What's wrong with the diet? Physiological component of the diet.

Chapter 4. Emotional Eating

What we're researching: What drives people to overeat?

What's new: How do emotions influence overeating?

What we will learn: Determine the cause of weight gain

1. Overweight individuals often say that they eat more when they feel stressed or anxious, and experiments confirm this. Obese subjects eat more in situations of increased anxiety (Atkinson et al., 2000). [1].

2. Feeling uneasy and comforted. Unfortunately, life in the modern Western world is such that many people experience anxiety for various reasons and, as a result, constant tension. Therefore, people resort to the fastest and most accessible way to relieve emotional stress with the help of food: "Feelings of despondency, sadness may require compensation from a person and push him to the idea that he must somehow console himself. In some cases, behavioral disorders associated with nutrition, are caused by just such a mechanism" (Izard K.E., 2012). [2]. In such a situation, we are not talking about satisfying hunger, but an emotional attitude of enjoying the taste of food, regardless of the need for food and its health benefits. The emphasis is solely on her taste. As a result, enjoying the taste of food becomes a very important value in their lives, since it is a quick and affordable way to calm themselves: "Many people respond to stress by increasing their food intake because food often becomes a comfort in such circumstances" (Marija Ljubičić et al. 2023). [3].

3. The taste of food is a way to comfort yourself. For this reason, taste itself, and not the feeling of hunger, is a motive or emotional impulse (literally an impetus) for a person to choose variety, abundance, frequency, and method of eating.  And the longer this process, the happier he is. Thus, people unconsciously try to smooth out all their difficulties, and insoluble external and internal conflicts with the help of the taste of food: "If at a critical emotional moment a person experiences even the slightest feeling of hunger, he can be deceived and convinced himself that food will relieve him of discomfort, and as a result, the emotion and mental image, supported by a physiological drive [energy charge, ed., author], will push [give impetus, ed., author] a previously moderate person in nutrition to gluttony" (Izard K.E., 2012). [2]. Emotional overeating is one of the reasons leading to excess weight, and then to chronic obesity. And it makes no difference whether a person is rich or poor, whether he lives in a less or more developed country, whether he is a specialist in the scientific or financial field, or whether he is an employee of a government or business structure. The numbers speak volumes about this.

4. Global obesity. Today, the problem of overweight and obesity has engulfed the entire world, regardless of whether it is a rich, middle-income, or low-income country. Below are global estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO):

• In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults over 18 years of age were overweight. Of these, over 650 million were obese.

• As of 2016, 39% of adults over 18 years of age (39% of men and 40% of women) were overweight.