If you are attempting to lose weight, then it is essential to overcome emotional eating patterns. Emotional eating is a way that many individuals cope with a bad day at work, school, or home. During your childhood, you may have lived in a home where food was used as a reward system for earning good grades or behaving correctly in certain situations. Unfortunately, a consistent pattern of using food for comfort or rewards can lead to weight gain and eating disorders.

Emotional Eating Changes Your Hormones

You may not realize that your weight issues are influenced by emotional eating until visiting a weight loss clinic, where there are experts who analyze your overeating patterns. When you begin to consume food, your hormones change, leading to a feeling of satiation. Some people enjoy this feeling of fullness subconsciously, and in order to cope with negative emotions, they turn to food. Eating a bowl of ice cream or bag of potato chips helps to alleviate feelings of anger or sadness as hormones are released in your body.

Emotional Eaters Often Gain Weight

If you engage in emotional eating frequently, then your weight begins to increase. In addition, the habit of overeating emotionally becomes a form of addiction that is difficult to overcome without recognizing the problem. Recognizing that you are an emotional eater is the first step toward overcoming the condition, but unlike other coping behaviors, you cannot stop eating completely. Research also reveals that almost 3 percent of emotional eaters also develop a binge-eating disorder that has additional health consequences, such as high blood pressure.

You Must Learn New Coping Mechanisms

In order to overcome emotional eating, you need to find new ways to cope with negative feelings that do not involve food. If you are an adult who has spent a lifetime comforting yourself with food, then it is time to learn new coping mechanisms. Rather than escaping into food when a difficult situation occurs at home, you need to learn how to discuss your feelings with other individuals to solve problems. Finding a new way to release negative emotions, including engaging in a favorite hobby or participating in sports, is also an excellent way to overcome this habit.