If we’re answering to emotional hunger more often than not, it’s going to make it very hard to achieve any kind of health goals. You might be snacking when you’re not truly hungry, eating meals just because it’s a certain time, or munching on something to numb the anxiety you’re feeling.

Wherever you are on the emotional eating scale, we want to arm you with the tools that can help you move closer to where you want to be. We’re all human and it’s rare for someone to only ever eat when driven by physical cues of hunger. We all have stresses, worries and frustrations that sometimes drive us to food as a solution. The goal here is not perfection. It's simply to become more aware of what our body needs and why.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The difference between physical and emotional hunger
• 4 key steps to help you work on emotional eating
• Why it’s not always helpful to ‘eat by the clock’ 
• The impact of screens on eating

To read the full show notes for this episode, www.TheWLCC.com/102

Quotes

01:04 - “If we're very often answering to emotional hunger, which is eating for reasons other than physical hunger, we have a very hard time actually making our goals happen.”

16:02 - “Hunger is not an emergency. A lot of us fear getting hungry. We fear it because we've been conditioned by the diet industry that if we're hungry, maybe we won't be able to eat.”

17:54 - “Often, when a screen is on, I don't think you're at your full consciousness level to focus on how your body's feeling with food. So I have made a personal loving boundary for myself that I don't involve screens when I'm eating anymore.”

21:23 - “When you stop emotionally eating, whatever feelings you were eating over will bubble to the surface.”

23:07 - “We don't need to eat something right away to feel better. You can just feel annoyed for a few minutes in the day. It passes. It's a human feeling. You don't have to feel happy all the time.”

Audio Stamps

01:16 - Dr Matthea begins by explaining the difference between physical and emotional hunger and asks us to consider where we would be on the emotional eating scale.

05:09 - We find out what the first step is to start working on emotional eating.

07:07 - Dr Matthea explains the importance of checking in physically with yourself and discusses the issues with ‘eating by the clock’.

10:40 - We learn what to do if you’ve identified that you’re emotionally hungry.

13:24 - Dr Matthea addresses concerns around waking up in the night hungry.

16:01 - We hear about the second step to overcoming emotional eating, including how to eat more consciously, and the problem with watching screens while eating.

20:28 - Dr Matthea talks about step number 3: how mindfulness can help you to get in touch with your emotional life and identify certain feelings.

27:37 - We discover the fourth step in the process and the importance of time and patience.

29:22 - Dr Matthea asks listeners to consider one takeaway from this process of overcoming emotional eating and which element needs more practice.