Caught In The Loop Of Emotional Binge Eating? How To Identify If You Are Genuinely Hungry

All human emotions elicit binging or starving. Love and hatred – they both can put you in a spin or a binge. Love and hatred can also make you starve. But starving may work sometimes as fasting cleanses but binge eating, certainly won’t work, whether in love or in hate.

Extreme hunger also increases your irritability. We can get agitated when the hunger has grown more than an hour plus and when food hasn’t been made available or ingested.

Binge eating is an out of control eating pattern because the strong emotions, whether positive or negative, govern you in a way that they control your mind and there is no stopping because mindless eating will certainly make you keep eating without realising that you have crossed limits of your capacity to digest or you make wrong choices of food. 

In both cases, damage to health, damage to healing processes and damage to wholeness happens. Wellness goes for a toss. We lose the equilibrium of our body. We lose the state of homeostasis and thus, biological loss, physiological deterrence and most importantly, bio chemistry going hay wire. 

Binges typically throw your digestive system out of gear. Not only that, the capacity to absorb, the capacity to assimilate, process food and eliminate toxins get compromised big time. This big-time compromise can ruin your health and could be the cause of your de-generation, dis-ease, dis-integration, de-cay and eventually death of energy, death of life force. 

Mind is a place of emotions. Yoga can definitely help with binge eating as it trains the mind to control the senses. It helps to expand your awareness and understanding.

With regular practice of workout, yoga, breathing and meditation, you can find transformation in yourself and therefore, in your pattern of eating. With sattvic food habits, one's biology, chemistry and complete mindset changes.

Fad diets, restricting intake and abstaining from certain foods result in increased cravings and may trigger episodes of binge eating. The right way could be:

Focus on making healthy changes. Eat more whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds and whole grains. Limit intake of refined, processed, packaged foods. This can help reduce binge eating and promote better health.

Starting each day with a healthy breakfast might reduce the risk of binge eating later in the day. Avoid skipping meals as again it can increase cravings and the risk to overeat. Set a regular eating pattern. Eat slowly with a lot of reverence and gratitude. 

Staying hydrated and drinking plenty of water through the day is a simple way to curb cravings.

Eat more fibrous foods to keep you satiated and feeling full longer. It can also help to reduce cravings.

Avoid having junk food or trigger foods at home in the kitchen as it can make it easier to binge eat.

Limiting unhealthy foods and keeping healthy foods on hand can reduce your risk of emotional binge eating.

Eating right foods can help keep full and curb cravings throughout the day.

Don’t consider binge as sinning. Food binges are done in special circumstances and is fine, especially when you are celebrating. It’s much better then because your mood is good, you are in a revelry and you are laughing and enjoying.

After this your body is then capable of handling the toxins much better and digestion is much better. But try not to binge when you are feeling low and depressed. Just in case you wish to eat, do take a small walk or a small workout or dance, sing a song or listen to music. Change our mood first and then eat, enjoy and celebrate.

Even if you are eating fast foods like pizza and pasta, be very mindful and eat slowly. Your body awareness will tell you that you’ve enjoyed it and now it’s time to stop. Mindfulness in eating will make you eat salads, soups along with other foods so that you can do the balancing act well. 

Once we fast for a few hours whether it's part of the morning or post lunch, or you haven't eaten at all until evening, you will feel the real hunger pangs.

The real hunger pangs are when your body screams for food, and if at that time you were to eat properly, as in, not over eating, whatever you eat slowly and well, would certainly get digested. If you put the cleanest food in your stomach, then that will certainly become a tonic, a nutritional supplement for you. 

Coming to the part of identifying your hunger and your needs, remember, hunger is the need of the body and appetite is the lust for the body. When looking at food, if you feel like eating, that means you have a lust for food. 

May be, that's okay sometimes but not as the order of the day. You must feel hungry and you must be hungry to eat. You must feel thirst and you must be thirsty to drink. Be self-aware and listen to your body. Notice how you feel at the moment.

One ought to be a little more aware of what one ingests and eats. It is important to make appropriate sensible intelligent choices. So, be very mindful of what you consume as food consumes us and nourishes us.