Emotional and Comfort Eating
Emotional and comfort eating happens when we eat because of how we are feeling emotionally inside, rather than as a response to actual physical hunger.
It is not uncommon for people to eat when they feel sad, angry, hopeless, bored or lonely. Eating may make you feel better in the short term. Eating in response to emotions, particularly if you are not hungry, is known as comfort eating.
Eating your favourite food when something upsets you is OK, and everybody is likely to do it from time to time.
Comfort eating may become a problem if you are regularly feeling sad, angry, hopeless, bored or lonely and are using food to cope with these feelings. All these responses to food can become pattern forming, that is when we associate feeling a certain way with eating. In all these examples, it is often the act of eating itself that becomes important, rather than thinking about and appreciating what we are eating. Habits of eating like this are negative and over time can lead to weight gain, low self esteem and a mirade of other problems, as we are overriding and ignoring our body's innate ability to tell us when and what it needs to function.
Clinical Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy and CBT can help to overcome negative eating behaviours by refocusing the mind on what it really wants, and using an analytical approach to investigate the reasons why you are eating in this way. Clinical Hypnotherapy can help you find out why you are behaving in this way and they will help you to build up positive habits and positive eating patterns, and will show you how to use your imagination to visualise a happy, confident you who has a healthy relationship with food.