“We don’t always eat just to satisfy physical hunger,” says Susi Lodola, counsellor and psychotherapist. “We also turn to food for comfort, stress relief, when we are tired, or to reward ourselves. On those occasions, we tend to reach for high-sugar and high-fat foods. We might reach for a block of ice-cream when feeling down, order a pizza if we’re bored or lonely, or go to a drive-through after a stressful day at work.”
Emotional eating forms a large part of Eleanor’s unhealthy relationship with food for a variety of reasons. As a one-parent family of two primary school aged children, she finds when the kids are in bed that she turns to eating, out of loneliness or boredom. She can pinpoint that this switch occurred about four years ago when she gave up alcohol and replaced it with sugar.
“My main binge cycle is sugar-rich foods,” she says. “It usually occurs at weekends, evenings, or when I am going through any period of stress. I think it will make me feel better, but always leaves me feeling worse.”
Eleanor recognises that the cycle of eating sugar-rich foods, then berating herself for eating so much in one sitting, followed by restricting her food intake to accommodate for the unhealthy eating, is a difficult cycle to break. These habits have created a negative relationship with food which has spiralled into emotional eating.
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“I know this is unhealthy and not a good habit to have, but I think I exchanged drinking to excess, which was also emotionally based,” says Eleanor, who weighs herself every day with mixed reactions to her weight depending on the number she sees on the scale.
Lodola suggests that emotional eating to make yourself feel better tends to be automatic and virtually mindless. “Before you even realise what you’re doing, you’ve eaten more than you intended,” she says. “Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional problems. Not only does the original emotional issue remain, but you also feel guilty for overeating.”
Eleanor discusses her eating habits with a therapist, but finds it’s not something she can share with any of her friends or family. “I am slim,” she says. “People don’t understand, and I worry they might think I am being dramatic.”
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She is taking part in a six-week nutrition and workout plan with a coach and has discussed her unhealthy use of the weighing scales with her therapist. “Emotional eating in itself isn’t classified as a formal disorder, but it can be a part of or lead to more serious eating disorders, such as binge eating disorder or bulimia, if left unchecked,” says Lodola. “While many people emotionally eat on occasion, it becomes a problem when it happens frequently and interferes with daily life, self-esteem and physical health.”
Ellen Jennings, communication officer at Bodywhys, the eating disorder association of Ireland. says: “An eating disorder is about so much more than food. The disorder itself, and the many ways it presents itself for a person, can act as a coping mechanism and serve a purpose for a person, helping them to feel okay and able to cope day to day, albeit a destructive coping mechanism.”
Challenging eating behaviours may “present as behaviours or ‘symptoms’ at a surface level around food, exercise, social isolation, but at the core, the feelings, thoughts and inner turmoil that a person is experiencing are often at the root of the disorder,” says Jennings. “Eating disorders are serious and complex mental health conditions that affect every aspect of a person’s life.”
The idea of compulsion is important to understand when considering the difference between emotional eating and that of disordered eating. With disordered eating, a person “no longer has a choice about whether or not they engage in a certain behaviour, they feel they must abide by the eating disorder’s rules in order to feel okay and able to cope,” says Jennings.
“This might show up as lots of ‘shoulds’ in the person’s vocabulary, black and white thinking and an ever-growing list of unattainable rules that the eating disorder sets for a person. For example, ‘I should do this not that’, ‘I must do this before I can do that’, ‘I must never do that’, ‘This is right and this is wrong’, ‘This is good and this is bad’. If a person breaks one of the eating disorder rules, they experience intense feelings of guilt and shame, and may engage in compensatory behaviours. People often describe feeling as if ‘nothing they ever did was enough for the eating disorder’.”
When considering how emotional eating impacts a person, it is interesting to understand how food, especially high-sugar and high-fat items, can have a powerful effect on our brain chemistry. “The brain remembers how certain foods make you feel better, especially during times of strong emotions. Over time, the brain links these foods with emotional relief,” says Lodola. “This learned response becomes automatic, making food the go-to solution for emotional discomfort, even when you’re not physically hungry.”
Lodola recognises that emotional eating can be managed, but it often requires self-awareness and developing healthier coping strategies.
She offers some practical approaches here:
- Mindfulness: Being more aware of your emotional state before you eat can help you differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger. Techniques like journaling or simply pausing before eating to assess why you want food can be helpful.
- Alternative coping mechanisms: Finding other ways to manage emotions is key. This could include exercise, meditation, talking to a friend, listening to music or engaging in a hobby.
- Breaking the cycle: Identifying the triggers for your emotional eating can help you intervene in the cycle. For example, if stress at work is a trigger, learning stress management techniques might reduce the urge to eat.
- Therapy: Working with a psychotherapist, especially one trained in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), can help you reframe your thoughts around food and emotions, develop new coping mechanisms, and address any underlying issues contributing to emotional eating.
- Learn to sit with your emotions. Many people are afraid of emotions because they can be painful. Emotions are messages that we need to listen to. Explore what is going through your mind and the physical sensations you are experiencing at the time you feel the emotions. Emotions don’t last forever, imagine them as waves starting off slowly reaching a higher point and then ebbing away.
