Sick and tired of feeling guilty for out of control eating and wish you could just stop emotional eating forever? It’s a common challenge I hear from clients. And so many people identify as emotional eaters, so you’re not alone! And guess what? It’s completely normal and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Emotional eating can be used in a positive and intentional way when dealing with emotions. Consider this two part blog post series your go-to guide when it comes to all things emotional eating: possible causes and triggers, how to deal with emotional eating and suggestions on developing emotional self-care coping tools and skills.
What is Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating doesn’t just happen. It’s eating food in response to emotions and it covers a
wide spectrum of emotions. This could include things like: sadness, boredom, stress, anger and loneliness. It could also include: happiness, joy and feelings of celebration or connection. And it’s 100% a natural human thing to feel a wide range of, sometimes complex, intense or uncomfortable, emotions. It’s when these uncomfortable feelings become “too much” to handle that we often look for ways to dull, distract, or numb in order to lessen the discomfort.
And we do this in a lot of ways. Some people crawl under the covers and binge watch TV. Others might engage in “retail therapy” or burry themselves in work or other harmful coping mechanisms such as excessive alcohol. Or when it comes to emotional eating, you might find yourself turning to food.
Here’s the thing. Emotions are a signal something needs attention.
Pretty obvious when you think about it, right? But so many don’t find it to be that obvious because they don’t stop to investigate. Or they might not know how to identify the feeling because they’re not even aware something is off. Or maybe it feels easier to attempt to eliminate the discomfort with food instead of dealing with the emotion. So we find ourselves at the bottom of a bag of chips or carton of ice cream, only to end up going to bed feeling physically ill and full of guilt and shame after freaking out over the eating that occurred. And worst of all, that initial uncomfortable feeling that triggered the emotional eating spiral is still there. And the actual issue remains unresolved.
Emotional Eating isn’t Inherently Bad or Wrong
Emotional eating is often demonized in our culture and gets talked about in a very negative way. The widespread belief that using food to cope with emotions is a bad thing has created a ton of shame and guilt whenever we inevitably eat certain foods when we feel emotional.
Well, here are two facts about being human: 1) We all have emotions. And 2) pretty much everything we do and the behaviors we engage in are tied to our emotions. So why would we think emotions aren’t a part of the eating experience? Eating is emotional and there’s no escaping that.
Emotional eating only becomes a problem if:
- It becomes your only coping mechanism.
- It doesn’t actually soothe or help you cope with your feelings or process your emotions.
- Anytime you emotionally eat feelings of guilt and shame are triggered – creating a stress response that makes you feel like you can’t trust yourself around food and/or that you need to compensate for emotional eating – thus feeding into the binge/restrict emotional eating cycle. You feel ashamed for emotionally eating, so you continue to emotionally eat.
So telling yourself you’ll never emotionally eat again isn’t realistic, because trying to stop it altogether will pretty much only ever backfire and continue the fight against yourself.
Speaking of guilt, it’s possible that you might experience an immediate sense of emotional comfort from eating, however the negative feelings of guilt that come after are strong enough to wipe out any positive sense of soothing relief.
Emotional Eating is Normal
Eating doesn’t occur in an emotionless void. And everyone emotionally eats because food isn’t just fuel. Food is culture, family, tradition, comfort, celebration, joy, connection and so much more. We associate specific foods with certain holidays and special occasions.
Eating food has the ability to make us feel good. And it should feel good. Yet this very normal human behavior can feel like a dirty shameful secret or character flaw that needs fixing.
Many of us can identify with eating for pleasure and comfort. But food CAN also be used as a tool when coping with the not so pleasant emotions. Think about some situation in which food has made you feel a little better.
Some examples:
- Ordering takeout while watching a movie after a really draining and exhausting week.
- Baking cookies when bored at night.
- Going out for ice cream with a friend after a bout of loneliness.
- Making nachos when feeling sad after a sudden blow of bad news
Food has the ability to comfort, soothe, distract, and even provide & add some joy.
But it’s important to remember that food rarely fixes the initial issue. With that said, emotional eating can be constructive when it’s something that you CHOOSE to help you cope. The operative word being choice. When you bring some mindfulness to your emotions, you allow for space to figure out what’s going on for you and you can identify what you might need to help you feel better. So when you make an active choice to soothe emotions with food, it becomes much more intentional – instead of reactive or impulsive. And by bringing awareness to your emotions and paying attention to the sensory experience of the food (smell, taste, texture, temperature, etc.), you increase the likelihood of finding some emotional relief. I dive more into how food can be used as a constructive emotional coping tool in Part 2 of this blog series. So stay tuned!
Getting to the Root of Emotional Eating
Emotional Hunger or Physical Hunger?
