Emotion: a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
Emotional Eating: the propensity to eat in response to positive and/or negative emotions

Eating and our emotional well-being are intimately intertwined from the time we are born. Upon birth, one of the first associations we make is the connection between comfort (warm embrace) and eating (suckling or bottle feeding). We realize eating helps us to feel better and cared for, therefore it’s no surprise that this same comfort from eating carries through to our adulthood relationship with food.

Yet despite the very reasonable basis for these behaviors, we tend to berate ourselves when we engage with food to assuage our emotional state.

The loss of control and the guilt that we often tend to experience when we find ourselves engaging in emotional eating can feel disheartening and disappointing to say the least. These experiences are often accompanied by fearful thoughts of never being able to feel comfortable around food and eating, worrying that you messed up “yet again” and even though you know better you can't seem to stop. Sound familiar?

First, let me reassure you that you are NOT abnormal or weird or crazy for doing this thing that I hear pretty much 100% of clients saying they do too. Emotional eating is something that we can all acknowledge has happened for us at least one time or another in our lives. There’s a reason why there’s a collective understanding that when we’re upset we want to bury our sorrows in a pint of ice cream, or chips or whatever our chosen comfort food may be.

Using food to cope with our emotions is a tried and true pastime. Yet just because it’s commonplace doesn’t mean that it is the only way to comfort ourselves when experiencing emotional turmoil.

Learning how to cope with and comfort our emotions without food is perhaps one of the most powerful (and most difficult) aspects of intuitive nourishment, as is learning how to know when MINDFUL emotional eating is warranted and appropriate.

A great way to begin exploring your emotional relationship with food and eating is through curious observation. If you’re new to this concept, check out my more in-depth discussion about it here. As you engage with daily reflections of what you observe, you will begin to notice some of your eating patterns, common emotions you experience around food and eating, and what some of your more common triggers are for eating unconsciously. Often there is a powerful emotion behind an “out of control” eating experience or a “lack of willpower” food choice (notice the use of quotations here because emotional eating rarely has anything to do with willpower or control).

So let’s dive into the question of WHY… why do you emotionally eat?

Like I’ve said before, emotional eating has nothing to do with willpower! Negative emotions are powerful triggers for wanting to eat; they signal a deep-seeded need for comfort. One of the first things we learn in life is that we feel better and are comforted by food and eating. Once you understand these physiological reasons, it can be easier to more compassionately nurture yourself before, during, and after you emotionally eat.

By understanding the reasons behind why you emotionally eat, you can discover the solutions to your perceived overeating too.

First and foremost, emotional eating is biological. We emotionally eat because we are seeking comfort and feel-good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. Any guesses as to what foods give us a nice release of these? You guessed it, high sugar and high fat foods, which tend to be the ones we reach for when needing emotional comfort!

Second, emotional eating acts as a distraction. When we eat while feeling heightened emotions, the food acts like a numbing agent to whatever it is that we’re feeling by giving us a distraction. It helps us to temporarily suppress the unwanted emotions and replace them with a short-lived sense of relief because it distracts our minds from the very real emotions we are experiencing.

Finally, emotional eating is a learned habit. How many times were we given special foods as rewards when we were children? Or as a soothing balm when we were sad or angry or bored? From a young age we learn that we feel better when we eat, so when bad things happen, we are trained to reach for food for that same reason - to feel better.

The thing to remember is that if food isn’t your problem, then food isn’t your solution. And usually food isn’t the problem or why we emotionally eat.

We use food as a means to distract us from the real-life struggles and challenges that are showing up in our lives. Emotionally eating, while temporarily soothing us, ends up inhibiting our ability to fully face and tackle our challenges head on. For example, if you’re feeling lonely and wishing you had more friendship in your life, but you instead eat that bag of chips, you’re not thinking about ways to cultivate more friendships and social interactions in your life. If you’re feeling bored and turn to that bag of cookies, you’re distracting yourself from potentially new and exciting creative outlets. If you’re feeling miserable in your relationship or job and you choose to dive into that ooey gooey cheezy pizza, you’re not considering ways to create more positivity in these situations or how to move on (if that’s what feels right to do).

