Atlanta Wellness Clinic Podcast

Food Feelings: Understanding Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry

• Catina Wilson • Episode 13

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How Does Emotional Eating Impact Weight Loss, And How Can You Control It?

Why do we reach for ice cream when we're sad or potato chips when we're stressed? The answer lies in understanding emotional eating—a powerful force that can completely derail weight loss progress and create unhealthy relationships with food.

Licensed nutritionist Catina Wilson breaks down the critical difference between physical hunger and emotional eating. While your body genuinely needs nourishment with physical hunger, emotional eating is a response to feelings—stress, boredom, anxiety, sadness, or even happiness. The telltale sign? When emotionally eating, we rarely crave salads or nutritious foods. Instead, we're magnetically drawn to calorie-dense comfort foods engineered to trigger addictive responses in our brains.

These manufactured foods contain chemicals and additives specifically designed to create cravings stronger than many drugs, explaining why breaking the emotional eating cycle feels nearly impossible for many people. But there's hope. By implementing a simple five-minute pause when cravings strike, you create space to assess what's really happening. Is this physical hunger, or am I responding to emotions? This small delay—combined with strategies like journaling, walking, or calling a friend—can prevent impulsive decisions you'll later regret. For deeper emotional patterns, especially those stemming from past trauma, professional therapy might provide the tools needed to develop healthier coping mechanisms.

Ready to transform your relationship with food and get your weight loss journey back on track? Visit ATLWellnessClinic.com or call 770-726-8978 for a free 10-minute weight loss consultation. Your healthier relationship with food starts with understanding these emotional connections.

To learn more about Atlanta Wellness Clinic visit:
https://www.ATLWellnessClinic.com
Atlanta Wellness Clinic
1827 Powers Ferry Rd. SE, Bldg 1 STE 250
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
770-726-8978

Speaker 1:

welcome to the Atlanta Wellness Clinic podcast hosted by licensed nutritionist and clinic owner, katina Wilson. We're here to kickstart your weight loss journey because, let's be honest, the only thing we want gaining weight is our wallets. From medical weight loss and nutrition coaching to body contouring, we help metro atl Atlanta women get real results. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2:

We've all reached for food in moments of stress or sadness, but when emotional eating becomes a habit, it can derail those weight loss goals. What causes emotional eating and how can you regain control to build a healthier relationship with food? Welcome back everyone. Millie M, co-host producer, back in the studio with licensed nutritionist and clinic owner, Katina Wilson. What's going on, katina?

Speaker 3:

Hey, great topic, I'm ready to dig in.

Speaker 2:

Yes, ma'am, emotional eating is something that so many people struggle with. I know our listeners will gain a lot from this conversation. So how does emotional eating impact weight loss and how can you control it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's a huge hurdle. I mean, it can actually literally derail. You know, you hear about this all the time where people they've been on a weight loss journey and then something happens, something triggers them, something bad happens and then they they start reaching for the comfort foods. And that's the challenge with emotional eating. It is a major hurdle and typically it is in response to something emotional. It could be stress, it could be boredom, it could be sadness, loneliness, for some people even happiness, right, and it's different than physical hunger, because physical hunger you need. You need that hunger. It's reminding you you need food to survive.

Speaker 3:

Emotional it's typically you're trying to cope with something, you're trying to suppress something, whatever that emotional thing that's going on. And, yeah, we see it all the time. I've had it throughout my life. It's derailed me numerous times. Right, I know it's derailed others who are on the weight loss journey and so, yeah, typically we see it as a form of coping mechanism, again, whether you're trying to suppress or just kind of cope with whatever traumatic thing or stressful thing is going on in your life at the moment.

Speaker 2:

It's a classic trope that we see in television. Whenever a young lady gets breaks up with her boyfriend, we see her in the bed with a tub of ice cream, like. I guess that sensation of eating feels good physically and is there to soothe that emotional.

Speaker 3:

It feels good in the moment because you're craving that ice cream or that pizza or that popcorn or whatever that unhealthy thing is. And the thing with emotional eating is you're not reaching for a salad, you're reaching for the calorie dense foods, and that what's going to lead you to overeating? It's going to lead you into taking in more calories than your body actually needs, which, in turn, is going to cause you to gain the weight right. And so that's the difference, I guess, between like physical hunger. Physical hunger, it could be satisfied with a salad, it could be satisfied like with anything, but with emotional eating, it tends to come on fairly fast, pretty intense, and the only thing that's going to really satisfy it is whatever you're craving in the moment that chocolate, that ice cream, that pizza, or for me, like all of the above, the difference so what are some strategies to recognize and stop emotional eating in the moment?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I think it's about and I feel I feel like in one of our podcasts we talked a little bit about this around like mindful eating. Take a pause If you feel like kind of in the immediate term, if you feel like that I have to have this piece of cake, maybe wait five minutes, drink some water, go for a walk, call a friend, you know, journal like what you're feeling in the moment, and then come back and decide am I really hungry, do I really want this cake or is it something else? Because it really is is if you eat that cake in the moment, if you just immediately jump into it, you're going to feel bad later and that's not good either, right?

