What is Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating is defined as eating in response to emotions or using food to cope with difficult feelings. Emotional eating can be in response to positive emotions, like eating a special meal to celebrate an accomplishment. Or, it can be in response to negative emotions, like eating a large amount of low nutrient-high calorie foods because you are stressed about a deadline. In either case, you are associating food with comfort and soothing. It is completely normal to occasionally use food to cope with emotions.
Reasons Why People Eat Emotionally
There are so many reasons why people may eat for comfort rather than to satisfy hunger. Everyone has certain “comfort foods” that they associate with positive feelings or memories. Perhaps as a kid, your parents would take you for ice cream either to celebrate good grades or to help you feel better after a difficult day. These memories stick with us, and we may crave these same foods during times of emotional distress.
There are also many powerful physiological factors that play a role in emotional eating as well. Research has shown that when our main stress hormone, cortisol, becomes elevated, it triggers cravings for foods high in sugar, fat, and salt. Eating also calms our body down by triggering our parasympathetic nervous system, or the “rest and digest” response. When we start eating, our breathing slows down, our heart rate decreases, our muscles relax, and we feel more relaxed.
Eating can also be used to provide distraction, numbing, or relief from difficult emotions. This may not even be a conscious decision; Often people are not aware that they are feeling distressed and mindlessly turn to eating as an escape. People also may have difficulty telling the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger.
The Emotional Eating Spectrum
While it is completely normal to emotionally eat from time to time, it can continue to progress to binge eating for some people. Binge eating is characterized by eating large amounts of food in a short amount of time when not feeling physically hungry. Usually, people who binge eat will do so in isolation, will feel out of control, will eat to the point of feeling uncomfortably full, and may experience extreme feelings of disgust, guilt, and shame after episodes. Bingeing is not an eating disorder in and of itself, but if a person is binge eating frequently and meets the specific criteria outlined in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), they may be diagnosed with binge-eating disorder.
Overcoming Emotional Eating: Where To Start?
If you are concerned that you may be stuck in a pattern of emotional or binge eating, it is very important that you speak with a Registered Dietitian and mental health professional to help you start normalizing your eating patterns and finding other ways to manage your emotions and stress.
Here are some tips to help you along the way:
- Learn to tell the difference between emotional and physical hunger.
- Keep an emotional eating diary: Write down what you ate (or wanted to eat), preceding events, how you felt before you ate, what you felt as you were eating, and how you felt afterward. Over time, you will be able to identify and plan for your common emotional triggers.
- Find alternative coping skills for whatever emotion you are feeling. For instance, if you’re anxious, do some breathing exercises or meditation.
- Check-in with yourself emotionally when cravings hit. Pause for 5 minutes and see if you can try a different coping strategy.
- Eat mindfully and savor your food. Focus on slowing down, and paying attention to the sensory aspects of the food. This will help you to stay present and get in touch with your hunger and fullness cues.
- If you do have an emotional eating or bingeing episode: Be gentle with yourself, counter thoughts of guilt and shame with positive self-talk, and avoid calorie restriction. Remember that this process will take time, and there will be ups and downs. But you can do it, and there are lots of resources available to support you!
For more information about emotional eating, binge eating, or to seek help, please check out the following resources:
National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA)
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/
Eating Disorder Hope
Academy of Eating Disorders
References:
Berkman ND, Brownley KA, Peat CM, et al. Management and outcomes of binge-eating disorder [Internet]. Rockville (MD):Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2015 Dec. (Comparative Effectiveness Reviews, No. 160.) Table 1, DSM-IVand DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for binge-eating disorder. Available from:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338301/table/introduction.t1/
Chao AM, Jastreboff AM, White MA, et al. Stress, cortisol, and other appetite-related hormones: Prospective prediction of 6-month changes in food cravings and weight. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2017;25(4):713-720. doi:10.1002/oby.21790
Johnson D. Emotional eating, overeating, binge eating – is there a difference? Mather Hospital .https://www.matherhospital.org/related-content/emotional-eating-overeating-binge-eating-is-there-a-difference/. AccessedJune 4, 2021.
van Strien T, Roelofs K, de Weerth C. Cortisol reactivity and distress-induced emotional eating. Psychoneuroendocrinology.2013;38(5):677-684. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.08.008
van Strien T. Causes of emotional eating and matched treatment of obesity. Curr Diab Rep. 2018;18(6):35.doi:10.1007/s11892-018-1000-x
