Emotional Eating Vs Mental Hunger in ED / Diet Recovery

Are you wondering if there a difference between mental hunger and emotional eating?

Are you confused around mental hunger and find yourself asking:

👉 should I respond to and follow mental hunger,

👉 what is mental hunger?

👉 how to stop mental hunger?

👉 is mental hunger normal?

👉 am I just addicted to food?

👉 why does my brain feel so obsessed / hyper-focused with food?

Well, in this post I talk about the differences and similarities between mental hunger and emotional eating and if you are really "eating emotionally" or mentally hungry...

...and what to do while in intuitive eating, orthorexia, eating disorder, disordered eating, bulimia, binge eating disorder or chronic yo-yo dieting recovery.

So, let's talk about emotional eating and mental hunger, shall we?

You may find yourself thinking one or many of the following:

• “I am thinking about food all of the time. Food is always on my mind. But I can’t tell if I’m just bored eating or just emotional eating now. Like how do I know that it’s okay to eat?”
• “I don’t really feel physically hungry, but the food is always on my mind, or I’m craving certain foods, so if I’m not physically hungry, then does that mean I’m just bored eating, or I’m just emotionally attached to these foods now? So what does this mean?”
• "I’m just at home all day, and I feel like the food, and the pantry just calls my name constantly, and I can’t stay at home or have certain foods in my cupboard because I’ll just binge on them."
• "I’ll just be bored eating."
• "I’ll just be emotionally eating if I get stressed out because I work from home or I do school from home, and so I’m just bored eating or stress eating or anxious eating."

Which one resonates with you most?

There's more ways to explain this, but those are some very common statements that I hear.

And so with this, it can be scary so people then want to reason with their body like:

» “Well, if I’m not completely starving and ravenous and have pain in my stomach, or my stomach is grumbling, then I must just be stress eating and I shouldn't eat,”

» “I don’t have a good enough reason to eat a full meal or a snack,” or whatever, just food in general.

» “If I eat outside of these certain times of the day, then I’m just bored eating or stress eating,”

...when in fact you need that food, NOT trying to "feel your feelings" instead of eating.

If you’re thinking about that food and food is just always on your mind throughout the day, then that means you’re hungry.

 

MENTAL HUNGER

Mental hunger is, but not limited to:

• thinking about food constantly.
• Your mind is always thinking about your cravings, you eat a 'normal meal,' and you’re still thinking about food 
• after eating a meal and feeling full, you still go on thinking about food
• and a whole host of characteristics.

This 'mental hunger' is legit hunger, just as physical hunger. 

There are different kinds of hunger signals.

1. there’s physical hunger,
2. there’s mental hunger,
3. and there's a vast amount of other 'signals' or 'cues' that make up the body's "language" of communicating hunger or energy needs (that I won't go into deep in this post)

The mental hunger sensation DOES NOT mean that you’re just an emotional eater and that you don’t have an excuse to eat because you don’t have physical hunger or the typical signs of hunger that people think is the only way to feel hunger.

There are different ways to feel hunger.

It’s not that you’re just an emotional eater

or that you have developed binge eating disorder now.

***When you’re coming from:

• a restrictive diet (skipping meals, cutting carbs/fats, etc),
• a low-calorie diet,
• a full-blown eating disorder,
• and whether you did this for six months or 10, 20 years, it doesn’t matter,
• if you’re coming from a past of restriction... 

the body turns off the appetite because physical hunger costs a lot of energy to produce.

 

 

 

 

So when there’s not enough energy, (calories/macros: carbs, fats, sugars) coming in - this means you’re in a malnourished state from semi-starvation.

The last thing the body wants to do is create physical hunger because then it will exert too much energy, and it’s already in an energy deficit.

That’s why mental hunger doesn’t cost as much energy to produce, so it’s going to cause you to be thinking about food all the time.

But you’re not always going to be physically hungry, so that it will be a confusing thing.

And people think, “Oh, I’m not hungry. I don’t deserve to eat because I’m not physically hungry,” because that’s what we’ve come to understand as the only way to be hungry..

..But this is to be listened to.

Every craving, there’s a reason why your body is asking for specific foods, whether you, your mind has come up with all these reasons or learned about why it isn’t good for you.

If your body is strongly craving those foods, the only way to overcome that strong mental hunger, it’s not that you’re an emotional eater.

It’s that your body needs those foods for a pretty good reason, probably, especially calorically dense foods.