Emotional eating is nearly ALWAYS about distracting from the deeper issues at hand. And as you may be guessing, if you don’t hold space for addressing these deeper issues, then you’ll likely stay feeling stuck.

So what is one to do?

PHASE #1: GATHER DAILY OBSERVATIONS

We don’t know what we don’t know up until the time that we know it. Therefore, we can’t really start to shift what we’re not aware of, right?

Enter daily journaling.

If you’re thinking “oh great, I have to keep a food journal?!?” please don’t worry. You don’t HAVE to do anything, but you might find that you want to after I explain what I mean by daily journaling.

This practice is not like the classic food journals that you’re probably used to keeping when dieting. Dieting journals are all about food tracking - measuring portions, tracking calories, grams, and noting the painstaking details and practices of weight, measuring, calculating, and recording these things. If you’ve ever participated in these types of journals and food tracking, it is exhausting, time consuming and can be down-right defeating. This type of journaling takes much (if not most) of the joy out of our food and eating experiences. Plus when you hyper-focus on the numbers and macronutrient ratios and grams of this, that and the other you are promoting disengagement and mindless eating while deemphasizing food quality and enjoyable nourishment.

That type of journaling is unsustainable and is absolutely NOT what I am asking you to practice here. Your journaling of daily observations is NOTHING like that!

In fact, food is perhaps the least detailed aspect of this journal! Say what? Let me explain.

The reason I’m bringing up daily journaling at all is because it can be a critical tool in helping you to have a concrete understanding of the when, where, how and why PLUS the what of your eating choices and lifestyle habits. It is vitally important to understand how your challenges, triggers, emotions and lifestyle habits all contribute to and participate in your eating behaviors and food choices.

In previous blog posts (here and here), I’ve encouraged you to start getting curious and non-judgmental about how much and what kinds of foods are going into your body as well as the body cues and habits that may or may not be driving them. Now we’re adding in the why.

To do this, I recommend you keep a daily journal. Believe me I can hear the collective groan, but I am here to tell you again that this is NOT like any dieting food journal that you’ve likely ever used.

Unlike traditional dieting journals, this journal is designed as a tool to help you identify the patterns and connections of your eating. When you can start to connect what triggers unwanted eating habits or what contributes to enjoyable eating experiences, you can start to construct a solid strategy for supporting the nourishing foods and eating relationship that you desire.

I wouldn’t be recommending taking time to journal if there weren’t some awesome benefits to the experience:

It provides a medium to more easily observe your eating choices and behaviors.
It helps you to build more awareness of what you’re putting into your body (and why you are choosing these foods in the first place).
It helps to promote more conscious eating and living while building accountability with yourself and your lifestyle practices.
By using a journal you can more easily discover what feels truly satisfying for you in your eating experiences, food choices, food combinations and quantities.
It helps you to identify what triggers unwanted eating behaviors, whether that is overeating, undereating or disconnecting from your nourishment needs.
It helps you to build a practice with yourself of checking in with YOU and your needs each and every day.

So, let’s take a look at what this journal includes shall we?

Daily Data Collection

You can set this journal up as a chart template or a list - really whatever format resonates for you. The key features include the following information:

Before You Eat:

Are you eating a meal or a snack?
What time are you eating?
Where are you eating? (i.e. identify your location)
Who are you eating with? (i.e. are you solo or with others)
Then ask yourself, “What do I want to eat right now?” (This engages your intuition and body wisdom and gives you an opportunity to take note of what your body is asking for - there are no right or wrong answers here!)
Once you’ve identified what you want, then check in with your hunger and rate it (1-10) using your hunger scale.
Finally, before you eat anything, ask yourself “How do I feel?” (This is your opportunity to note any emotions, body sensations or other feelings that you may be experiencing, and which may be contributing to your hunger.)

Denote What You Eat:

Jot down what you eat.
Now, this does NOT have to be super specific. It doesn’t have to include portions or quantities of each macronutrient. It can be “2 slices of pizza and a mixed greens salad” or “2 cookies” or “roasted broccoli/cauliflower with chicken breast and rice with tahini dressing”.
Please please please don’t let your dieting-journal brain take over here - you do NOT need to measure, weigh or calculate anything about the food you’re eating, okay?

