We have all found ourselves eating emotionally at some point in our lives whether we have been aware of it or not. Emotional eating is not as uncommon as we may think and most of us aren’t even aware that we are doing it.
In today’s society and culture, food plays a vital role in our lives. We express affection towards other people through food. We use it as a means of celebration, we share food and eat together as a way to connect or we cook food as a source of comfort for a friend facing challenges. Food has the power to uplift our emotions, whether our mood is good or bad.
When we turn to food as a way to deal with intense emotions, and this pattern becomes a habitual way for us to process our emotions, it can start causing problems in our lives.
Below I have outlined the necessary information about emotional eating and how you should address it. I point out ways to identify the behavior and offer solutions to healthier coping strategies. I hope you find the information useful and that you can implement it into your everyday life.
I am not a licensed therapist or healthcare provider. If you are experiencing psychological difficulties that require professional assistance, I recommend reaching out to a qualified therapist or healthcare provider for support.
What is Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating refers to the act of eating not to satisfy physical hunger but to satisfy psychological hunger and cravings, or when we eat to change, comfort, and/or elevate our emotional states. In essence, every time you eat when you are not hungry is emotional eating.
Here is a list of the most common attributes of emotional eating:
You are eating to:
- Self-indulge
This is a common behavior when we want to satisfy our cravings by instantly gratifying ourselves with whatever food we urge at the moment. Giving in to our urges is a trait of the ego mind.
- Celebrate. Rewarding yourself through food
This behavior is often learned from childhood. Our parents gave us dessert if we finished our meal or we went for ice cream if we got a good grade.
- Fit in (when people want us to eat)
Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we are expected to eat. Maybe we are having dinner with coworkers, family, or friends where eating, in general, is foreseen.
Triggering Emotions
- Eating to regulate inner emotional states or eating to feel better (comfort food)
You are eating out of:
- Boredom
- Stress
- Loneliness
- Because you are angry
- Because you are anxious
- Lack of sleep
- In distress (break up with boyfriend)
- Eating AT someone (You made me do this) (Anger)
- Eating to forget or distract yourself
When we eat to escape situations or pestering thoughts.
Triggering activities
These activities are often referred to as mindless eating and are a great cause of weight gain in many cases. It is good to consider eating healthy snacks during these activities or at least raise awareness of this type of behavior, where overconsumption is due.
- Watching tv
- In front of the computer (Screen time)
- Scrolling through social media
- Playing video games
Eating out of habit
- When you are on your way home from the grocery store or popping into a Mcdonald’s drive-through, because it’s on the way.
The emotional eating cycle
Emotional hunger does not come from hunger and is most often sudden and comes with a sense of urgency. It wants instantly to satisfy a craving for a specific type of food. It is very common to overeat in these situations and may trigger feelings of guilt, shame, and regret.
The pattern of giving in to sudden specific cravings and feeling guilt afterward is the same pattern of a smoker, alcoholic, or drug user.
What is the psychology behind comfort eating?
Childhood
Infancy
Feeding as an infant most often involves closeness, bonding, and affection from parents. When a mother holds her child, comforts it, and feeds it, a significant amount of oxytocin is released in both mother and child. This biological response forms a powerful subconscious connection between food, emotional comfort, and soothing. So associating food with something good and uplifting is not as unusual as we may think.
Learnt Behaviour
Emotional eating most often stems from our childhood. If it’s not a subconscious automated behavior, it is a learned behavior from uninformed adults.
Many times children are rewarded with food or sweets for accomplishments in school or are given treats to comfort them when feeling down.
This pattern is normalized and the whole of our society does it.
Since the behavior is ingrained in us and no other coping mechanisms are offered, overconsumption of junk food or sweets, when having a rough patch, is inevitable to happen as adults. Until we learn better strategies.
Poor Coping Mechanisms
How to master our emotions should be taught by our elders. Parenting a child involves more than just keeping them safe and fed, it also entails guiding them on how to manage their emotions in a healthy and evolving way.
A lot of times the child is left to fend for themselves because they are acting in a certain way. They are told to be quiet or the behavior is shut down, instead of giving them tools to learn how to cope with the feelings arising.
This parenting strategy is generational and not uncommon. Today, we have the chance to break this outdated pattern and educate ourselves on how to cope with intense emotions in a wholesome way.
Biological issues that may cause emotional eating
Numerous studies have shown that when in physical or emotional distress the intake of calorie-dense food increases.
This is due to our inherent response when subjected to a stressful situation. The body seeks rapid equilibrium and does this most quickly by craving foods high in sugar or fat.
Food high in sugar and fat releases high amounts of dopamine and opioids which in terms calms down the emotional and physical stress response.
