Emotional eating kind of evolved slowly over the last, I don’t know, maybe 20 years. We didn’t know what it was till fairly recently, and that’s because eating disorders such as anorexia, people who under-eat all the time, to the point very often to starvation, or people who have binge eating disorders, people who have out of control eating. The definition is out of control eating two or more times a week or more for a period of six months. That’s binge eating disorder, and my aside is, if you diet, how can you not have binge eating disorder? You are craving food in taste and flavor and feelings.
Emotional eating has evolved out of that and we have started looking more closely at the growing evolution of eating disorders, and emotional eating simply means you are eating because of emotional reasons, to feel better because you are anxious, because you are depressed, because you are happy, because you are joyous. There’s an emotional drive behind it.
You are not eating because you are hungry. You are not eating because you have a healthy good appetite, you’re feeling, really looking forward to having a meal because you’re feeling wonderful health, wonderfully healthy appetite; very different motivation.