Navigating Emotional Eating: A Guide to Healthier Habits
Overcoming Uncontrolled Snacking: Strategies for Curbing Emotional Consumption
We don't always munch on food just to identify physical hunger. Chances are you, too, have reached for a comforting snack during stressful moments, to celebrate good times, or as a way to soothe annoying feelings. When we take this route, we tend to gravitate towards sugary, fatty foods that deliver a quick mood boost. You might find yourself digging into a pint of ice cream when you're feeling down, ordering a pizza when you're feeling bored, or hitting up the drive-through after a long day at work.
Emotional eating comes into play when we use food to boost our spirits, rather than quelling our stomach growls. The bad news? Emotional eating doesn't help solve emotional problems. Usually, it amplifies the issue and leaves you with a feeling of guilt over the excess calories consumed. You're still faced with the original emotion, plus the added burden of guilt.
Identifying Emotional Eaters
- Do you find yourself scarfing down more food when you're feeling stressed?
- Do you eat even when your stomach is already full or when you're not actually hungry?
- Do you dine to get rid of negative feelings (like using food as a salve for stress, sadness, or boredom)?
- Do you reward yourself with a tasty treat?
- Do you continuously find yourself eating until you're stuffed?
- Does food bring you a sense of security or comfort? Does it seem like a trusted friend?
- Do you feel a sense of helplessness or lack of control when it comes to food?
Emotional Eating's Vicious Cycle
The occasional emotional pick-me-up isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when emotions play the lead role in your dining adventures-when reaching for a snack becomes your go-to when you're stressed, upset, angry, lonely, exhausted, or just plain bored-you enter a harmful cycle. You ignore the root cause of your feelings, instead numbing them with food.
Emotional hunger can't be quenched by eating. Satisfaction may make you feel good for a moment, but your original feelings remain. And since you consume unnecessary calories, you often end up feeling worse afterward. It's easy to beat yourself up over giving in to cravings and lacking self-control.
The cycle worsens with time, setting the stage for diminished self-control, advanced difficulty losing weight, and an increased feeling of powerlessness over both food and emotions. Remember, despite feeling trapped, there are ways to bring about change and break the cycle.
The Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger
Before you can rid yourself of emotional eating, it's important to learn how to spot the distinction between emotional hunger and physical hunger. This may seem simple, but it's a bit trickier when you frequently rely on food to manage emotions.
Emotional Hunger Characteristics
- Sudden Onset: Emotional hunger strikes suddenly, overwhelming and urgent. Physical hunger comes on gradually.
- Comfort Food Cravings: Emotional hunger targets specific, comforting junk foods. Physical hunger is more open to healthy choices.
- Mindless Eating: Mindless, emotional eating often leads to overconsumption and failure to enjoy your meal. Physically hungry eating tends to be more mindful and appreciative.
- Unsatisfied Feelings: No matter how much you eat when emotional eating takes over, it never feels like enough. Physical hunger is sated when your stomach is full.
- Location: Emotional hunger is experienced in the mind rather than the stomach. The physical sensation of hunger comes from the stomach.
- Guilt or Shame: Physical hunger doesn't invite guilt or feelings of shame. Emotional eating often does, as you know deep down that your indulgence was largely driven by emotional needs.
Identifying Emotional Eating Triggers
The first step in overcoming emotional eating is to recognize your personal triggers. What situations or emotions cause you to reach for the comfort of food? Most emotional eating kicks off in reaction to unpleasant feelings, but happy events or goals can also prompt unhealthy eating patterns.
Common Triggers
- Stress. If you've noticed that stress increases your appetite, you're not alone. Chronic stress causes cortisol levels to rise, leading to cravings for sweet, salty, and greasy foods.
- Ignoring Emotions. Sometimes, emotional eating is our way of numbing uncomfortable emotions like anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment, or shame.
- Boredom or Feeling Empty. Do you ever eat just to pass the time, out of a desire for distraction, or to fill an emotional void in your life?
- Childhood Habits. Reflect on your childhood memories of food. If your parents often used food as a reward or to assuage negative emotions, these habits may have stuck with you into adulthood.
- Social Influences. Feasting with friends relieves stress, but it can also lead to overeating. It's easy to consume excess calories simply because the food is there or because others are indulging.
Keep a Food and Mood Diary
Log your emotional eating episodes in a diary, including what you ate, how you felt before consuming the food, during the eating experience, and afterward. Over time, patterns will emerge, helping you identify your emotional eating triggers.
Discovering Other Ways to Feed Your Feelings
If you don't know how to handle your feelings without food, your efforts to control your eating won't last long. Diets usually fail because they only provide logical nutritional advice, which may not work if your emotions hijack your eating decisions.
To overcome emotional eating, you need to learn new emotional strategies that don't involve food. Understanding the cycle of emotional eating and your triggers is essential, but that's just the beginning. You need alternatives to food that provide emotional fulfillment.
