Eating Disorders Archives | Richardson Christian Counseling

How Your God-Given Internal Cues Can Stop Emotional Eating

How Your God-Given Internal Cues Can Stop Emotional Eating

Lori Askew, Kate Motaung2025-03-26T12:17:48+00:00March 7th, 2025|Eating Disorders, Featured, Individual Counseling, Weight Loss, Women’s Issues|

Chronic stress, a silent predator, is a key instigator of a range of physical and mental ailments. Unfortunately, it also slyly fuels emotional eating. What happens is that we often turn to food beyond our physical hunger because we’re trying to fill a deep-seated void. God actually created that void in us to fill with Himself. Therefore, we know that food is not the answer. God has gifted us with a sophisticated system that signals when we need to nourish ourselves and when we should refrain from eating. This system helps us to effectively curb emotional eating by recognizing and responding to internal cues. Defining True Hunger The internal cues we possess to indicate hunger are natural and intuitive. Your body releases two hormones, ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin stimulates the appetite, making your stomach feel empty and often causing it to growl. The growl or empty sensation may subside but return in 10-30 minutes as your body requires fuel. The other hormone, leptin, controls satiety. You experience the sensation of being full when fat cells release leptin, which leads you to stop eating. This hormone is released when it receives the signal from the stomach approaching fullness. Unfortunately, many individuals continue to eat even when they are already full or not hungry, making it difficult to gauge their satiety or control their eating. This can lead to physical discomfort, obesity, digestive problems, and even illness if it becomes a consistent habit. Understanding these potential health risks can be a powerful motivator to change our eating habits. Why We Eat Our Emotions If the empty feeling or stomach growl indicates hunger, why do we eat when not physically hungry? Thoughts and emotions fuel our actions. For example, you have had a stressful day at work. You arrive home, and everyone [...]

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Knowing the Difference Between a Big Appetite and Binge Eating in Teens

Knowing the Difference Between a Big Appetite and Binge Eating in Teens

Kate Motaung2025-02-26T05:46:53+00:00February 26th, 2025|Christian Counseling For Teens, Eating Disorders, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Jackson has been feeling lost since he recently realized his teenage son Jack Junior’s famous appetite may have evolved into a binge eating disorder. As a single dad, born and raised on a ranch in Texas, surrounded mostly by cowboys who don’t talk much about emotion, Jackson is not quite sure how to even broach this topic with his son. All sorts of questions keep floating around in his head. “How did I not notice that my kid might have an eating disorder sooner?”. “How can I know for sure if my son is binge eating?”. “How and why did this develop into a disorder?”. “How much of a problem is this condition?”. With this article, we hope to answer most of Jackson’s questions and help any other parent who might find themselves in the same boat with their child. How did I not notice that my child might have an eating disorder sooner? The boy, Jack Jr., has always had a huge appetite and loves his steaks, drumsticks, potatoes, and gravy. You see, his mother, who recently passed away of cancer, was the ranch’s resident cook, so he has grown up surrounded by her rich cooking, literally eating it all up. What Jackson doesn’t know is that in recent months, Junior has endured relentless teasing at school for the way he looks with hurtful body-shaming nicknames that are thrown at him every day. Slowly he’s been finding ways to cope with the pain by seeking solace in food. It’s become his routine that when life throws too much at him, he just retreats to his room, locks the door, and starts binge eating whatever snacks he could find in the pantry or leftovers stashed in the fridge. Jack Junior can eat several bags of chips, cookies, a full chicken, [...]

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The Dangers of Stress Eating

The Dangers of Stress Eating

Melissa Plantz2024-09-27T10:23:31+00:00June 23rd, 2023|Eating Disorders, Featured, Individual Counseling|

When you think of stress eating, does it seem harmless? You are not hurting anyone, right? All you are trying to do is manage your anxiety and stress with a much less dangerous substance than drugs or alcohol. But is that true? Is eating excess food a harmless activity? Is there a danger to stress eating? Effects of stress eating Overconsuming food and eating foods lacking in nutrients can take a toll on the body. Everything from your digestive system to your emotional state can change when stress eating becomes a habit. This habit feeds off your thoughts and emotions until stress eating becomes an impossible urge to overcome. But you can overcome stress eating with counseling and techniques like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The following is a list of common conditions that can develop from stress eating and eating disorders. High blood pressure. For the body to digest food, blood rushes from other areas to the stomach to process the food and store excess as fat. This process naturally lowers your blood pressure unless the meal contains sodium and added sugars. This combination raises blood pressure and increases heart rate. When more fat is stored, you increase your risk of weight gain, and the extra weight will raise your blood pressure. High blood pressure for long periods can damage the arteries, heart, and kidneys. High cholesterol. Fatty deposits in your arteries can form clots when you have high cholesterol. These clots reduce blood flow in the blood vessels and break off, traveling to the lungs or brain. You can suffer a heart attack or stroke from high cholesterol. Check with your physician about the likelihood of you developing high cholesterol. Family history, genetics, and past and current behaviors can contribute to the condition. Diabetes. Although Type I diabetics [...]

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