Do you reach for a bag of chips when you’re bored? Do you eat a chocolate bar at the slightest annoyance? Another bout of emotional hunger! This makes you eat in order to amplify or make an emotion disappear. A practice that some are trying to eradicate with hypnosis sessions. But is it a good solution against emotional hunger? Anaïs Lecocq, dietitian and Delphine Blondel, graduate in public health and psychonutritionist answer our questions.
What causes emotional eating?
Anais Lecocq: “Often, these are difficulties in everyday life, a very stressful job, difficult children, a complicated marriage, etc. Difficulties linked to childhood, disorders linked to trauma, things left unsaid and which have not been particularly managed and taken care of. There are many things that can lead to emotional eating. Eventually, emotional eating can also occur in a person who does not eat enough and who ends up snacking on anything and everything once hunger strikes because they are no longer able to manage it. »
Delphine Blondel: “Poor regulation of emotions. We haven’t learned to regulate our emotions and we don’t know how to do it. We feel overwhelmed and we eat. So, we eat, we drink, we do drugs, we smoke, etc. Everyone will have their own coping mechanism, but eating is accessible all the time, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, which is what we have been taught to do since we were babies. »
What can be the harmful consequences of emotional eating?
Anais Lecocq: “Obviously, weight gain, discomfort. At the pathological level: insulin resistance, hyperinsulinaemia (which can inevitably lead to diabetes), intestinal dysbiosis, problems with digestion, inflammation, muscle and joint pain, etc. In short, you will have understood, emotional eating is not without consequences if we do not take charge of it. »
Delphine Blondel: “Everything that will be the consequence of excess food. All the so-called diseases of civilization, we can develop diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, many cancers are linked to this, hormonal imbalances. There are really lots of problems. But one effect that results from this is really the breakdown of self-esteem. »
Hypnosis, a solution to treat emotional eating?
Anais Lecocq: “I have some of my patients who have practiced it with good results. Personally, I prefer that we get to the bottom of things, but if it helps people, why not. I don’t know enough about this practice to make a firm statement. I think the key is to find the method that suits us, that does us good and that allows us to achieve the result we want over time. Whether it’s hypnosis, therapy or something else, as long as it helps the person feel better, that’s the main thing. »
Delphine Blondel: “You should not use just any hypnosis. Hypnosis can work very well, you can very easily put someone off eating sugar or tobacco, etc. But we are not going to work on the trauma that makes us eat. My opinion on hypnosis is to work on these traumas with someone who is well trained in this. It’s PTR hypnosis or conversational hypnosis to cleanse the trauma. When we say trauma, we always expect something super serious, but sometimes it’s just events like “I was deprived of dessert when I was little.” This can give great results. I don’t always do it, but I have had incredible results with patients. »
