By Staff
With stress come many unwanted behaviors.  Today I would like to talk about "stress eating."  
Many of us use food to cope with problems, challenges or gaps in our lives. We eat to satisfy emotional hunger.  The problem with eating when emotionally hungry is that no matter how much is eaten, there is never satisfaction.  That's because we are hungering for something that cannot be satisfied with food.
Other forms of nourishment are needed that address what we are really hungering for.  It's important that we learn to recognize the difference between physical and emotional hunger and find alternative forms of nourishment that have nothing to do with food.
Managing feeling without using food means being willing to "feel the feelings."  For many of us this may be an uncomfortable thought, especially if we have been eating to deny, numb, or soother our feeling for most of our lives.  We may fear that these feeling will be too intense, will never stop, or will harm someone else.  
There are five parts to the basic strategy for learning to manage feeling without food:
Determine hunger.  
Before eating, you should ask yourself: