From Stress Eating to Mindful Nourishment: Transforming Your Emotional Connection to Food
“I want to see food as just fuel,” is a common goal I hear from individuals struggling in their relationships with food.
Food is more than just sustenance though; it's a source of comfort, celebration, and connection. However, for many of us, food can also become a way to cope with our emotions, leading to a complicated and sometimes unhealthy relationship.
And while emotional eating is often painted as a “bad” habit, it is not solely or inherently a negative behavior. We turn to food as a means of self-soothing when our emotions feel like too much to handle. Receiving this type of assistance from food is actually beneficial—the act of eating is protecting us from psychological damage.
However, when emotional eating is your sole or primary means of coping when you’re faced with challenging emotions, it can feel as though food has a powerful spell on you, making you feel like you lack control, or producing physical and emotional side effects like digestive discomfort, regret, and weight gain. And while, just like emotional eating, weight gain is not inherently bad, it can feel bad when it’s due to poor emotional health.
I don’t believe it’s a realistic goal to remove all emotional connection to food.
Who honestly wants to eat chicken and broccoli to celebrate their birthday instead of cake? Or to stop reminiscing about cooking with your grandmother in her kitchen whenever you make one of her recipes?
Instead, we can learn to transform our relationships with food, so that it can remain a source of comfort, celebration, and connection, and we can eat in a way that’s purposeful, nourishing, and always in control.
The Rollercoaster of Emotional Eating
Have you ever found yourself reaching for a pint of ice cream after a long and stressful day? Or perhaps indulging in a bag of chips when feeling sad or bored? You're not alone. Emotional eating is a common phenomenon where we use food as a way to soothe or distract ourselves from uncomfortable feelings. As you may have experienced yourself, it can provide temporary relief, but often leaves us with guilt and regret afterward.
Sometimes, an overeating episode can follow a period of food restriction, for weeks, days, or even hours. For example, when you wake up in the morning and you tell yourself you’re going to have a “perfect” day of eating, following all your plans—but by the time the evening hits and you’re under the weight of all the stressors of the day, the ice cream is just too tempting to pass up.
You feel like you’ve been in a pinball machine, pinging back and forth between feeling virtuous, strong, and proud for eating nourishing, healthy foods…and breaking down in the face of vicious cravings, filling a black hole in your stomach with sweet and salty forbidden foods as your mind swells with disappointment and shame.
The highs and lows of this roller coaster are dramatic and exhausting. It’s no wonder emotional eating gets a bad rap.
So how can we get off this nerve-wracking ride?
Understanding Emotional Hunger vs. Physical Hunger
One of the first steps towards healing our relationship with food is learning to differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger.
Physical hunger usually builds up gradually over time. It's a natural response to the body's need for nourishment after a period of not eating. When you're physically hungry, you may experience physical sensations such as a growling stomach, weakness, light-headedness, or an empty feeling in your stomach. Also, when you're physically hungry, you're generally open to a variety of food options and are more likely to make balanced and satisfying food choices.
Emotional hunger often comes on suddenly and can feel intense. It's not related to the body's need for nutrition but rather to emotional triggers. You might feel the urge to eat when you're stressed, sad, bored, lonely, or anxious, seeking comfort or distraction. Emotional hunger tends to lead to cravings for specific comfort foods, often high in sugar, fat, or salt. These foods are chosen for their immediate emotional relief rather than their nutritional value.
Practicing mindfulness and self-awareness is essential in honing your ability to differentiate between these two types of hunger. This is one of the first skills students learn when they enroll in Food Body Self. It allows you to make more conscious choices about when, what, and why you eat, ultimately leading to a more balanced and nourishing relationship with food.
Mindful Eating: A Path to Awareness
Mindful eating is a powerful tool that encourages us to eat with intention and awareness. Instead of devouring our meals on autopilot, we learn to savor each bite, paying attention to flavors, textures, and how our body responds.
People who eat mindfully often eat less, savor eating more, and select foods consistent with desirable health benefits.
When we don't eat mindfully, we're disconnected from our bodies, which means we’re not paying attention to how we feel physically or emotionally. The primary result of disconnection is we can often overeat (and in some cases undereat), because we're not paying attention to our hunger cues.
Another downside of not paying attention is that we feel less satisfaction from our food. In addition to experiencing less pleasure, this can also lead to overeating.
As discussed above, mindless eating can also be a coping mechanism for uncomfortable emotions, from boredom to sadness to anger. Practicing mindful eating helps us become attuned to our body's cues, helping us distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. It also creates a space for us to pause and reflect on our emotions before turning to food for comfort.
