Understanding Emotional Eating: When food and emotions get together
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Which of these resonates with you?
- I enjoy all kinds of foods with no negative feelings
- I chose food that fuels my body, but I also enjoy food that fuels my soul
- I’ve had a rough day, I deserve to eat all the cookies I want.
- I’ve been bad today, I ate a lot of bad food.
The first two? It looks like you have a healthy relationship with food!
The two last ones? In this case, you might have an unhelpful relationship with food and be using it as a way to cope. Would you agree?
If so, stay with me and keep reading because I’m going to share with you not only what emotional eating is, its causes and triggers, but also practical steps to becoming more aware of your emotional eating habits.
When you hear Emotional Eating, what comes to your mind?
There’s a big chance that you can picture yourself eating in response to emotions. At least that’s what comes to me. Not only that, I can see specific times in my life when I was eating my emotions (even though I didn’t realize it at the time).
Eating ice cream when you’re sad, having a treat after a challenging day, or celebrating a birthday with all kinds of foods... All of us eat in response to emotions from time to time. It’s a part of a healthy balanced life, it’s a part of being human.
Why are we talking about it then? Emotional eating becomes a problem when it affects your quality of life when it’s your only or primary way to face (or not face) emotions, and when it’s followed by feelings of guilt, shame and powerlessness.
Emotional eating refers to turning to food for other purposes than nourishment and satiation. We can think of it as your relationship with eating, your food choices, and the emotions that drive those choices. Emotional eaters use food to cope with emotions they don’t want to feel, they use food to feel better, self-soothe, numb or fill a void, and even to feel some sense of control.
It’s about emotional hunger, not physical hunger and it often feels like being out of control around food, feeling addicted to food. It’s like being on a roller-coaster ride without brakes, the emotions and desires can be overwhelming and difficult to fight against. You feel guilty and shame around it and believe that it’s your lack of willpower and discipline. In other words, you believe you’re the problem. Can you relate?
What drives you to emotionally eat?
The first and most important thing to say here is: that it’s not your lack of willpower and/or discipline! You’ve been taught by diet culture to blame yourself for feeling out of control around food. Nothing further than the truth!
Second, there’s no universal way to understand emotional eating. We are all different and everyone has their unique roots and habits. Our personal experiences, influences, environment, and even personalities make everyone have a different connection with food. We all eat emotionally due to individual experiences and associations with food.
With all this in mind, we can still talk about some factors that contribute to emotional eating. By getting familiar with them, you can start reflecting on your relationship with food.
Four causes of emotional eating:
Cultural influence
In many cultures being busy and multitasking are the norm. We’re taught the (wrong) idea that taking time for oneself is selfish and a waste of time, we need to be productive. The result? People feel stressed, and stress affects what we eat, how much we eat and how we eat.
We search for quick fixes to try to look and feel better, but these are not truly designed to work. So you think that you failed, once again. Our busy lives don’t leave us space to do things that bring us joy. Food is always there and helps us get those little moments of joy.
Coping mechanisms
Emotional eating is used to feel a gap or a perceived lack. We eat in response to emotions, pleasant and unpleasant as a way to cope when we haven’t developed other tools to do it in a healthier way.
It often stems from a lack of self-connection. We don’t want (or don’t know how) to feel uncomfortable emotions and have learned that food helps us move away from them. So when something triggers us, we respond by eating even when we’re not hungry, or not eating even when we are. This disconnects us from our body, and our hunger, but also from our emotions.
Difficulty regulating emotions
Unfortunately, many of us haven’t been taught how to regulate our emotions. To regulate our emotions means to know how to manage and respond to an emotional experience in a way that supports our emotional, physical and mental health.
When we can’t respond to our emotions in healthy ways, using food helps us avoid having to deal with what’s going on on a deeper level and looking inwards. Food makes us feel better and becomes an easy and quick fix. We eat through our feelings in an attempt to deal with them, or we deprive ourselves to maintain a sense of control.
Social connection
We all want to belong in some way, we want to fit in and connect with other people. This can be a primary motivator of human behavior. Sometimes by trying to fit in, we can develop dysfunctional eating behaviors and maladaptive coping mechanisms that end up making us feel bad about ourselves.
