The All-American Emotional Eater

By Katherine Heffernon


It's not simple to pick them out of a group of people, the mom you see every day dropping off kids at school gives the impression of being normal, nothing is abnormal about the way she talks, and she doesn't behave strangely but in the privacy of her house she gobbles up food and drinks cocktails. Does this sound familiar? If it doesn't sound familiar to you, it does to someone living right next door.

The domestic life which most of us live today is filled with people who feel by themselves, unhappy, melancholy, uptight, over-anxious, exhausted, and disheartened. People either deal with these feels in a healthy way like calling your best friend or exercising or unhealthy like stuffing yourself with food to feel better.

For those of us who eat to fill the void, it's a lonely road. You eat in private because you are ashamed, you have a negative self-image, and the issues which started it all are still there when you are done. If the questions below ring true for you then you most likely are an emotional eater.

Do you eat food just because?

Physical hunger can wait until food is available and it doesn't care if the food is healthy or unhealthy. Emotional hunger is immediate and impulsive and usually craves specific unhealthy foods.

Instead of dealing with a problem or emotion, do you hit the pantry?

Filling yourself with food instead of coming to terms with your feelings can bring up your level of stress and your blood pressure resulting in you experiencing more depression then before.

Do you regularly overeat high carb, high fat foods?

One should be eating 'good for you' food 90% of the time and 'cheat' foods 10% of the time. If these percentages are not in line most of the time, then you need to control your emotional eating.

Learn how to break the HABIT of emotional eating by visiting EmotionalEatingMom.com.




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