Did Emotional Eating Steal Your Identity?
What is emotional eating?
Emotional eating is eating as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions. Sometimes the strongest food cravings hit when you're at your weakest point emotionally. You may turn to food for comfort, consciously or unconsciously, when facing a difficult problem, feeling stressed or even feeling bored.
Although some people eat less in the face of strong emotions, those who emotionally eat often turn to impulsive or binge eating in times of emotional distress. This leads to quickly consuming whatever's convenient without much enjoyment in what they’re eating.
Why food?
Negative emotions may lead to a feeling of emptiness or an emotional void, and those who suffer from emotional eating see food as a way to fill that void. However this often creates a false feeling of ‘fullness’ and temporary wholeness, and once those unsatisfied feelings return emotional eaters turn to food once more.
Those who suffer from emotional eating could also use food as a means of distraction. They may focus on eating comfort food instead of dealing with an upcoming event or conflict, because it may be a painful situation they’d rather not take part in.
Mood-food cycle
Major life events or, more commonly, the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating. Your emotions can become so tied to your eating habits that you automatically reach for a treat whenever you're angry or stressed without thinking about what you're doing. These triggers might include:
Relationship conflicts
Work or other stressors
Fatigue
Financial pressures
Health problems
Emotional eating often results in an unhealthy cycle of eating. Your emotions trigger you to overeat, you beat yourself up for giving into your triggers, you feel guilty and shameful, and you overeat again. When negative emotions threaten to trigger emotional eating, you can take steps to control cravings.
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Emotional hunger vs. physical hunger
Physical and emotional hunger may be easily confused, but there are key differences between the two. Emotional hunger cues are typically as followed:
It comes on suddenly and abruptly
You crave only certain types of food
You binge on food but don’t feel satisfied
You feel shame or guilt towards eating
Meanwhile, physical hunger cues are typically as followed:
It develops slowly over time
You desire a variety of food groups
You feel the sensation of fullness and take it as a cue to stop eating
You have no negative feelings about eating
It may also help to pay attention to how and when your hunger starts as well as how you feel after eating.
Mindsets you may have
Emotional eating stealing your identity really comes to the surface and truly speaks to something when you’re healing from emotional eating. And more often than not it doesn’t really get addressed too often. The feeling of emotional eating stealing your identity is a mindset that revolves around your identity, your belief in your belonging, around your feeling of shame.
You’re more likely to have these mindsets or constructs if you first began to suffer from emotional eating during your formative years, like your teens or your 20s. You might even feel like you’re behind. The following mindsets or constructs might be to blame for feeling like emotional eating has stolen your identity:
No identity
Feeling like you don’t have an identity anymore because of emotional eating is the mindset that most experience. This feeling of no longer having an identity happens sometimes when you are healing from your emotional eating. Often times your identity was based on the relationship you had with food, but this was an unhealthy relationship and an unhealthy identity.
Shame
Feeling shameful that you’re not as far along in life as your peers is another mindset many experience. This can be shame that you’re not as far along in your career, or shame that all of your friends have kids and you dont yet, or even that you’re not in a long term partnership yet. It could be something that you feel a deep shame about, and are afraid to tell other people about. But these feelings of shame then often become the construct to fueling your emotional eating.
People pleasing
Being an ear for others who are going through hard times, or being a people pleaser is the third mindset. It might feel good to be that role because you’re used to being connected to darkness through your experience with emotional eating. This darkness can be something that attracts other people to you because they feel safe to share their darkness with you due to that connection feeling the darkness brings.
How to remedy
When looking to remedy the mindsets and constructs that come with emotional eating, it should be less about the outcome and more about the process. Once you find something you really love doing, start doing it regularly. You can even create and organize a group around it with those who share your interest. And by regularly meeting up, you can hold each other accountable and remedy through it together.
Do things
To remedy the feeling of your identity being stolen, you need to take action. Think about what you love doing. Often times it’s usually something creative, or it’s something that can take you from one point A to point B. It’s something that is actionable, whether it’s doing your makeup or painting or a skin care routine. Whatever the theme is, do it.
Take initiative
When you take initiative, you reach out to people that share your common interests. And even if they’re not able to participate in your interest idea, look for the feedback from them that they’re excited about it. Because just feeling their excitement and validation can help to reframe the feeling that you don’t have an identity anymore. Identity is created through action and not analysis.
