Raise your hand if you're an emotional eater.

This morning in class, I announced to class, "Raise your hand if you're an emotional eater."  I and about 99% of people raised their hands, which made me feel right at home & not so lonely.  One of the qualities I admire about the community in the studio is how comfortable everyone feels in the presence of each other to share their feelings and opinions. Except for Brad.  His stories make me blush.  But seriously...

I, for one, take comfort in emotional eating when I get angry, which fortunately isn't all that often.  Sometimes I just get so frustrated and angry that I think to myself "Screw it!  I've been good for way too long and the only thing that's going to make me feel better is a pumpkin milkshake and sweet potato fries from Burgerville!  Paleo can SUCK IT for day!"  Do I feel better afterwards? Hell yes I do!  My stomach isn't in such a friendly place for about an hour, but the benefits of that milkshake hitting my taste buds and taking me to a happy place far outweigh the GI consequences I'll face later on.  

Because my personality is similar to that of a 12 year old girl, I'll usually crave any kind of chocolate I can rummage in any part of the house.  If we're out of chocolate, then I'll scour the freezer for Shelly's hidden stash of Chunky Monkey in the very back of the bottom shelf that she thinks I don't know about.  "What's that, babe? No, I don't know who ate the rest of your Chunky Monkey.  Weird." And because she's getting older she says, "Hmm, I could have sworn I saved some.  I guess must have eaten it all."  The memory is always the first thing to go.  I also can never pass the chip aisle in the grocery store and those lime Tostitos: the greatest technical improvement in the history of corn.  

Some of you said that you have "real emotional attachments to food".  I completely understand.  As a former chunky monkey myself, I often ate when I wasn't hungry and was just bored.


According to Robert Gould, MD and creator of Shrink Yourself, an adult development, self-help program,  "Emotional eating means you eat to satisfy emotional hunger; it means you use food for comfort or as a way to cope with life; and it means you eat for reasons other than what your body needs.

When people eat at times like these, they are eating to satisfy, numb, or avoid their emotions. People who are suffering from emotional eating are driven to eat so they won't have to face what's bothering them internally."

Below are Dr. Gould's 12 types of emotional hunger.  

The 12 Types of Emotional Hunger

By: Dr. Roger Gould, M.D.

Below are the 12 types of emotional hunger that fuel emotional eating. In order to lose weight for life, you will have to conquer all 12 types. Look over the list -- which type of emotional hunger derails your diet?

Type 1. Dulling The Pain With The Food.

If you get really hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you suffer from Type 1 emotional hunger, and you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.

Type 2. Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones, But Cake Won't Heal What Hurts You.

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you or take you for granted, then you suffer from Type 2 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid confrontation.

Type 3. A Full Heart Fills An Empty Belly.

If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you suffer from Type 3 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.

Type 4. Hate Yourself, Love Your Munchies.

If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you have Type 4 emotional hunger. You eat to "stuff down" self-doubts.

Type 5. Secret Desires Have No Calories.

If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you suffer from Type 5 emotional hunger and you use food to try to fill the gap, according to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food,

Type 6. Forty Gulps And The Well Is Still Empty.

If you eat to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you have Type 6 emotional eating.

Type 7. It's My Pastry, and I'll Eat If I Want To.

If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you have Type 7 emotional hunger.

Type 8. I Can't Come To Work Today--I'm Eating

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges--if you use food to avoid rising to the test, or to insulate yourself from the fear of failure--you have Type 8 emotional hunger.

Type 9. Aroused by Aromas, Not by the Chef.

If you stuff your face in order to avoid your sexuality-either to stay overweight so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters--you suffer from Type 9 emotional hunger.

Type 10. I'll Beat You With this Éclair.

Emotional eaters often eat to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments. If you do this, you're really battling type 10 emotional hunger

Type 11. Peter Pan and the Peanut Butter Cookie.

If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you have Type 11 emotional hunger. You eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.

Type 12. That Stranger In Shorts Wearing Your Face.

If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you have Type 12 emotional hunger.

For more useful tips and information on emotional eating, please visit www.ShrinkYourself.com