Emotional Eating: Feeding Your Body vs Filling a Void
For most of my life, I have had a very complicated history with food. There were certain foods that I had no self-control over. Oreo cookies, chocolate Pop-Tarts, Nutella and chocolate fudge brownies. One particular memory comes to mind. I was home alone and I made a batch of chocolate fudge brownies. I made sure they were as gooey as possible. Right on the edge of being raw.
Part of me knew I wasn’t hungry. Part of me knew that this wouldn’t make me feel better. There was so much shame about what I was feeling. But in that moment, I did not care at all. Every bite of that brownie just sent a cascade of flavor and enjoyment throughout my mouth. And I just wanted more. More and more of this sense of satisfaction. This feeling of satiation.
And I did what I normally did in these situations. I ate way, way too much. I sprinted past feeling full straight into nauseous and bloated. Even the taste of the chocolate and the mushy texture that I was enjoying so much just moments before turned to disgust. Disgust for the brownie and disgust for myself.
I’d spend the next several hours of the day feeling God awful. My body was angry about the over indulgence I took place in. And my mind was yelling horrible obscenities at me for doing this to myself again. “Your disgusting” “You deserve to feel awful” “What is wrong with you?” “Your weak”
I lived with this pattern around food for decades. But the food never filled the hole that I was trying to fill within me. It wasn’t until I started on my own healing journey that I was able to discovery what I was really needing. Friendship, love, purpose, direction.
If you can relate to this story and you are ready to end this cycle with food, take advantage of the free 20-minute consultation that I offer so you can begin your journey on healing this damaging cycle with food.
What is Emotional Eating?
Many of us do not eat to satisfy physical hunger. Many of us use food for a sense of comfort, stress relief or a reward. And the foods we use tend to be junk food, sweets or other unhealthy options. It could be a pint of ice cream, a cheeseburger from you favorite fast food joint or with me, some form of chocolate.
Emotional eating is when you use food to make yourself feel better. To fill some kind of emotional need, rather than getting a nutrient that your body is asking for. Unfortunately, emotional eating does not satisfy an emotional need. Pizza isn’t going to get your loneliness to stop. Chocolate isn’t going to make you have more self-confidence. It does the opposite. Not only is your original need unfulfilled, you add on top of it the guilt over having emotionally eaten.
Am I an Emotional Eater?
Do you eat more when you are feeling stressed?
Do you eat when you are not hungry or when you are full?
Do you eat to make yourself feel better (to calm yourself when you are feeling sad, angry, bored or anxious)?
Do you reward yourself with food?
Do you regularly eat until you have stuffed yourself?
Does food make yourself feel safe? Do you treat food like a friend?
Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then you have experienced an episode of emotional eating. And the more times you said yes, the more intertwined your emotions are with food.
Don’t beat yourself up. According to a 2013 study done by the American Psychological Association, about 38% of adults in the US have used food in response to emotional stress in the past 30 days.
Causes of Emotional Eating
Stress – Being in a prolonged stressful state will cause your body to produce the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet and fried foods. These foods give you a burst of energy so that your body can respond quickly to a threat. In the past, this response helped keep humanity alive as we were being hunted by predators or waring tribes. But in today’s world, many of the stressors we face do not benefit from being able to run longer or fight harder.
Burying emotions – Eating can be a way to temporarily silence or bury difficult emotions. These can include anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment and shame. The food may work for a short time to cover up these emotions, but they continue to linger within you. And when they resurface, you may use food again to bury them. This cycle can repeat for years but the underlying emotions never get resolved.
Learned Habits – “Clean your plate, there are starving children in Africa” “If you get a good grade on this test, we will go to McDonalds” “Win this game and I’ll buy you ice cream” Many of use grew up being taught by the adults around us that food was a reward for success. Or that food should never be wasted, as there are others who are hungry. Both of these patterns can get embedded within us and carried into adulthood.
Social Influence – You get together with friends or family for a meal and you get caught up in the moment. The people around you order hefty meals and drinks and you follow suit. There is so much food around you, so you just start picking at this and that. Your encouraged to enjoy the food as an extension of enjoying the moment. It doesn’t take much to push someone past their physical needs and unintentionally overeat.
How to Overcome Emotional Eating
The key to overcoming emotional eating is to tackle the underlying emotions that fuel the need to emotionally eat. What worked for me and has worked for my clients is the Emotional Freedom Technique.
Emotional Freedom Technique:
EFT, also known as tapping, involves tapping on acupressure points on your own body in order to calm the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. The tapping allows for the Chi (emotional energy) to move more freely and bring a sense of relief and calm to the mind and body.
Tapping can be used during the emotional eating episodes to help reduce its intensity and stop the cycle of overeating. EFT can be used with an experienced mental health practitioner to alleviate the source of the underlying emotions, thus breaking the habit of using food to fill the void.
Ending the Pattern of Emotional Eating
You do not have to live with uncontrollable eating habits. You can let go of the guilt and shame of overeating and the underlying emotions once and for all. You no longer have to live with the pain that is causing you repeat this pattern in your life.
If that sounds like a life that you want to live. A life where you have a healthy relationship with food and live in a state of internal peace, then feel free to take advantage of a free tapping session with me.