We all eat emotionally sometimes. Most people celebrate with and entertain with food, we tend to commiserate around it when something sad happens. Emotional eating happens on a continuum. Some people use it a lot and some people do it a little. Emotional eating becomes a problem when it becomes a person’s primary coping strategy: the way someone self soothes and self regulates moods or emotions. The result is emotional and physical distress. The extreme end of this continuum is Binge Eating Disorder or Bulimia.
Why we overuse food is complicated! There are many reasons: brain chemistry, biology, genetics, hunger, environmental cues, dieting history, emotional pain, personal beliefs regarding body size, habits and patterns we have developed to self soothe or avoid feeling or doing.
Emotional eaters come in all shapes and sizes. Emotional eaters use food, thoughts about food, and / or dieting behaviors to take care of emotional needs. Food, food thoughts, an obsession with weight or a diet, serve as an effective distraction from any thought or feeling that we don’t want to tolerate.
Diets do not work for emotional eaters. Why? Because a diet does not address the underlying reasons why a person uses food to manage their moods.
Emotional Eating is characterized by the following:
- Eating compulsively and being critical of your body as a way to deal with uncomfortable feelings
- Using food for reasons other than hunger and feeling unable to stop the behavior
- It might mean eating until you are stuffed or grazing throughout the day
- Eating more than you are hungry for to relieve stress, anxiety, depression, or other emotional needs
- A way of letting yourself and others know that your needs are not being met
The bottom line is that Emotional Eating is a message that something else is going on that has nothing to do with physical hunger.
Treatment:
- Focus on wellness not weight
- Learn to stop hating our bodies
- Accepting our feelings and needs
- Listening to your body and meeting it’s true needs
- Learn emotion regulation techniques
- Mindfullness to identify and reduce mindless eating
- Intuitive eating to connect with and listen to your body
