Exploring Emotional Eating: Why It Happens and How to Cope
Table of content:
What is Emotional Eating?
For many of us, food is a source of comfort. It is common for us to talk with our friends about “comfort foods,” those meals or snacks that feel like a warm hug at the end of a long day. We look forward to specific seasons because of the meals we’re able to have at those times. In many ways, this is a beautiful practice. However, it can become a negative thing when food is the only thing that brings us true comfort.
Emotional eating is the practice of eating in response to emotional cues rather than physical hunger. For emotional eaters, food is a coping tool to deal with difficult emotions, such as grief, stress, boredom, or loneliness. Struggling to embrace other coping skills can have dire impacts on one’s mental well-being, especially because one’s relationship to food and their body image can often be closely linked. The guilt and shame an emotional eater experiences after eating can be just as damaging as the initial trigger. Right now, there is no official diagnosis for stress eating disorder or emotional eating disorder, however, both of these factors can contribute to disordered eating behaviors that it is wise to look out for. Throughout this post, we will explore reasons for emotional eating, the impact of emotional eating, signs of emotional eating, and strategies to overcome emotional eating.
Why Do People Eat Emotionally?
Psychological Factors
Many people turn to emotional eating in response to a psychological trigger. Common trigger emotions include stress, boredom, and loneliness. For many of us, learning to cope with these emotions is very difficult, and food is used as a way to get through this intense emotional experience.
Environmental Factors
Certain environments lend themselves to emotional eating. For example, if someone at a social event feels anxious, they may find the food table to make sure they can snack to cope with the overwhelm of meeting new people. Additionally, having constant access to snacks within your day-to-day routine, for example, an office kitchen that’s well stocked within a few feet distance, could make you more susceptible to eating in response to boredom or stress. Finally, one’s family habits may contribute to cycles of emotional eating. This could be a coping skill we pick up from our parents or siblings or it could be driven through our family member’s attitudes towards food.
Biological Factors
Hormonal changes may make someone more vulnerable to emotional eating. Many menstruators report more intense emotions during menstruation, which may cause them to turn to food to cope with these shifts. Additionally, one’s personal brain chemistry may contribute to emotional eating patterns, especially if the person’s brain struggles to produce what we know as the “happy chemicals” (i.e. serotonin, dopamine). This connection is further discussed in this study from Harvard’s Brain Science Initiative.
Impact of Emotional Eating
Coping Mechanism
A cycle of emotional eating typically starts when we feel a strong, negative emotion. For example, someone may feel intense sadness after hearing that their former partner is dating someone new, but they may feel unable to process that emotion. To experience some form of comfort, they turn to their comfort food, and, because they are feeling dysregulated, they may wind up eating more than their body needs in that moment. This often prompts a sense of shame or guilt, which tends to exacerbate the underlying emotion or mental health concern. This guilt keeps them quiet about their struggle, reducing opportunities to experience external comfort. Over time, they may associate these intense spikes in emotion with their relationship with food.
Negative Consequences
Emotional eaters tend to develop an unhealthy relationship with eating due to the guilt and shame they experience. Many people feel like it is their fault that they cannot regulate their eating and do not acknowledge the underlying emotional trigger. This can lead to a complicated relationship with food, which may contribute to disordered eating patterns. Shame prevents people from opening up about their struggle with eating.
This shame can trigger depressive symptoms. Many people with depression struggle with a desire to isolate from their loved ones. The intensity of these guilt cycles can perpetuate that symptom. It is very challenging to break this cycle alone, which can also contribute to a feeling of hopelessness that is characteristic of depression. Additionally, struggling to control one’s eating habits may make them worry about their eating to an excessive degree, which can lead to an anxious response.
Signs of Emotional Eating
Eating Without Physical Hunger
Emotional eaters tend to struggle to remain mindful of their physical desire for food when they go to eat. They may eat while they are not hungry, or eat beyond the feeling of fullness, in an attempt to numb emotional pain. It may be helpful to note the hunger cues that are most prevalent for you. Common hunger cues include an empty feeling in the stomach, a slight headache, a growling stomach, or irritability. Pay attention to your body to know how hunger shows up in your life.
Eating in Response to Emotion
Emotional eaters tend to eat in response to intense emotion. If you’re concerned that you may be an emotional eater, it may be helpful to take note of your emotions before eating. If you find that you tend to eat in response to a specific emotion (i.e. boredom, loneliness, anger, etc.), you may be an emotional eater.
