Changes in behavior, including eating and sleeping, can reflect your emotional state. Emotional eaters eat when they are sad, stressed, bored, angry or lonely. Disordered sleep, insomnia, or a lack of sleep may all increase emotional eating. Over the long term, emotional eating contributes significantly to weight difficulties and may make weight loss especially challenging. While you may not think of sleep and your eating habits as being related, these two things are more interconnected than you might expect.
Function
Emotional eating is not about hunger, but rather about satisfying other needs. Most of us understand the connections between food and feelings. We celebrate with food at holidays, birthdays and other occasions, and may link certain foods to happy memories. For many people, emotional eating goes far beyond just an occasional celebration. The desire to eat when sad, angry, lonely or frustrated is both physical and psychological, as the body craves food to improve levels of chemicals in the brain, according to RealAge.com.
Significance
While emotional eating is driven by feelings and brain chemicals, sleep plays a key role in healthy eating habits. If you are sleep-deprived, you will be hungrier than usual, according to Melissa McCreery, Ph.D. When you do not get adequate sleep, you will crave high carbohydrate foods and high fat foods. Good quality sleep improves your emotional control and feeling of well-being, allowing you to cope with difficulties more easily. Better coping skills mean less emotional eating.
Time Frame
Many people find that they are most prone to emotional eating in the late evening. Late night snacking may be boredom, habit, or a sign of something lacking in life. Control your weight appropriately by eating no sooner than two to three hours before bed. Replace evening emotional eating with healthy habits to improve sleep. Journaling your feelings, a cup of herbal tea, or a warm bath can help you fill your needs for comfort and solace without food, suggests weight-loss expert Dr. Bob Greene.
Considerations
Physical food cravings, particularly those for sugary foods, are often the result of a need for serotonin and dopamine, according to OCYoga.com. Some healthy foods and activities offer a boost in these brain chemicals without the high calorie and fat counts associated with ice cream, sweets or fatty foods. Pumpkin seeds, avocados and almonds are all good sources of dopamine, while complex carbohydrates, yoga, and cardio exercise can help to boost serotonin.
Misconceptions
Controlling emotional eating can take more than just self-discipline. Breaking and changing behavioral patterns is difficult. Forgive yourself for slips and misses on your weight loss journey. You will need to take care of yourself physically and emotionally. Adequate sleep is one piece of that puzzle, along with replacing food and eating with new, healthier coping skills.
