What You Need to Know About Emotional Eating

The emotional eating pattern is a familiar one. You start the day as usual, waking up and vowing that this will be the day you eat healthy and “stay on plan.” You eat a nutritious breakfast, then grab a quick lunch of coffee and a small wrap. But then the work stress piles on, and you get a call from the school that you need to pick up your child early. Your spouse must work late, and you must figure out dinner.

Before you know it, you are standing in the pantry eating a bag of chips and nibbling a cookie from the new box. Emotional eating, that familiar struggle, has you in its grip again.

But what exactly is emotional eating? Can you stop it?

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating is an impulsive behavior. We feel uncomfortable, and a surge of strong emotions, and we are unsure how to handle these feelings. In turn, we choose food to soothe our souls. Unfortunately, an eating occasion is a temporary event, and the feel-good chemicals released by the brain are a fleeting quick fix.

Often, emotional eating behaviors go back to childhood or early adult years. If you felt emotions and did not know how to manage them, you may have reached for food, or someone may have rewarded you with food to make you feel better. Eventually, our brains recognized this behavior as a reward system.

Emotional eating can lead to physical and mental conditions:

• Rapid weight gain.
• Obesity.
• High blood pressure.
• Rapid heart rate.
• Shortness of breath.
• Feeling out of control.
• Feeling guilt and shame.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.
• Increased risk for a heart attack or stroke.
• Digestive issues.
• Low self-esteem and confidence.
• Body image issues.

Emotional eating is a behavior you can stop. The behavior becomes impulsive, and the urges are strong, but once you recognize the triggering emotions behind the behavior, you can find new ways of coping with stress and other feelings. Although you may give in to emotional eating from time to time, once you gain control over those emotions and find other outlets, you will have a healthier body and mind.

Why It Is Hard to Overcome

The brain is a powerful organ that wants you to be comfortable. When faced with strong emotions, such as sadness, stress, anger, boredom, or loneliness, we can turn to food as a coping mechanism. Our brains recognize this behavior and reward us with a cascade of hormones that boost our mood. When we repeat the pattern, the brain recognizes the behavior and creates a habit.

Now, we are trying to break a habit and ingrained behavior and reward systems that may go back to childhood. This is why it is so challenging to break the habit. It may not be the food itself that is the issue, but the habit of turning to food to stamp out or ignore uncomfortable feelings.

How to Stop Emotional Eating

Ask yourself if your emotional eating episode has become a habit to help you cope with a strong emotion. There are other coping mechanisms that you could try.

For example, if you turn to food when angry, ask yourself if the anger is repressed. Maybe you are not voicing your opinion or speaking up for yourself. You may need to learn how to express yourself diplomatically. Instead of eating, perhaps you could go for a walk or stream a workout video to burn off the extra energy.

See if you can identify the intense emotion that is leading you to emotionally eat. You may want to journal these episodes and analyze your thoughts and feelings. A counselor can help you with new coping mechanisms to improve your health.

Gaps in nutrition can also lead you to eat when not hungry. Are you eating enough nutritious food during your meals? Are you drinking enough water? That feeling of getting “hangry” can drive an emotional eating episode. Dehydration can also make you feel hungrier than you actually are. Keep track of your meals and water intake with a journal and see how it compares to your mood.

Christian Counseling for Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a behavior that our brains embrace because it brings us temporary relief. But this coping mechanism will eventually destroy our physical and mental health. A counselor can help you dig through the reasons you emotionally eat and help you reset your mindset. A healthy and positive mindset can lead to beneficial behaviors with fewer emotional eating episodes.

If you are ready to get started breaking the emotional eating cycle, contact us today at Longview Christian Counseling to schedule a call with a counselor in Longview, Washington.