What causes emotional eating?

There can be various triggers that lead to emotional eating because it is related with your emotions:
1) Stress is the most important cause of emotional eating. Stress can be an outburst of lack of confidence, low self esteem, fear, negative feelings, etc. To get away from these emotions, one may hold on to food for comfort.
2) Boredom: When you get bored, you usually get restless and wants to kill the time. So one might think of binging on some food just to pass time, but the problem here is one might know how much to eat since they are eating just out of boredom.
3) Tiredness: Lack of energy can be the reason of being tired, and usually its is because there is no fuel in the body in the form of food.
4) When you feel upset or hurt: Some people turn to food when someone says or does something that upsets or hurts them. Anxieties and emotions can also trigger the desire to eat.
5) Loneliness: Since there is no companion or you are undergoing a recent break up, you want to find a friend in someone or something. Certain foods have the ability to make us feel happier if only for a short while.

Causes:
- Social eating: Often people find comfort and seek support from their friends.
- Sometimes when people get nervous or anxious, they might get fidgety with their oral cravings. This might lead to nail biting or teeth grinding.
- Childhood habits
- Stuffed emotions or pent up emotions which are not finding any direction to come out.
- Childhood habits