Stop comparing
When you’re comparing, whether it’s yourself to others or your new-self to your old-self, you feel like you’re doing something. You’re in your head analyzing, but that really isn’t doing anything for you. Taking action and initiative will help act as the first steps for you to stop comparing. Action and alignment with joy is the best vaccine for shame. When you take action, and it’s in alignment with what you love, it acts as a vaccine for the shame of not being far along in your life, because by taking action you’re doing your life.
Boundaries, not barriers
Boundaries are something that is extremely personal to you and your growth. You need to create boundaries and not barriers so you can still maintain your full life. When creating these boundaries it’s important to recognize that your shame is a way of being productive, and by going back to the first few steps of remedy, you can realign with the feeling of joy.
When you’re healing from emotional eating, you’re learning your boundaries and who you are. You’re creating this new identity and you’ve stopped comparing yourself. You are finally starting to see yourself as a real person that deserves to be autonomous and independent from this emotional eating.
Lifestyles more susceptible to emotional eating
While anyone can be susceptible to emotional eating, there are certain lifestyles that are more likely to attract it. Once you recognize that you fall within one of these lifestyles, you will be one step closer to taking control. However if you don’t relate with one of these lifestyles, and still find yourself emotionally eating, it does not mean that you still can’t take control.
Not relieving stress
Those who do not deal with the stress in their life, or don’t look to relieve their stress, are more likely to become susceptible to emotional eating. If you’re experiencing stress on a regular basis and not relieving it, your body is likely producing higher levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone that causes cravings. This lifestyle of generating high levels of stress without relieving it can lead to more serious health problems, along with the higher chance of suffering from emotional eating.
what can be done
If stress contributes to your emotional eating, try a stress management technique, such as yoga, meditation or deep breathing. You might also find it helpful to keep a food journal. By writing down what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat, you will over time be able to see the patterns that reveal the connection between your mood and the food you turn to.
Unrealistic weight-loss goals
Those who rely on extreme dieting lifestyles and have unrealistic weight-loss goals are more likely to become susceptible to emotional eating. When you have unrealistic weight-loss goals and are trying to lose weight, this often results in limiting your calories too much, eating the same foods repeatedly and banishing treats. This lifestyle often generates high emotions towards yourself and the food you’re not allowing yourself to eat, and in turn may make you more susceptible to emotional eating.
what can be done
Unrealistic weight-loss goals will increase your food cravings, especially in response to your emotions. By eating satisfying amounts of healthier foods, enjoying an occasional treat and getting plenty of variety to help curb your cravings, you will be able to set more realistic weight-loss goals.
Easily bored
Those who find themselves easily bored, or with a lot of free time on their hands, are more likely to become susceptible to emotional eating. Being bored affectively marks an appraised lack of meaning in the present situation and in life. So often times as an attempt to distract oneself from this experience, emotional eaters tend to use boredom as an emotional validation to binge.
what can be done
Instead of snacking when you're not hungry, try to distract yourself with a healthier behavior to fill your boredom and free time. This can include taking a walk, reading a book, listening to music, partaking in yoga, or even calling a friend.
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It’s important to remember that you are not alone in your journey through recovering from emotional eating. And it’s also important to remember that you are going to have setbacks sometimes. If you have an episode of emotional eating, allow yourself to be forgiven and start fresh the next day. Focus on the positive changes you're making in your eating habits and give yourself credit for making changes that'll lead to better health.
Extra tips for emotional eating
Meditation
Simple deep breathing is meditation that you can do almost anywhere. Sit in a quiet space and focus on your breath — slowly flowing in and out of your nostrils.
Mindful eating
Resist grabbing a whole bag of chips or other food to snack on. Measuring out portions and choosing small plates to help with portion control are mindful eating habits to work on developing.
Hunger reality check
Is your hunger physical or emotional? If you ate just a few hours ago and don't have a rumbling stomach, you're probably not hungry. Give the craving time to pass.
Limit temptations
Don't keep hard-to-resist comfort foods in your home. And if you feel angry or blue, postpone your trip to the grocery store until you have your emotions in check.
