Battling Emotional Eating
(and Coming Out on Top!) Picture the scene: your workday was just awful. Your boss got upset with you for something that was your ungrateful client’s doing, which sent you to the bathroom in tears. Mommy dearest called during your lunch break to tell you what a disappointment you are for not having given her the joy of being a grandmother, which then rippled into a fight with your spouse because you were so tense from the day’s events. Where to reach for comfort but your best friend the refrigerator? You see a lonely apple at the bottom of the produce drawer, wince, and then spot that fat piece of birthday cake from your nephew’s party the other day. Mouthwatering at the thought of the sugary frosting coating your eager mouth, you grab the cake and scarf half of it down with your bare hands before you’ve even seen the couch. Ah! Sweet, sweet relief. But the temporary bliss doesn’t last. Instead of jumping on the yoga mat or phoning your flesh and blood best friend to complain, you start poking around the pantry for inspiration. Even though the organic trail mix you enthusiastically picked up last week is right smack in the middle of the shelf, a sleeve of nearly expired sandwich cookies hidden in a dark corner sweetly calls your name. “I’m heeeerrreeeeee”. And this goes on all night until, bloated and ridden with guilt, you put yourself to bed with a healthy glass of Merlot and a series of Top Chef reruns. This sort of behavior is common throughout the population but is especially prevalent among women. Even though coping strategies such as meditation and exercise are generally accepted, it’s just much easier to find temporary comfort in the carbs and sugars that compose most of the average American supermarket. The conduct in question used to be known as stress eating, but the preferred term today is emotional eating, and for good reason: it isn’t just stress that causes people to binge on junk food. Receiving upsetting news, getting broken up with, or indeed, being placed in a tense situation are all justifiable reasons that women give themselves to think it’s ok to indulge.
Understanding Your Behavior Emotional eating may seem like the answer at the moment, but in fact it is crucial that in order to completely abandon your healthy food quest, you figure out the root cause of your comportment and act accordingly. For example, it could
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