OVERVIEW:
- What Is Emotional Eating?
- Emotional Eating Causes
- How To Stop Emotional Eating
- Difference between Disordered Eating & Emotional Eating
What is emotional eating? What causes emotional eating? How to stop emotional eating? Do I have disordered eating?
In recent years more and more people have been seeking answers to these questions, when looking to enlist the help of our nutritional counselling services
Important consideration
Level Nutritionist’s own Registered Dietitian, who works with disordered eating clients, says it’s important to keep this point in mind: “While emotional eating is normal, it may potentially be harmful when it is the only coping mechanism that we have for dealing with difficult emotions, or if we end up feeling guilty afterwards.”
What is Emotional Eating:
Emotional eating occurs when food is used to suppress negative emotions such as sadness, guilt, frustration, anxiety, anger, stress, loneliness or fear. In short, it is the practice of consuming food in response to emotions rather than hunger it can also occur when feeling happy.
Causes of Emotional Eating:
Certainly, emotional eating causes are many and varied. In addition, they are both psychological and physiological. Since emotional eating involves the tendency to eat for reasons other than hunger, sufferers often crave foods that are high in calories, high in carbohydrates and also have minimal nutritional value. In addition, these foods typically consist of three highly-palatable ingredients: sugar, salt and fat.
- Stress:
Stress holds primary role in emotional eating because, high levels of stress trigger the release of cortisol that is a hormone. It increases appetite especially for high-fat and sugary foods. Growing levels of stress in our daily lives create a deep need for relaxation and indulgence. At times, a sugary, salty and/or high-fat snack can provide instant, albeit short-lived, relief.
- Emotional Distress and Mental Health:
Feelings of sadness, loneliness, anxiety, or boredom often led individuals to seek comfort in food when people have nothing to do or don’t have a healthy outlet for their emotions. How many times have you reached for a chocolate bar just because it is there? And how many times have you grabbed a bag of potato chips or some popcorn while watching a movie?
Perhaps you made that reach because you simply had nothing else to do. Maybe eating chips while watching your favorite movie or tv show just feels great. Whichever is the case, you simply eat for reasons other than hunger, and the trigger behind these bouts of eating is related to your emotions.
- Childhood Habits:
Many people develop emotional eating patterns in childhood where they were rewarded with treats or comforted with food either for a celebration or a compensation to change mood. Associating food with a job well done is a dangerous form of operant conditioning. According to Simply Psychology, operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior.
Through operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a particular behavior and a consequence (Skinner, 1938). Food can come to be associated as comfort and therefore a go-to when feeling yourself in need of some comfort. As pioneered by the work of B.F. Skinner, positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding.
4. Food addiction
Addiction to certain foods is certainly one of the causes of emotional eating.
When you eat highly-palatable, feel-good foods, endorphins are released into the body, resulting in a feeling of pleasure. Repeatedly seeking to reproduce this pleasant effect can swiftly lead to food addiction.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, recent research suggests that “foods, particularly highly palatable and energy-dense ones, may be “addictive” in ways similar to drugs of abuse. These findings have consequently led to the conceptualization of ‘food as drugs.”
The same article goes on to say that both “food and drugs exploit similar pathways in the brain. Increased drug taking and high-fat diets increase sensitization of reward pathways, which in turn influences preference for addictive substance and hyper-palatable foods and increases craving and intake.”
- Social Influences: Social gatherings often revolve around food, and emotional eating can be exacerbated by peer pressure or cultural norms.
6. Food can be a distraction
For many, food also serves as a distraction.
For example, if you’re facing a problem in a relationship with a loved one or if you’re worried about an upcoming exam, food can be used as a vehicle to take your mind off those matters through indulgence and the accompanying feel-good factor.
- Emotional eating and ads
Moreover, emotional eating has been conditioned by our TV viewing habits, particularly by ads. That is, advertising has been instrumental in the positive association we develop with highly palatable but unhealthy foods. Such chronic exposure certainly shapes our thinking. As a result, many of us adopt the expected behavior portrayed in these ads.
Whatever the reason you emotionally eat, the end result is often the same. The solution is always only temporary and at the end of it all, you will only add on another emotion, and that is guilt over what and how much you have eaten. This could end up throwing you into a vicious cycle that gets endlessly repeated, potentially harming your health and causing weight gain.
Impacts of Emotional Eating:
As this phenomenon is interlinked with our emotions so, it causes drastic effects on our mental health in the form of depression, anxiety and mood swings. Ultimately, it impacts our social and behavioral patterns. Side by side emotional eating leads to physical health impacts that are mentioned below.
- Weight Gain and Obesity:
Emotional eating often involves consuming high-calorie, sugary, and fatty foods, leading to weight gain and potentially obesity.
