Getting to and maintaining a healthy weight helps reduce risk of health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Maintaining a healthy body mass index, or BMI, is especially important as people age.
Controlling weight includes making changes in eating and activity habits. A psychologist trained in weight management may help with these adjustments.
Emotional eating
Emotional eating is when you eat more than your body needs to satisfy negative emotions. This can lead to obesity and other health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke. It is important to identify your emotional eating triggers and learn healthier ways to deal with them. Keeping a food and mood diary can help you pinpoint the factors that influence your emotional eating. For example, if you tend to eat out of boredom, you might find that you are most likely to overindulge when you are at work or socialising with friends.
While emotional eating is mostly associated with negative feelings, it can also be triggered by positive ones such as stress and satisfaction. For this reason, research examining emotional eating in healthy individuals in daily life is complex and inconsistent. However, moderators including psychological state, overweight/obesity and unhealthy dietary patterns appear to be important. These findings suggest that preventing emotional eating could be an important strategy for promoting well-being and controlling weight.