Emotional eating is when you consume food to deal with tough emotions rather than to satisfy actual physical hunger. Emotional eating is where the phrase “comfort foods” comes from. Comfort food is usually junk food or fast food. It’s food that you probably wouldn’t consume on a daily basis because of it’s high fat or sugar content. Often we eat comfort foods to soothe tough or negative emotions.

Have you ever came home from a long stressful day at work and skipped your planned workout? Instead, you just head straight for the fridge and before you knew it were eating your favorite comfort food? Maybe it was ice-cream, pizza, cookies or potato chips. Afterwards, you probably felt lazy, and relaxed the whole night, probably watching tv or surfing the net. You probably woke up the next day feeling guilty about sabotaging your weight loss efforts the previous night.