The body knows what it’s doing when asking for calorically rich foods and processed foods because they’re easy to digest.

They’re predigested for your body.

So that’s why your body is sending cravings for those foods, such as fatty, starchy, sugary foods because they will replenish the energy deficit you’re coming from.

This is not emotional eating.

The only way to beat this constant draw to food is to stop restricting and consistently feed your body that food.

A lot of people think that when they go into a diet recovery process to heal their metabolism and mind...

...that the side of you that causes you to restrict and over exercise (think of it as a separate entity) wants you to think and come up with rationalizations of why you’re so drawn to food and why you shouldn’t be drawn to the food.

That there’s something wrong with you if you’re thinking about food all the time or if you’re craving specific foods, so it must be emotional eating because that’s bad..

...And you’re not supposed to do that.

But that’s not true.

Your body is doing it for a specific reason.

And so the best thing you can do is to listen to that and not feel guilty or shameful around, feeling like you’re thinking about food all the time.

That’s a big part of recovery, is to be able to get rid of the guilt around eating.

So food’s not on your mind all of the time.

So you can get your life back and be present in your life again without food being the number one thing you’re thinking about.

And it DOES happen.

And it CAN happen for YOU too.

I see it time and time again, both with myself and with my clients.

I thought that I was just a stress & bored eater and that I always had to control myself around food, and it was going to be this lifelong battle of having to be on a diet because I would eat when I was bored and that I would binge when I’d be home all day...

...So I’d keep going back to the pantry and back to the pantry and back for more and back for more.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

I work from home, and the food isn’t calling my name.

It’s just I eat when I’m hungry.

And I don't keep thinking about food after eating, just when I'm hungry again.

I eat the foods that I want without question or guilt, and then I’m not thinking about food all the time.

And I don’t feel like I’m an emotional eater.

Hunger may fluctuate, but I don’t question that.

It’s just it is what it is.

That’s how it should be.

That’s normal eating.

That's freedom.

That's peace of mind (sanity).

That's LIVING.

I want you to get to that place too.

I don’t want you to think that you’re an emotional eater and be a prisoner to that burden, when you're not.

I want to say, again, if you’re coming from a past of restriction, whether even 3 months, 6 months, or a couple of years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or even longer - you’re not an emotional eater.

You deserve to eat.

Whether you’re underweight or you’re in “overshoot weight,” or you’re at your set weight point, whatever you want to call it, you still deserve to eat.

You’re not becoming an emotional eater.

If you are thinking about food and constantly thinking about food, then that’s a sign that your body needs more food.

Remember, you are coming from a past of restriction/energy deficit, and all your body is trying to do is make up for that. It is that simple.

We’re trying to overcomplicate this stuff with nutrition and do this, do that.

Just go within, and it gets easier to listen.

But if you have that mental hunger, that is extreme hunger, just like physical hunger.

So if you think, “Oh, I don’t have extreme hunger because I don’t have that physical hunger,” if you’re thinking about food or thinking about the foods that you wish you could eat.

But, still, you haven’t been able to eat, that’s extreme hunger, that’s mental hunger, and it’s not emotional eating.

I hope that clears things up.

You CAN and will become a normal eater again (or intuitive - I say normal to stay away from labels such as intuitive eating)..

- in other words: getting back to that childlike state around food.

Even if you started dieting as a kid, and you can’t even remember a time like this, you can still get back to this place of being a normal eater.

You’ll see that as a normal eater, normal eaters don’t have the draw to be constantly thinking about food, constantly planning, plotting, calculating, tracking, thinking, researching about food and nutrition, and blah, blah, blah.

No.

Or if "they’re an emotional eater or if are they eating if they’re stressed, or are they eating if they’re anxious, or are they're just eating because they're sad, or are they just bored and they're just eating because they’re bored"...

...all of these things and thoughts that, that doesn’t cross your mind anymore.

It’s rather, “Oh, am I hungry? Oh, okay, I need to eat. Let me have something that I know I like.”

Maybe you have a specific craving, maybe not.

You don’t question it.

You don’t overthink it, and you eat.

And then you stop when you’re full, and you go on from the meal, not continuing to think about food.

You feel fine because your digestion and metabolism have balanced out and healed.

So, yeah, normal eaters don’t think they’re emotional eaters.

I don’t want to deny that perhaps there could be emotional eaters because I’ve seen people that do eat more than their body’s asking for.

And here’s the difference, and I’ve talked about this before.

