Emotional Eating: What It Is and How to Stop

Did you know there are more gratifying ways to feed your feelings than to eat? Yes, it is a fact that people eat to help themselves feel better or deal with stress – this is known as emotional eating.

This article will shed some light on what emotional eating is and show how to stop it. Armed with knowledge and courage you will be able to control your cravings, find out why you are triggered to eat and make emotional eating something you used to do.

How to understand emotional eating

Many of us reach for food when we are looking to reward ourselves for a task well done, to feel stress relief, or simply for comfort. But it is not the carrot sticks we reach for, but fast food that fills our imaginations and tummies. Junk food tastes delicious, and how could it not when it is bursting with artificial flavorings?

A pint of ice cream when you are watching a sad movie, a pizza if you feel listless, or even passing by a drive-through after a busy day at work for its simple convenience. This is what emotional eating looks like in the real world, and it is likely that many of us have done our fair share of it.

It is the practice of using food as a tool to fill, not your stomach, but your emotional needs to help yourself feel better. But as you will also likely know, emotional eating cannot fix emotional problems. Rather we often feel guilty for overeating, and then still have to deal with the problem we tried to bury under food, because – and I will say it again – emotional eating does not fix emotional problems.

Do you know whether you are an emotional eater?

Take a breath now, pause, and decide to be honest with yourself when you answer the following questions about food:

• Do you feel like you cannot control yourself around food?
• Is food something that you reward yourself with?
• When you are full, or not even hungry, do you still find yourself eating?
• Does stress make you eat more regularly?
• At most meals do you only stop eating when you feel bloated?
• Can you identify with the sentiment that there is safety in food?

To be clear, the occasion of a nice meal when celebrating or as a reward for achievement is not a bad thing. The downfall comes when eating becomes a person’s primary coping mechanism – if any negative emotion flitters through your brain you open the refrigerator door. So, at times when you are all alone, disappointed, worried, fatigued, or stressed, you become increasingly entrenched in a downward spiral that does nothing to address the problem you need to face.

If you face an emotional hunger, it may feel like it can be satisfied with food – but it cannot. Yes, eating does feel good, but only while you are enjoying the meal and so you face the consequences of poor dietary choices for much longer than you enjoyed the meal. And if you are in the habit of eating your feelings, you will likely berate yourself for being weak-willed, and not practicing healthier approaches to handling your emotional side.

Be encouraged that shifting toward a healthy relationship with food is exceptionally beneficial to you. Not just because it will help you mature to become a more balanced individual, but your health will improve – and having consistently good health as you age prevents a huge number of ailments that will face you in old age if you are overweight or have a poor diet.

Recognize the difference between physical and emotional hunger

To decouple yourself from this downward spiral of bad eating habits you need to know why you are doing it, and part of this is learning to recognize real hunger and that brought on by your emotional state. Be aware that changing your eating habits is difficult, but you owe it to yourself to work toward getting it right.

A quick way to see the difference between emotional and physical hunger is the pace at which it comes at you. Emotional hunger arrives very quickly and feels overwhelming and urgent. Physical hunger comes on more gradually and unless you have missed meals it probably does not feel like it will give you instant satisfaction.

Comfort food is what satisfies emotional eating. You have heard that hunger is the best sauce, that when you are hungry food just tastes good. Not so with emotional eating which needs the instant rush of sugars, sweeteners, and stimulants found in cakes, junk food, and sugary snacks.

Mindless chewing and swallowing. When you are comfort-eating you do not notice how much you are eating, simply that you are eating. So if you are honest with yourself, you can sit with an open tub of ice cream and finish it without tasting it or enjoying it. And the same is true with a large packet of chips or a family-size pizza. Eating as a result of being physically hungry is far more intentional.

Unsatisfied and bloated is how you will often feel after an emotional eating binge. Emotional eaters will often continue to eat once they no longer feel hungry, past feeling full, up until they are feeling physically uncomfortable and just cannot eat anything else. Yet the feeling that drove you to eat persists. Often when we are physically hungry at meal times we are happy to stop eating once our tummy no longer feels hungry.

