Practical guide to support you and manage your emotional eating

Our mood and eating are all connected. It’s part of being human to eat in response to our feelings. All kinds of emotions can compel us to eat, from unwanted moods such as frustration, anxiety, worry or feeling down, to positive emotions like excitement, celebration or anticipation. Even neutral feelings such as boredom and apathy can be a cause to eat. In a world where we are often surrounded by food, eating can be a common response.

Why is this a common response?

There’s nothing wrong with using food to cope with feelings some of the time. Food is great at helping to regulate our emotional states.

Food has never been just about fuel for the body. Ever since you were a baby and your tears were soothed by your caregiver's milk, food became a powerful symbol of feeling soothed and nurtured.

Is it any wonder then that regardless of our shape and size, many of us impulsively reach for food as a way of coping with everyday emotions? From stress at work, to conflict with family or friends, most of us need comfort from time to time.

Can it become something to worry about?

This becomes a problem when we find ourselves in situations where we are experiencing feelings and, rather than identifying them, our brains give us the instruction to eat. This prevents us from normalising, expressing and managing our emotions.

We tend to automatically listen to this instruction and eat - and often, eating does actually make us feel better. It can settle us and soothe distressing emotions.

There's nothing wrong with this - sometimes, only food will do.

But, sometimes you may benefit from strategies to identify, express and manage your emotions, rather than dull them with food.

We also need to reassess when food becomes an issue due to unwanted weight gain or health problems associated with eating too much of the wrong type of food

Get in touch with your emotions

When you start to understand where your emotions are coming from, you can start to have a new conversation with yourself when you overeat. Rather than saying unhelpful things like "I'm greedy" or "I'm out of control", you can figure out the deeper reason.

For example, "I'm eating because I feel embarrassed because my boss was not happy with my report" or "I'm eating because I am cross with myself for not passing the test".

Once you’ve identified the real story behind the impulse to eat, what’s next? If someone else is causing your emotions, you may be able express your feelings to them.

Sometimes this isn't possible though. For example, telling your boss what you really think of them when they expect you to work the weekend.

So, what other ways are there to express unwanted emotions without resorting to overeating?

It always help to name your emotions

• I am….
• At….
• Because…..

Some examples of this could be:

• “I am upset at my husband because he forgot my birthday ”
• “I am angry with my Mom as she did not babysit when I asked her”
• “I am embarrassed that I tripped up on the road”
• “I am cross at myself because I didn’t get my essay submitted on time’
• I am frustrated that my family do not keep the house tidy”

Express yourself

Ways to express your emotions in a risk-free way could include:

• Talking to a friend or family member
• Giving yourself permission to go off and have a cry
• Writing out what you feel, even if you tear it up afterwards.
• Express yourself in a safe, physical way, such as exercise, dancing, banging on a drum
• Distracting yourself with something enjoyable, read a book, watch a film

Small, manageable steps

Even if all you do for now is carry on eating, but successfully identify the reason why, you're making an important first step.

Keeping a regular journal or doing a brain dump first thing in the morning or last thing at night can be very helpful here to process and make sense of what might be going on for you.

Letter writing is another useful tool here. With this tool we can write letters that we do not get to send to the person we are missing in terms of a bereavement or the person we are angry with when you are dealing with a conflict situation. This allows us to say the things we would like to say to the person but cannot say. Don’t hold back here. Remember this is a letter that is for you to say what you really want to say right now. Light a candle, go to a quiet space and let the pen do the talking.

Emotional eating can have roots in early experiences and you may need support from a counsellor or psychotherapist to help identify the root cause.

Difficulties with emotional eating can be managed and getting support can be an important first step on your journey. Check with your GP or with me if you need advice to find a therapist.

Finding a therapist you can work with is a bit like speed dating. It is good to go on recommendations but like everything in life you need to meet the person to see if they are the best fit for you right now. If you do not want to work with a therapist, you also need to ask your self is it the therapist that does not suit me or is it I am not just ready to do therapy right now.

Always remember healing is not linear or rarely a straight line. Setbacks are a normal part of the journey and are not an indicator of failure. Keep going – you can do this.

Other Steps to help you break free from emotional eating

1. Regular eating
2. Challenge your food rules
3. Consider the satisfaction factor
4. Break the binge – restrict cycle
5. Manage body image distress
6. Self-compassion
7. Mindful eating

Regular eating

Regular eating is one of the most effective strategies you can do to reduce emotional eating. If you’re dieting it’s common that you might restrict how much food you are eating throughout the day.

This can be in response to not sticking to the diet the previous day, and/or because you may be following a restrictive diet that doesn’t allow you to eat enough.

When your body is physically hungry, your blood sugars drop meaning there’s less energy being provided to your brain. This impacts almost everything! Your mood, energy, concentration levels, ability to make decisions, all of which make over eating more likely to occur.

Nourishing your body regularly throughout the day is one of the best ways to help reduce comfort/emotional type eating. Regular eating means having a breakfast meal, a mid day meal and an evening meal. Try not to skip or miss meals and remember the saying of ‘if it’s a meal time stop, sit and eat.’

Challenge your food rules

Over time we can create many food rules for ourselves; these can come from our parents, our friends, social media, and other places. It might be helpful to consider what these rules for you might be. Maybe you have a rule of not eating carbohydrate food in the evening? Or that pasta is bad for you? Or that we shouldn’t snack as it’s unhealthy?

Consider what these rules might be and gently challenge how useful these really are. Having food rules often results in a situation where after you’ve broken the rules, you think “I’ve already messed up, so I may as well keep going”, and so an overeating episode begins.

