Emotional Eating

Ah. Emotional eating.

Never have I had such a big response on my Instagram as when I asked about people’s experiences with emotional eating.

The ironic thing is, emotional eating doesn’t really exist.

It isn’t a ‘thing’.

What it is, is, a phrase dreamed up by diet culture to make you feel guilty for eating when you want to feel better.

There’s nothing at all wrong with that.

In fact, ask someone who has never had an issue with dieting, or their body image (stereotyping here, but most likely a man in your life), if they have ever emotionally eaten and you’ll probably be met with a blank look…. ‘huh’?

Does that mean this person doesn’t eat emotionally?

Absolutely not – we all do, from time to time.

What it means is, they don’t see it as a problem. It isn’t something they feel guilty about or ashamed of. The reason why? Because they don’t do it consciously. To them, they are just having a snack, perhaps a particularly tasty or satisfying one, and then moving on with their day. End of.

Emotional Eating Symptoms

The trouble is, to most people, like you and me, who do have a history of having issues with dieting and their bodies, emotional eating is very much a thing. It’s something we do perhaps in secret. It troubles us because we feel guilty, and we vow never to do it again – until the next time.

So what actually is emotional eating?  

The way I describe it to my clients is this. We have two types of hunger – physical hunger and emotional hunger.

Physical hunger

Physical hunger is when you physically NEED to eat. Your body requires the energy it knows will be obtained by consuming food. Typical symptoms of physical hunger might include a growling stomach, lightheadedness, dizziness, salivating, getting touchy / agitated especially easy (commonly coined ‘hangry’ – something I very much identify within myself!). The body produces these symptoms because it WANTS you to be thinking about food – you need to eat, to obtain the energy you need to go on with your day.

Now, if you’ve been dieting for many years – ten, twenty, possibly more – you may feel disconnected from your hunger cues. You might not even believe that you have them. After all, you’ve been outsourcing your hunger requirements to an external source (your diet) for such a long time. You probably don’t trust your body when it tells you that you are hungry, and you certainly don’t listen to it when it tells you what it’s hungry for – but that is another story.

I promise you, you have hunger cues. You are born with them. Think of a newborn baby – it cries until it gets fed. It isn’t thinking about dieting or how its body looks in its nappy – all it knows is its hungry, needs energy and will therefore demand attention until it gets what it needs. You haven’t lost that ability – it’s just buried somewhere, deep inside.

Satisfy your stomach – that physical hunger – and those hunger symptoms will subside.

Emotional hunger

Emotional hunger, is in fact, not really hunger at all.

Emotional hunger is when you have an emotional need.

That emotional need could be anything – a need for connection, human touch, love, understanding, compliance.

Emotional hunger might come in the form of a desire to connect to your parents or loved ones from childhood, recreating the safety that you perhaps felt.

Emotional hunger could, in fact – be boredom, or loneliness – both very, very common.

It could be stress – perhaps with a relationship, finances, work life or something else.

The possibilities as to why you might feel ‘emotionally hungry’, really are endless.

What do they all have in common?

They can’t be ‘solved’ with food.

Eating for emotional reasons won’t fulfil your emotional needs.

In fact, not only will you not feel satisfied – you’ll wind up feeling even worse because you’ve ‘over eaten’ or ‘binged’ on something ‘naughty’. You’ve created a whole new set of problems right there.

So why do we turn to food to solve emotional hunger?

It’s simple, really – we desire pleasure.

Not only do we desire pleasure – we desire it really, really quickly.

Let’s face it, in todays society – everything is available instantly. Amazon next day delivery, paid for on a credit card – we don’t have to wait for anything nowadays.

Trouble is, our emotions can’t be solved, long term at least, quite so swiftly.

We turn to food because we desire pleasure

Bored? We want the pleasure of being entertained.

Lonely? We want the pleasure of someone else’s company.

Stressed? We want the pleasure of that stress being removed.

None of those things, necessarily, are available to us instantly.

What is?

Food.

Food is instant pleasure – the type we are eating when we eat emotionally, that is.

Typically that is food high in fat, and/ or sugar – I’m talking cakes, sweets, chocolate, ice cream, crisps, pizza, cheese – you get my drift. After all, no one is ‘emotionally eating’ a head of broccoli now, are they?

Food high in fat and / or sugar is supposed to give us pleasure – back in the caveman days, when we had to forage or hunt for our food, food that was high in fat or sugar meant that it was high in energy – a scarce resource back then.

Fast forward millions of years, and we still get that pleasure – trouble is, the food isn’t scarce anymore. Our brain just doesn’t know that.

How do I know if I’m eating emotionally or genuinely physically hungry?

Two quick tests I like to use are these:

The apple test

If you are genuinely physically hungry, an apple (or carrot, or celery – you get my drift) will satisfy, at least in the short term until you can get something more substantial. Emotional hunger typically manifests as a desire to eat a specific food, right now – nothing else, certainly not an apple, will do.

Post-food check in

Check in with yourself after you’ve eaten. How do you feel? How was the eating experience for you? If you feel comfortable, happy & satisfied, ready to move on with your day – chances are that hunger was physical. If you feel guilty, angry at yourself and unsatisfied – perhaps even with a desire to eat more even though you are already full or even uncomfortably full – then that’s emotional eating.

Crucially – food will never solve the root cause of an emotional issue – it might mask it temporarily, and that might be OK – but at some stage or other, you’ll still need to deal with the issue. 

Breaking free from emotional eating

Don’t worry – we’ll come to that. I have a free guide that I’ve made just for you detailing my 5 tips to break free from emotional eating.

In the meantime though – a word of caution:

None of them will work if you aren’t taking care of yourself at the basic level. I’m talking the boring stuff, like getting enough sleep, drinking enough water and incorporating some sort of relaxation into your life.

One step ahead of me and already have these covered?

Great! Then download my free guide ‘how to stop emotional eating’ and let’s get right to it!

I’ve even included a couple of bonuses in there for you, too! The first is a handy list of feelings to help equip you with the vocabulary you need to express your emotions, something many of us have a remarkably limited capacity to do. The second is a template to help you create your very own ‘emotional toolkit’ – something I use with my clients all the time and a handy resource you can ‘cut out and keep’ for when that emotional hunger strikes.  

What are you waiting for? Download your free copy now and start working on overcoming emotional eating, for good!

Further support

If you need help regarding Binge Eating Disorder or any other eating disorder, please seek support from your GP or other qualified medical professional. Beat and Mind are two charities which can provide additional support and have plenty of resources on their websites.