Under normal circumstances, a few minutes after birth, we are held by our mothers, feeling warmth, love, comfort and security. As we are being fed and gently rocked, our subconscious minds take this all in as a very nice situation to be in.

When you were young, it’s quite possible that you were rewarded with food for being good. If you hurt yourself or were upset, perhaps Mummy gave you some chocolate to ‘make you feel better’.

These are all very pleasant feelings and the emotional eater attempts to recreate them as an adult by guess what....eating!

The human body has an automatic biochemical mechanism that tells us when we are hungry and when we are full. The problem with emotional eaters is that they have learned how to override those signals.

Imagine it is lunchtime and we are feeling the hunger signals being generated within the body. You eat your sandwich and drink your cup of tea. As the stomach begins to fill up, signals are sent warning you of becoming full. Once that point is reached, in the case of a normal eater, they will stop eating (irrespective of food left on plate) and feel pleasantly full.

In the case of an emotional eater, the ‘stop signal’ is completely ignored and they carry on eating for a psychological reason rather than a physiological one. They go way beyond the point where they should really stop and feel bloated, lethargic and guilty. Why would a person want to do that? The answer lies in 'conditioning' - we are taught when young that food can bring comfort.

Why Do People Overeat?

Emotional eaters 'overeat' for many reasons. By overeating I mean overriding the body’s automatic processes and going past the 'Stop Signal'. In my practice I frequently deal with plate clearers, fast eaters, chocoholics, comfort eaters, binge eaters etc. Why do they override the body’s natural functions? Why do they force themselves to eat food they really don’t want? Why do they overeat and make themselves uncomfortable? Why do they always have to clear their plate? The answers lie in issues from our childhood that still lurk in our subconscious minds.

As adults, some people turn to food to alleviate the negative feelings of stress, anxiety, anger, loneliness and boredom

We're all emotional eaters to some extent. We live in a food-orientated society where eating is an integral part of celebrations and a fundamental aspect of family life. But how much emotional eating is too much? Simply put, when it interferes with your health and happiness.

Traditional dieting and weight loss strategies don't work for emotional eaters, because the psychological aspects of weight control aren't fully addressed by most diet plans. Many programs don't deal with self-sabotage and the real reasons we throw ourselves off track.

In his book Fattitudes, American clinical psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey R Wilbert addresses the problem of diet sabotage and emotional overeating. He describes the need to discover the hidden emotional triggers that drive us to eat, and to understand the ‘food-feelings’ connection that makes balanced eating (and subsequently weight loss) so difficult.