Food industries have not made it any easier by creating food with the perfect combination of fat, salt, and sugar referred to as the “bliss point”. This type of food includes pizza, hamburgers, french fries, and are considered to be highly addictive since the withdrawal symptoms can be compared to opioid withdrawal.
What is behind your cravings?
First and foremost we need to rule out physical causes that may trigger snacking throughout the day. Do you have low blood sugar, are you dehydrated, have hormone imbalances or lack of sleep? Are you going too long in between meals? Are you low in calcium, serotonin, omega-3, or magnesium? Do you have an unstable microbiome? The lack of nutrients and imbalances in our gut may trigger various cravings, so please contact your physician and check your vitals and overall health to exclude physical causes.
If you are pretty stable when it comes to eating meals regularly and you can rule out the physical causes we head to the next step.
How do you stop using food as a coping mechanism?
There are several ways we can prevent emotional eating. Like with any type of “addiction” or “habitual pattern”, we want to stop the behavior and identify the root cause of the behavior and the triggers leading up to it. Our goal is to learn how to shift our emotional state and implement healthier coping strategies.
Step 1
First and foremost when it comes to breaking a pattern and changing a behavior we need to have the right tools to implement instead. These tools can be used no matter what affliction you have, whether it is food, binge-watching series, smoking, playing video games, or drug use.
When it comes to addictions or addictive behaviors, most often the pattern is the same, the “only” difference is the amount of dopamine that gets released.
The tools provided below will help you build new strategies when it comes to dealing with your emotions, identifying your triggers, and bringing self-awareness to your habitual patterns.
(Always contact a health care provider if you have severe addictions or any type of mental issues)
- Keep a food diary to harness self-awareness
Identify the correlation between, situation, behavior, and emotions. Write down and keep track of your thought process, your emotions, cravings, and what you are eating for at least a week up to a month. This is to get a clear picture of your patterns and behaviors, gain self-awareness, and break the habit of eating.
Before you eat, ask yourself
- What am I feeling right now?
- Is it physical hunger or something else?
- Am I stressed? Am I bored? Lonely? Anxious? Happy? Depressed?
When we question our emotional state before eating we get a valuable insight into our behavior and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves. Emotional eating is typically a form of escape from difficult or less pleasing emotions. The goal of harnessing self-awareness is to develop emotional resilience and learn to stand steady in our emotions.
Although, we can’t always catch ourselves asking before we eat or snack. This is why identifying situations where emotions can stir up is as effective.
What recurring situation causes me to eat?
- Argument with your boyfriend?
- Tough day at work or in general?
- Are your children driving you crazy?
- Are you just happy and want to celebrate?
- Shopping at the grocery store?
We identify good emotions or situations as well because we are working on breaking a pattern. For starters, all emotional states should be included.
2. Identify your triggers
A trigger can be a person, place, emotion, situation, or even a thought that leads you to experience distress or cause you to behave in undesirable ways.
By understanding what your triggers are you have the opportunity to face and change your unwanted behavior.
When you have identified your triggers, you can pose these questions, to find a different response to your trigger.
- Why do I react in this manner? Where does this behavior come from? Is it from my childhood? Have I copied this behavior from someone? From my parents? Siblings? Friends? Partner?
- Why am I reaching for food as comfort?
- What can I reach for instead of food?
- Why is this situation, person, thought process, or conversation triggering to me?
- How do I want the situation, thought process, or conversation to go instead?
- Should I avoid the situation, thought process, conversation, or person entirely?
- How do you want to act in this situation?
- How do you want to end up feeling?
- What can I do differently? What can I do instead of eating, when faced with triggers?
An important part of this process is to always approach yourself with compassionate curiosity and to always be gentle, kind, and loving towards yourself.
Write down your strategies on how you want to proceed in the triggering situation, so you have something to lean on when you are in the midst of it. (E.g. You always buy a chocolate bar when grocery shopping. The solution for this would be to write a grocery list and ONLY buy groceries from the list).
By doing this you are restructuring your brain and you are giving it other ideas and options on how to act and change the automated behavior or how you want the situation to end. Like with anything new, we are learning, repetition is important.
If the triggers are harmful, avoid the situation, person, or place entirely.
Always seek medical advice, from a doctor or a therapist, if you feel unstable or have any type of psychological issues.
Step 2
Change your perspective
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” – Wayne Dyer
3. Pros and cons list
Write a pros and cons list about the situation you find stressful. Write what you do not like and what you do like about the situation.
You can always find positives in the negative.
Eg. You have to give a presentation and talk in front of your class. The negative, you are nervous. The positive is that you are growing and gaining valuable experience. Every time you talk in front of a large group of people it will get easier and your confidence or self-esteem will grow.
