Many people think that an eating disorder can only be something as severe as bulimia or anorexia. That’s not true. Emotional overeating is just as much a disease as those two. And if you suffer from any of the following symptoms you could be suffering from it. So, what are the symptoms? Let’s take a look:
1. Gaining weight during times of stress.
2. Eating when you’re bored because there’s nothing else to do.
3. Eating when you’re angry or sad or upset and so on.
Those are just a few of the most common symptoms. Now let’s take a look at some of the more uncommon ones to help you decide whether you could be an emotional eater.
Guilt and Shame
Someone that suffers from emotional overeating will have a binging episode where they gorge themselves with food and then hate themselves for doing it. They will feel embarrassed even though no one is around…which brings me to the next sign/symptom.
Eating in Secret
An emotional overeater hates themselves for doing it and because they are embarrassed and ashamed they do it in secret when others aren’t around. Often times they’ll even eat good when others around, saving their ‘bad’ food for their secret binges.
Mindless Eating
Oftentimes an emotional overeater won’t even realize what they are doing. Meaning they are so ‘mindless’ when doing it they often don’t even taste the food or realize how much they’ve ate. For example, an emotional overeater could eat a whole pack of Oreo cookies and only realize they are gone because they reach in for one more only to find none there. People have often said that they feel like they are ‘out of it’ during one of their mindless binges.
Always Thinking about Food
If you find yourself always thinking about food (for example you wake up thinking about it, you go to bed thinking about it, you eat breakfast only to think about when you can eat next, etc) can be a sign that you have an emotional eating disorder. It’s not normal to think about food all the time or to feel anxious about it.
Feeling Sick
Many overeaters find themselves feeling sick after eating. They eat to comfort themselves but it ends up making them nauseous because they eat so much – a body’s way of saying ‘hey, you’ve fed me too much.’ Even with feeling like this, it doesn’t prevent the emotional overeater from their next binge.
Identify Your Triggers
In order to get a grip on emotional overeating, the triggers (they why) need to be identified. We know that the main thing is emotions but it often goes beyond that to something a lot more specific. There are some basic triggers so let’s take a look at those:
* Environmental/Situational – Eating while reading or watching TV or working on the computer, these are all environmental/situational. This simply means that you eat because the opportunity is there.
* Psychological – Negative thoughts, self-destructive thoughts often make an emotional overeater go on a binge in an effort to comfort their self.
* Emotional – Stress, boredom, anxiety, sadness all are emotional triggers that cause the emotional overeater to eat.
Now the question is – do you find that these signs (symptoms) describe you? If so, don’t feel like there is no hope. There are things you can do to fight this. You should talk to a professional about what you’re going through to start with.
