Emotional eating often means medicating one's self with food. Instead of prescriptions or controlled substances, comfort foods become the drug of choice. Certain foods do offer a bit of a "high," however, it is short lived. This triggers the need to continue eating to continue feeling high.

Emotional eating is a bit more complicated, and includes nutrition, science, and psychology, but let's just keep it in basic terms. We eat to feel better. When we are stressed or depressed we indulge in emotional eating to lift the mood. Sweets are often the first foods people reach for, especially decadent desserts, which provide not only high sugar content but also high fat content. They seem to soothe the weary soul.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with emotional eating is the fact that it becomes a vicious cycle. Eat too much, gain weight, become depressed because of weight gain, and then eat more. In most cases, food just doesn't make good medicine.

We also use food to reward ourselves, but if we're only working toward a goal in order to get a taste of the forbidden, it isn't as fulfilling. It also leads to binging and using food as a source of comfort in situations other than just the emotional ones, which means even bigger problems.

The first step, as always, is to identify the problem. Is your unhealthy diet a result of emotional eating? The best way to find out is to write down what you eat, when you eat it, how you are feeling and what is going on at the time.

If you do this for a week, you'll probably notice patterns that involve either certain stressors or certain foods that you eat when various stressors become issues. By knowing and understanding what's happening, you have a much better chance of getting emotional eating under control.

Learn more about this author, S. Mills.
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