Binge Eating Part 2 - Emotions and Eating

In Part 2 of looking at binge eating I will be looking at how emotions play a part in why some of us may over eat. In many cultures food is often used as a way to celebrate and to comfort. If you think about it how do we celebrate holidays? How do we mourn the death of a loved one? It very often involves food!

This means that from childhood many of us correlate "feelings" and "comfort" with food. If we are sad we seek comfort food, if we are happy we may want wine, etc. The key to breaking the cycle of correlating food with emotions is first to be able to identify what it is that we are feeling.

Research has shown that often the first emotion we feel is not the true emotion we are feeling, meaning that there is often an underlying emotion that we need to be able to identify to truly deal with the emotion.

This is what we call a Feelings Wheel and it outlines what the surface and underlying feelings we feel may be. For example if you look at the negative emotions you will see that if you feel frustrated you may in fact be angry. If you are feeling apathetic you may be bored. Being able to identify this and seeing what precedes a binge eating incident will help you to develop a alternative plan of behavior.

Next I plan on looking at the ABC's of developing an alternative behavior plan to help you to avoid binge eating after you have identified the emotion that precedes the binge.