Exploring Emotional Eating

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Let’s be honest. Food IS emotional. We celebrate with food. We express love with food. Food is weaved into the fabric of our culture. Food is a wonderful part of the human experience.

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There is so much guilt and shame around eating in general in our society. Then add in emotional eating?!?! Boy does that get a bad rap! What we need to remember though is that every single one of us is doing the best we can with the tools we’ve been given. For many people, food is the one thing that has been there for them during challenging times. It can be a friend, it can be a distraction, it can soothe painful emotions. For some, it very well could have saved their lives. When we can start to see how our emotional eating has served us in the past, we are able to make peace with it.

While there are pros to emotional eating, there are cons as well. Physical discomfort, isolation, or even numbing of POSITIVE emotions. You have to ask yourself. Do the pros outweigh the con?? I’m assuming since you are reading this post, they do not. So how can we address this?

In moments you find yourself eating in the absence of hunger (again, this is FINE, there are times we want to eat for taste hunger - ex. you’re at a super fancy restaurant you’ll probably never visit again and they bring over an incredible chocolate lava cake, it’s perfectly okay to try the cake for the sake of taste hunger) ask yourself the following question:

How Am I Feeling?

Check in with your body. Are you physically hungry? No? What are you feeling? Use this wheel to help you identify the emotion. If you can’t pinpoint exactly how you feel, sometimes the word “uncomfortable” is helpful. Once you’ve identified the emotion, ask yourself:

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What Do I Need?

If you are not hungry it is likely you are trying to meet a need using food. How can you meet your TRUE need? Do you need support, self-care, a helpful distraction or perhaps to deal with your feeling directly?

  • Support : call a friend or family member; chat with a therapist etc.

  • Self-care: take a nap, go for a walk, journal, set boundaries

  • Helpful distraction: change your environment, play with your pet, listen to some music

  • Deal with your feeling directly: chat with therapist, journal, reframe your thoughts

Perhaps you are sleepy or unfocused. What do you REALLY need to meet that need? A nap? A 5-minute time out? A breathing exercise? Or let’s say you feel disrespected or betrayed. Maybe you need to set some boundaries, or have a conversation with the person you feel disrespected/betrayed by.

The more awareness we can bring to our emotions and feelings, the better we become at meeting our true needs.

For more help with emotional eating and ways to cope with your emotions with kindness, apply for 1-on-1 coaching.