How to Recognize Your Unhealthy Eating Triggers

Understanding emotional eating is critical to maintaining healthy body weight. And even if your weight is right where it needs to be, if you are eating the wrong foods, your internal physical makeup may be dangerously out of line. These things happen because human beings don’t always eat to satisfy hunger. Many people eat as a reward, to relieve stress in their lives, and even to give themselves a sense of comfort.

So recognizing your unhealthy eating triggers is important, so you do not sabotage your exercise and nutritional plans for a healthier and happier you. This is because when someone eats for the wrong reasons, whatever issues or circumstances existed before this unhealthy emotional eating episode will still be after that. How can you identify your unhealthy eating triggers? It may be easier than you think.

Emotional and spiritual hunger can never be filled with food.

That is why you should ask yourself if you are an emotional eater. Be very honest with your answers to the following questions:

1. How often find yourself eating after periods of intense stress?
2. Do you continue to eat after you know that you are physically full?
3. How frequently do you reward financial, personal and business achievements with food?
4. Do you often eat until you are stuffed?
5. Does the thought of eating make you feel safe and content?
6. Does just thinking about food make you feel powerless or out of control?

These are all instances where unhealthy eating triggers are activated. Because of habit, environment or some other issues, if you answered yes to any of the questions above, you have developed unhealthy eating habits which are triggered by outside influences.

Now that you have identified some of your unhealthy eating triggers remember that emotional hunger usually comes on very quickly. If you have craving hit you out of the blue, make sure it is not because you just got some bad emotional news. Also, natural, physical hunger usually means eating just about anything sounds good. But emotional hunger a lot of times involves comfort foods like pizza, ice cream, and cheesecake specifically, which are not that healthy for you.

Remember that emotional hunger usually is not satisfied once you are physically full, it is not located in your stomach and can lead to mindless eating where you wolf down an entire bag of potato chips at one sitting. Identify and respond appropriately to your unhealthy eating triggers, and you will not suffer the regret, shame, and guilt that accompany the weight gain and unhealthy body weight emotional eating delivers.