems. The key to managing your diet is to eat less than before, eat regularly, and eat healthier foods. However, these changes inevitably cause stress and hunger for dieters. Dietary control to get healthy and thin leads to emotional overeating.
Abnormalities in the HPA axis can also cause emotional eating. The HPA axis refers to the neuroendocrine system that includes the brain (hypothalamus and pituitary gland) and the adrenal cortex, and its main role is to maintain homeostasis and regulate stress in the human body. When there is acute stress, appetite is suppressed, but when chronic stress occurs, appetite-enhancing hormones are secreted.
Emotional eating also appears in cases where there are emotional problems. It is known that alexithymia, which means difficulty recognizing and expressing one’s emotions, or coping methods such as impulsively resolving stress or trying to suppress emotions, is linked to emotional eating. A recent study found that this type of emotional eating occurs not only in adults but also in children between 4 and 5 years old.
Four-year-olds eat five times more calories than usual when they are bored
Researchers at Aston University in the UK announced that even children as young as 4 eat more food than usual when they feel bored. The results of this study showed that children ate 79% more calories than usual when they were bored.
The researchers asked 119 parents about what eating habits they were instilling in their children and what their children’s temper was like. Children between the ages of 4 and 5 took part in the study. The researchers created a variety of everyday situations that could trigger various moods, including boredom, then fed children a normal meal and asked them to report when they were full.
The results of the experiment showed that children who were bored ate an extra 94 calories even when they were already full. In addition, if parents often used food to calm their children and their children were very emotional, the children ate five times more calories when bored.
Rebecca A. Stone, Ph.D., said, “Given that boredom is a common emotion experienced by children, if children consumed these many more calories during a single boring situation induced in the laboratory (4 minutes) , they would have stopped. During the year, excessive caloric intake in response to boredom can be very important in food-rich environments.” He added, “Children should learn how to experience boredom without relying on food, and parents should try to help their children turn their attention to something other than food when they are bored.”
Also, even if you want to use food as a tool to soothe your child, you need to be careful because giving food based on your child’s emotions can lead to more emotional eating in the future.
The results of this study were published in the journal ‘Food Quality and Preference’ in the field of sensory and consumer studies.
Managing stress is important to overcoming emotional eating
Managing stress is very important to overcome emotional eating and develop healthy eating habits. You need to take a hard look at how you express and hide your emotions, whether you’re consumed by depression or have difficulties in interpersonal relationships. It is also important to check for eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa.
You should also check carefully to see if food addiction is caused by emotional eating. △Eating a lot until you’re too full to feel uncomfortable, △Continuing to look for food even when you’re not hungry, △deliberate vomiting after eating, △binge eating at the weekend or in the evening , △ feeling disgusted with yourself, depressed, or guilty after overeating If you experience any of the following symptoms, you should suspect food poisoning.
Obesity caused by food addiction, binge eating disorder, etc. is treated differently from general obesity. This is because if an appetite suppressant is used in a patient with severe food addiction, it can worsen yo-yoing or depression due to a rebound effect. If obesity is caused by food addiction or binge eating disorder, it should be considered a mental problem and psychiatric treatment should be provided at the same time. Cognitive behavioral therapy is mainly used, where the patient recognizes that he or she is addicted to food and receives counseling to correct it. However, the most important thing is to find ways to relieve stress and emotions in ways other than food for treatment and prevention.
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