It’s a simple question… WHY DID I EAT THAT?
You knew you weren’t physically hungry. Instead, you just started wanting something to eat.
Marty works at a large corporation where the staff are constantly being pressured to make more contacts, increase their sales, and produce more revenue. The threat of layoffs has been hanging in the air for weeks.
He told me, “I figured it was habit that sent me down the hall to the candy machine every day. Then I realized that, by the middle of the afternoon, I’d used up my patience with this job and my overbearing boss. I would eat a candy bar or two just to get through the last few hours of my day.”
Today, we’ll look at the first step of conquering emotional eating–figuring out WHY you suddenly wanted food.
In the last post, I talked about how food serves as a mirror, showing exactly which emotions are prompting our desire to eat. In my work, I’ve divided emotional eating into two simple categories:
1. Head hunger – makes you want to chew on something.
2. Heart hunger – relates to emptiness that needs to be ‘filled’
Marty’s reason for eating was simple. He wanted to “chew” on his boss. But since that wouldn’t be very proper, he chomped down on the candy bars instead.
Head Hunger cravings
Head hunger usually begins with a SPECIFIC food thought or craving. You know EXACTLY what you want–a candy bar, potato chips, or perhaps that granola-nut mix from your camping trip.
Your craving may be so precise that you make a special trip to the grocery store for your favorite brand of macadamia nut cookies. With head hunger, some people will do whatever it takes to satisfy a food thought, even getting up in the middle of the night and driving to a fast-food restaurant.
Instant Cravings
With head hunger, cravings often pop up quickly. One minute you feel fine, the next minute you desperately want a bag of peanuts or a candy bar. When you eat in response to head hunger, you also usually know when you’re done.
After you wolf down a cheeseburger or finish off a bag of chips, you feel better for the moment. The food soothes your intense emotions and temporarily leaves you feeling calmer or more peaceful.
Chewy or crunchy foods
When you experience head hunger, you typically look for foods that are CHEWY or CRUNCHY. Snack foods such as potato chips, nuts, and candy work great. The crunchiness of these foods and the effort required to chew them provide “mouth satisfaction.”
Foods with a dense, chewy texture also work for appeasing head hunger. Hamburgers, pizza, and chocolate all have a “smash in your mouth” sensation that replaces what you’d really like to do to somebody or something else.
Below is a list of common head-hunger foods. Take a minute and identify which ones you are most likely to reach for when you experience a sudden craving.
Chewy foods:
Cookies, bars
Candy bars, M&Ms®
Steak, chewy meat
Trail mix, granola
Fried foods
Crunchy foods:
Potato chips, corn chips
Nuts of any kind
Breakfast cereal
Popcorn
Crackers, pretzels
Texture foods:
Hamburgers
French fries
Hot dogs
Pizza
Chocolate
The Question: What do I want to CHEW ON?
When you recognize that you want a chewy or crunchy food, take a quick inventory of what might be bothering you. Ask yourself, “What do I really want to chew on? What’s irritating, stressing, or frustrating me right now?” Your answer might include kids, finances, friends, project deadlines, or a difficult job.
Once you identify the source of your head hunger, ask yourself, “Will eating change this issue?”
Will food really mend your relationships or improve your child’s behavior or eliminate a project deadline? Of course not.
Eating might seem to fix the problem because you initially feel calmer or less angry. But after the food is gone, the situation still remains–often causing you to reach for food again. Eating simply postpones what you really need to do in order to cope with life issues.