Emotional Eating: How to Break the Habit
Photo by Alena Darmel - from Pexels
What Is Considered Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating (at least in this context) is eating to soothe an emotion or feeling that you are experiencing. This may be in response to a positive or negative emotion. Nutritionally I am most interested in the emotional experience someone has after the emotional eating. If that experience is negative then that is something that most people would benefit from exploring further. A common scenario is feeling sad or lonely or stressed, making a food choice that doesn’t align with health goals, feeling shame and frustration that you made the choice, which in turn fuels more cravings, and the cycle repeats. This may also look like celebrating something great with food, then feeling negatively about the amount or type of food you chose.
What Can I Do About Emotional EAting?
Truthfully it depends, but there are steps you can take to get started.
Notice when you emotionally eat. If you don’t even realize you do it, then you don’t know something needs to change. This can also help you to learn about yourself and what things may trigger emotional eating. Common triggers include: lack of sleep/fatigue, high levels of stress, boredom, procrastination, celebrations/events (remember the emotion can be positive too!).
Start to identify alternatives that align with your health goals. The last thing I want is to have someone switch from eating emotionally to using alcohol, drugs, etc. to manage the emotions. Aim to have alternatives for each situation that are supportive of your health and goals. Alternatives can be highly individual, but some common options include: connecting with others/community, exercise/walking, taking deep breaths, having hobbies available for when you’re bored (think painting, puzzles, books, etc.), or setting a timer to just start a task for 5 minutes if you’ve been procrastinating.
Take accountability for your choice. Many people feel like emotional food choices are out of their control. Like no matter what they try the only thing that will actually improve their situation is the food, or that before they even consciously realized it, they already started eating. Some options here can be: stating “I am choosing to do this” before grabbing your snack, setting a timer for 15-20 minutes and do one of your alternatives (above) for the 15-20 minutes then check back in to see if you are still hungry, or taking a moment to explore your emotion - sometimes giving yourself permission to feel helps the craving to pass. As you can see all of these are a way to add more time between feeling like you want to eat, and actually eating. During that time you may be able to make a different choice that is better aligned with your goals.
Show yourself empathy. If you end up eating emotionally, whether than is before you even realized it, or after you tried some alternatives. Remember that it is the choice that doesn’t align with your goals, it is not a character flaw. Start by noticing that you are emotionally eating without judgement - “hmmm I am eating emotionally, I wonder what’s going on?” Explore the emotion you are experiencing, and think about what you may try the next time you eat emotionally for the same reason, or what you can do differently right now (just because you started eating emotionally doesn’t mean you need to continue - stopped sooner than you normally would I still . Remember that each time you experience emotional eating is a chance for you to learn more about yourself so that you can handle things a bit differently next time.
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