How to Untangle Your Attachment to Food
At the height of my struggles with emotional eating, binging, and purging, food was on my mind ALL. THE. TIME.
What am I going to eat? When am I going to eat next? Will I be able to stick to what I’ve allowed? Will today be a good food day? I shouldn’t eat that. Why did I eat so much? I didn’t plan this in. Why can’t I control myself? What is wrong with me? I need to do better.
And on and on and on and on and on. 😵💫
I know I’m not alone in feeling crazy. Here are some food stories from newcomers to the Food Body Self community:
I'm a foodaholic.
I think I’m addicted to food.
I'm overruled by the desire [for short-term gratification].
I have a very hard time stopping myself [from emotional eating], I'm like this big Mack truck going no matter what.
Food is always on my mind!
I feel powerless.
One of the top complaints I hear from community members and students is that food has become an obsession and it’s taking up WAY too much brain space.
Not only is it frustrating to feel like you’ve lost control—and that you can’t focus on anything else—food preoccupation can lead to:
Physical discomfort and digestive issues
Increased feelings of anxiety, self-blame, depression, guilt, shame
Relationship issues (whether you’re hiding the problem from your partner or not), and
Your wallet can take a hit both from buying food you don’t even want to be eating and from your attempts to solve the problem.
If you’ve reached this point of distress with food, here’s the deal:
Food attachment is NOT due to a lack of self-control or planning.
Many diet programs and coaches would have you believe that the answer to all your problems is more nutrition education. But let me save you the time, money, and heartache:
Being told what to eat is NOT going to solve your food issues.
I’m willing to bet you already know what a healthy diet looks like, or at the very least, you’ve got the basics down: mostly whole, unprocessed foods including a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and lean protein sources. (“Mostly” being a keyword here—you probably also know that foods that don’t fit this description do have a place in a balanced diet.)
So if you already have the knowledge, what’s stopping you from following through on your plans?
Your relationship with food.
Your food relationship is comprised of your beliefs and perceptions about food (which are interwoven with your thoughts about health, your body, yourself, etc.), your emotions evoked by food, and your eating behaviors.
Everyone has a relationship with food, and falls somewhere on the spectrum from optimal eating to disordered eating to having an eating disorder. (See “How to Tell if Your Eating is Disordered—and When to Seek Help”.)
If you suspect that you have an unhealthy attachment to food, here are three ways you can work to break that attachment and end food preoccupation:
[Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor or psychologist. The information contained on this website is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or disorder including eating disorders. If you think you have a problem, you might start with a brief screening survey from the National Eating Disorders Association here.]
Build Clarity
The first step toward detaching yourself from food preoccupation is to understand what your relationship with food is like today. This will take some self-exploration, which you can start by asking the following questions:
When do you eat food that you don’t want to be eating? Why?
When do you avoid eating? Why?
What does food mean to you?
What role do you want food to play in your life?
What thoughts arise when you think about certain food choices vs. others?
Do you feel restricted? What do you wish you could eat?
What emotions does food evoke?
What emotions do you use food to cover up?
Asking these questions is important because if you don’t understand where your eating habits come from, you’ll never be able to change them successfully and sustainably.
Build Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is your ability to perceive, understand, and manage your emotions.
In building clarity, you answered some questions that helped you understand what emotions food evokes, and what emotions you use food or food avoidance to bypass.
Now you’ll learn how to manage those emotions without food.
Building emotional intelligence involves increasing your ability to get specific when naming emotions you’re feeling (known as emotional granularity), and connecting with the physiological changes you experience, such as noting that your stomach turns when you feel anxious.
In addition to getting better at naming emotions and how they feel, you’ll want to practice sitting with emotions without distracting yourself from them with food or screens or anything else. This generally involves increasing your distress tolerance, or your ability to manage emotional stress, which is a skill that takes practice.
As your emotional intelligence increases, you’ll be able to cope with difficult emotions without relying on food or food avoidance for self-soothing. In other words, you’ll resolve a major reason why desire for food can feel uncontrollable.
Change Your Mindset
In nearly every, if not every case, people who experience food attachment have thoughts about food, dieting, their bodies, exercise, and themselves that contribute to an unhealthy relationship with food.
For example:
“I can't leave myself alone with [trigger food].”
“I've let myself down.”
“Why can’t I be stronger around food?”
“I’ll feel better if I can just lose x lbs.”
“My body looks disgusting.”
“[Type of exercise] is the fastest way to lose weight.”
“[Example] is an unhealthy food, I can’t eat that while I’m trying to lose weight.”
A few ways to change your thoughts are to:
Reframe unhelpful thoughts
Modify thoughts you don’t yet believe—but want to
Find supporting evidence for new thoughts
Aim for workability (are your thoughts working for you or against you?)
Identify and correct thinking errors
How does this help you change your feelings and behaviors? Let’s look at an example. Which beliefs do you think will serve you best?
A) “I’m broken. My body looks terrible and it’s a reflection of my terrible insides.”
or
B) “I’m learning new ways of processing my emotions to change my behavior around food. My body deserves kindness and respect, no matter what it looks like.”
In example A, the person’s thoughts are self-defeating, critical, and shaming. When you think thoughts like that, the resultant negative feelings destroy motivation to take positive action.
In example B, we haven’t lied or twisted anything. The person in question (you, perhaps?) is truly learning new ways to process their emotions. And they may not like the way their body looks, but they can understand it does still deserve care and respect.
Thoughts like this mitigate negative emotions and help pave the way for more consistent, positive, health-promoting behaviors.
If you’re struggling with an unhealthy or uncontrollable attachment to food, you’re not alone.
But I must gently tell you a harsh truth: Many folks in your place mistakenly believe that resolving this attachment will come from finding a magic willpower reserve that will allow them to stick to a diet consistently, lose the weight they want, and ABRACADABRA! The attachment will relieve itself.
Unfortunately, that’s not how to undo the knot. Another diet will almost certainly exacerbate any food issues you currently have.
However, that doesn’t mean there’s no hope. Untangling your attachment to food IS possible, if you’re willing to divert your attention from what you eat toward WHY you’re eating.
If you look at the thoughts and feelings that are driving unhealthy eating habits, you’ll not only be able to understand your behaviors and stop blaming your lack of self-control, you’ll empower yourself to blaze new healthy habit trails.
Your mindset—not your meal plan—holds the key to your food freedom.