COMFORT EATING
Learn to make mindful food choices and regain control over what you eat with Dr Romi Ran’s five tips to help you put a stop to comfort eating once and for all.
Recognise emotional hunger vs physical hunger
The journey begins by learning to dif ferentiate emotional hunger from physical hunger. Emotional hunger is a reactive urge to eat, driven more by feelings than by a true physiological need. It's often likened to an itch that urgently needs to be scratched. This kind of hunger is usually immediate and intense, leading to cravings for specific comfor t foods such as sweets, fatty foods, or those that we typically try to limit.
Emotional eating can also take a more calculated, obsessive form, where considerable time is spent fixating on foods, often accompanied by feelings of guilt and shame. Yet, when finally indulging in these foods, the eating experience often becomes dissociative, lacking conscious engagement in the eating process.
In contrast, physical hunger develops gradually, changing and intensif ying over time. It presents clear physical signals like a rumbling stomach or a mouth salivating, as well as mental cues such as thoughts about food or a diminishing focus on tasks.
Although there might be a preference for cer tain foods, physical hunger is usually satisfied with a range of food options. Eating in response to physical hunger, par ticularly when not overly hungry, is often a pleasant and mindful experience, with significant attention paid to the entire process of eating. Recognising the dif ference between these two types of hunger is essential in regaining control over your eating habits.
●Cultivate an awareness of your hunger by checking in with yourself multiple times throughout the day. Ask yourself if you are truly hungry, noting any physical or mental signs you observe. If you're unsure, it's okay to wait a bit. Genuine hunger becomes more distinct with time, aiding in developing greater awareness. If you find yourself completely disconnected from the sensation of hunger, as a temporary measure, try eating every 3 hours for 3-4 days. This short-term intervention is designed to reawaken your hunger cues. Once you start recognising these cues, use this experience to reconnect with your body's renewed hunger signals, moving away from rigidly timed eating.
●Take time to develop your hunger scale. i.e. a scale ranging from 0-5, where 5 is a neutral feeling and 0 represents extreme hunger. This scale will help you become attuned to your specific hunger signs and their associated intensity levels. Pay attention to what each level on your hunger scale feels like. For some, a growling stomach might signal the onset of hunger (around level 4), while others may only experience this when they're extremely hungry. It's important to understand and trust your body's unique responses,
