Anxiety to eat: how to identify it.

Channeling anxiety at meals is a very common symptom, even more so in the current era.

A sedentary lifestyle in contrast to the demands of a system that prioritizes constant development, consumption, and speed, is the perfect conjunction for anxiety. Food is a pathway towards which anxiety is directed in a large number of cases. One of the reasons is the momentary satisfaction it generates, through which it is unconsciously sought to alleviate the discomfort generated by anxiety. On the other hand, culturally we are so used to basing our daily lives around food that it is often made invisible as an anxious discharge.

The person may feel that constant eating is a necessity. You may report being hungry all the time or not being able to get enough. But you have to be able to distinguish between the feeling of hunger that corresponds to something physiological and the feeling of hunger that is related to anxiety.

The fundamental differences between being hungry and anxiety eating are:

• The feeling of organic hunger begins gradually. The body triggers this instinct when it is running out of energy. It is gradually marking that it is necessary to incorporate more food. But it never happens from one moment to another.
• When you eat because of anxiety, you usually feel an urge to eat from one moment to another, and with excessive frequency. Certain types of food are usually sought, those that cause pleasure, or are very sweet or very salty and that can be consumed quickly.
• After the meal, in the case of doing so due to organic hunger, a feeling of satiety usually comes. And you can easily stop eating and continue with activities.
• When you eat for anxiety there is usually no feeling of satiety. That is why shortly after eating, they look for something else to consume again. There is a feeling of desperation in the face of food and difficulty in controlling oneself.
• Those who experience anxiety around food stop registering their body. They don't eat according to their body's needs, and they may continue to eat despite feeling fullness, heartburn, or gastrointestinal symptoms that tell them they should stop. It usually generates guilt later and can lead to being overweight or obese.

Anxiety, as we said before, has an easy way of manifesting through food, because it requires little effort and immediate satisfaction from the person. Passivity or lack of activities can enhance states of anxiety because by not having alternative modes of discharge (through physical activity, work, creative activities, for example) the person channels primarily through food intake.

We can ask ourselves what comes to cover or to cover this excess of food. Usually, a feeling of emptiness, loneliness, anguish, insecurity, uncertainty, seeks to be "filled" and thus remedied. However, as with all compulsive behaviors, they never fully achieve their goal, and the subject always has to consume a little more without solving the problem.

For this reason, it is very important to be able to distinguish what is hunger and what is due to an anxious urge that leads to eating in a disorganized way, bringing other harmful consequences for health. In the case of suffering from anxiety around food, a professional consultation is recommended to be able to work on the conflict in a timely manner in relation to the path and history of the person in particular.

 

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