Emotional Eating: Coping with Food as Comfort

I love to celebrate any win, no matter how big or small, with a pastry. Over tax season, when I signed and sent the paperwork over, my husband and I went directly to the bakery to indulge.

I also mourn my losses over a comfort meal. If I’ve had a hard day at work, my husband will have my favorite food waiting for me to drown my sorrows when I get home.

Food is more than simple fuel to keep your body going. It is also a source of comfort, coping, culture, and even habit.

Understanding that emotional eating is normal will help you to unlock strategies to overcome harmful habits that may be slowing down your weight loss progress.

You don’t need to give up celebrating birthdays with a slice of cake to reach your goals, but recognizing your triggers, being mindful about your habits, and finding other healthy coping skills will help you to be more successful at maintaining a healthy weight.

It will probably help strengthen your mental and emotional health too.

Why We Use Food for Comfort

Food is more than just fuel. You eat to satisfy a craving, to sooth negative emotions, to participate in a family or cultural tradition, or to celebrate a birthday or accomplishment.

Food is more than just simple fuel because it triggers an emotional response in our brains. This is actually an evolutionary trait that humans developed for survival.

Back when we were hunter-gatherers, food was scarce. When we were able to source food in abundance, it was important to indulge in high volumes, because we didn’t know the next time we would see that much food again.

Now, food is abundant. While the availability of food is different, our brains are still wired the same way, so we still experience an positive emotional response to eating that keeps us wanting more.

Let’s talk about the neurological, emotional, and cultural, reasons why we might overindulge.

Neurological responses

Obviously, there are important biological reasons our brains trigger hunger and satiety cues.

When you need to eat, your brain creates hormones like ghrelin which stimulate hunger. When you’re full, your brain produces leptin which tells your body know it’s time to stop eating.

But like we said, hunger is not always black and white. Food, especially indulgent foods high in fat, sugar, or carbohydrates, also stimulate the pleasure centers of our brain, creating rewarding feelings when we eat.

Over time, the brain learns that these foods make you feel happy and this connection can become habit-forming, and you continue to indulge to get those good feelings.

On the other side of the coin, stress hormones like cortisol can also trigger hunger. So, when you’re stressed, you’re more likely to reach for indulgent foods.

Emotional triggers:

Now that you understand how stress is connected to eating, you may be starting to see why you tend to reach for your favorite foods in response to your emotions.

When we talk about emotional eating, we are generally referring to negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, or sadness.

As an example, I had an important exam coming up that I was studying for, and on my desk was a bowl full of my favorite Lindor Truffles. By the time I finished studying, half the bowl was gone and my desk was littered with empty foils.

Without even realizing it, I was using chocolate to elicit a positive emotional response due to the stress I was feeling.

Another example might be a person who mindlessly polishes off a whole bag of potato chips in front of the T.V. They weren’t necessarily hungry, but were eating in response to the feeling of boredom.

The salt, fat, and simple carbs that make up the chips kept them reaching for more and more and more because of that positive emotional response.

Cultural Associations

Have you ever been at a birthday party and eaten a really terrible grocery store cake? It was dry, overly sweet, and covered in frosting that tasted mostly of food coloring.

Even though you may not have even been hungry or even particularly like cake, you ate the whole thing. This is an example of food as tradition, or cultural eating.

This isn’t always a bad thing! For example, maybe your grandmother makes a delicious traditional meal from your culture on special occasions.

Whatever your cultural food traditions are, it’s important to be aware of these habits and whether you are participating out of obligation or true desire.

These sorts of food associations can be closer tied to subconscious habit than an actual want for the food itself. Being unaware of your own feelings and desires might cause you to make poor decisions about when to participate or refrain.

The Challenge of Eating Less

Food can be emotional. It can be a coping mechanism, a reward, or a tie to your culture.

Eating less can trigger more than just hunger, but an emotional response of loss, irritability, or even sadness because you are giving up the coping mechanisms that you have been reliant on for years.

If you are an emotional eater, you are now forced to give up the habits that have provided comfort or distraction. Giving up any habit is hard, but especially those that help you cope with hard feelings.

On top of the grief of letting go, you may experience other hard emotions as a result of calorie restriction such as irritability. Even if your body is physically satiated, your mind resists change, and might create feelings of deprivation or scarcity that put you in danger of bingeing.

Recognizing that food is emotional and understanding why is the first step to building healthier habits.

