Food for comfort
What is comfort eating?
It is not uncommon for people to eat when they feel sad, angry, hopeless, bored or lonely. Eating may make you feel better in the short term. Some foods, such as chocolate, affect the chemicals in the brain that regulate your mood. For that reason, you often feel better straight after you have eaten chocolate but these effects usually don't last for very long. Eating in response to emotions, particularly if you are not hungry, is known as comfort eating.Eating your favourite food when something upsets you is OK and everybody is likely to do it from time to time. Comfort eating may be a problem if you are regularly feeling sad, angry, hopeless, bored or lonely and are using food to cope with these feelings. If this is the case, it may be a good idea to talk to someone about your feelings and look at other ways of managing them. If you are eating when you are not hungry and having feelings of guilt after eating it may also be a good idea to talk to someone. This may be your local doctor, a psychologist or dietician.
