Emotional Eating: How Emotions Influence Your Eating Behaviours
Emotional Eating: How Emotions Influence Your Eating Behaviours
Find yourself at the drive-through whenever you’re under stress, or reaching for ice cream when you’re upset? People often turn to food as a source of comfort when times are hard. But emotional eating can become a problem for some.
What is emotional eating?
The name says it all – when you eat something as a direct response to your emotional state, it is emotional eating.
No one is immune to this experience – we all do it from time to time. But if you feel like it’s happening too frequently or you aren’t able to cope with your emotions in any other way, it can become an issue.
This can lead to you feeling:
Urges to eat when you experience strong emotions
A desire to eat even when you’re not physically hungry or have eaten recently
Out of control around certain food types e.g. chocolate, chips, ice cream
The causes behind emotional eating
It might seem simple, but the relationship between emotions and food is incredibly complex. The food choices you make can influence your emotions, and your feelings can change what you eat and how you eat.
There is also so much more to food than just being fuel. Every culture has some kind of connection to food as a form of celebration. Many also see sharing food as a form of care and connection.
We can’t just disconnect feelings from the food that we eat! So when emotional eating kicks in, it can be hard to break out of it.
Some of the key drivers behind emotional eating include:
Work stress
Financial stress
Health concerns
Issues in relationships
Lower awareness of how you feel
Emotional dysregulation
A history of disordered eating patterns including restrictive eating and frequent dieting
There is also a reason why food is the go-to. It releases dopamine that makes you feel better. Food is accessible, particularly foods that release more dopamine (highly processed junk food), and you can access it anytime.
And of course, we all develop routines with food, so it’s easy to establish a habit around food and stressful situations.
How can I stop emotional eating?
This comes down to you being able to make conscious decisions around food – including what you eat, when you eat and how you eat.
It’s not about your emotions never influencing your food choices, but rather about choosing when food is part of it and when there are healthier ways to cope with how you feel.
Stop fighting your feelings!
A big part of emotional eating is suppressing or pushing down unpleasant emotions so you don’t have to deal with them. But by doing this, you end up giving them even more power over your decisions.
So instead, let’s just acknowledge them. Whenever you eat, check in with yourself by asking:
What am I thinking about?
How do I feel about my food choices?
How am I feeling in general – has there been anything throughout the day that is influencing it?
What stories am I telling myself about all of the above – for example, am I telling myself to ‘treat myself’ after a hard day?
Practice mindful eating
Rather than quitting emotional eating altogether, our goal is to increase your awareness around food.
Here’s my go-to routine for mindful eating:
Turn my phone off or leave it in another room (ideally on silent!)
Focus on the food and on slowing down
Whenever possible, no TV or other distractions (the one exception is eating with another person and chatting)
Pay attention to the body’s fullness signals – for me, I notice I’m satiated when I subconsciously sit back a little and do a bit of a sigh
This will also empower you to notice your own hunger and fullness cues. But thoughts and feelings tend to be fleeting – so if you spend 10-15 minutes per meal, they will have less hold over you than if you’re eating the entire meal in 5 minutes or less!
Get plenty of nutrition into your day
This won’t stop the influence of your emotions, but it does mean one less driver behind unhealthy choices.
Many of the people I speak to are not actually getting sufficient nutrition throughout the day. This may be because they aren’t consuming enough calories, or it could be that they’re missing key nutrients such as protein and fibre.
Make sure you balance your plate and get the nutrients you need to feel satiated. This will also help to support your nervous system and reduce the effects of stress and emotions in general.
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Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
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While we make every effort to make sure the information in this website is accurate and informative, the information does not take the place of medical advice.