DO YOU REALLY FEEL LIKE MUNCHING ON SOMETHING ALL THE TIME? ARE YOU EATING TO HIDE YOUR EMOTIONS? IF FOOD IS THE SOLUTION YOU CHOOSE WHEN YOU FEEL UPSET, THEN YOU MAY BE ENGAGING IN EMOTIONAL EATING.

Are you using food as a substitute for love?

Have you ever found yourself mindlessly noshing on cookies only to find out that you have eaten the whole box? When you have an argument with your significant other, do you reach for a bag of barbecue chips or a pint of ice cream? When you feel lonely after a breakup, do you find comfort in a bowl of mac or a slice of pizza?

If so, you are not alone. Emotional eating is a serious problem that experts say can account for 73 percent of overeating.

If you feel a sudden onset of insatiable hunger, you’re craving a specific food, you’re consuming mass quantities of food, eating alone, or you’re feeling angry or guilty about the food you’re eating, you may be suffering from an emotional eating disorder.

I spoke with a panel of experts to determine just how to stop emotional eating and break the difficult cycle of devastating eating to fill up your heart, instead of just your stomach.

” EMOTIONS ARE OFTEN EASY TO GO WRONG WITH HUNGER,” SAYS NICOLE BURLEY, AUTHOR OF PROUD, NOT PERFECT: A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO HEALTHY HABITS. “WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, WE FEEL OUR LONELINESS, OUR SADNESS IN OUR GUT — THE SAME AS WHEN WE ARE HUNGRY.”

Tatiana Abende, a coach of health and lifestyle says, people often resort to emotional eating because they feel rejected, especially in their romantic relationships. Abend warns, “Self-care can go out the window when you feel rejected and nobody cares about you and say to yourself, ‘Everyone hates me, so I hate myself.’”

Nancy Lee Bentley, Wholistic Health Expert, believes that the “solar plexus,” the center of the main energy intersection below the ribcage, is in the same area like the stomach, Which sometimes causes us to confuse the emotional feeling satisfied with the physical feeling of “being full” from eating “During a long period of loneliness or a breakup,” says Bentley, “we sometimes try to ‘fill’ up that energy center with food to make up for the withdrawal of love.”

Bentley says that the chemistry of emotions and love is similar to the chemistry of, say, chocolate. “Love stimulates some of the hormones and neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, the calming and stimulating ‘feel goods’ we get from carbs and other foods, such as chocolate.”

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