Content adapted from Principle 7 and 8 of Intuitive Eating: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness and Respect Your Body. The information presented here is a summary from chapters 12 and 13 of Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
As humans, we are always going to experience emotions. We need to find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract and resolve our issues. Food won’t fix any of our feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb us. But food won’t solve the problem. Becoming an intuitive eater means learning to be gentle and compassionate with yourself about how you use food to cope and letting go of the guilt.
It’s not surprising that we have an emotional connection with food. The emotional rhythm to eating is reinforced each time a cookie is given to soothe a scraped knee or ice cream is eaten to celebrate after a dance recital. Whenever a significant life experience is celebrated with food, the emotional connection with food deepens. Food is love, food is comfort, food is reward, food is a reliable friend. Grazing to kill time between classes or appointments is not emotionally charged, but the results can be the same as using food to numb strong feelings – disconnected eating.
Some of the most detrimental feelings that overeating can trigger are guilt and shame. Guilt and morality have no place in your eating world. If you replace the guilt with feelings of self-compassion, you’ll be freed to become curious about your underlying issues and find ways to understand and deal with them.
The continuum of emotional eating – The coping mechanisms of using food to escape feelings lie on a continuum of intensity that begins at one end with mild, sensory eating and continues to numbing. The continuum includes sensory gratification, comfort, distraction, sedation and punishment. Mild sensory eating is normal; eating for sedation or punishment is concerning.
Emotional Triggers – A craving for certain foods or a desire to eat, can be triggered by a variety of feelings and situations. Boredom and procrastination, bribery and reward, excitement, soothing, love, frustration, anger and rage, stress, anxiety, mild depression, need for connection or to loosen the reins are all examples of emotions that can drive us to cope with food.
Coping with Emotional Eating: Four key steps to making food less important in your life. Ask yourself:
Am I biologically hungry? If yes – honor your hunger and eat. If not, explore the following questions:
What am I feeling? Take a minute to tune into your feelings. Explore them by writing out your feelings, talking through your feelings with a friend or counselor or sitting with your feelings and accepting them.
What do I need? You may be filling some unmet need with food (rest, etc)
Would you please? Once you determine what you need you can ask others for help.
Meeting Your Needs with Kindness
Acknowledge that you are entitled to having your needs met. Are you meeting these basic needs?
Getting rest
Expressing feelings
Feeling heard, understood and accepted
Being intellectually and creatively stimulated
Receiving comfort and warmth
Seek nurturance. Feeling nurtured can allow you to feel comfort and warmth so that food becomes less prominent. Deal with your feelings by allowing them to come up (journal, call a friend, let yourself cry, sit with your feelings, talk with a therapist, get curious about the physical sensation of an emotional feeling)
Find a different distractor. Don’t rely on food as your primary coping tool. Other ideas: read a book, rent a movie, take a drive, clean out your closet, put on some music and dance or take a walk around the block.
Overeating or undereating is simply a sign that stressors in your life are surpassing the coping mechanisms that you have developed. If you find balance and at some point emotional eating resurfaces, that’s sign that you need to find ways to put more balance into your life.
