Emotional Eating

I love to eat. I especially love pasta and breads and cereal. Self-discipline in eating correct portion sizes and adding fruits and vegetables to my diet is the way I have been able to maintain a healthy weight. Although I am currently still at a healthy weight, I have gained 11 pounds over the last five months. I know that this weight gain is due to emotional eating. When I feel stressed out, bored, or depressed I have been reaching for food for comfort. I often reach for cookies, ice cream, or salty snacks. Healthy or unhealthy choices, too much of anything is not good and leads to weight gain. For me, extra weight has led to lower self-esteem, frustration with myself for not having better control over my eating habits, and more knee discomfort. If I continue to allow myself to devour food to disengage from or to cope with my emotions, I will soon be overweight.

We can adopt the behavior of eating to soothe emotions at any time in our lives. Emotional eating is a maladaptive behavior. Eating to deal with emotions inhibits our ability to develop proper coping techniques.

The first step is to identify the reasons you are feeling the way you are. What issues are causing you to feel angry, depressed, bored, or frustrated? Happiness is also an emotion that can cause emotional eating. For example, when you are feeling happy you may reach for a celebratory piece of cake or over-indulge at dinner. Both good and bad feelings can lead to emotional eating. Certain people or certain situations may cause you to experience certain emotions. Once you have discovered triggers to your emotions that cause you to reach for the brownies, potato chips, or large portion sizes you can learn new coping techniques to avoid emotional eating. The goal is to eat only when we are actually hungry.

Instead of dealing with emotions with food, the following activities may be helpful:

Exercise! Clean, drink water, call a friend or family member to chat, take a short nap, care for your plants, read, or go to the library. Adopt a pet. Pets can be wonderful for our emotional well-being. The responsibility of a pet gets us up and moving and thinking outside of ourselves where we can get stuck sometimes, especially when we are depressed. Make a healthy dinner menu for the week and go grocery shopping for healthy foods and healthy snacks. Do not grocery shop when you are hungry. Create art, listen to music, or learn how to play an instrument. When I was a child my parents offered me lessons on a Lowrey organ. In my early years, when I was bored or sad I remember playing music for lengthy periods of time because playing music made me feel better. I later learned to play the trumpet. Playing music can be very entertaining, rewarding and relaxing.

In addition to finding other things to do besides eat, you may benefit from therapy to learn coping techniques. Keeping a journal to write about situations and how you felt during those circumstances and then talking through the events with a therapist can help. A therapist can help you discover how to change the ways you think or react to triggers that cause you to eat when you are emotional.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the enjoyment we get from food. But eating in an effort to cover up or deal with what we are feeling does not help us with our problems. In my case, emotional eating had led to weight gain, feelings of guilt from overeating, and many upset stomachs. By recognizing our triggers, changing our behavior concerning how we react to those triggers, and seeking professional assistance when we need it, we can stop emotional eating and regain control over our eating habits.