Counteracting Emotional Eating: A Few Suggestions
- Talk to a Friend or Pet. If you're feeling sad or lonely, give someone (or something) who makes you feel good a call, play with your furry friend, or reminisce about happy memories.
- Engage in a Fun Activity. Dance to your favorite tune, work on a hobby, play a sport, or delve into a good book to help burn off nervous energy or pass the time.
- Take a Break. If you're feeling exhausted, take a moment to enjoy a warm drink, soak in a bath, or curl up with a blanket.
- Connect With Your Senses. If you're in a boring rut, light some scented candles or explore nature to engage your senses. New sensory experiences can help you feel invigorated.
Checking in With Yourself When Cravings Hit
Most emotional eaters feel imprisoned by their food cravings, surrendering to the compulsion to eat instantly. Because you've tried to resist in the past and failed, you believe your willpower is inadequate. But you have more control over your cravings than you think.
Taking a Breather
When a craving comes on, pause and reflect for a moment. Don't tell yourself you can't give in to the craving, remembering the forbidden is often quite tempting. Just tell yourself to hold off for a bit.
Reflecting On Your Feelings
While you're taking a break, pay attention to your emotions. Understanding why you want to eat can help you make a more thoughtful choice the next time around.
Learning to Accept Your Feelings (Even the Bad Ones)
Though it may seem that the core problem is your lack of control over food, emotional eating actually stems from feeling powerless over your emotions. You fear that you can't cope with your feelings head-on, so you avoid them with food. Accepting negative emotions is important in overcoming emotional eating.
Allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions can be frightening. But when you don't label these emotions or try to suppress them, they diminish relatively quickly, and their power to control your attention is reduced. By learning mindfulness and staying connected to your moment-to-moment emotional experience, you can manage stress and repair emotional issues that often trigger emotional eating. HelpGuide’s free Emotional Intelligence Toolkit can help you get started.
Savoring Your Food Without Overindulging
When you treat food as a way to boost your mood, you tend to eat hurriedly, shoveling food into your mouth without mindfulness. This mindless consumption often results in overeating. Eating slowly and savoring each bite can help you truly appreciate your food and feel satisfied with less.
Slowing down and really savoring your food is an essential aspect of mindful eating. Try taking a few deep breaths before starting your meal, putting your utensils down between bites, and focusing on the taste, texture, and smell of your food. Enjoying your meal mindfully can help you curb excessive consumption.
Embracing Mindful Eating
Mindless Eating, an approach focused on emotional eating, can offer additional guidance. Paying attention to the mind-body connection is vital in overcoming emotional eating.
Building Healthy Lifestyle Habits
A strong body and mind make it easier to deal with life's challenges. But when you're already worn out, any setback can send you spiraling towards the fridge. Combat exhaustion with a few healthy lifestyle habits.
- Get Daily Exercise. Regular physical activity improves your mood and energy levels while serving as a fantastic stress reliever. Making exercise a priority is easier than you might think [6].
- Aim for 7-9 Hours of Sleep Each Night. Lack of sleep can trigger food cravings, so getting adequate rest is crucial for appetite control and reducing food cravings.
- Relax. Whether it's meditation, a warm bath, or a good read, make time to relax daily. Giving yourself a short respite can help you recharge.
- Connect With Others. Building strong relationships and partaking in social activities will protect you from the negative effects of stress.
Sources:
[1] HelpGuide
[2] American Psychological Association
[3] Harvard Medical School
[4] Psychology Today
[5] National Eating Disorders Association
[6] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Identifying and Overcoming Emotional Eating Habits
Emotional eating often serves as a coping mechanism for underlying, untackled negative emotions. To address this, you should identify your triggers and explore alternative strategies for managing your feelings.
Steps to Overcoming Emotional Eating
- Recognize Emotional Eating Patterns:
- Identify emotions and situations that trigger emotional eating.
- Monitor your food intake and emotional state during such instances.
- Seek Alternatives for Emotional Coping:
- Discover hobbies, activities, or conversations that help soothe your emotional state.
- Engage in these alternatives when you feel the urge to emotionally eat.
- Mindful Eating:
- Eat slowly and savor each bite, focusing on taste, texture, and smell.
- Practice mindfulness to reduce the need for mindless emotional eating.
- Adopt Healthy Lifestyle Habits:
- Incorporate regular exercise, adequate sleep, and stress management techniques into your daily routine.
- Connect with friends, family, or support groups for added guidance and encouragement.
By implementing these steps, you can create a healthier relationship with food and overcome emotional eating more effectively.
- Recognizing emotional eating patterns is essential in overcoming emotional eating. Keep a food and mood diary to help identify triggers such as stress, ignoring emotions, boredom, childhood habits, or social influences.
- Building a healthy lifestyle can make it easier to manage emotional eating. Incorporate regular exercise, adequate sleep, and stress management techniques into your daily routine, and connect with others for added support.
