Sad, Angry, Happy: How These Simple Feelings Could Lead To Weight Gain

Emotional eating, anxiety, and anxiousness may be responsible for half of all cases of weight gain.  But making some simple adjustments to your lifestyle could prevent unwanted weight gain and help you “snack” healthier and be happier.

Instead of beating yourself up over every little thing that goes in your mouth, adopt these key strategies to keep your weight loss on track—even during anxious times.

Today, I am going to show you EXACTLY what I tell my clients when nervous and emotional feelings start getting in the way of their weight loss…

Table of Contents

What Is Emotional Eating (what causes it)?

How Nervous (Emotional) Eating Impact Your Weight Loss

Strategies To Control Nervous (Emotional) Eating

Summary

Emotional eating has been shown to be an easy way to pack in extra calories.  Also named “stress eating,” or “nervous eating,” emotional eating happens when you don’t have a full grasp on your emotions.

Oftentimes, during emotional eating, a person will eat—even when there are no feelings of hunger.  This occurs as a result of your emotional state dictating when and how much you should be eating.

Emotional eating, nervous eating, and stress eating all mean the same thing—you’re feeding your body in response to some emotional feeling you’re currently immersed in.

This could have lasting impacts on your weight, simply because of poor food choices—which could sabotage your weight loss program and have lasting impacts on your health.

Although most eating is done to fuel your body with the right foods or drinks, emotional eating works in the opposite way. 

Emotional eating, in a way, acts to drown out negative emotions that may be caused by stress, anger, fear, sadness, or loneliness.

Even boredom can trigger emotional eating to occur.  And it doesn’t have to be a major life event that triggers emotional eating.

It could be due to everyday life stressors, situations that may make you feel worthless, or situations that make you feel isolated and alone.

Even though you may eat less if you feel angry or depressed, you may also binge eat, rapidly eat, or even eat whatever is at your disposal (even if you’re not hungry).

Your emotional state may also cause an increase in the stress hormone cortisol—which may also stimulate your appetite.

Emotional eating is dangerous for many different reasons, but one of the main reasons why it’s bad is because of the impact it may have on your weight.

How Emotional Eating Impacts Weight Loss

Although you may not think that emotional eating can have an impact on your weight, it most definitely does.

It may lead to eating far too many calories—especially from foods that contain high amounts of sugar, salt, and fat.

This combination of salty-and-sweet may cause unsafe swings in your blood sugar, which could alter cholesterol, increase your risk for diabetes, and may lead to the development of cancer.

Plus, it may also lead to increased weight gain, which could further complicate matters.

Besides unsafe increases in blood sugar, the high amount of sodium may cause unsafe rises in blood pressure, which could lead to hardening of your arteries and heart-related complications.

Now, when it comes to your weight, the impacts of emotional eating may be more severe.

During emotional eating, you do not tend to gravitate towards snacks that would be healthy for you.  You tend to snack, or even binge, on foods that contain far too many calories and have high amounts of added sugar.

These foods may make you feel good in the short-term, but after some time your blood sugar will start to fall.

And when that decline occurs (oftentimes rapidly), you are back to craving unhealthy foods, creating a vicious cycle of poor eating and eventual weight gain.

Although you may feel that munching here and there may not be bad for your body, it may lead to overeating and even more feelings of anger and guilt and other self-deprecating behavior.

So what can you do to control emotional eating and prevent it from derailing your weight loss goals?

Strategies To Control Emotional Eating

Emotional eating may lead to poor eating habits, poor health, and increased weight gain.

But there are some strategies you can use to control emotional eating—and still keep losing weight and staying healthy.

Those strategies include:

1. Balance

When you’re in a serious bout of emotional eating, grabbing healthy foods is usually the furthest thing from your mind.

However, if you try to balance your snacking, you will be in a far better emotional space.

Reaching for high-quality foods that contain proteins, healthy fats, fiber, and micronutrients your body needs will keep your weight loss on track.

This doesn’t mean you don’t need the cookies or cakes—you just need to balance out the unhealthy foods with healthier ones.

This could lead to better blood sugar control, which could keep you from overeating certain foods.

Instead of eating a box of crackers, which may be higher on the glycemic index, shoot for berries and eggs to slow the rate of digestion and have a much slower impact on your blood sugar.

2. Keep a Food Diary

Keeping a food diary is one of the easiest ways to keep emotional eating from destroying your weight loss.

If you write down everything you eat or drink, how much you've eaten, and how you are feeling while you are eating, this could help you find patterns between your emotions and eating.

3. Develop Regular Eating Interval

If you’re hungry, the chance you’re going to overeat is much greater.  This is why you need to create a regular schedule for eating.

Eating a small meal or snack, every two to three hours, could go a long way to curbing your appetite.

Eating at regular intervals could manage your stress, blood sugar levels, your portions, and could limit the amount of foods you eat during emotional eating times.

4.  Be Mindful

If your stress is constantly high, then practicing mindfulness could alleviate emotional eating.  How can you practice mindfulness?

Some easy ways to be more mindful of your eating include:

• Eating slowly and tasting your food
• Taking several deep breaths before meals
• Putting your fork or spoon down in between bites
• Taking a sip of water before your next bite (water fills your stomach, therefore you have less room for food).

You should also keep track of your emotions while eating.  This could help you determine if you’re eating due to actual hunger, or if you’re satisfying an emotional need.

5. Include Herbs and Spices

Herbs and spices have been used for thousands of years as a way to control blood sugar and reduce stress.

Two of the most potent blood sugar-reducing spices may be cinnamon and Guggul.  Both of these powerful nutrients may lower blood sugar, therefore lowering your risk for severe swings in food cravings.

Another potent nutrient, called Ashwagandha, has been shown to lower cortisol levels, therefore reducing stress and lower anxiety.

Summary

Emotional eating, also called stress eating or nervous eating, may cause unhealthy weight gain.

This type of eating, which often is associated with feelings of anger, anxiety, depression, or loneliness, could potentially lead to increases in portion sizes, added calories, and fluctuations in your blood sugar levels.

However, there are several strategies that you could adopt that could reverse the negative impacts of emotional eating.

Those strategies include:

• Balancing your meals
• Keeping a food diary
• Developing regular eating patterns
• Being more mindful around food
• Including appropriate herbs and spices that could balance blood sugar and reduce cortisol

By adopting these simple strategies, you may find the impacts of emotional eating decrease.

And this could be great for your weight loss.

If you find yourself eating mindlessly, it may be time to take stock of your emotional state, and take the necessary steps to control your eating to keep your weight loss on track.

 

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