Combat Emotional Eating When Dealing with Stress

By: Mariam Salah

@MaryamFSalah

As midterms approach, many students are likely to resort to emotional eating to deal with overburdening papers, deadlines and the stress which comes with cramming.

In an engaging workshop organized by AUC’s Psychological Counseling Services and Training Center on March 5 in the Tim Sullivan Lounge, four intern counselors –  Norehan Aly, Sarah Salem, Mona El Roby and Mirna Awad – discussed the causes behind emotional eating.

According to the Mayo Clinic in the US, emotional eating occurs when food is used as a way to suppress negative emotions such as stress, anger, fear, loneliness and sadness.

This happens when the person is not hungry, but rather using food as an escape, and is a common occurrence which individuals may not be aware of.

According to the American Psychological Association, 27 percent  of adults report overeating because of stress.

“Research indicated that emotional eating in response to negative emotions is related to Body Mass Index (BMI), weight gain, interference with weight loss, and binge-eating behaviors,” said Aly.

Often times, emotional eating can be triggered by certain things that may even affect the choice of food.

For example, a member of the audience shared that custard makes her automatically remember her childhood and her mother.

“Sometimes you crave some types of food because it has certain memories,” said El Roby.

The audience discussed that many of the foods they love are directly related to their previous experiences.

“Be aware of your emotions. Think before you eat. Think ‘why am I craving this right now?’ Personally, when I began doing this, I was able to decrease my emotional eating as well as engage in healthy habits, such as sports,” added El Roby.

Her colleague Salem said that there are also key factors to see the difference between emotional and physical eating, thus avoiding the mistake of starving oneself.

While emotional eating may occur even when the body does not require food, physical eating is when the body actually requires food for survival.

“Physical hunger is felt in the stomach, while emotional hunger is just you wanting something to chew,” said Salem

Salem added that physical hunger is also gradual and predictable while emotional hunger, which is more common in the evenings or when someone is alone, is rather a sense of urgency, where one feels they need it now.

The difference and the definition will not matter unless something can be done about it, which is the objective of the workshop and the support group that follows.

The first step is to take the time to keep track of what the individual is eating, which was emulated through a small exercise in the workshop.

The exercise helped the audience practice and understand mindful eating, which allows the person to think about everything they are eating.

“Mindful eating is different than emotional eating. You use your senses to think about what you are eating. You get to take the time to acknowledge the taste, the texture and engage all five senses. This allows you to reduce overeating and binge-eating,” added Salem.

In addition to mindful eating, which may not be as simple when emotions get the best of a person, a support group is expected to begin work at the Psychological Counseling Services and Training Center.

“The workshop is just an introduction to the topic. The support group is for people who want to work in a group to talk about their story and get help from one another. In that support group, we’ll work on combating emotional eating on a group level,” said Aly.

Although the support group is confidential, she also added that if there are more serious underlying issues, these can be tackled in one-on-one counseling sessions.

Aly came up with the idea of holding this workshop followed by a support group because most of the clients she sees have an emotional eating problem, and some of them don’t even realize it.

“I realized why I’m eating, the emotions behind it and what to do when I get these emotions in terms of coping mechanisms,” said one of the audience members, Counseling Psychology Master’s student Norhan Ibrahim.

“The support group will definitely help me find out what the underlying emotions are and to resolve these issues.”