Emotional eating is the tendency of its sufferers to respond to stressful, difficult feelings by eating, even when not experiencing physical hunger. Emotional eating or emotional hunger is often a craving for high-calorie or high-carbohydrate foods that have minimal nutritional value. The foods that emotional eaters crave are often referred to as comfort foods, like ice cream, cookies, chocolate, chips, French fries, and pizza. About 40% of people tend to eat more when stressed, while about 40% eat less and 20% experience no change in the amount of food they eat when exposed to stress.
Warning signs for emotional eating include a tendency to feel hunger intensely and all of a sudden, rather than gradually as occurs with a true physical need to eat that is caused by an empty stomach. Emotional eaters tend to crave junk foods rather than seeking to eat balanced meals, and the urge to eat is usually preceded by stress or an uncomfortable emotion of some kind, like boredom, sadness, anger, guilt, or frustration. Other hallmarks of emotional eating are that the sufferer may feel a lack of control while eating and often feels guilty for what they have eaten.
A number of different health care professionals evaluate and treat emotional eating and may also help with weight loss when this contributes to overweight or obesity. As this symptom can occur at nearly anytime across the life span, everyone from pediatricians, family practitioners, and other primary care physicians may address this problem. Nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants may be involved in caring for emotional-eating sufferers. Mental health professionals who are often involved in assessing and treating this issue include psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and licensed counselors. While any one of these practitioners may care for people who engage in emotional eating, more than one may work together to help the person overcome this symptom.
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