Emotional hunger drives eating more than physical need. When you use food to numb pain or celebrate, you create associations that lead to overeating and can worsen both mood and health. Ten non-food strategies can replace the temporary fix.
Chapters
So why do we eat? I mean, why do you eat? Do you eat because you're hungry? I want to suggest that we have a whole lot of reasons for eating, and they actually often don't have much to do with hunger at all. Emotional hunger is not a form of nutritional hunger at all. It has nothing to do with food. It has to do with an emotional pain that somebody's having or an emotional acceleration that somebody's having. And then they've learned to link that up to some food. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you are playing on a sports team, and your sports team lost the big championship. And everybody's quiet in the back of the van heading home after the tournament. The coach feels so bad for the kids that the coach wants them to feel better. And so the coach takes them for, let's go for pizza and soft drinks and ice cream. And so they go and have that. Now, what's crazy, those kids have learned something. That pizza, soft drinks, ice cream is like anesthetic. It helps them feel better when they're feeling sad. And so for the rest of their lives, if they've had a bad day, they'll lean toward, say, in this example, pizza, soft drinks, and ice cream. Wait, what about the other version? What about the team that won? That team won. They're in the car, they're celebrating. They're singing songs. It's amazing. And the coach wants to celebrate with them. They go to a different pizza place. They have pizza, soft drinks, and ice cream, too. But what they've learned is that they have to celebrate with those things. This happened to all of us in some form. You were running along, you skinned your knee, you looked up, you saw your mom was looking. Maybe you cried, you were in pain. Your mom would do anything to end the pain. And she brings you a cookie. And what do you learn in that moment? Cookies take away pain. So what takes away your pain from a food perspective? Does chocolate do it? Ice cream, Glass of wine? What takes away the pain? Well, what I want you to know is that it doesn't take away the pain at all. And in fact, what it does is it makes it worse. Not right away, not you. See, what happens is you're in that emotional pain, and then you eat that food, and for a moment, the pain doesn't go away. You're just distracted from it. You're distracted from it for a moment, but then it comes back. And then it'll even come back worse, because guess what? You just put some junk in your body. And so your body's gonna start to feel gross too. Now you're gonna feel emotionally gross and physically gross. And the cycle repeats. And by the way, there's one more thing I want you to think about. If you're sad and depressed and you treat your sadness and depression with chocolate, then your body has just learned that all that fat and all that sugar and all that dopamine is available. If only your body could somehow trigger sadness and depression. Do you understand what's happening? It's incredibly important that you recognize that emotional hunger is not a form of hunger at all, but it is a path to addiction. And so here's the deal. If you are feeling lonely, take out a piece of paper, take out your phone, and write down 10 other ways to cure your loneliness that come before food. If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling depressed, write 10 different ways. And so anytime you're having an emotional low that you feel like you should treat with food, why don't you first try to treat it with something else? And if that fails, you can go to the food later. When you feel these hungers, it's almost too late. So if you address them in advance, then they won't have power over you. Neutralize the six hungers, and then you'll find yourself eating less, but more importantly, eating more good quality food as well.