After You Eat:

Return to your journal and note how quickly you ate your meal (slow / moderate / fast); this explores your eating pacing and can help you identify if you tend to be a quick, slow, or moderately-paced eater. Again, no judgements here, you’re simply conducting an experiment and are curiously collecting and observing the data.
Revisit your hunger scale and denote where your hunger/satiety now lies. This will provide helpful insight into whether or not you ate enough to feel satisfied.
Note how you FEEL after you eat. Do you notice any differences between how you feel now and how you felt before eating? Were you irritable and foggy headed before eating and are now feeling energized and content? Or is it the opposite? This is all great stuff to note.
Add any additional notes as you like about your eating experience. Remember, this is YOUR experiment so you may conduct it however it feels best to you.

I encourage you to consider practicing this daily journaling for a full week to give yourself a reasonable opportunity to observe yourself and your food/eating relationship as it stands right now.

PHASE #2: CURIOUSLY REVIEW YOUR DATA

If this daily journaling practice resonates with you, a crucial part of this activity is to take a little time once or twice a week to review what you’ve experienced and noted.

This might feel like a difficult action to take, but I HIGHLY recommend it as it can be incredibly helpful in giving you honest feedback about your eating behaviors, triggers, and patterns within your current eating style. As I mentioned before, your journal is like your experiment’s data collection - and this weekly review is your experimental analysis.

It will help to give you the information that you need to make informed decisions. It will help you to identify your intentions and formulate plans and action steps to help you manifest them.

The point of this data review is NOT to promote self-critical comments, but rather curiosity. I encourage you to be much more interested in the WHY of your eating and not the WHAT.

I, of course, understand that this will likely be challenging to do, especially if you are coming from a prolonged dieting history where you’re used to “good/bad” food labeling and attaching your self worth to the food choices you make. It is absolutely understandable if your inner critic starts shouting judgments at you during this practice. Be prepared for it and at these times remind yourself that single individual food choices do NOT strongly impact your well being or your self worth.

Inner Critic Got Your Tongue?

When your inner critic comes a-knocking, a helpful strategy to turn to is the CHILD - FRIEND - COURT assessment. This is a helpful cognitive strategy to help take the wind out of the sails of your negative thoughts and emotions.

You start by first identifying the negative thought that is feeding your negative emotions. Ask yourself what story you are creating and telling yourself to make you feel the way you do?

When you’ve identified this thought then ask yourself the following questions for the CHILD, FRIEND, and COURT:

CHILD = Is this thought something I would say to a child if they were in my situation?
FRIEND = Is this thought something I would say to a dear friend if they were in my situation?
COURT = Would this thought hold up in court? What concrete evidence do I have to support this thought if it is true?

More often than not, the negative thought that our inner critic is trying to force on us is NEVER something we would say to a child, friend or try to argue in court. We have a tendency to speak much more kindly to others than we do to ourselves. This is the tool to turn to when you find yourself getting caught up in negative self-beliefs and emotions because when we start to hold space for and examine our negative thoughts with curiosity, lo and behold they start to lose their power over us.

The Five W’s

Another excellent strategy to use when reviewing your journaling data is to consider the FIVE W’s: who, what, when, where and why.

WHO:

Who did you eat with?
What impact did this have on your eating experience?
Do you prefer to eat with others or alone?

WHAT:

What are you eating?
What types of foods are you tending to eat and/or enjoy most?
What foods do you feel most comfortable eating?
What foods do you tend to restrict or minimally eat?
What trends do you notice in the textures, flavors and types of cuisine you choose to eat?

WHEN:

When during the day/night do you tend to eat?
What times tend to be typical for you?
Is your eating schedule consistent or erratic?
Are there long periods of time between when you eat?
Are your meals occurring evenly throughout the day or are they more concentrated?
Do you find yourself eating late at night or at random times?

WHERE:

Where do you find yourself eating the majority of the time?
What does this environment look like?
Is it relaxing or stressful for you?
How does your location and environment impact your eating experiences?

