Actual vs. Emotional Hunger

Tonight’s Breaking through Barrier’s class was about listening to your body to see if you are feeling actual vs. emotional hunger. Which later in evening turned out to be a very appropriate topic! We talked about the signs of actual hunger – stomach hollow, stomach growling etc. And, a 10 point hunger scale ranging from feeling faint as a 1 to feeling overfull to the point of feeling sick as a 10. And, how if you are thinking you are hungry and you are not at like at three or four on that scale then it may just be that you are thinking of emotional eating. Boy, do I know all about this! I have been known in the past to eat for a wide range of emotions from resentment, anger and frustration to boredom, relaxing and even happiness. Tonight was the perfect example – something happened and someone upset me. So what did I want to do? You guessed it – eat a big bowl of pasta and drink a couple of big glasses of wine. But, then I took a few minutes to calm down, and a few deep breaths, and asked myself, “Do you really need to eat that?” I was actually hungry at the time too – making the situation a little more difficult to manage. But, I made a lean cuisine frozen dinner – I know not the best, but low in calories – and ate that instead of having a few big glasses of wines and a big meal. And, you know what I feel great now – good about myself and good about how I handled this situation. I am proud of myself! Now I just need to incorporate this into my life every time I get the urge to eat for emotional reasons. Looks like I will be using the hunger scale a lot and learning to take 10 deep breaths for awhile! At least until I master this actual vs. emotional hunger conundrum.