--> If your body is asking you to stop eating, it’s showing that it’s full and the person continues to eat because they’re looking for stimulation or filling a void because they’re going through grief or stressed..

Or they don’t want to deal with certain things in life, or that’s the only way they can receive pleasure, and they’re pleasure addicts, whatever, then yeah, they’re going to ignore their body’s cues that it doesn’t want any more food and they can emotionally eat.

 

 

 

 

But I don’t want to devoid that because there may be people out there..

(BUT are they coming from a restrictive history? If so, then once they recover, during times of stress, they'll lose their appetite rather than eat a lot).

 

BUT IS IT EMOTIONAL EATING??

Suppose you’re coming from a past of restrictive eating.

And you’re facing any of the symptoms that I’ve talked about with malnourishment, such as:

• you don’t have your period,
• your hair’s falling out,
• bloating, digestive problems,
• hormone imbalance,
• low libido,
• extreme hunger,
• mental hunger,
• physical hunger,

all of these things...

- then you don't need to be focusing on stopping 'emotional eating.'

Your body's hunger is just doing what your body is designed to do after a period of restriction.

And that is to ask for food when it knows it needs more when it knows it’s in an abundant environment again, it’s going to ask for a lot more food.

It knows it’s safe-ish.

It’s going to want to binge.

It’s going to want to have the primary focus on getting food.

You are thinking about it all the time.

It’s going to want to rest a lot to take in that energy and put it towards healing, replenishing, and restoring.

So yeah, your body has it handled.

It does.

Your body is a freaking intelligent machine.

But better than a machine.

It’s so amazingly smart.

We don’t even understand how to replicate a human body, yet we think we can control it.

It’s backward.

But you get what I’m saying. 😉

Anyways, to sum it up, long story short....

I think that I could say this in a lot fewer words than I do.

But I want to cover most of what I can, and I probably still have missed stuff, but really, you’re not an emotional eater.

You're often just trying to convince yourself it must be emotional eating (aka bad and needs to be controlled) because you're afraid of your hunger and you're afraid of gaining weight.

Even if you feel yourself in recovery because you’re coming from a past of stress, over-exercise is stressful, malnourishment from dieting is stressful, or low calories, in general, is stressful on the body.

So it doesn’t mean you’re an emotional eater in recovery because you’re already in a stressed-out body and mind.

No.

You need this.

**Even if emotional eating is real or not, in recovery, if you’re emotional eating, then keep emotional eating.

Yup, I said it.

You need to eat.

Once you recover, you'll no longer be prone to emotional eating.

Now we can overcomplicate it by saying that, but you need to permit yourself to eat all of the foods you crave, and things will get better and balance out.

You’ll be able to be at home or be out and about and not have food calling your name and have extreme mental hunger all the time or feel the need to emotional eating.

That’s not even going to be in your life.

 

Okay, so what about when you’re later in your recovery journey?

So your hunger signals are balancing out..

What if you’re just super happy and you’re enjoying life, and you feel like you want ice cream, a blizzard from Dairy Queen? 

Or you’re out with someone, and they want ice cream, and you’re like, “You know, I’m not that hungry, but you know I’m having a good time. It’s summer. I want to have an ice cream.”

Is that bad if you have that?

Do you want it even if you don’t have mental or physical hunger?

No. I do that all the time.

So this is about getting away from these labels of good or bad or regimens or intuitive eating principles even.

That’s why I like to say normal rather than intuitive because even intuitive eating has some rules and guidelines that you have to abide by, or else you’re doing it wrong.

So being a normal eater, none of this stuff matters anymore.

Who freaking cares if it’s emotional eating or not.

If you want to do something, do it.

If it doesn’t make you feel good necessarily and you don’t want to do it, you probably wouldn’t want to do it, so if you don’t want to do something, don’t do it.

Simple right?

That's how it's supposed to be!

Eating = Easy

Eating = Instinctual

Let’s get away from these labels and terms and get back to normalcy and just do what you want within reason.

You want to stick to your morals and values.

But with eating and stuff, like what morality does food have?

You’re not hurting anyone.

And if you’re following your body, you’re not hurting yourself.

Alright. I don’t have anything more to say than that. 

With that, I’ll wrap it up there.

I hope this video has helped you.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear from you, and until next time, I’ll see you in the next post. 😉

Xx 

Kayla Rose

Holistic Nutritionist

P.S. I’m hosting a free masterclass specifically for people who want to stop feeling obsessed around food and truly heal their metabolism, and you’re invited! Click here to sign up.