11 Reasons Why You Should Never eat when you are Angry

“When we get up each morning, we step into a new opportunity to live healthy, it requires patience, time, and respect for your food and the process.”

Spoiling your mood with a heated argument at home or work ruins not only your day but also your appetite, well-being, and mental health. Whenever we are angry, upset, worried, or anxious our body reacts to these changes, and our appetite changes along with it. During any of these mood swings, it is advised to not consume food as our body emits different emotions which affect our physical state directly.

Whilst anger drains our energy, it also produces fight and flight stress responses from your sympathetic nervous system leading to increased cortisol levels. This situation can lead to irritation, distraction, emotional eating, and also increased impulsion.

Experts are always behind the fact that a healthy diet is of high importance to maintain our physical and mental wellbeing, based on this it is also proven why you should never eat when stressed or angry,

• Increases Depression and anxiety – Our sole concentration and focus get diverted when we are in an angry mood which results in an empty stomach due to no fullness post meals. In a state of rage or anger, our blood pressure levels shoot surfing up the blood sugar and cholesterol levels causing induced depression and anxiety.
• Bloating – When we are angry our stomach shows heavy disturbances, waves of emotions flush up and down causing stomach complications as we start eating. People who suffer from IBS and colitis can undergo serious damage if they eat when in a stressful state. This bloating happens due to fast eating, emotional eating, or food intolerance, either the condition is severe as gastric problems start to occur.
• Guilt Feeling – When people eat while being stressed or angry, they eat much more than they usually eat, when they calm down they realize too much food had been taken in. This guilt trap may lead to eating outbursts, mental disorders, severe mood swings, low self-esteem, and hence a vicious cycle.
• Nausea – Anger eating often results in overeating which ends with a stomach ache and nausea. Eating food in an emotional state triggers many waves of emotions giving rise to stomach problems.
• Weight Problems – Recurring emotional or stress eating causes heavy weight gain and problems attached with it like blood pressure, fatigue, diabetes, etc.
• Increase in Cortisol Levels – Stress results in a fall of appetite so that the body can manage the situation, if the stress levels don’t recede a hormone called cortisol is let out which helps increase appetite and cause the person to overeat.
• Increase of cravings – When a person doesn’t focus on his food but still eats it will not find fullness post meals. Anger or stress is a reason for such occurrence and this situation then leads to an increase in cortisol levels and appetite increases significantly. Our appetite increases at very odd intervals which spikes up cravings for sugary or fatty foods. Hunger hormones also increase cravings for unhealthy foods associated with stress.
• Binge Eating Disorder – Sometimes due to stress or anger, our food intake is disturbed and our appetite is never full after such meals. Due to this Binge Eating Disorder develops and increases our cravings with high-calorie intake.
• The Hunger Hormone (Ghrelin) – Some of our appetite gets wasted after anger eating, the hunger hormone called Ghrelin directly affects our hunger and hence our appetite increases oddly and so does our cravings which induces obesity due to high increase in carbohydrates.
• Frequent boredom – Due to addiction towards eating due to repeated cravings, it is seen that most emotional eaters feel bored quite often which is just another excuse to chew their next food. It is a very common thing in emotional eating which acts as a catalyst as well as an effect.
• Fatigue during work – As stress eating plays a heavy toll on our health, it increases fatigue in our physical and mental health and we don’t like taking additional stress to complete the work. Food always seems to be an answer when an activity is unpleasant.

Take Away

From this article we can understand how emotional eating can prove fatal to our wellbeing, so a person should understand the triggers and reasons why they develop such illnesses, people should carry a food diary to write down the quantity consumed and at what time, this will help keep significant watch on the calorie intake.

We can also take meditating classes to ensure we have a good spiritual and mental control to tame our stress and anger. Anger eating is a slow poison which lies dormant, hence we shall have a Hunger Reality check.

Don’t forget to get some support and professional help to guide yourself and get better insights about emotional eating, if you are suffering from one do not hesitate to get a dietician to help you get rid of such illness.