How To Heal From Emotional Eating
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.
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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.
What usually triggers emotional eating?
While most emotional eating episodes are linked to unpleasant feelings, they can also be triggered by positive emotions, such as rewarding yourself for achieving a goal or celebrating a holiday or happy event. It’s important to recognize your personal triggers for emotional eating, whether they’re because of a place, situation or a feeling. Common triggers of emotional eating could be one or all of the following:
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Stress
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Not feeling your emotions
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Boredom
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Feelings of emptiness
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Childhood habits
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Social influences
Emotional hunger can be a powerful feeling, which is why it’s often easily mistaken for physical hunger.
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:
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It comes on suddenly and abruptly
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You crave only certain types of food
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You binge on food but don’t feel satisfied
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You feel shame or guilt towards eating
Meanwhile, physical hunger cues are typically as followed:
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It develops slowly over time
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You desire a variety of food groups
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You feel the sensation of fullness and take it as a cue to stop eating
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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.
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:
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Relationship conflicts
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Work or other stressors
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Fatigue
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Financial pressures
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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.
How to heal from emotional eating
It takes trial and error to heal from emotional eating. Feelings aren’t straight forward and neither will be your journey to healing; but it is possible. The following are a few short tips on how to start healing from emotional eating:
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Let go of the strategy mindset that sets rules and discipline. It may seem like a construct will help stop the behavior, but it won’t.
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Begin to develop an understanding and felt sense of the relationship between when you emotionally eat, what the context is, and who you are engaging with.
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Once you recognize the connection between context, feelings and behaviors, you can begin to build an inner structure that can disrupt the eating to soothing cycle and eventually create safety around food.
Learning to listen and attune to your surroundings, create boundaries, and develop inspired methods to self soothe is the way. And though it may be difficult at first, sticking to it will make the healing process worth it.
Ways to feel safe around food
Because everyone is different and struggles with emotional eating differently, it might take a while until you find your own routine that makes you feel safe around food. It’s really important to be able to feel safe around food, and while emotional eating may make it difficult, there are certain ways to help make you feel more safe.
While these tips may not work for everyone, they are a good base point for feeling safe around food after an emotional eating episode.
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Food shop every 2-3 days
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Keeping more fresh foods in your house
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Try not to have pre-packaged & convenience foods
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.
Scarcity complex
Those who find themselves with a scarcity complex, or with the fear of wasting food, are more likely to become susceptible to emotional eating. Someone who has a scarcity complex often has a deep rooted fear that if they don't finish everything on their plate, they are inherently a bad person. They might also feel this way about eating the free food from work even if they aren’t hungry or that isn’t what they want. This type of lifestyle would be susceptible to emotional eating because the lack of trust that comes with a scarcity complex is one of the main contributors to emotional eating.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
As an adult, you have the power of choice. There are tools that can help ease your scarcity complex, but only you will know what they are. These tools will help you to slow down enough to understand what motivates your choices. Remember, choice is available at any time and has no judgements.
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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Food is not meant to meet your needs, even though many people feel that way. However once you realize that meeting your needs is not the job of food, you can then begin to work on those deep rooted problems that are most likely the cause behind your emotional eating.
Extra tips for emotional eating
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Keep an emotional food diary. This can help you keep track of your patterns of emotional eating so that you can identify them more easily in the future.
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Find other ways to ‘feed your feelings’ like taking a brisk walk, practicing yoga or reading a good book.
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Try to take a moment to pause and reflect when you’re hit with a craving, and ask yourself “can it wait 5 minutes?” Then while you’re waiting, check in with yourself and your feelings to find out why you want it.
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Practice mindful eating. By eating more mindfully, you can help focus your mind on your food and the pleasure of a meal to curb overeating.
