Identify your emotion type: Which type of emotional eater are you?

Next, compare your scores in the six categories of emotional eating to understand which emotions most easily trigger your eating. The following sections of this chapter will guide and help you understand yourself more precisely, when and where you are most likely to eat due to emotions. Once you understand the specific reasons, you can develop a plan to address your emotional issues without eating.

What type of emotional eater are you?

Realizing that you're using eating to reduce anxiety is a first step toward changing your habits. To gain a deeper understanding of why you eat, take a look at some of the types of emotional eating below.

Emotional eating can manifest in many forms. The most severe form is likely uncontrolled overeating. When this happens, eating becomes uncontrollable. What you eat becomes irrelevant; the only thing that matters is eating until the bad mood disappears. But the bad mood is often simply replaced by guilt stemming from eating so much.

A Stanford University study shows that negative emotions can trigger overeating with at least the same intensity as hunger. Many overeaters say they eat until they can't eat anymore, or until they are interrupted by someone or something. Overeaters can consume enormous amounts of food, sometimes up to 10,000 calories while sitting alone. Although this type of emotional eating is rare (only 2-3% of adults, and 8% of obese adults), the depression associated with overeating is a form of psychological trauma that can make weight loss more difficult.

Most emotional eaters are not out-of-control binge eaters. Because more typical emotional eating does not involve depression or loss of control, it does not cause the same psychological harm as binge eating, but it can still lead to unnecessary weight gain. For example, Jesse is unlikely to consume 10,000 calories, but even if he eats small amounts at a time, the calories will accumulate as he walks around the refrigerator and eats intermittently.

Chris, Betsy, and Tiffany are trying to lose weight, but emotional eating wasn't part of their diet plans, so they feel guilty about this unplanned eating. Chris is particularly angry with herself and therefore thinks dieting is pointless and gives up. So why do Chris, Betsy, Jesse, Tiffany, or any other rational person eat for this reason? Why do these people, especially those who are overweight and dieting, needlessly eat?

Reasons for emotional eating

You are a rational, logical thinker capable of making informed decisions. You also know that emotional eating has the opposite effect, making your mood worse, so why is it so difficult to control? Chapter Two explores the process of developing bodily intelligence, including childhood experiences that associate eating with comfort. You can't go back to childhood and recapture those experiences. One thing you can do to reduce emotional eating is to give up dieting.

Chapter Five will explore the dangers of dieting more comprehensively and offer new, smarter methods for weight management. But now it's time to discuss some lesser-known problems caused by dieting: irritability and mood swings. Psychiatrist and author Carol Tavris suggests: "...if people abandoned any of the popular, foolish, and excessively restrictive diets they were practicing, the proportion of irritable people in this country would be lower..." Perhaps, if many drivers didn't diet, there wouldn't be so many angry people on the road.

The constant focus on what to eat or not to eat, the feeling of being deprived of the foods you want to eat, the guilt of eating forbidden foods on your diet – all of this creates tension. Dieting deprives you of certain emotional eating patterns that you need to cope with other stressors in your life. Just because you're dieting, you don't care about work stress, money, children, or any of the other problems of modern society.

The burden of continuous dieting makes people more prone to anger and often depressed. So, what can you do to feel better? Eating out of weakness might make you feel better temporarily, but you know you'll feel guilty later. This emotional eating could be avoided if you didn't diet, so you can increase your physical intelligence by reducing dieting. Chapter Six will tell you how to regulate your eating without dieting.

Besides dieting, what else can cause emotional eating? Is it a pathological condition or an addiction? First, it's important to understand that, aside from overeating, which may be associated with clinical depression, emotional eating is not a sign of mental or psychological illness. Psychiatrist Richard Ganley, after reviewing research, concluded that over 75% of overweight individuals participating in weight loss programs experience emotional eating, as do many people of normal weight. So, if it's not pathological, could it be addictive? After all, emotional eating often involves high-sugar or high-fat foods, or both (such as chocolate), and when emotional eaters are prohibited from eating the foods they crave, they crave them. Therefore, is emotional eating caused by chemical dependence or addiction?

While alcoholics' cravings for alcohol share some similarities with some people's cravings for chocolate, there is little scientific evidence that emotional eating is an addiction. Addiction to substances like alcohol and heroin is characterized by physical dependence, severe withdrawal symptoms, and increased tolerance to the addictive substance. Although some evidence suggests that consuming high-fat, high-sugar "comfort foods" can reduce activity in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and improve mood, there is no evidence that these effects are strong enough to cause addiction.

Even chocolate, often described as an addictive food, does not cause true physiological addiction. While chocolate does contain some psychoactive components, the amounts are very small, so cravings for chocolate are likely primarily psychological. It tastes good, and it feels good in your mouth.

Research shows that the types of food people crave are products of their learning experiences and cultural background. In our society, chocolate is a special food, often associated with love (heart-shaped wrappers for Valentine's Day chocolates), rewards, and hospitality, but in other societies, it may not hold these meanings. For example, a study of different cultural societies found that American and Spanish women crave chocolate, while Egyptian women crave delicacies like stuffed eggplant. If you grew up in Egypt, you might find chocolate unappealing.

So, why is it important for you to find the cause of your emotional eating? It's very simple. If you attribute your emotional eating to a mental illness, personality flaw, or addiction, you'll tell yourself it's a physiological problem, and there's nothing you can do about it. When you accept this explanation, you become passive, only able to wait for a miracle cure. On the other hand, when you identify the emotions that drive your eating, you can increase your physical intelligence and do something about it. You can deal with emotions in other ways than with food.