Comfort eating, 5 steps to stop it. 

Do you eat when feeling stressed? Does food play a big part in your life, but especially when you’re feeling low, or bored? You could be comfort eating, also known as emotional eating.

It is natural at times for us to turn to food for comfort when we need it. We make different food choices depending on how we are feeling. It starts to become a problem for us when we use food to deal with difficult emotions, negative emotions, and even positive emotions, and we don’t know how to deal with those emotions without food.

Over time, disordered eating causes weight gain and can have a detrimental effect on our physical health. Scientists are also discovering the role ultra-processed food plays in our mental health as well. 

You might feel you can’t stop it, that you have no control over food. The good news is it is possible to stop and to have a positive relationship with food.

What is comfort eating?

Comfort eating/emotional eating is overeating in response to negative emotions. Using food as a way to soothe or distract yourself from negative emotions such as stress, sadness, boredom and loneliness. 

Normally at these times, it is the junk food that we automatically reach out for. These unhealthy foods, which are often high-fat and high-sugar foods, provide an immediate sense of comfort and pleasure. They temporarily distract us from our feelings of stress and give us a momentary feeling of satisfaction.

However, the problem with comfort eating lies in its addictive nature and causes excess weight.

When we consistently rely on food to cope with our negative emotions, it can lead to overeating and a reliance on unhealthy foods. These high-calorie foods often provide a quick fix, but can leave us feeling guilty, unsatisfied, and ultimately contribute to weight gain and a negative body image.

How do you know if you’re an emotional eater

Start becoming more aware of when you eat. Answering these questions might help

Do you eat when bored?

Do you eat for something to do? 

Do you eat when stressed?

Does food make you feel better?

Does food calm you down?

Do you feel powerless when around your favorite foods?

Do you eat when you are not hungry and you don’t know why?

Do you mindlessly eat in front of the t.v. after you have eaten a meal?

Do you find yourself obsessed with food?

If you find yourself doing any of these, you could be emotionally eating, or eating your feelings?

Emotional hunger vs. physical hunger

When you start learning to tell the difference, it can help you to move away from disordered eating and start listening to what your body needs.

When we are in tune with our bodies, it sends us signals as to how much food we need and what foods we need at that time. This is called intuitive eating.

Even though it is called intuitive eating, it is a skill to be learned like anything else. You start by paying attention to your physical hunger.

Some people have never felt physical hunger and don’t let themselves ever get hungry for fear of the feeling. To help you, you can grade your hunger from 1-10, 10 being when you are famished.

You feel physical hunger in your stomach below your rib cage.

Physical hunger starts at a low number and slowly grows to a 10. A good time to start preparing your food is when you are at a 3 or 4. This is enough time to prepare without getting too hungry Leave it too late, near a 7 and we get too hungry and start reaching out to those high-fat and high-sugar foods to stop those hunger pangs.

Emotional hunger feels like strong food cravings. It is felt in your head. Emotional hunger is a response to emotions. Comfort eating makes those emotions feel good.

What causes someone to comfort eat because of their emotions?

Emotional eating happens gradually and over some time. It can start in different ways such as:

Childhood – We experience a difficult time or times in childhood. Food could be the one thing we can reach out to that makes us feel better. It might start with secret snacks from the snack cupboard which feel exciting.

Parents – Our parents are either too authoritarian with food, imposing strict rules, or they have no boundaries around food. You are allowed to eat what you want when you want and that normally consists of sugar-filled foods. Because there are few guidelines given, this can evolve into disordered eating. Eating with no regularity or order to it.

Adverse events – Painful events in our past cause us uncomfortable emotions. These can be too painful to feel so we put them away. Only our brain knows they are there. Those negative emotions seep into our behaviours. 

Eating to cope with your emotions

When we are feeling low, vulnerable, tired or just not 100%, we are triggered easily. This means something happens, or someone says something to us and it bothers us. It gets under our skin.

Somewhere in our past we have found that food makes us feel better. It is the high-fat and high-sugar foods that gives us a temporary high. 

Access to food is easy and less judgemental from society.

Not many of us may recognise that we are emotional eating. We may just see that we have a large intake of food, we eat too many sugar-filled foods and we can’t stop. This is the power of comfort food and the ingredients in them.

5 steps to stop emotional eating

Mindful Eating

The first step to stop any behaviour is become aware of it. You are observing when you eat, what you eat and how often. Noticing if you feel any physical hunger and if so, how hungry do you get before you eat.

Try to observe yourself without passing any judgement on yourself. Treat it like an interesting experiment.

Notice things like when your appetite for food is at its highest. Do you have strict rules around food? Do you have any negative emotions towards food?

Find your emotional trigger

Practising mindfulness, you can start paying attention to what triggers you to eat when you do not have physical hunger. You are paying attention to how you feel when you reach out for food. 

It takes quite a bit of introspection, because in that moment of food craving, we have such an appetite for food that we are not aware of what emotions we are feeling.

That is the objective of emotional eating, that food stops us from feeling uncomfortable emotions.

Start an emotional eating diary

To help you start to access your emotions, writing an emotional food diary can help. This is to start recording when you eat. You want to start thinking and being aware of how you feel when you reach out for food.

It can help to do this at a time when you are relaxed and you have time to think.

Find ways to relax

In times of stress is one of the biggest reasons that causes us to reach for high-fat and high-sugar foods.

We may not realise when we are stressed. It might just feel normal to us.  The mind is busy with what we have to do, racing to get tasks done, rushing to get to places.

One of the consequences of stress is weight gain. We overeat because we need to keep our energy levels up.

We need to find ways to slow down at times and give our brain space to pause.

1. Meditate. Learning to meditate can help you to get in tune with your body and your emotions. You learn the skill of being able to slow down and listen to what your body needs.
2. Hobbies. Find things that you love to do. This is about filling your life with pleasure and joy. Instead of filling it with tasks and chores.
3. Enjoy the now. In our minds we race ahead to the next thing. We think when I get to a ‘normal weight’ then I’ll be happy. Actually being happy now, allows your cortisol levels to drop, meaning less stress and it is easier to eat a more balanced diet.

Find food alternatives to stop comfort eating

1. Healthy snacks. Find some healthy snacks that you can keep in your bag and for when you are on the go. Sometimes we are pekish and want to have something. If we don’t eat, that is when we can end up even hungrier and we end up going for the unhealthy snacks.
2. Seek professional help. Disordered eating can be accompanied with other mental health disorders, such as ADHD. A mental health professional can help you work out what else could be causing your emotional eating.
3. A Therapist who specialises in Eating disorders can help you to distinguish between your physical hunger and your emotional hunger. They will help you to face any negative emotions you may have so you get to a place where you enjoy healthier food and your response to emotions is more appropriate.
4. Address it now. If left, disordered eating can become polarised and turn into Binge-Type Eating disorders. As your food intake during short periods of time increases, so to can your food restriction.

Finally

Negative emotions are there for a reason. They may serve as a warning or they are a knock on the door to say, hey pay attention to me. Once you work through your negative emotions, you may notice what once triggered you, no longer does.

When this happens, you feel in control of your food choices. This feels immensely powerful.

Other Resources

Beat, Eating Disorders – https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/media-centre/eating-disorder-statistics/

NHS, Eating disorders Overview

Mind – Information on Eating Disorders