WHY:

Why did you eat what you did?
Were you experiencing emotional or physical hunger, triggers, or thoughts/beliefs that swayed your eating choices?
Were you experiencing certain thoughts that impacted your eating experiences?

By asking yourself these five W questions you can better identify eating patterns, behaviors and tendencies that you might otherwise miss or overlook.

Journaling Reflections

The final piece to your weekly data review is to ask yourself a series of reflective questions to help you better observe your current eating and food relationship so you can make more informed choices in the future:

Generally, how do you feel about your eating behaviors/patterns?
What patterns do you notice with your eating (if any)?
How often do you listen to and honor what you want to eat? What happens for you when you do? What happens for you when you don’t?
What role do your hunger and satiety cues play in what, how much and when you eat?
What role do your emotions play in what, how much and when you eat?
Do you see any clear and simple shifts you can begin to make to help you to nourish and fuel yourself more regularly or increase your nutrient intake?

By asking yourself these reflective questions you will help yourself hone in on what practices work well for you, which don’t and which ones are in need of support. Going through this process once or twice a week will help to keep you moving forward towards reaching your intentions and cultivating a positive and healthful food and eating relationship.

PHASE #3: ADDRESS THE UNDERLYING FACTORS

Okay, let’s shift back to focusing on the relationship between your emotions and eating.

Let’s start with how to explore the REAL challenges, struggles and stressors that are contributing to you wanting to emotionally eat in the first place.

Firstly, if you find yourself emotionally eating, there is absolutely no shame in ASKING FOR HELP! Almost everyone could benefit from a little heart-to-heart time with a licensed counselor, therapist, or nutritionist trained in food/eating relationship counseling. Having someone who can compassionately listen to and support you as you navigate your emotions and subsequent behaviors can be truly thought-provoking and cathartic experiences.

With that being said, you don’t have to wait to start exploring the relationship between your eating habits and emotions. Here is a journaling activity that I encourage you to practice if you find yourself struggling with emotional eating.

Step #1: You begin with a review of your daily journal (see above for tips on how to engage with this). Check in and notice what emotions you see most frequently accompanying your eating experiences.

Step #2: Next, for each emotion that you identify, check in with yourself and reflect on whether or not you can tie that emotion back to a specific issue, challenge or situation in your life.

Step #3: Finally, for each challenge you identify, consider one intention that you can cultivate that would help you to work towards improving or resolving this concern.

Identifying Your Intentions

I’d like you to think back on the very last time you attempted to shift or change your eating or fitness habits. Ask yourself - what were your goals for these attempts and what did they look like? Maybe it was to go sober for October and not drink alcohol. Or maybe it was a New Year’s Resolution to stop eating sugar, or to go vegan, or to workout at least 4x/week, or start the keto diet.

These are all common goals I hear from clients. As is typical with goal setting, people usually feel like they have to make some grand sweeping gesture to prove to themselves that they have to go big or go home.

You don’t need grandiose goals. I postulate that you, rather, need intuitive intentions.

Intuitive intentions are about identifying the simple, small and sustainable steps that are needed to take you to where you’re wanting to go.

Progress does not have to involve leaps and bounds - those giant leaps are much more likely to result in tripping over your feet and landing flat on your face.

If you’re used to professing big and bold goals, it might feel a little unsettling to scale down the magnitude of your intentions, but just know that these small intentional steps are your building blocks for success. By building a solid foundation, you are setting yourself up to sustainably succeed.

Your intuitive intentions help:*

You to be specific with your intent (meaning you know exactly what you want your focused outcome to be)
You have a way to measure your progress with reaching these intentions
You identify ahead of time what you need to make your intentions attainable.
You promote awareness with yourself by asking what is realistic and why these intentions are important for you in the first place.
Then you give yourself a starting date and you begin to practice your intention within an appropriate amount of time.

*You may have realized that these intuitive intentions are very similar to classic SMART goals that are common in habit change and behavioral counseling. I prefer referring to these as intentions because they give us a space to focus our energies on without the pressure of set expectations that often accompany goal-setting.

