Posts Tagged ‘emotional eating tips’
Are Low-Fat Alternatives Help Emotional Eating?
We all have times when we eat emotionally. Emotional eating is not eating to satisfy hunger, but rather to heel some negative emotions, like boredom, sadness, loneliness and many more.
There was a recent study at the Oregon Research Institute on the effects of eating on the pleasure center of the brain. They selected two groups of woman, and gave them both a real, full fat chocolate milkshake. One group was told it was low calorie, the other group was told it was the real deal. The researchers watched the brain activity in a CT scanner.
The results were very interesting. The women that thought they had the real milkshake showed activity in the brain’s pleasure center. The women that thought they had the low-calorie version showed far less activity in their pleasure center. Again they both had the same tasty drink.
People who eat emotionally also show greater activity in their pleasure centers of their brain when they eat in general, as compared to other people who do not eat emotionally. It means that some of us eat to activate the pleasure centers of our brains to feel better. However the milkshake study showed that the low-fat version results in less pleasure which means more eating.
