Why do we eat?

All of us eat to live in order to survive because if we stop eating, we would die. Hence to avoid this fate, we all eat good food and drink enough water. However, nowadays there has been a new prevalent fashion of ‘live to eat’ that’s getting rampant in society. This new concept has nothing to do with our biological survival. Those who indulge in this, do it because of some other reason outside of simply staying alive.

In short, eating to live is a biological understanding whereas, living to eat is a psychological, social, and emotional disorder that needs urgent attention because emotional and disordered eating can wreak havoc on our mental, emotional, and physical health if left unaddressed. Not to mention, the massive amount of time and energy it takes up, leaving one much less able to focus on what really matters in his/her life.

For most of us, emotional eating has become a habit of comfort – in other words, it’s a behaviour induced by certain cues like situations, feelings, people, commercials, etc. Scientific studies done over the years reveal that animals and people that were more stressed ended up eating more. In general, most of us consider emotional eating as a food addiction, just like we consider shopping, gambling, and other behaviours as addictions.

There is no doubt that these behaviours can sometimes seem to take on a life of their own and make you feel like you’re just going along for a scary ride. Using food from time to time as a reward, or to celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But, when eating becomes our primary emotional coping mechanism and when our first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever we get upset, angry, lonely, stressed, exhausted, or bored, we get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed. Remember! Emotional hunger can’t be filled with food. Eating may feel good in weak moments, but the feelings that triggered the eating would be still hiding within. So, it’s better to target those hidden feelings rather than turning to unnecessary and extra eating.