- Digestive Issues:
Overeating or consuming unhealthy foods can cause digestive problems such as bloating, constipation, or acid reflux.
- Nutrient Deficiency:
Relying on comfort foods can lead to an imbalanced diet, resulting in deficiencies in essential nutrients.
4. Increased Risk of Chronic Diseases:
Long-term emotional eating can increase the risk of developing chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome.
How to stop emotional eating:
- Cope with emotions with kindness:
It’s important to recognize that food restriction itself can trigger a loss of control around certain foods, which often feels like emotional eating
It can feel like difficult emotions are driving the need to eat, but that’s not always the case. It’s important to be curious about your eating behaviors. If you find yourself emotionally eating, ask yourself:
Have I been eating enough over the last few days?
Is it possible that I have been too busy to eat consistently?
Have I been restricting certain foods?
These types of questions can help to clarify the root cause of your behavior.
Of course, food can also be a source of comfort, relaxation, and joy. Therefore, it’s understandable that we would sometimes turn to food to help cope with difficult emotions.
And while there’s nothing wrong with using food in that way, it can be problematic if that is your only coping mechanism. Food won’t solve the issues that are causing uncomfortable emotions, so there may be more helpful ways to appease and deal with those feelings, separate from food.
Identify the trigger
What is causing you to emotionally eat? A good way to identify patterns in eating is to start a food and mood journal. Every time you eat, record what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, how hungry you are and also what emotions you are feeling prior to eating.
Furthermore, ask yourself, am I really hungry? Why do I want that chocolate bar?
Distinguish between craving and hunger
Knowing the difference between craving and hunger can contribute to greater self-awareness.
Craving
- sudden
- temporary
- mental response to a situation
- involves immediate satisfaction followed by guilt
- only certain foods will satisfy
Hunger
- gradual
- permanent
- physiological response to a need
- involves replenishment and satiety followed by satisfaction
- any food will satisfy
Be mindful:
To be mindful is to be conscious of what is happening and why it is happening.
How to be mindful to stop emotional eating
- Take a few minutes prior to eating and ask yourself “Am I really hungry or am I just craving?”, “Is my stomach growling?”.
- When eating, eat slowly and without distraction.
- Take the time to enjoy your food and actually taste it.
- Actually, focus on your food. Focus on eating it.
- Make sure to chew your food properly and not just inhale it.
- Last, it’s important to learn to eat until you are no longer hungry, rather than stopping only when you’re full.
6. Find healthier ways to cope with life’s stresses
Go out for a walk, a run or join a fitness class.
Play with your dog or cat. According to Science Daily, animals have been shown to reduce stress in people.
Another way to relieve stress is to do something you enjoy: a hobby. Read a good book, listen to some relaxing music, do some crafts, sew or knit, play some solitaire–anything
8. Try meditation, yoga or breathing exercises
These are no doubt time-tested ways to relieve anxiety and stress and, in turn, help manage or stop emotional eating.
YouTube has some excellent meditation, yoga and breathing exercise videos available from a multitude of hosts.
9. Seek professional help
If you have tried the previously suggested methods and still find yourself emotionally eating, then it may be time to find some professional help.
Professional help comes in many forms: counsellor, therapist, a life coach, a dietitian or nutritionist. These professionals can look for signs of disordered eating patterns, which can be connected to your emotional eating. Frequently, these professionals work in conjunction with one another to help those struggling with emotional eating.
Emotional eating and disordered eating
While emotional eating can be a component of disordered eating, it is only a partial component. There may be other issues involved that require professional help.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, disordered eating may have a variety of symptoms and are akin to symptoms of full-blown eating disorders.
Disordered eating symptoms may include:
- significant fluctuations in weight
- stomach disturbances
- changes in bowel habits
- changes in menstrual regularity
- feeling dizzy or weak
- fainting
- being preoccupied with food
- frequent dieting
- extreme fasting
- excessive concern with own weight or weight loss
- worry about consuming too many calories
- unhealthy preoccupation with body image, body size/shape
- significantly limiting or restricting certain foods or food groups
Irrespective of symptoms, disordered eating can be detrimental to your health, and as such, help should be sought quickly. The earlier the diagnosis and treatment, the better the chances of management and recovery.
Conclusion
Emotional eating can be a complicated matter. Most likely, it is something that has grown up with you or stayed by your side most of your life. As such, it can be difficult to cope with. But rest assured help is out there. With sustained professional help, the hurdle of emotional eating can be managed, if not overcome altogether. If you require assistance in this area, or any other, you can contact us for an appointment or book a free consultation with our dietitians We offer online dietitian services.