Have you noticed a common theme between these forms of emotional eating? In all of them, we can see the lack of self-connection. There’s a disconnection from our bodies, our emotions, and ultimately, a disconnection from who we truly are.
9 common triggers for emotional eating:
Restrictive diets
You can probably remember starting a diet. At first, everything goes well but after a few days or weeks, cravings start to grow stronger. It feels like the more you fight those cravings the worse they get, which makes you feel obsessed with food.
Yes, it’s not only you! Engaging in strict rules or eliminating certain foods can lead to feelings of deprivation. It’s a natural response to finally “give in” to those craving after a while. And what happens when you do? There’s a good chance that you end up overeating. This usually comes with feelings of guilt, shame, and failure for not being able to fight against our biology and emotions.
Think of it as the effects of a dam on a river: the more you block and restrict the water, the more pressure builds up until eventually it bursts, with devastating results. Can you relate to this?
Stress overload
What do you do when you feel stressed? For a lot of people when feeling stressed, food can be a source of comfort, a form of control, or a distraction. Although you may think is your lack of discipline, there’s a biological reason that links stress with emotional eating habits. Stress not only affects what we eat but also how and how much we eat.
When we feel stressed the release of stress hormones can activate cravings for your comfort food (usually high in fat and sugars). In addition, carbs increase serotonin which is the feel-good hormone. Makes sense that we crave carbs when we feel stressed, right? Stress makes us want carbs because carbs makes us feel good.
In a stressful state, our minds are more focused on the problem/s, which means that when we eat we do it almost in autopilot mode, in a mindless way that often leads to overeating.
Although stress can motivate eating when we’re not hungry, it can also motivate the opposite. Eating less or skipping meals it’s not uncommon in people whose bodies suppress their appetite when feeling anxious.
Emotional turmoil
You’ve probably heard emotions being labelled as positive and negative. However, emotions aren’t positive or negative. They can definitely be very uncomfortable or unpleasant, but all of them have a purpose and a message.
Emotional ups and downs can create an urge to eat comfort foods as a way to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions or numb ourselves. Food acts like a distraction and gives us an escape from the emotional pain. This escape is only temporary and usually followed by feelings of guilt and shame for not being able to control it.
Boredom and monotony
Boredom is an emotion that a lot of people give a very negative connotation to. If you’re bored it means that you’re not being productive. However, boredom is important to “give a break” to our brain, mind and body.
When boredom feels too uncomfortable we try to find anything to engage in, which can lead to reaching out to food and eating mindlessly. This also happens when we engage in repetitive routines. Food is used to fill the void or simply add some kind of excitement to our day.
Procrastination
When it comes to procrastinating, not only food is often used as an excuse to postpone a task or situation even though we’re not physically hungry, but we might also be eating in anticipation of the unpleasant feelings the situation might bring. After all, if we’re avoiding doing something, it’s usually something we’re not comfortable with for some kind of reason: from boredom because we have a boring task to do, to stress because we don’t know how to have a certain conversation with someone.
Loneliness and isolation
As mentioned earlier, we all have a need for connection and belonging. The lack of it has been shown to affect our overall health and well-being. When people don’t have social interactions they tend to try to feel that void in one way or another. Food can often feel like a friend we turn to when we feel lonely and disconnected from others.
Reward and celebration
Based on your experiences you might have associated that celebrating special occasions and accomplishments only feels that way when it revolves around food. Not only that, food can also become a way to reward ourselves after working hard or as a treat after overcoming a challenge. We deserve to pamper ourselves but when we don’t have other ways to, food becomes the primary way.
We unconsciously seek any kind of “good reason” to convince ourselves that we deserve a treat, we deserve the food that makes us feel good. We make up excuses to reach out to our comfort foods but afterwards, we feel guilty about it.
Unresolved emotions
As much as we may try to avoid feeling unpleasant emotions, emotions don’t go away. They build up inside of us and eventually, we need to address them. It’s like a glass where you start pouring water. If you don’t empty it and keep pouring, in the end, it will overflow.