First, it’s important to make sure physical hunger needs are being met. This might seem obvious but sometimes what is believed to be an emotional eating experience is actually a response driven by a biological need for nourishment (or at least partially). Low blood sugar can present as anxiousness and irritability. So when hunger shows up, especially when it’s in a ravenous sate, it can heighten existing feelings of anxiety, irritability, fatigue, stress, etc. – especially when pushing off hunger for long stretches of time is intentional for the purpose of restriction. So it’s understandable that when you’re feeling anxious and intense hunger is knocking at your door that you might find yourself inhaling a pizza in a binge-like, uncontrollable way. And because you feel off the charts emotional, its easy to call this an “emotional eating” occurrence. But on any other day it might just be called “dinner.”
So it’s important to ask yourself if any hunger is being added to the out of control eating pot. And it’s through building a greater awareness of physical needs that you can satisfy hunger and lessen or prevent those primal eating episodes.
Check out this FREE Hunger Discovery Guide to help you develop skills to connect with your body’s cues, so you can become better attuned with the nuances of hunger.
Is There Any Mental Restriction Around Food?
Even if you’re not physically restricting food (not eating enough for your body’s needs), mental restriction can have the same effect and keep you in a binge-y mode too. Meaning, even if you are telling yourself no foods are off limits but you continue to judge food and your eating actions or feel guilty over what or how much you’re eating, then the restriction is still there and you’re still stuck in that stressful restriction cycle.
Mental restriction can be, but is not limited to:
“I shouldn’t eat that.”
“That food is bad for me.”
“I had a bad day of eating. I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“I going to let myself eat that, but I should only eat a bite or two.”
You can read more on mental restriction and pseudo-permission within this blog post here. Mental restriction is tricky because a lot of it happens in the subconscious. So start paying attention to feelings and judgmental thoughts in relation to food and eating. Are there any conditions or limits or controlling parameters around eating? Are there any strings attached if you allow yourself to eat certain foods?
Check In With Your Satisfaction
Eating a leafy salad because you think you “should” when you’re in the mood for a burger will likely not result in a satisfying eating experience. And it’s when you’re left feeling unsatisfied that turning off the drive to eat becomes unlikely and you’re left eating more food in an attempt to fill that satisfaction hole – regardless of feeling physically full.
So eating when you’re not hungry is often mistaken for emotional eating – when that may not be the entire case. It’s just a human response to settling for unsatisfying eating experiences.
Think about this scenario. How satisfying was it when you’ve eaten in an uncontrollable way in an attempt to push out emotions? Again, likely not a very satisfying experience when your body and brain are disconnected from eating.
It’s when you consider the importance of allowing yourself to pleasure your palate and tune into your body, mind and the savory experience of eating, that you’ll be able to arrive at an amount of food that you need to feel satisfied and content.
So don’t underestimate the powerful force of satisfaction in turning off the drive to eat. How to achieve satisfaction in eating? Check out this recent blog post!
Identify the Feeling
Okay, now that we’ve looked at some possible contributors to loss of control eating, let’s look at how you can get to the root of your emotions – rather than reacting to them.
As I mentioned above, emotional eating can be triggered by a wide spectrum of emotions. It can be as positive as the pleasure and joy from celebrating at a wedding with cake or as destructive as using food as a punishing behavior after getting angry at yourself for an argument that didn’t go your way.
The first step in working through emotional eating is to recognize your triggers. Here are some example emotion triggers:
- anxiety – eating to calm yourself down
- boredom – eating food for something to do
- celebration – eating food at a festive or special events
- emptiness – eating from a lack of meaningful fulfillment
- frustration/anger – eating for a sense of release
- self-soothing – eating for comfort
- procrastination – eating as a means to distract from a task
- stress – eating for relief
Sometimes feelings are not all that obvious because many people are used to denying or avoiding feelings. So it’s hard to know how to respond or attempt to mend an issue when you don’t even know or aren’t able to fully describe what’s bothering you. Using this emotion tool can be helpful in pinpointing more specific feelings.
Try writing out and journaling your way to identifying and untangling these feelings. Or take a 5 minute time out to ask yourself: “what am I feeling right now?” Or talk with a friend, someone you trust or a therapist if you think it could be helpful.
Identify What You Need
When you recognize and identify triggers, instead of impulsively reacting to these emotions with food you give yourself space to make the choice to tune into and explore these feelings so you can figure out what it is you need in that moment to help soothe that emotion. Connection? Comfort? Nurturance? If what you need comes out as a narrative – i.e. I need to be left alone, or I need to spend more time with my family, think about the need behind it. A need for space for some self-nurturing? A need to feel connected? And the next question is how can you fulfill that need in a constructive and intentional way? This is where an emotional care tool-box comes in handy.
What’s an emotional care tool-box you ask??
To be continued in Part 2!…
Interested in individualized support? The truth is there are many nuances to emotional eating that may benefit from deeper exploration on an individual level. No two person’s struggle is the same. I offer virtual nutrition and wellness coaching across the US! Book a discovery call and we can chat more about it.
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***This post and website are for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical therapy, medical care, diagnosis or treatment. You should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.