Why You Must Address Childhood Emotional Attachments to Create Sustainable Eating Habits

(Video note: I was trying new microphone and didn't test sound before! My apologies. Audio is a bit jagged, but lesson learned. Thanks for your patience) This video explores how childhood emotional attachments affect our eating habits and how to create sustainable eating habits for adulthood. Many people turn to food for comfort, but when you have a traumatic childhood this can lead to emotional eating. Emotional eating is defined as the compulsion to eat in response to emotions like stress, anger and depression. It’s not uncommon for adults who were neglected or abused during their childhood years to develop emotional eating habits. The problem with these tendencies is that they are often cravings rather than hunger, so it becomes difficult for them to stop once they start on the binge-eating cycle. This can be extremely dangerous because binging on high calorie foods leads quickly into obesity which in turn raises risk of heart disease and diabetes. The first step in breaking free from this destructive pattern is identifying your triggers – what situations make you crave food? If you are under a lot of stress at work, do you always find yourself eating something sweet when you get home from the office? Are there certain events in your life that make you feel sad or depressed – like an upcoming wedding? If triggers include feeling sorry for yourself after a difficult day at work or when something negative happens, it can be important to recognize that this is a problem. For some adults, indulging in emotional eating helps them deal with daily pressures but it does not provide any real solution. The fact is that emotional eating can only temporarily help mask emotions and does nothing to address the underlying issues behind those feelings.