What is Emotional Eating?

For many of us, food serves as a source of comfort. It’s common to talk about “comfort foods” with friends, those snacks or dishes that feel like a warm hug after a long day. We anticipate certain seasons because of the meals associated with them. In many ways, this is a healthy practice. However, when food becomes the sole source of comfort, it can turn into something negative.

Emotional eating is the practice of consuming food in response to emotional cues rather than physical hunger. For emotional eaters, food becomes a coping mechanism for dealing with difficult emotions such as sadness, stress, boredom, or loneliness. Struggling to adopt alternative coping techniques can have detrimental effects on one’s mental health, particularly because an individual’s relationship with food is often closely tied to their body image. The guilt and shame experienced by emotional eaters after eating can be as destructive as the initial triggers. While there are no official diagnoses for stress eating disorders or emotional eating disorders, both factors can lead to disordered eating behaviors, hence it’s prudent to be vigilant. In this article, we will explore the causes of emotional eating, its effects, signs of emotional eating, and strategies to overcome it.

Why Do People Eat Emotionally?

Psychological Factors

Many people turn to emotional eating due to psychological triggers. Common emotional triggers include stress, boredom, and loneliness. Learning to cope with these emotions can be very challenging for many of us, and food is used as a way to navigate through these intense emotional experiences.

Environmental Factors

Certain environments lend themselves to emotional eating. For instance, if someone feels anxious in social settings, they may find solace in having snacks readily available at the dinner table to cope with the pressure of meeting new people. Additionally, having constant access to snacks in everyday life, such as an office kitchen stocked with plenty of treats, can make it easier to eat in response to boredom or stress. Lastly, familial habits can contribute to the cycle of emotional eating. This could be coping techniques learned from parents or siblings, or it could be driven by attitudes toward food within the family.

Biological Factors

Hormonal changes can make individuals more prone to emotional eating. Many menstruating individuals report heightened emotions during their menstrual cycle, which can lead them to turn to food to cope with these changes. Additionally, an individual’s brain chemistry can affect patterns of emotional eating, especially when the brain struggles to produce known “happy chemicals” like serotonin and dopamine. Further exploration on this connection is discussed in a study by the Harvard University Brain Science Program.

Effects of Emotional Eating

Coping Mechanisms

The cycle of emotional eating often begins when we experience intense negative emotions. For instance, someone might feel extremely sad upon hearing about an ex-partner dating someone new, but they may struggle to process this emotion. In an attempt to find some form of comfort, they turn to comfort foods, and due to feeling out of balance, they may eat more than their body needs in that moment. This often triggers feelings of shame or guilt, which can be as destructive as the initial trigger. This sense of shame keeps them silent about their struggles, reducing opportunities for external comfort. Over time, they may associate these intense emotional fluctuations with their relationship with food.

Negative Consequences

Emotional eaters often develop unhealthy relationships with food due to feelings of guilt and shame. Many feel out of control with their eating and attribute it to personal failure, refusing to acknowledge underlying emotional triggers. This can lead to a complicated relationship with food and subsequently to eating disorders. Feelings of shame can trigger depressive symptoms. Many individuals with depression tend to isolate themselves from loved ones. The intensity of these guilt cycles perpetuates these symptoms. Breaking this cycle alone is extremely difficult, leading to a sense of despair characteristic of depression. Additionally, the struggle to control eating habits can lead to excessive worry about one’s diet, resulting in anxiety responses.

Signs of Emotional Eating

Eating Without Physical Hunger

Emotional eaters often struggle to maintain a connection to physical hunger cues while eating. They may eat when not hungry or eat beyond a sense of fullness in an attempt to numb emotional pain. Keeping track of the hunger signals most common to you can be helpful. Common hunger signals include stomach emptiness, mild headaches, stomach grumbling, or irritability. Paying attention to your body and understanding how hunger shows up in your life is crucial.

Eating in Response to Emotions

Emotional eaters tend to eat in response to intense emotional reactions. If you’re concerned you might be an emotional eater, keeping track of your emotions before eating can be helpful. If you find yourself eating due to a specific emotion like boredom, loneliness, anger, etc., you might be an emotional eater.

Feeling Guilty or Ashamed After Eating

One of the most telltale signs that someone struggles with emotional eating is the guilt or shame experienced after eating. These feelings perpetuate the chaotic cycle of binge eating as shame often leads to restricting the next meal or all meals the following day. This restriction makes it difficult to stop thinking about food, intensifying feelings of hunger. Heightened hunger intensifies the next emotional state. Then, when eating becomes the only available coping tool, trying any other methods to soothe their feelings and continuing the emotional eating cycle isn’t easy.

Strategies to Overcome Emotional Eating

Coping Techniques

When breaking the cycle of emotional eating, it’s crucial to find other effective coping skills since over-reliance on one coping mechanism can diminish its effectiveness. Identifying the emotions most likely to trigger the cycle of emotional eating can be helpful. For example, if boredom often triggers the cycle, keeping a list on your phone of other activity ideas might be helpful. If stress tends to be a major trigger for you, trying various stress-reduction techniques might be helpful, such as deep breathing, journaling, meditation, or exercise.

Social Support

While it can be challenging, openly discussing your struggles with emotional eating can be an effective way to control symptoms. Support systems can include friends, family members, therapists, nutritionists, support groups, or anyone else who can provide emotional support. Talking about emotional eating is a good way to address the guilt associated with the cycle and helps reduce the power of emotions.

Increasing Joy

Engaging in new hobbies and activities can help you experience joy on a daily basis. Increasing happiness can be helpful for emotional eating as it brings hope for things to get better. Additionally, new hobbies can help alleviate potential emotional triggers (i.e., joining a recreational sports league or writing group can reduce feelings of boredom and loneliness).

Mindful Eating

Mindfulness originated in Buddhist culture. Mindfulness involves focusing attention on your inner world, particularly aspects related to your senses and breath. This practice also requires us to retain discernment—a great way to break free from shame. Mindful eating may involve observing hunger cues without judgment, eating slowly to savor each bite, or checking in with your body while eating to gauge if you’re still hungry.

Improving the Relationship with Food and Eating

The root of emotional eating lies in an unhealthy relationship with food. Improving this relationship is a vital part of recovery. During this time, it’s essential to avoid restricting your diet or dieting. These practices often increase feelings of guilt and shame around food, which can lead to more emotional eating. Instead, viewing food as a source of fuel that enables us to do all the things we love may be helpful. Additionally, trying new foods can help you add enjoyment to your diet.

The relationship between people and food is incredibly complex. If implementing changes on your own proves difficult, seeking professional help may be wise. Therapists can help you address the triggers leading to emotional eating while providing a space to heal your relationship with food and eating.

Conclusion

Emotional eating can lead to a challenging cycle, where one feels the need to eat to cope with intense emotions, then feels guilty afterward and tries to restrict food intake, leading to heightened emotions and continuing the cycle.

Key Points

Emotional eating involves psychological, environmental, and biological factors.

While emotional eating often serves as a coping mechanism, it also comes with negative consequences, and lacking coping skills can increase anxiety and depressive symptoms.

To overcome emotional eating, exploring alternative coping techniques, social support, increasing joy, mindful eating, and improving the emotional relationship with food are crucial.