When it comes to understanding emotional eating we realise that sometimes we eat in response to our mind without consulting our bodies…
Our connection with food and emotions is a very primitive one, it starts at birth; it is created the minute we are fed our first meal of milk and experience the wonderful feeling of safety and satiety together. A baby is born with two main needs, the need for bonding, physical closeness and safety and the need for nourishment. When a baby is held and fed at the same time, both these needs are being satisfied together and this is where food and feelings intersect and fuse for the first time.
It is important to understand that this connection happens at an unconscious level so please do not beat yourself about your reaching out for food as comfort, we may say that we are biologically programmed to focus on food when under stress.
Feeling hungry is a natural experience, however we sometimes eat not because we are physically hungry but because our heart is hungry; this is what we mean by understanding emotional eating.
Emotional eating is when we eat in response to our mind without consulting our bodies to check if our stomach really is hungry. There are many emotional reasons for eating; we may eat because we are upset and need a treat, because we are happy and need to celebrate, because we are sad and need comfort, because we are angry and failed to express this anger, because we are frustrated, bored or lonely and needed something to fill the time.
When we eat in response to emotional hunger we often reach out for junk or comfort food and also it is usually done without being mindful.
We also often eat due to external cues rather than an empty hungry tummy. For example we eat because it looks good, or we didn’t eat it when we were dieting; because its lunch time, because we are meeting friends for a coffee or because we are attending a social activity.
The key tool to breaking the compulsive eating pattern is to eat when we are physically hungry. Our bodies are very reliable, if we listen hard enough we will learn to recognize when we are hungry, if we listen closely we will hear our body speak even if it is a very faint whisper. We have over time lost the ability to distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger; we have become out of touch with our bodies, but listening closely will help us make the distinction between eating for our heart or for our stomachs.
Listening closely will also help us realize when we have had enough to eat.
The latter being quite a tough challenge especially when we are eating for reasons besides physical hunger. This is because we are trying to satisfy something besides hunger so food will not really do the trick, what we need from the food goes beyond nourishing our body and therefore it will be hard to stop eating.
Understanding emotional eating and then breaking the pattern of emotional eating is hard as it is often a pretty hardwired response in us. However we do have the power within us to do this. There is so much that is beyond our control, however, our responses, our behavior, our attitudes are one thing we can control, they belong to us and we have power over them.
Binge eating often means that we have handed our power over to food, it is the food that holds the power and we feel that we have no control over our actions. The urge to emotionally eat is bigger than us.
It is very important to redefine this dynamic in our minds, take back the power and shrink the power of compulsive eating. This is quite challenging and often takes a lot of mental effort but needs to be done if we are to break free from the cycle of reaching out to food to satisfy other needs rather than hunger.
Let’s take a look at emotions.
These are a very important human experience, their aim is to transmit information to us about what is going on in our inside world, in our heart and mind. Some emotions are easier to experience than others and often we go out of our way to not allow ourselves to experience the more difficult or distressing ones including; loneliness, boredom, fear, anger, helplessness, anxiety, frustration are but a few.
Focusing on food can be a perfect escape to dealing with difficult feelings. Food helps distract and comfort us so that we do not experience those feelings. However feelings cannot be banished, they can be buried but not banished. The only way for a feeling to fade is to allow it to be fully experienced no matter how distressing it is, burying it will only store it somewhere in our body, inhibiting us from feeling true joy and spontaneity.
Turning to food to avoid feeling may initially be an easy way out however it is riddled with many disadvantages including gaining weight, losing personal power and it brings with it secondary feelings.
We eat to try and banish loneliness for example but after eating we not only have to contend with the loneliness but also an added distressing emotion like guilt or shame for our overeating. It is hard to cope with the primary feeling let alone the critical secondary feeling. This can lead to a very negative cycle of eating, feeling bad, eating again to soothe the new feeling, feeling bad again …….
Occasionally using food as a pick-me-up, a reward, or to celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem arises when eating is the primary emotional coping mechanism, when the first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever feeling stressed, upset, angry, lonely, exhausted, or bored. This presents the danger of getting stuck in the above-mentioned unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.
Before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating, you first need to learn how to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. This can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use food to deal with your feelings.
My next article will address the issue of breaking free from this cycle, learning the steps to overcome overeating. In the meantime, pay attention to your hunger pangs and check if they are actually heart pangs. Another tip is to always be mindful, eat slowly eat consciously and with presence, this will help you not overindulge as if your mind is present in the action it can make a conscious decision whether the food is needed or not and also when to stop eating.
Do you find the above helpful in terms of understanding emotional eating? Have you got an experience of your own in this regard which you’d like to share on wham? Contact us or send us an email at [email protected]
Karen Schranz is a Psychotherapist, a Fitness Trainer and also a Group Coach on the Six Pack Revolution.
Click here to check out Karen’s full bio as well as a list of all her Wham published articles