Consider the statisfactor factor

Feeling full is different to feeling satisfied. Have you ever eaten something like a plain chicken salad and felt really unsatisfied? The reason this might happen is you’re not including things you actually enjoy eating. Feeling deprived of the foods you enjoy leads to wanting them more, in turn increasing the likelihood of emotional eating. Consider what you can add into your regular meals to make them more satisfying, so you look forward to eating them.

Break the overeating-restrict cycle

Being stuck in the overeating-restrict cycle is something many people are familiar with. Breaking this cycle is not possible if you’re always looking for the next diet. It can be easy to think the solution to emotional eating is to go onto a diet, but your lack of willpower is not the problem, the diet is.  So try to avoid diets and dieting, as it can lead to an all or nothing approach where by I am either on or off a diet. Try instead to plan to eat healthy foods that are beneficial for whole body health rather than a means to weight loss. The website www.healthpromotion.ie has lots of really useful healthy eating resources. You can check out their website and download the resources or order hard copies for free.

Manage body image distress

The longest relationship we will have in our lives is with our bodies. But this relationship can be a fraught one, with moments of love, hatred and shame. Outside forces such as social media can impact how we see ourselves, and so too can the opinions of our families, our life experiences and the things that make us feel different to others.

Feeling unhappy about your body, weight and shape can often be a trigger for emotional eating. Your relationship with your body is complex and may take time to heal. In the meantime, you may find it helpful to learn ways to manage your emotions and thoughts when you’re experiencing a bad body image day.

Some people find the following tips useful: wearing comfortable and loose clothing, avoid wearing clothes that are tight fitting or are no longer comfortable to wear, if you need to move up a dress size and do not want to spend a lot of money, charity shops are full of affordable, nice clothes in all sizes, avoid body checks in the mirror, limit time on social media, and distract yourself with other activities like getting out of the house or calling a friend.

Another letter writing exercise that can be helpful is to write to our body, thanking it for what it has done for you and apologising to it if you have not been the best at minding your body. What would you say to your body?

Another exercise that can be useful when it comes to poor body image is to name and be grateful to our body for all that it does for us. The quickest mindfulness/meditation technique is gratitude. To identify and name and tell your body what about it you are grateful for. It could be that you particularly enjoy reading and you thank your eyes for seeing the page and your hands for being able to hold the book.

This gets us not to focus on what our bodies look like but instead appreciate what they do for us. We can do this exercise for lots of body parts:

Body part: ________________

What does it do/what is its function? _________________

What does it allow me to do? ________________________

Self-compassion

In psychology, self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. American psychologist Kristin Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main elements – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

• Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism. Think of it, if you can, like being with your small inner child. With a child we would not typically scold them for perceived wrong doings. When they are upset or frightened or lonely or scared we would comfort and soothe them and look after them. Why not do the same for yourself the next time you do something that you are trying not to do and see the difference between that and shaming or giving out to out to ourselves
• Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience rather than isolating.
• Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one's negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.

In this u tube video Kristin Neff author of Self – Compassion: The Proven Power of being kind to yourself, Identifies and explains the three components of self - compassion.

What is mindful eating?

Mindful eating is mindfulness specifically related to our experience with food and nutrition

Being fully present in the moment when you’re eating, without distractions, may promote positive, healthy eating habits and behaviours.

Check out my blog post on mindful eating here: https://www.gntc.ie/2024/06/28/mindful-eating/

Staying well

There are lots of things we need to do to keep ourselves on track, some every day and some less often. Have a think about what some of these things are for you.

What can I do on a daily basis to keep myself well?

• Go for a walk
• Write in my journal
• Keep a food and mood record
• Do a few minutes of gratitude or diaphragm breathing

What can I do on a weekly basis to keep myself well?

• Go out for a nice lunch with my partner/friends
• Go to a yoga/gym class
• Meet someone for coffee
• Go to the library
• Check in with my therapist
• Listen to a wellness Podcast
• Review the week and identify my progress over the week

If trying to lose weight, check my weight in a self-compassionate/mindful way one per week only

What do I need to do monthly or less often to keep myself well?

• Check in with my GP to check my bloods annually
• Do a session with my Registered Dietitian to help identify what is working and how to move forward for the next few months with my plan
• Review my plan and identify what is and is not working

Over the years I’ve helped many of my clients who are experiencing emotional eating to ditch dieting and take back control over food. If you’re ready to break free from emotional and comfort eating, book an appointment or call me to chat with me further about how I can support you.

References

1. Macht, M. (2008). How emotions affect eating: A five-way model. Appetite, 50(1), 1-11. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2007.07.002
2. Canetti, L., Bachar, E., & Berry, E. M. (2002). Food and emotion. Behavioural Processes, 60(2), 157-164. doi:10.1016/S0376-6357(02)00082-7
3. Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85-101. doi:10.1080/15298860309032
4. Albers, S. (2011). Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food. New Harbinger Publications.
5. Baer, R. A., Fischer, S., & Huss, D. B. (2005). Mindfulness and acceptance in the treatment of disordered eating. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 23(4), 281-300. doi:10.1007/s10942-005-0015-9
6. Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. New York: Delacorte.
7. Kristeller, J. L., & Wolever, R. Q. (2010). Mindfulness-based eating awareness training for treating binge eating disorder: The conceptual foundation. Eating Disorders, 19(1), 49-61. doi:10.1080/10640266.2011.533605
8. Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach. St. Martin's Essentials.