If you haven’t learned and developed healthy ways to cope with your emotions, the moment you can’t keep pushing them down can feel truly overwhelming. Seeking comfort in food seems to give temporary relief from the emotional pain.
Sleep deprivation
Have you noticed that when you have fewer hours of sleep you tend to want more comfort foods? Lack of sleep affects hormones related to hunger and fullness signals, which contributes to a desire for higher carbs and/or sodium foods.
Also, think about how you feel mentally when you’re tired. When we don’t sleep well we are more irritable, moody, and foggy, and may engage more easily in poor decision-making, which can affect what we decide to eat and drink.
Are you engaging in emotional eating?
To truly understand our relationship with food and emotional eating habits, it’s necessary to take time and reflect on various aspects of our life around food, but not only. I hope that by now, with what you’ve been reading, you have had some insight about your individual and own situation.
Maybe some of the root causes and triggers of emotional eating resonated with you, and you’re now wondering if, after all, it’s truly not your fault, and there’s an explanation for why you feel out of control around food.
An article is not enough to determine how your relationship with food is. For that, it’d be important to have a conversation where we can truly talk about your unique circumstances. That being said, some signs might be telling us that we could benefit from digging deeper.
- You label food as “good” or “bad”
- After a challenging day you can’t wait to eat one of your comfort foods
- Your number one reward is food
- Celebration equals comfort food
- You engage in diets but can’t seem to have enough willpower and disciple
- You unconsciously look for reasons to deserve having the food you truly want
- When you indulge, you feel guilt and ashamed
The list could go on. But if you identify with half of these statements, you need to know that you have the power to make changes so that your life doesn’t revolve around food and your body anymore. A different relationship with food, your body, and yourself is possible if you’re willing to put in the work.
How to become more aware of your emotional eating habits
You might be thinking: Okay, I understand but… What does that look like? How do I do it?
To decipher our relationship with food and emotional eating habits, we need to reflect and be very honest with ourselves. Remember that healing doesn’t happen overnight and it’s a journey with its ups and downs.
Be compassionate and non-judgmental
Work on shifting your mindset towards self-compassion instead of self-judgment. Be “alert” and catch your inner critic every time you’re being hard on yourself. Take some distance from the situation and think about what you would tell a friend. Think about what you need to hear and say it to yourself.
2. Keep a food and emotions journal
Bring awareness to your eating habits and emotional states. Pay attention to the emotions that lead you to turn to food and overeat. Record what you eat and how you feel before, during and after. This will help you identify patterns and triggers and reconnect with your body.
To help you, I created a free Emotional Eating Journaling Guide.
3. Embrace mindful eating
Practice mindful eating and learn to be present in the eating experience. When you reach out to food, ask yourself if you are physically hungry or not, slow down during meals, and savor each bite.
Here’s a reel I created on how to practice mindful eating.
4. Explore healthy coping mechanism
Connect with yourself and find alternative ways to manage emotions that don’t have food involved. Engage in activities you enjoy and that can help you process emotions in a positive, healthy, supportive way.
Take away
Emotional eating it’s just a part of being human. Other than nourishing, food is also pleasure and connection. It’s important to embrace that as a part of a healthy balanced life. Emotional eating becomes a problem that affects our overall health when it serves as our only coping mechanism and is followed by unpleasant emotions towards ourselves.
Different causes lead people to develop an unhealthy relationship with food and engage in emotional eating, as well as different triggers that make us seek comfort, relief or distraction in food. But we’re all unique which is why it’s important to reflect and bring awareness to our own experiences.
Emotional eating is about emotional hunger, not physical hunger. It impacts all areas of our lives as it disconnects us from ourselves and our emotions. If we feel out of control around food and our mind is occupied by thoughts of food and our body, we can’t be present in our lives. If we’re not present in our lives, we are not able to focus on what’s truly important to US and what WE want our life to be.
Remember the quiz at the beginning? If your answer revealed that you might have an unhealthy relationship with food, you now know that the answer can change. You have started to bring awareness to your issues with food and your body, don’t you feel the need to do something?
