WALTHAM, MA—A whopping 80 percent of Indian-Americans want to learn techniques to manage emotional eating, according to a recent survey by INDIA New England News. Emotional eating is when people use food to cope with their outburst of emotions and feelings.
If you have ever found yourself pacifying yourself with comfort foods like pizza, bread, cheese, chocolates, sweets, fried food, and spicy food after a stressful day or when you are sad, lonely, depressed, happy, bored, anxious, and nervous, you may have some symptoms of emotional eating.
Sneh Jaisingh, a lifestyle and nutrition coach who founded NutriAge with her husband Ajay Jaisingh, will talk about emotional eating, how it effects health and how to manage it at the 7th annual Indian and South Asian Health Expo on March 10 at Burlington Marriott Hotel in Burlington, MA.
The 7th Annual Health & Wellness Expo, which is produced by The Mishra Group in collaboration with INDIA New England News, Indus Business Journal and INE MultiMedia, is sponsored by KnowYourMeds, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Lahey Health.
The event is free for all attendees, but you must pre-register. To register for free, please click here.
“Sometimes we use food as a way to cope with our feelings and this is what we call emotional eating,” says Ms. Jaisingh.
Here the are results of the Emotional Eating Survey conducted online by INDIA New England News in collaboration with Ms. Jaisingh.
When asked about experiencing sudden hunger bouts (those mid-afternoon vending machine calls, late night snacking, etc.), 58.1 percent readers said that they do experience hunger bouts and 41.86 percent said no. Seventy one percent said they get certain cravings for specific type of foods such as bread, fried snacks, spicy food, sweets and chocolate, among others as 28.57 percent said they have so such cravings.
When it came to eating in public or in front of other people, readers had a mixed of answers: almost half (49 percent) said they eat differently while 44.19 percent said they ate the same way everywhere.
Do you often/sometimes binge and feel uncontrollably full afterwards? They responded the following way:
Very often: 2.38%
A few times a week: 14.29%
About once a week: 4.76%
About once a month: 4.76%
Less than once a month: 26.19%
Never: 26.19 %
When asked if the survey participants felt guilty/angry with themselves after an emotional eating episode, 60.97 percent said they did. When they feel guilty, 20.9 percent put themselves through extremes of exercising and diet restriction. About 30 percent use food as a means of rewarding oneself (e.g.- “I lost 5 Lbs so I can treat myself with a scoop of ice-cream”, “got a promotions”,” Patriots are in the super bowl”).
The weekned phenomenon: Twenty-three percent of the responders said that they often find themselves fairly disciplined through the week, but come Friday things start to go downhill; 48.84 percent said they do it sometimes, while 29.91 percent said never and they remain disciplined throughout.
Do you practice regularly any stress management techniques that doesn’t involve food or alcohol? More than half (54.76 percent) said they don’t practice any stress management while 45.24 percent said they do use stress management techniques such as meditation, yoga, music, gym, reading, prayer, running and dance, among others.