What is emotional eating?

All I found was that figuring it out gave me even better reasons to explain and justify my behavior.

So I could stand in front of the refrigerator and explain to you why I was doing this. [MUSIC PLAYING]

At some level, you must know that you do eat for emotional reasons. Most of us really eat a lot more than we

need to just stoke that engine for a 24-hour period. We're not using food as fuel, where you see it

as an object for comfort. Those of us who are over-eaters-- and that includes myself-- we eat because our team won or because it lost.

We eat to celebrate. We eat to mourn. We eat in any heightened awareness state,

where we're usually taught that quite young, from infancy to early childhood, that any distress, something

oral, something by mouth, will fix it. So the only way to really know if you are or aren't eating

emotionally is to initially get put on some kind of a food plan where you know you are eating just the amount you

need to stoke the engine. Then, any cravings, or seeking out, or hunting out food other

than those times will probably be emotional eating. So when people say, why am I eating?

What are my emotions I'm eating over? What I like to say to people is if you want to find out why you're eating, don't.

It's when you stop eating that you will find out what your eating is about. When you don't eat at that time, and you instead

sit down and start writing your feelings, it will all be revealed to you.

A magic happens when that pen touches paper. And the answers will come. And I hope that you eat what your body needs,

not what your psyche needs. [AUDIO LOGO]