Kuchisabishii.
Do you know what it means?
Whether you know it or not, you have most likely experienced it at least once in your life.
The term is Japanese, it means, literally lonely mouth.
Romanticism aside, what it indicates isn’t exactly a recommendable gesture: eating without actually feeling hungry.
Or nibbling, or munching, or whatever verb you can think of.
We eat out of boredom: a behavior that falls within the broader category of emotional eating, i.e. ingesting food, often anything but healthy, as a reaction to an emotionally stressful situation (and boredom can certainly be so).
But why? A study (Eaten up by boredom: consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self, published in “Frontiers of Psychology” in 2015) suggests that:
“Unhealthy behaviour may draw attention away from the threatening, self-focused, existential experience that boredom entails”.
Let’s call it for what it is: a eating disorder. It can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and negatively affect mental health.
The solution? Well, as in all similar cases, it’s about talking to a specialist.
And let’s not take the problem lightly.
And maybe, if we’re really bored and can’t keep our mouths shut, nibble on a carrot, a cucumber or some fennel….
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