Do you sometimes you feel like you are reaching for food when you’re not angry? Maybe you’re sad and you grab a box of biscuits? Or you feel bored and end up eating a pack of crisps in front of the TV, without even really noticing that you have? You've not really enjoyed what you ate but you still crave more?

Then I can tell you, lovely, that you are probably eating your emotions. You might even have heard the term “emotional eating” and you weren’t really sure what that implied, so let’s discuss this!

What is emotional eating, and how do you know if that’s what you are doing, consciously or not? We talk about emotional eating when we use food to soothe ourselves, and make ourselves feel better - we use food to fill our emotional needs, instead of using it to fill our stomach.

The thing is, most of us haven’t been taught what to do to process our emotions - we’re told to just stop crying, to stop being angry, to stop being sad… not how to stop or to accept and process those emotions.

That's why I want to mention something very important: using food to soothe our emotions is completely normal and we all do it. Think about how it has been engrained in us since we were infants: when a baby cries, the first thing we do is try to feed them. As children, a lot of us were given sweets if we had a boo-boo, a biscuit if we had been good. We have integrated that food comforts us, and as adults, that is often our main coping mechanism for our emotions.

Issues start if you realise that eating your comfort foods is the only way you have to manage and process your emotions, and it triggers guilt, self-criticism, etc.. Or if it happens more and more often and starts causing physical issues such as digestive issues or unwanted weight gain.

That’s when it’s time to start looking into it!

Emotions or Hunger?

The first thing we need to look at is to see if you can spot the difference between your emotions and your hunger.

When we have a complicated relationship with food, if we've been dieting for example, or restricting ourselves in any way, we lose touch with our body’s signals. Unfortunately, that makes it more difficult to understand if we're feeling physical hunger or emotional hunger. Let’s dive into this!

Physical hunger builds gradually - when you learn to listen to your body, you will be able to identify if it’s a small hunger, a medium one, or a big one (the goal being to avoid letting it become a big hunger before you eat, to avoid throwing yourself at food and eating more than you actually needed.) It can be satisfied with pretty much any foods, not just your specific comfort foods, and it comes with physical signs such as your stomach growling, or feeling low on energy.

On the other end, emotional hunger tends to come on suddenly and in the form of cravings for specific comfort foods. Filling up your stomach won’t actually satisfy you, you will more than likely still crave more - as the emotion at the root hasn’t been addressed.

Reading this, you might think that it sounds easy to distinguish the two. The issue is that if you’re not connected to your body and the signals it sends you, it’s more difficult to not confuse the two. Sometimes, emotions can cause physical signs too, such as feeling a tightness in your stomach, and that can make it feel similar to physical hunger. Here is a technique to help you decided if you are physically hungry, or if it is emotional hunger:

Ask yourself “Would I eat a piece of fruit now"? If your answer is “No, I want chocolate/crisps/biscuits (insert any foods that you feel are comforting to you, usually high in calorie, high in carbs and/or high in fats)”, and that craving arrived suddenly and you can’t stop thinking about it, it might well be emotional hunger. Remember, emotional hunger makes you crave specific comfort foods, whereas physical hunger would make you consider most foods.

The effects of emotional eating

Even though it is quite natural for human beings to emotionally eat, it sometimes starts to cause issues in our life, especially if it happens on a regular basis.

The first impact that this has on your life is that it often creates a negative cycle: you eat to soothe your emotions, you’re not left satisfied because the emotion is still there, but you feel guilty and frustrated, and that leads to more eating to comfort yourself. See how that might impact you? That causes stress, anxiety, guilt and it can even impact your self-esteem (”I ate a full box of biscuits, I’ve been so bad, I have no willpower")!

It also has an impact on your relationship with food and with your body. When my clients come to be coached by me, they often mention how this has impacted their digestive system, and their body in terms of weight gain. Because emotional eating has us reach for specific comfort foods, it’s usually not fruit and veg - and if it is, it might very well be the case that you’re trying to control what you eat and you could end up with even more frustration and guilt.

When we're using food to manage our emotions, we tend to eat quickly, without paying attention to what we're eating or enjoying it for that matter, and we don't even realise how much we've eaten. And we still crave more.

The issue is that emotional eating doesn’t address the root of the issue you’re encountering: the emotion is still there. It might have been soothed (and buried) for a while, but it hasn’t been accepted and processed.

Identify your emotional triggers

An important thing to do when looking at your emotional eating is to look at what triggers it. The most common triggers are stress, boredom, sadness, loneliness, or even happiness.

When it comes to negative emotions, we tend to use food to escape, or to fill up a void we have in our life. Here are some examples I've experienced myself, or heard from my clients, so you can have a better idea of what that could be:

• When you're stressed and you crave quick comfort food

• When you're alone, especially in the evening, and eating is the one thing you look forward to

• When you're bored, and eating keeps you busy

• When you're working but not enjoying what you're doing and you use eating as a break (or a way to procrastinate)

• When you feel upset, and it's just easier to reach for a "treat" than to think about what truly bothers you

But negative emotions are not the only one that can trigger emotional eating! When we're happy, or celebrating we can fall into the “treat mentality”. An example of this could be if you’re often thinking “I had a tough day at work, I deserve this” or “it’s a special occasion, it’s okay if I eat cake even though I’m not hungry”. Most of us actually treat evening meals or snacks as a form of reward for getting through the day. This can lead to emotional eating as we wind down, even if we're not truly hungry.

In all those cases, food provides a short relief, but very quickly, the initial emotion returns and we’re left with guilt. We still don’t feel satisfied, because we haven’t addressed the root of the issue: the emotion itself. Emotions are there to bring our attention to what is happening, so instead of numbing them with food, we need to address them.

Practices to start managing the emotional eating triggers

The first practice to implement is simply to observe: when an emotional eating episode has happened, take a minute to reflect on what is happening and what could have triggered it. You could keep a journal of this, and try to identify patterns. You might find that there's something in your life that causes you negative emotions on a regular basis, and that you might need to make some changes!

Mindful eating is the other key strategy to put in place when you want to overcome your emotional eating habits. What is mindful eating? Well, it’s all about being mindful when you eat - it starts with slowing down when you eat, taking time to savour each and every bite, focusing on the flavours, textures, and really taking the time to enjoy what you eat without distractions. Check in with your body during your meal: are you still hungry? Are you still enjoying what you are eating? The goal is to be present while you eat, to do it consciously, as opposed to the super quick eating of emotional foods.

And last but not least… get yourself some support. If that’s something that you have done for years, getting support to navigate this is important. Being able to discuss your challenges with someone who can guide and give you all the strategies and keys you need will change your journey.

That’s what my clients work on in my Body Freedom 1:1 coaching programme, and if you want to be guided on that journey too, you can book your consult here 💚