Emotional eating

Emotional eating is compulsive eating of food based on a person’s feelings rather than based on physical hunger and nutritional needs. One does not have to be overweight to fall in this category. It’s thus common that emotional eaters associate certain food with at least one type of feeling of comfort, relief, joy, pleasure, and so on. To put it another way some types of foods end up being used like a drug or alcohol. In overcoming emotional eating there is a challenge of separating one’s emotions from food and seeing food for what it is: as a nutritional source for the body. Like any habit forming and compulsive behavior emotional eating can be overcome.