4. Deconstruct your thoughts
Most often, our difficult feelings stem from the negative thought patterns or viewpoints that we have. Are the stories we tell ourselves causing us pain? Do our thoughts about a certain situation give us anxiety? Just because we tell ourselves a story, does not make it true.
If your story is causing you distress, what you can do instead, is to actively work with your thoughts and put them in a better feeling place. Find a more positive outlook on the situation or life in general.
A great tool for this is the “emotional guidance scale”, you can find a detailed explanation of how this works in Ester and Jerry Hicks’s book, “Ask and it is Given”.
5. Build your Emotional Resilience
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to build your emotional resilience.
Emotional resilience is the ability to bounce back and recover after being exposed to adversity. This is a trait that is possible to develop and master, through various practices, which will leave you better equipped to handle yourself and whatever life throws at you.
Step 3
Every Day Hacks
In the previous steps, we have hopefully gained a deeper understanding of ourselves and what may cause or trigger our emotional eating behavior. In this step, we want to find new healthier strategies to approach our unappealing habit and prepare distractions for when our mental cravings kick in.
- Eat your meals and snacks on a regular schedule
It is easier to distinguish your eating habits if you eat your meals and snacks on a regular timetable every day.
- Healthy Food and Snacks
Buy healthy food and snacks like fruits, vegetables, or whole-grain foods to have at home vs. the less healthy options like candy or chips. You will be less prone to reach for an apple if bored.
- If it is out of sight it is out of mind
Let’s say you still want to have Doritos at home for the Friday night movie. Hide the bag at a place where you do not see it all the time. If you see the bag of Doritos it can become an emotional trigger.
- Cheat day
Have a day once a month where you can eat whatever you want.
- Develop alternate ways of coping with distress
- Take a walk, go outside, connect with friends, draw, read, deep breathing, meditate.
- Write a list of what you can do to distract yourself if at work or in a meeting. You can’t always go on a walk or take a bath. Eg. Chew gum, drink water, tea, coffee, draw zentangle, BREATHE.
Like with any habit or behavior that we are changing, remind yourself that it takes time so have patience with yourself and the process.
- Be compassionate with yourself
- Some days you know you will feel anxious, angry, depressed. Remember to give yourself a break. I am having a bad day today and that is ok.
- Forgive yourself if you fail
- If you fail, the first thing you need to do is to forgive yourself. The second thing is to look at ways you can improve until next time, to gain the desirable results. Failure = Feedback
Have you found this post useful? Do you have other ways to handle your emotions? Do you have any tips to share on how to avoid emotional eating? Please feel free to comment and give your perspective on the subject. Thank you for reading this post! Much Love!
Cara
This post is so insightful and helpful! I’ve definitely struggled with emotional eating in the past, and I appreciate how you break down the psychology behind it and offer practical solutions. The tips about keeping a food diary and identifying triggers are especially valuable. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and encouraging us all to develop healthier coping mechanisms!
spirit.expanding
Thank you Cara <3 Much love to you <3
Dominique P
You have some good pointers here. It is a great article and it will make a difference in someone’s life. Thanks for sharing!
spirit.expanding
Thank you Dominique <3 I am glad you enjoyed it <3 Much love <3
Olga
I`m an emotional eater too. I have two young kids, and every evening, I need to eat something sweet or crunchy for comfort. I`ll try keeping a food diary and paying attention to triggers. Thank you for the informative post.
spirit.expanding
Emotional eating is a serious issue. I am meditating many hours per day and I fasting a lot and yet I am still an emotional eater. I am maybe not eating every day but when emotions stir up I sure am craving that chocolate bar. Practice makes “perfect”. Let me know if you need anything <3 Much love <3
Kirsten Smith
Great post!
Jais
This post really resonated with me! Emotional eating is such a common struggle, and I appreciate the practical strategies you’ve shared.
Spirit.expanding
Thank you Jais! I hope you found it useful ❤
Lauren Maker
Love this! Explains such a lot about the relationship with food! Thank you for bringing this to light!
Spirit.expanding
Thank you Lauren ❤
Kat Stano
Love the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of this post! Oh, I’m so guilty of treating myself for accomplishing a task or goal–and also for pretty much doing nothing! Love the ending, too, about forgiving yourself if you fail. That’s so important. Thank you!
Jarrod
I eat when I’m stressed. Mac and cheese is my comfort food. My wife is the exact opposite—she won’t eat at all when she’s stressed. But she helped me figure out my triggers, and now I drink a lot more water when I’m stressed. I stay hydrated, but I’m not overeating junk food all day!
Kimberly
Great tips, thanks for sharing!