Psychologist gives advice on how to deal with emotional overeating 03:38

Emotional or psychogenic eating is an eating disorder that involves excessive food consumption. There are clients who eat almost every 15-30 minutes, that is, almost constantly. Anna Grishina, a psychologist, nutritionist and specialist in eating disorders in the multidisciplinary team of the Center for Weight Surgery and Metabolic Disorders, told socialbites.ca.

“This inevitably leads to weight gain, obesity and food addiction. It doesn’t always matter what it is. It can be the uncontrolled sucking of any food from a pan in the dark or the ritual of eating nice food in a nice restaurant. Most of the time, of course, it’s fatty, sweet and floury. Food is a socially sanctioned addiction. No one will judge you for your fifth cake, especially if food problems haven’t yet affected your appearance,” he said.

According to the psychologist, if a person eats every 30 minutes to an hour, it is not a matter of hunger. This food has a different role; not to satiate. There can be many roles: stress; not accepting your body and yourself as a person; dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction with one’s life (work, relationships).

To cope with this problem, it is necessary to recognize it and determine the causes of overeating. You also need to distinguish between types of hunger and record your feelings, listen to your body and learn to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger.

Grishina emphasized that “personality traits such as high anxiety, lack of self-confidence and susceptibility to stress play an important role in the development of eating disorders.”

An eating disorder psychologist works with all of these. If you can’t see a psychologist yet, or if you’re sure you can handle this problem on your own, start by keeping a journal of your emotions and regulating your eating behavior:

“In the 1st column we write the time, day. Product – Napoleon cake. Is there hunger now or not? There is no hunger. What happened? (The desire to eat arises before or after an event. Most often these are certain rituals). For example: after a meeting I eat a cake and drink coffee with sugar. What are the physical sensations? Immediately after the meeting I felt tension in my body. There was pressure in my chest and it was difficult to breathe. What emotions did you experience? During the meeting: anger, rage, rage. I wanted something sweet. After the meeting I bought a cake and ate it very quickly. It became easier. The tension went away. What do you think and feel about it now? I think about why I did it. I feel guilty. Again, I did not have enough willpower,” the psychologist explained.

Try to understand the reason for the urge to eat and follow the sequence of actions.

“Were you able to overcome the urge to eat? If we succeed, we write “YES” and write exactly what helped. For example, I left a meeting angry, thought about the cake, but got water and went for a walk down the street. I took a deep breath, enjoyed the sun, talked to my wife on the phone, got distracted by the meeting and my desire to eat disappeared,” concluded the expert.

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