How Your God-Given Internal Cues Can Stop Emotional Eating

Chronic stress, a silent predator, is a key instigator of a range of physical and mental ailments. Unfortunately, it also slyly fuels emotional eating. What happens is that we often turn to food beyond our physical hunger because we’re trying to fill a deep-seated void. God actually created that void in us to fill with Himself. Therefore, we know that food is not the answer.

God has gifted us with a sophisticated system that signals when we need to nourish ourselves and when we should refrain from eating. This system helps us to effectively curb emotional eating by recognizing and responding to internal cues.

Defining True Hunger

The internal cues we possess to indicate hunger are natural and intuitive. Your body releases two hormones, ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin stimulates the appetite, making your stomach feel empty and often causing it to growl. The growl or empty sensation may subside but return in 10-30 minutes as your body requires fuel.

The other hormone, leptin, controls satiety. You experience the sensation of being full when fat cells release leptin, which leads you to stop eating. This hormone is released when it receives the signal from the stomach approaching fullness.

Unfortunately, many individuals continue to eat even when they are already full or not hungry, making it difficult to gauge their satiety or control their eating. This can lead to physical discomfort, obesity, digestive problems, and even illness if it becomes a consistent habit. Understanding these potential health risks can be a powerful motivator to change our eating habits.

Why We Eat Our Emotions

If the empty feeling or stomach growl indicates hunger, why do we eat when not physically hungry? Thoughts and emotions fuel our actions. For example, you have had a stressful day at work. You arrive home, and everyone demands to know what is for dinner.

You are not hungry because you ate a late lunch at the office, but the urge to hide in the pantry and eat the cashews or cookies while you try to figure out dinner is strong. It is a coping mechanism because you feel stressed. For a moment, the act of eating brings comfort and soothes you, but it is a fleeting comfort.

We also eat for other reasons, such as past trauma, feeling unwanted or unloved, or losing autonomy due to responsibilities. We must learn to identify the emotions that drive us to eat and face them. We must catch the thoughts behind our feelings and find other ways to cope with these thoughts and emotions instead of turning to food.

Steps to Stop Emotional Eating

You can stop emotional eating and get off the roller coaster of your emotions controlling when you eat. It takes getting back in tune with your body and listening to the internal cues. If emotionally eating is a habit you have been doing for months or years, it will take practice.

Feeling hungry may feel uncomfortable or even scare you. If you came from a childhood of scarcity, making yourself wait until you are hungry might be difficult. A counselor can help you overcome the scarcity mindset behind that drive to eat.

The following is a list of steps to stop emotional eating. If you have been diagnosed or suspect you have an eating disorder, speak to your physician or therapist before making changes.

Identify the sensation

When the urge to eat hits, ask yourself if you really are hungry or if you are avoiding an emotion. Are you worried, afraid, anxious, or sad? Boredom and even happiness can also trigger an emotional eating event.

Once you get into the cycle of feeding the impulse to emotionally eat, and numb your feelings, your brain learns that this is an acceptable habit to protect you from that emotion. Then, the urge to eat when you feel that way again will grow stronger.

Real hunger is an empty feeling in the stomach. Most people get hungry about every three to four hours, depending on the nutrients and volume of their last meal.

If focusing on the internal cues is new for you because you have bypassed real hunger for years, you might go longer than four hours before your stomach feels empty. However, if you feel shaky, lightheaded, or dizzy, eat a meal to raise your blood sugar and contact your physician to rule out a physical condition.

Choose what you want to eat

Another trigger for emotional eating is restriction. If you deny your favorite foods, you may eventually binge on them. For example, if you deny yourself ice cream, although it is your favorite summer treat, the first bad day might lead you to eat an entire pint.

What happens after you emotionally eat? You probably feel guilty, ashamed, and disappointed. You may vow to stay away from ice cream. Before too long, you will repeat the cycle because restriction only serves as a trigger.

Instead, consider allowing yourself a little bit of ice cream when you are truly hungry, along with the rest of your meal. Once you realize you can eat a small portion of ice cream when you want, the power of the craving dissipates.

Slow down during the meal

Most of us eat too quickly. We treat mealtime as a nuisance in our busy days. We often graze throughout the day, basing our consumption on emotions and limited time. How often have you eaten in the car and still felt hungry afterward? When that happens you are not focused on the food.

Once you are physically hungry, sit down to eat your meal. Focus on the best bites and pause between bites. This pause gives your stomach time to register that you are eating. It takes around 20 minutes for the stomach to signal to the brain that it is getting full. Once you feel satisfied, stop eating. If you eat the best bites first, you will more readily walk away from the plate when you’ve had enough.

Stop when satisfied not overly full

About halfway through the meal, assess your hunger. Give yourself a few minutes to allow the food to “settle” and the sensation of fullness to register. You might realize that another few bites would put you over the edge into eating beyond full. Rich, higher-fat fare can bring satiety quicker, and overeating these foods could make you physically ill.

If you have trouble distinguishing whether you are satisfied with your meal, try covering your plate and sit for a bit. After several minutes, your stomach will tell you if it is empty and needs more fuel.

Remember, we aim to fill the stomach with a satisfied feeling, not overfull. If your stomach is full, but you still have the urge to eat, you are probably dealing with emotional eating.

Distract yourself

Emotional eating is a coping mechanism when we cannot handle specific thoughts and emotions. If the urge to eat is there, but you are not physically hungry, find ways to distract yourself. You may want to consider doing hands-on activities like knitting, crocheting, playing video games, gardening, woodworking, or meeting up with a friend.

Exercise is an excellent distraction that helps you condition your body while regulating your appetite. You may notice that as you exercise consistently you feel hungry more frequently. Physical movement fires up the metabolism and aids in digestion.

However, if you struggle with over exercising to control your weight, seek help from a counselor. Eating disorders can be fatal if left untreated. It’s important to have a healthy relationship with food and exercise.

Counseling for emotional eating is only a click away

Are you stuck in the grip of emotional eating? Do you give in to the uncontrollable urge to eat when your emotions get too high? You can find a counselor specializing in emotional eating with only a click or call. Reach out to our office today to schedule an assessment. We would love to get you off the roller coaster of emotional eating and back to the natural internal cues God has given you for hunger.