When we use food to cover up the issue rather than examining what the emotion is telling us, problems are left to fester and emotions or trauma are left unprocessed.
This can lead to a host of further problems such as depression, heightened anxiety, irritability, overwhelm, social withdrawal, decreased concentration, and apathy.
Mindful eating is such a useful tool for addressing emotional eating because it helps you cultivate awareness, emotional regulation, and healthier responses to your body's cues and emotional triggers (see below). It fosters a more balanced and sustainable approach to eating that supports both physical and emotional well-being.
Building a Toolkit for Emotional Well-Being
Building a toolkit for emotional well-being is an essential step in breaking the cycle of using food as a primary coping mechanism for emotional stress or discomfort.
Developing a range of coping mechanisms means you have multiple options for managing your emotions. Relying solely on food may not effectively address the underlying emotional issues. Emotional eating often masks deeper emotional issues or triggers.
Activities in your toolkit encourage you to confront these issues directly. Having options ensures you can choose the most appropriate and effective strategy for each situation.
Deep breathing and meditation, for example, can help calm the nervous system and reduce stress levels. Journaling allows you to process and reflect on your emotions, while physical activities like walking release endorphins, which can improve mood. However, it can sometimes be tough to engage in these activities when we’re already in a state of high emotional discomfort.
Ultimately, our emotional well-being relies on our ability to stay present with uncomfortable emotions.
This is much easier said than done. All building our emotional intelligence requires is to become skilled at naming our emotions (e.g. jealous, rejected, nervous), staying aware of arising sensations in our bodies, and mindfully observing passing thoughts. Sounds pretty simple, right?
However, these abilities are precisely what we are avoiding when we seek to escape uncomfortable emotions using food, and it can be invaluable to have the guidance of a coach or other professional during this learning process.
Cultivating Self-Compassion
A lack of self-compassion can fuel the rollercoaster of emotional eating. We may criticize ourselves for feeling certain emotions or judge ourselves harshly for our eating choices. Feelings of guilt, shame, or self-judgment can exacerbate the cycle by triggering further overeating episodes.
If you want to break the pattern but find that you haven’t been successful at halting the behaviors you don’t want to take, it’s time to take a look at the other side of the emotional eating cycle: your emotions.
Instead of turning against yourself, criticizing and shaming yourself for overeating, using self-compassion means treating ourselves with the same gentleness, kindness, and understanding we would readily extend to a friend facing similar challenges.
This shift in perspective creates an empathetic, nurturing space within ourselves, fostering an environment where we can engage in mindful and intentional nourishment rather than succumbing to impulsive consumption driven by negative emotions.
By practicing self-compassion, we can begin to release the grip of self-criticism and develop a more balanced and caring relationship with both our emotions and our food choices—and ourselves.
Forgiving Yourself and Moving Forward
In the same vein as self-compassion, forgiving yourself and moving forward is a fundamental aspect of the process of transforming your emotional connection to food. This journey is not linear, and setbacks are inevitable. It's essential to recognize that reverting to old habits is a natural part of the process and doesn't signify failure but rather a temporary stumbling block.
In these moments, self-forgiveness becomes a powerful tool. It's easy to succumb to self-criticism and guilt, but this approach can be counterproductive. Instead, embracing self-compassion is key. By treating yourself with kindness and understanding, you acknowledge that you are human and that making mistakes is part of personal growth.
Moreover, these setbacks can offer valuable insights. They provide opportunities to learn about your triggers and vulnerabilities, enabling you to develop more effective strategies for the future.
Approaching setbacks with curiosity rather than self-condemnation can lead to a deeper understanding of your relationship with food and emotions.
Remember, the journey to healing your relationship with food is a process that requires time and patience. Each step, even those that seem like missteps, contributes to your growth and transformation. By forgiving yourself and maintaining a forward-looking attitude, you can continue progressing along the path to a healthier and more mindful connection with food.
Our relationship with food is complex and multifaceted, often reflecting our emotions, experiences, and coping mechanisms. By understanding the connection between emotions and eating habits, and the purpose emotional eating serves, we can embark on a journey towards more mindful nourishment and greater emotional well-being.
Within the Food Body Self program, mindful eating, self-compassion, and alternative coping strategies are the building blocks of this transformation.
As we learn to differentiate between emotional and physical hunger, we open the door to a healthier and more harmonious relationship with our food, our bodies, and ourselves.