How to know the hunger is Physical or Emotional???
This is very important thing to know when you really want to eat smart and avoid unnecessary weight gain. First let's understand, what does Physical Hunger and Emotional Hunger mean???
Physical Hunger is when you feel hungry because your body actually needs energy. While Emotional Hunger is when you just feel like eating because of emotions  like being alone or bored or while reading, watching movie etc.
Following are some differences between Physical and Emotional Hunger, which will help you to understand whether you really need to feed your body or you just need to RETHINK!!!
  1. Physical hunger builds gradually while Emotional hunger develops suddenly.
  2. Physical hunger builds a little at a time, It gets bigger the longer it's been since you last ate, especially occurs 3+ hours after a meal. & Emotional hunger occurs at random times.
  3. Physical hunger can be temporarily offset by drinking water & Emotional hunger still persists after drinking a glass water. So you can drink a glass of water when you feel hungry and check it out.
  4. Physical hunger strikes below the neck (i.e. growling stomach) while Emotional hunger occurs above the neck (i.e. a taste for ice cream).
  5. Physical hunger goes away when you are full & Emotional hunger still persists after having a enough amount of food.
  6. Physical hunger is satisfied with food & Emotional hunger leads to guilt after eating food as you know that you have eaten unnecessarily.
  7. Physical hunger can be suppressed with stress or tensions while Emotional is activated with stress and hence sometimes you feel like eating chocolates or sweets when you are stressed.
  8. Physical hunger enhances taste as real hunger stimulates the taste buds on our tongue while Emotional does not.
  9. Physical hunger is increased with the smell or appearance of the food while Emotional hunger is not.
So, how to overcome it?? when you are stressed out just think "what do I feel?" Then ask yourself: What do I need to feel better? When you think about that, the answer won't always be that you need something to eat.