The sensation, smell, and taste of eating are what excites you to engage in emotional eating. A craving or urgent need to eat is how you feel your emotional hunger. Rather than a rumbling tummy or empty pang for food, emotional hunger is based on a mindful and not physical need. However, eating to fill an emotional hunger is never going to satisfy because your emotions are not found inside your stomach.

Contrast the effect of emotional eating, rather than satisfying a physical hunger in a nutritious manner. Emotional eating means that physically you feel bloated, unhealthy, and often ill, and emotionally you experience regret, embarrassment, and guilt. Satisfying a physical hunger allows you to feel like you have done just that – become satisfied. And if you have used nutritious food for this purpose you feel energized, clear-thinking, vibrant, and confident.

What triggers fuel your emotional hunger?

Getting to know the triggers that tip you to make decisions for emotional eating is a good first step toward mastering your emotions in this area. Record the circumstances around your emotional eating episodes – are there particular places or feelings that proceed to quickly place you in front of the fridge without passing Go? While it can be linked to rewards, almost all emotional eating is rooted in feelings that are not nice.

Do you identify with any of the following?

Feelings of emptiness. Sometimes we eat just to give ourselves a task when we have nothing better to do. Other times it could be because you feel unfilled and empty, and filling your mouth and your time is seen as a way to solve this. This solution is a false hope that only lasts while you are chewing, but it tastes of disappointment when you are finished.

Habits from childhood. Remember the meals you ate when you were a child, and how you remember food in your family. Were children rewarded with sweet treats, the opportunity to get a take-out pizza to celebrate an achievement, or perhaps a packet of sweets when they were feeling sad?

Like many things from our childhood, we carry these habits into the rest of our lives. Some people link nostalgic memories of fun meals or baking sweet treats with family, and this can influence your choice of food later.

Emotion stuffing. Have you ever managed to silence emotions, even temporarily, by eating? During meals, you do not feel fear, resentment, shame, anger, anxiety, or loneliness. This makes eating attractive as it takes the edge off of emotions that are difficult to deal with.

Stress. If it is uncontrolled in your life other things also start to swing a little wide, such as self-control over your diet. Constant stress makes your body produce extra cortisol, a stress hormone, catalyzing a desire for foods that give you a boost and taste great, like salty, sweet, or fried foods.

Social pressures. Sharing time with friends during a meal is almost always fun. Yet this may lead to overeating because it is just too easy to binge on all the available food. Stressful social situations may also encourage you to eat as a way to numb the stress, or perhaps there is peer pressure to eat and it is easier to go along with the group than it is to take a stand for your health.

Two things to help you stop emotional eating

Journal your food journey

Did you see yourself in a few of the descriptions earlier in this article? Write them down. Putting the details of your feelings down in black and white is an excellent way to keep track of your food and your mood.

Know your weakness

Every time you break your own eating rules and guidelines, rewind the scene to yourself and find out what took you over the line. If you do backtrack you will find an event that catalyzed your emotional eating cycle. Write down what you ate, or what you wanted to eat, and what happened to you to make you so upset.

This can be added to your food and mood journal. Looking back you will see a pattern of behavior and be able to join the dots of what pushed you toward emotional eating. This pattern can be useful as you investigate healthier ways to process your emotions.

There is more than simply knowing the theory behind emotional eating. With a firm knowledge of your triggers, you can start to manage your emotions without using food. Unlike other diet methodologies which hinge on having a firm handle on your eating habits, emotional eating relies on subjective feelings which are powerful enough to interfere with most dieting processes.

You will need to find other more sustainable ways to fill yourself up emotionally so that you no longer need to turn to food.

Christian counseling for emotional eating

If you’re looking for additional help for emotional eating beyond this article, please browse our online counselor directory or contact our office to schedule an appointment. We would be honored to walk with you toward a place of healing and hope.