Feeling Guilty or Ashamed After Eating
One of the most prominent signs that someone is struggling with emotional eating is the guilt or shame they experience after eating. These feelings perpetuate the messy cycle of overeating because shame often makes someone restrict their eating for the next meal or all their meals the next day. This restriction makes it difficult for the person to stop thinking about food, making the hunger they’re experiencing more intense. That high level of hunger can make the next emotion feel even more intense. Then, when eating is the only coping tool available to someone, it isn’t easy to try any other ways to work through their feelings, continuing the emotional eating cycle.
Strategies to Overcome Emotional Eating
Coping Skills
When looking to break the cycle of emotional eating, it is essential to find other effective coping skills, as an overreliance on only one coping tool can make that skill less effective. It may be helpful to identify the emotions that tend to be most triggering for one’s emotional eating cycles. For example, if boredom tends to trigger emotional eating cycles, it may be helpful to keep a list on your phone with ideas for other activities you could try out. If you know that stress tends to be a significant trigger for you, it may be helpful to try various stress-reduction techniques, such as deep breathing, journaling, meditation, or exercise.
Social Support
While it can be challenging, opening up about your struggles with emotional eating can be a helpful way to manage your symptoms. A support system may include friends, family, a therapist, a dietitian, a support group, or anyone else who can provide emotional support. Talking about emotional eating is a great way to address the guilt associated with the cycle head-on, which helps reduce the power associated with that emotion.
Increase Joy
Engaging in new hobbies and activities can help you to experience joy on a daily basis. Increasing your happiness may help with emotional eating, as it can provide a source of hope that things can improve. Additionally, a new hobby could help mitigate underlying emotional triggers (i.e. joining a recreational sports league or writing group may reduce feelings of boredom and loneliness).
Mindful Eating
Mindfulness practices originate in Buddhist culture. Being mindful involves drawing your attention to your internal world, especially in relation to your senses and breathing. This practice also asks us to withhold judgment—another great way to take power away from shame. Mindful eating may look like observing hunger cues without judgment and eating meals slowly to savor each taste. Additionally, you may find yourself checking in with your body as you eat to detect if you’re still hungry.
Improve Relationships with Food and Eating
At the root of emotional eating is an unhealthy relationship with eating. Improving this relationship is an essential part of healing. During this time, it is important to avoid restricting eating or dieting. These practices tend to increase guilt and shame around food, which can trigger more emotional eating. Instead, it can be helpful to think of food as a source of fuel that allows us to do all of the things we enjoy. Additionally, trying new foods can help increase your enjoyment around eating.
One’s relationship with food is very complex. If you’re struggling to implement changes on your own, it may be wise to seek out professional help. A therapist can help you work through the triggers that cause emotional eating while offering space for you to heal your relationship with food and eating.
Conclusion
Emotional eating causes a challenging cycle where someone feels the need to eat to cope with intense emotions, experiences guilt after eating, and attempts to restrict their food intake—resulting in heightened emotions that continue the cycle. If you need support as you navigate through this cycle, Trust Mental Health offers emotional eating therapy. We also offer depression therapy in California, eating disorder treatment, and binge-eating disorder treatment. Our therapists are trained to work with clients as they increase coping skills and work to develop a healthier relationship with eating. Additionally, we have a dietitian on our team who is prepared to offer additional support. With the therapist and a dietician together, you can feel comfortable emphasizing the needs of the mind and the body together. You are not alone. Book a free fifteen-minute consultation today.
Key Points
Emotional eating has psychological, environmental, and biological factors.
Emotional eating tends to serve as a coping mechanism, but it also has some negative consequences, including how a lack of coping skills can increase anxiety and depression symptoms.
To overcome emotional eating, it is important to explore alternative coping skills, social support, methods to increase joy, mindful eating, and an improved emotional relationship with food.
FAQs
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Physical hunger typically builds gradually and is accompanied by physical symptoms such as stomach growling or feeling lightheaded. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, tends to come on suddenly and is often triggered by specific emotions or situations. Emotional hunger may also be accompanied by cravings for specific comfort foods.
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Chronic emotional eating can have several negative consequences on mental health, including increased risk of obesity and related health issues, heightened feelings of guilt and shame, worsened symptoms of anxiety and depression, and a negative impact on self-esteem and body image.
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Creating a supportive environment can be key to overcoming emotional eating. This may involve surrounding yourself with supportive people who understand your goals and struggles, communicating your needs and boundaries with friends and family, seeking out resources and support groups, and making changes to your physical environment to promote healthier eating habits.