Speaker 3:

So maybe take a little bit of a pause and just kind of assess like what's going on and really try to identify those feelings, because maybe once you start to identify those feelings, then you can kind of determine is this truly physical hunger, can it be satisfied with something healthier, or is there something emotional going on that I need to deal with in a different way? So that's one of the things that I would say in the immediate term that I think would be helpful. Longer term, I do think we have to think about, like what are our emotional triggers, what are the things that we maybe we need to deal with and that may involve, you know, even talking to a professional therapist to help work through whatever those emotional things are. But I think in the moment, maybe just taking a little bit of a pause, really trying to internalize, like, what is it that you're feeling? Like I said journal talk to a friend, go for a walk. I think if you start to create that habit, it will help guide you into healthier patterns.

Speaker 2:

Just taking a break sometimes will give you some clarity, and I've been there standing in front of the refrigerator, knowing I just had a snack 15 minutes ago, going why am I in here?

Speaker 3:

Oh, absolutely, and then it's also going to help you learn to differentiate the types of emotions that you have. When I've started to take a break now, I know like sometimes, when I have that tense feeling, maybe it's anxiety or something that's coming on when I start to feel it in my stomach, and so maybe it's not the cake or the pizza that I'm really craving right now that I really really want it's oh, I need to deal with whatever. This is causing this anxiety, right? So if you start to figure out and learn and put words to whatever the emotional feeling is that you have again, I think we can start to create, you know, better patterns longer term.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and you and I talked about this earlier. I think I'm more of an anxious eater than an emotional eater, because every day at my desk, at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, it was something crunchy which might be potato chips, which is not the healthiest thing to eat. So I had to understand why was I doing this and what emotion I was feeling in order to replace it with something healthier. So you're a nutritionist. So if, when I get to heaven, I got a question that I need to ask God, is that why are the things that are so bad for us taste so good? So why do the comfort foods tend to be high in sugar, fat and carbs?

Speaker 3:

Because they're manmade. Right, they're manmade, they've been designed that way. There's all these chemicals. I am an engineer, or, as a friend of mine likes to say, I am a reformed engineer. So I went to school with all these chemical engineers. They are literally manipulating the food, especially like packaged and processed foods, and so there are all these extra ingredients.

Speaker 3:

Many of that you and I cannot even pronounce that when you eat it enough, it's like a drug, it's actually stronger than a drug, and so that's why you're craving it, because you've now introduced it into your system. Your system doesn't know what it is, but it likes the way that it feels, and so now it's craving it. So the reason for that is because it's man-made and they've introduced so many different types of chemicals and additives and all of these things that, again, we can't even pronounce into the food, and now we're taking it in. That's why you're craving it. So you know one way as a nutritionist and you hear a lot of nutritionists I'm no different we tend to like to focus on real food, whole food, because you know what you put in there. You know how much sugar, you know how much salt. You're not putting all this extra other stuff that's in there, right?

Speaker 3:

So if you can start to cook your own food right, you know what you're eating, what you're putting in it. You can start to like wean yourself off of some of these other kind of like unhealthy foods, the foods that are causing you to crave but yeah, but a lot of it. It starts with the fact that it's manmade and they put so many things in there that you started to crave it. You're craving it like a drug.

Speaker 2:

See, I didn't need a higher power, I have you. So are there medical or behavioral treatments that can help break the cycle of emotional eating?

Speaker 3:

I think it starts with, if you're trying to do it on your own, I think it starts with again pausing, trying to be more mindful about what you're eating, right, and so what you're feeling in the moment is it truly hunger or is it thirst, or is it something else? And if it's something else, again let's like journal there. So there's some things you can do there. So let's journal what are you feeling? Why is it feeling? What triggered it? That sort of thing you can start to learn. You journal enough, you can start to learn from some of those trends that you're seeing and then maybe you can start to create some better habits that way.

Speaker 3:

But for some people this has been like a lifelong journey and it probably started with some sort of traumatic event that happened, you know, at a much earlier time in their life, and sometimes it's bigger. You need something bigger and stronger than your journal or even your circle of friends, and that's why I suggested earlier depending upon like what the traumatic thing is, it may require talking to a licensed therapist, somebody that can help you navigate the traumatic experience but then also, at the same time, help you start to create some better, some better coping strategies, spiritual experience, going through your relationship with food, and I love how you said before these emotions, even happy ones, because food is at the center of a lot that we do, even birthdays, thanksgiving, christmas, happy times, sad times.

Speaker 2:

So understanding that relationship and taking that pause will definitely help people. This is such a powerful discussion. Thank you for sharing these practical strategies for overcoming emotional eating and to our listeners, we will see you next time for more ways to build lasting, healthy habits. Thank you, katina.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Millie.

Speaker 1:

That's a wrap on this episode of the Atlanta Wellness Clinic podcast. If you're ready to kickstart your weight loss journey and not just your bathroom scale and frustration, ready to kickstart your weight loss journey and not just your bathroom scale and frustration, visit ATLWellnessCliniccom or call us at 770-726-8978 for a free 10-minute weight loss consultation, because the best time to start was yesterday, the second best time right now. See you next time.