We never want to rely on willpower alone to restrict food. Rather, it’s important to build new habits and coping mechanisms into your routine to replace what emotional eating was providing you.

Recognizing Emotional Triggers

The first step to overcoming emotional eating is building awareness around what is causing you to eat in the first place.

Food triggers come in many forms, whether emotional or environmental, and recognizing them will help empower you to form different habits.

Keeping a food journal is a great way to start building that awareness. Try to record your mood, hunger level, and what you ate and see if you can identify any patterns over time.

Another simple way to change your habits around food is cultivating mindfulness around your hunger. When you find yourself reaching for that bag of chips, the extra donut in the break room, or your favorite comfort meal, slow down and ask yourself some questions.

Start by asking yourself, “Am I truly hungry right now or am I feeling a different emotion?” Over time, you will learn to identify true hunger cues and be able to differentiate them from emotional ones.

If you aren’t truly hungry, the next question you should ask yourself is, “What emotion am I trying to manage right now?” Maybe you are anxious about a deadline, sad over a hard conversation with a friend, or even just bored.

Once you identify the why behind your emotional eating, you are ready to adopt some coping strategies that don’t involve food.

Healthy Coping Strategies

There are so many healthy ways to manage anxiety or other hard emotions. One of the kindest things you can do for yourself is to build a self-care toolbox you can turn to when hard emotions arise.

What we mean by this is start to pay attention to what habits make you feel better when you are struggling mentally or emotionally.

For example, going for a walk, getting in an easy workout, or dancing to your favorite song helps to relieve stress and trigger happy emotions by creating endorphins.

Maybe you need a healthy way to release hard emotions. Writing it out in a journal, talking to a trusted friend, or seeing a therapist are all ways to express yourself safely.

Meditation or breath work is another way to calm down your nervous system and get you through a moment of crisis. You could also find some hobbies or creative outlets like drawing, painting, knitting, or sculpting to engage your hands.

One of my favorite hobbies is coloring in simple, cute coloring books with alcohol markers. It feels meditative to fill in the bold shapes and cute animals.

When you know what makes you feel better when you’re down, it’s easier to reach for those tools instead of the bag of chips. You might even keep a physical list on paper or in your phone that you can refer to when you need it most.

Practicing Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is simply the practice of slowing down and increasing your awareness during meals and snacks.

Cultivating mindfulness around food will help you to overcome emotional eating by creating awareness around why you are reaching for food. You will also get in tune with your body and its natural hunger and satiety cues.

Many of us eat so quickly, or eat while distracted by our phones or televisions, that we have a hard time recognizing when our bodies are actually full.

To practice mindful eating, try to slow down and ask yourselves the questions we talked about before: “Am I eating because I’m hungry,” and “What is my body craving?”

Make decisions that support your healthy by creating balanced plates including protein, complex carbohydrates, and fresh fruits and veggies.

Sit down without distractions and allow yourself to fully experience your meal, noting the taste, texture, color, feeling, and smell of each bite.

Finally, practice gratitude for the food and for your body for supporting your health.

When to Seek Support

Binge eating disorder (BED) is the overconsumption of food on a recurring basis. Patients are found to eat more rapidly during an episode of BED. They will also eat when no physical signs of hunger are present and will continue eating past the point of feeling uncomfortable or even ill.

These episodes are accompanied by a feeling of lost control, depression, or anxiety and can occur with other compulsive disordered eating behaviors such as purging, otherwise known as bulimia.

Disordered eating is a serious condition that requires the intervention of medical and mental health professionals.

If you think that you are suffering from binge eating disorder, reach out to your medical provider for support in overcoming this difficult situation.

Final Thoughts

Food is not just fuel, it’s emotional. And that’s just human, nothing to feel bad about!

However, emotional eating can impact your health. When you habitually overeat, you may gain weight and suffer other health impacts such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, or type 2 diabetes.

Emotional eating can be attributed to neurological, emotional, and cultural triggers. Triggers can be both positive or negative, and recognizing the difference is important. Overcoming these triggers means replacing your coping mechanisms with healthier techniques.

To overcome emotional eating, start by cultivating awareness of your own unique triggers, build your self-care toolbox by finding healthy coping mechanisms you can turn to, and practice mindfulness around food.

Change takes time and setbacks are part of the process, so be kind to yourself and recognize that you are building new habits. That’s hard, and you should be proud of yourself for taking this on!

As always, the team at TeleHealthNP is always here to support you on your weight loss journey.