Emotional & Bored Eater
In this “An emotional & bored eater” article I will be talking about the reasons I have repeatedly fallen into the emotional and bored food trap and how I managed to finally get out.
Since I was a little boy, I loved eating and man could I eat. 2 Pizzas in one sitting followed by a large ice-cream was nothing for me. Even up until the age of 23 I could easily devour 2 footlong Subs and not feel disgusted afterwards. Ice-cream is my weakness and back then at the age of 12 finishing a 2-liter tub felt easy. I have a fond memory of me at the age of 15 and my grandpa doing a pancake eating competition, where I proudly beat him finishing 11 large pancakes in one sitting. Playing tennis from the age of 5, I was a kid with a lot of energy to burn and I had no issues doing so.
How The Mentality Changed
I just enjoyed food and did not have to think twice about what I ate. I cannot exactly tell you when I started to develop another reason for eating, but I know it was not long after I injured my shoulder during a large tennis event in Mexico, which forced me to rethink my career goals and become a coach. I didn’t at all enjoy coaching tennis at the beginning and having to grasp the fact that I needed to make money to live. After my injury I went through a lot of ups and downs, and I believe its during these shaky moments that I started to develop these two new eating habits, emotional and bored.
“ There is nothing wrong in enjoying food, but lets be mindful of what we consume, how much and for what reason really.”
OLIVER PETRI
Click Here to see 23 other ways to help you stop Overeating!
What This Meant To Me
Emotional eating for me means, eating anything salty, fatty, or sweet to satisfy mostly unpleasant moments and feelings. Once I felt down, I would grab something unhealthy to eat to make me feel better. I assume it was like being hooked on drugs, it would give me a temporary high but every time I felt down, I wanted more.
Bored eating for me means, basically eating the same sort of foods, but this time for the reason of just feeling bored. It could be watching a movie later at night and feeling the need to keep my fingers occupied, grabbing chips out of the bag. The satisfaction was not the same as emotional eating.
In both cases I filled my body with unhealthy food, but this time I wasn’t a kid anymore and I wasn’t exercising the way I used to, burning more calories than I took in. I wasn’t staying in shape and quite late towards the end of my 30’s I realized what I was doing to my body. I had these eating moments, which gave me that high, but I dropped emotionally, mentally, and physically so badly after and it became this vicious cycle that I just could not get out of.
