If you find yourself trying to blur feelings of guilt, sadness, loneliness, anger or pressure through food, you may be dealing with emotional eating. Why does it happen and how can it be treated? The experts explain.
Emotional eating is not something you can get rid of. It is embedded in us from a young age and with the social ideal that fat is bad it creates confusion and difficulty and makes those who suffer from it struggle even more, says Emily Davis, blogger, body positive activist and manager of the Facebook group Confessions of Plus Size Women. The goal of the group is to support plus size women and encourage them to express what is on their minds, all in the spirit of body positivity without mentioning diets or surgeries.
The first time she realized she was eating to comfort herself was during the first diet she ever did in her life, at age 14 or 15. That diet made her realize that everything is about compensation, and the moment something is taken away from us we immediately try to compensate with something else. Besides the fact that the body, in the most metabolic way, needs compensation for things taken from it suddenly. And when the compensation comes, it comes in a big way and leads to a double weight gain.
With the years, she shares, she learned to control her emotional eating and manage it so it does not get out of control. Emotional eating will accompany me for life, but now I know how to manage it. To understand our relationship with food it is worth noticing the food associations we learned from childhood. Once we notice when food is based on conditions and not a basic need like hunger and fullness, it is easier to develop awareness of the roots of emotional eating.
Of course there are moments when it is harder to control it, like pregnancy which causes hormonal changes, emotional situations and stress. When I find myself in situations like that, I try to examine whether I am truly hungry or if I need something to calm and comfort me. And there are many things you can do besides eating. Meditation, talking to a friend or partner, or going for a walk outside. But sometimes you really want something sweet, and that is okay. So you eat, do not judge yourself, and the next day you go back to taking care of your body. I learned to forgive myself and for me that is part of listening to my body.
And maybe the issue is the quantities? A single piece of chocolate will not harm anyone, but people who deal with emotional eating often find themselves in situations where food fills an empty space they cannot fill, and for that they need much more than a single piece of chocolate.
I do not like talking about quantities, because for me that is diet language, she says. I have a large body, I am 1.81 and weigh more than 120 kilos, and no one can decide for me if the amount I eat is too big. Everyone has the amount that fits them. Of course if it reaches a level where you harm yourself, that is different. I eat the amount that satisfies me and does not harm me, but never through counting or weighing calories, only through listening to my body.
There is also importance to the way I eat. If I eat while distracted, like in front of the television or in the middle of an argument, I lose control and pass the point of listening to my body and reach overload. I try not to get there. And in general, the demonization of food is very problematic. Why call a dish sinful? It only makes the person who eats it feel sinful. All those diets that allow reward meals and reality shows that call food comforting, it is terrible. Food is a basic need and should not be used as a prize.
Thanks to her strong awareness, she says she no longer aims to be thin, and despite her high weight she is healthy, maintains a wonderful relationship, is a mother of two and accepts herself as she is. Diets and calorie deficits are what caused me to gain weight. All of us who did endless diets from a young age are already lost. Once we pushed our body from its balance point and abused it with diets, we reached a point where after every weight loss came a gain, doubled. I quit this game. I will not abuse my body for an ideal.
And what about the medical consequences of obesity? I am not denying the consequences of obesity, but I am angry about the anxiety built around it. For us, people with high weight, there is not much to do about it now. We are already overweight, and losing it quickly is not something really possible. This anxiety only made us eat more. And the obsession around weight only pushes us to gain.
HUNGER BASED ON EMOTION
Emotional eating is eating driven by emotion, not physiological hunger. It is eating often characterized by unhealthy patterns like fast eating and binge eating, and it is not satisfying because it does not come from real hunger, explains Dr Sarah Page, clinical psychologist, lecturer and supervisor in psychology.
Usually we are hungry when the body signals physical lack through low glucose levels or stomach volume. Emotional eating, however, comes from feelings like sadness, anger, guilt or boredom, which the person unconsciously interprets as hunger that pushes them to eat.
According to Page, emotional eating is actually a signal recognition problem. Unpleasant feelings are interpreted as hunger and treated with food, so they are not addressed correctly. The feelings remain raw, create distress and trigger more emotional eating, creating a cycle.
Are there specific traits in people who suffer from emotional eating?
In stress or difficulty people turn to the fridge for comfort through tasty foods, usually sweet or starchy, creating initial relief. It is human and normal when it happens moderately. But some people are controlled by these patterns and are distressed by them. Often emotional eating develops in people who have difficulty recognizing or expressing their emotions.
Page shares that in therapy for various problems, emotional eating often appears as a hidden difficulty. It is not accidental. Difficulty recognizing the emotional source of distress leads to turning to food without awareness, so people do not connect the distress to the eating patterns.
Is it true that most of them experienced childhood trauma?
Not necessarily. Many people, especially women, who experienced trauma in childhood develop ongoing distress they struggle to express, which leads to symptoms including emotional eating. But not everyone who experiences emotional eating has trauma.
WHEN THE CRAVING HITS
How do you help someone with emotional eating?
Treatment includes helping the person identify emotions more accurately, including distinguishing hunger from emotion. Therapy encourages exploration of emotional experiences to translate them properly instead of translating them into hunger.
Treatment may also include practical tools like pausing before eating to identify what triggered the desire. Is it real hunger or emotional need? Some keep a food journal to describe what they feel before eating. It helps pause and identify emotions behind the craving.
Some use mindfulness, a short walk, a shower, petting their pet, or preparing food slowly. Others put their favorite snacks in a higher cabinet or in a box that says Stop, do you really want to eat now? But these tools only work if deeper emotional work is done.
There is also importance in finding ways to enjoy food intentionally with pleasure, from real hunger or conscious choice.
WOMEN SUFFER MORE
Emotional eating is caused by many factors and almost everyone experiences it. But studies show women experience it more than men. It is not surprising because women are taught to fit beauty ideals and connect food to emotions. Movies show it clearly, when the heroine is heartbroken sitting with a tub of ice cream.
The connection to sweet food is not accidental. Emotional eating often includes foods rich in sugar and fat, not healthy food, and often includes loss of control, impulsiveness, guilt and shame, says Lauren Simmons, clinical dietitian and NLP mindfulness instructor.
It can come from avoidance of unpleasant feelings or craving that cannot be satisfied. It is important to identify the intensity, frequency, triggers and thoughts connected.
Treatment should not make food the main comfort tool, but address emotions directly through physical touch, kind words or loving attention. Treatment includes physiological, emotional and behavioral layers. Tools like mindfulness, NLP and CBT can help. Menu restrictions are usually not effective in emotional eating. Some people may even have addiction to certain foods and need a specialist.