I want to mention that you can have more than one intention at a time. The following questions are designed to help you get clear on what you’re needing to help you be successful in reaching your intentions:

What are your intentions & when do you want to begin them? Pick a starting date for each intention.
How will you reach these intentions? Choose 3 action steps for each intention.
How will you make it measurable? Identify mileposts so you will be able to gauge tangible progress.
How will you make your intentions attainable (i.e. what is needed to succeed)?
Why are these intentions important to you? Why do you want them? What will achieving them do for you? Identify your why to promote mental buy-in for engaging with your intentions.

PHASE #4: START NOURISHING YOUR EMOTIONS WITHOUT FOOD

Emotionally eating usually stems from an unconscious desire to escape - to escape from our daily reality, from our emotions, from our fears, from our struggles - even if it’s just for a brief moment in time. But as we know, emotional eating does not solve the issue we’re trying to escape from. Sure it can temporarily numb us to the upsetting situation and/or emotions that go along with it, but in the end we end up right where we were before we started eating. Except now we have some guilt and shame and regret to go along with it.

When you find yourself wanting to numb your emotions with food, I encourage you, as best you can, to take (what I like to call) an Empowered Pause. This Empowered Pause is a moment where you can intentionally check in with yourself so you can fully understand what is really going on for you in that moment.

Ask yourself what emotions are you feeling and trying to shove away using food?

What need is going unmet that is accompanying this emotion?

The more you practice nourishing yourself emotionally, physically and spiritually, the better able you’ll be to shift away from using food as your emotional coping mechanism.

The Empowered Pause

Name: Start by taking a nice deep breath and asking yourself: “What am I feeling?”

What emotion(s) are you trying to suppress, dismiss, ignore or run away from?
Some common emotions that often trigger emotional eating are feeling:

Sad
Lonely
Overwhelmed
Anxious
Shameful
Fearful
Stressed
Embarrassed
Guilty
Resentful
Uncomfortable
Uneasy
Jealous
Disappointed
Dejected

While you’re doing this, be sure to remind yourself that it is absolutely more than okay to be feeling these emotions!

Locate: Once you are able to identify the emotions you are feeling, acknowledge and say hello to it (maybe place your hand upon the place in your body where you’re feeling the emotion most strongly) and take a few moments to sit with and locate it.

Notice where you are feeling the emotion in your body and breathe into it as you hold space for it.
As best you can try not to judge the emotion you’re feeling.
You are allowed to feel this way.

Identify: After this, take another deep breath and ask yourself: “What am I needing right now?”

Check in with yourself and think about what might help you to feel better in this moment… something that will help to address the emotion you’re feeling.
Maybe this will be an activity that helps to distract you from your desire to eat for comfort while boosting your mood.
Often we go to a place of wanting to fix the source of the emotion - but this might not always be possible. So instead, consider what might help you in that moment, even if it’s just for a little bit of relief.

Breathe: Take a few deep breaths, visualizing that you’re breathing into the emotion, and releasing a little bit of what you're feeling with your exhale - continue for as long as you need to fully feel and allow your emotion(s) to flow.

You are not ignoring, smothering or shoving down the emotion.
You are acknowledging it, honoring it, feeling it, and intentionally and consciously taking an action to help you feel better.

Comforting Emotions Without Food

As great as the empowered pause can be, we may still be left with a need for emotional comfort, especially if you recognize you’re emotionally, rather than physically, hungry.

Here are some general tips to help give you some emotional comfort without eating:

Take a break

Get a little change of scenery. Step outside for some fresh air or change your physical environment to mix things up and distract your reflexive tendency to reach for food when bored or needing comfort.

Connect with someone

Sometimes what we need most is a chance to share what we're feeling with another. Call or message a loved one or friend - it's more than okay to reach out for support & connection!

Stream-of-Conscious Journaling

When our feelings are swirling around internally it can be difficult to reflect on them objectively. By taking some time to write them down in a journal, you can help to clear your mind for more open reflection.

Practice a little self-care

Do something that you love and makes you feel good, whether that's taking a bath, a nap, reading a book, moving your body, setting boundaries or some other practice that feels nourishing and comforting to you.