Am I Really Hungry Or Is It My Emotional Hunger?
6 Clues that will help you tell the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger.
I recently did a Facebook live on this exact topic. You can watch the replay here:https://www.facebook.com/shemakespeacewithfood/videos/343901786299117/
A client of mine recently struggled with this even though she was working so hard to improve the way she copes with challenging emotions. She was meditating, doing yoga and journaling, all the tools I love my clients to use. She told me she craving food all day and night and she was still eating more than she felt she needed. Her clothes were getting tighter and her moods were getting darker.
After some investigation, we discovered she was confusing emotional hunger with physical hunger. She was often eating when she really needed something other than food.
This isn’t uncommon because it can be easy to mistake these two, but there are 6 clues you can look for to help you understand your hunger. This is the first step to interrupting the binge cycle because until you identify which one it is, you won’t know whether to eat or do something else.
Here are 6 clues to look for to help you determine the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger:
1. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly. It is overwhelming and feels urgent.
2. Emotional hunger makes you crave comfort foods. When you’re physically hungry you typically crave foods that will nourish your body, but emotional hunger favors sugar or salty snacks. These types of foods provide your emotional hunger with a rush of instant distraction.
3. Emotional hunger leads to mindless eating. Because you are checked out, you’ll keep eating until you get to the bottom of the bag or scrape the bottom of the ice cream container.
4. Emotional hunger is not satisfied with fullness. You might feel like no matter how much food you consume, you’re not feeling full. It’s not easy to feel connected to your body and in tune with satiation levels when you’re eating from this place of urgency.
5. Emotional hunger isn’t in your stomach. You don’t feel typical hunger cues when you are dealing with emotional hunger. The sensation of a growling stomach and hunger pains are signs of physical hunger, but they’re not present in emotional hunger. Start paying attention to your hunger cues so you learn what that feels like in your body.
6. Emotional hunger triggers feelings of shame and guilt. When you’re physically hungry and you eat to satiety, you don’t tend to dwell on the experience. However, when you emotionally eat, the aftermath leaves you feeling ashamed and filled with regret.
After you have become clear on which type of hunger you’re feeling, then you can proceed to the next steps.
If you are physically hungry, it’s simple:Eat
If you are emotionally hungry: Do something to take your mind off of it that will help calm or soothe the emotion. This is truly what you need instead of food.
It can be helpful to start tracking some of these clues and tuning into your own hunger signals to learn if you are eating because you are hungry or trying to distract from an emotion.