Mentally Hungry: Your Emotional Eating Escape Plan PREVIEW
Mentally hungry: the emptiness you feel when you don't get what you need emotionally.
Do you find yourself reaching for a chocolate bar when you are stressed - only to then feel terrible afterwards?
Do you feel like you need to stop eating junk when you feel down or hurt, but you just can’t stop and you aren’t sure why?
I’ve been exactly where you are – most people have at some point. I get it.
During my last semester of grad school, I was on a first-name basis with the afternoon Domino’s delivery guy in our area (hey, Ian!). I was at home full-time on a grant, desperately trying to write a dissertation. I was lonely, stressed, terrified, and full of Domino’s Cheesy Bread and Lava Cakes. All I could bring myself to do daily was write for a bit, watch bad TV, and eat. I gained a degree and 20 pounds at the end. I hardly recognized myself, and that put a damper on what I’d accomplished.
Eating is a common way to deal with our emotions because it’s soothing, fun, and brings back memories of comfort for many of us. But, emotional eating is all about satisfying a mental hunger rather than a physical one. Unfortunately, food can’t make us mentally full.
I love to eat. I feel that eating doesn’t have to be (and really shouldn't be) ALL about fuel and whole, nutritious food choices. What would life be without the occasional slice of pie or plate of cheese fries? It’s about balance, baby.
Imagine what it would be like saying “NO” to your emotional eating the next time you feel mentally hungry. This book is going to help you do just that.
There are three major phases that we’ll go through in this book:
Understand
When you finish this section, you will understand the connection between emotions and eating so you can arm yourself with the knowledge you need to understand why you turn to food when feeling emotions so you can be prepared.
Observe
When you finish this section, you’ll be able to recognize the signs that you are about to turn to emotional eating so you can know ahead of time what might cause you to eat emotionally and you can be mindful and intentional about your behavior.
You’ll also be able to recognize the signs that you are about to turn to emotional eating so you can know what to look out for and be prepared for when you might turn to food to deal with your feelings and be able to pause before eating to assess if you’re really hungry or if there’s something else you can do to help with that emotion.
Take action
After this section you’ll have a list of do-able healthy replacement ways to soothe and comfort yourself instead of using food so you can have an action plan so you don’t have to think in the moment when it’s hard to rationalize.
You’ll also have a list of enticing healthy foods for when cravings hit or food can’t be avoided (e.g., parties, social events, when you’re actually hungry) in order to know what you can turn to when it’s time so you can enjoy food.
You will have gotten in some practice with the replacement behaviors and foods in order to be comfortable with making changes so it can become habit and not take any thinking in the future.
You will finish with the habit of regularly checking in with your emotions and feeling the feels without masking them so you can cut off emotional eating well before it even comes up and you can deal with emotions in a healthy way and feel well, body and mind.
Within each of these phases, we’ll go through the important steps:
Step 1: Understand the Causes of Emotional Eating
Step 2: Be Aware of the Common Emotions that Lead to Eating
Step 3: Assess the Emotional Eating Situation
Step 4: Identify Your Triggers
Step 5: Dive Deeper into Your Emotions
Step 6: Deal with Your Emotions - Without Food
Step 7: Know What to Do When Cravings Strike
Step 8: Deploy Smart Substitutes
Step 9: Use Your Most Important Tool - Mindful Eating
To help you really nail things down as you go through this book, you’ll have activities, as well as a ton of bonus supplementary content that you can download for free.
Now for a pop quiz:
Do you ever eat when you’re not really that hungry?
Do you find you eat more when you’re stressed?
Do you sometimes eat to feel better?
Do you get sudden cravings for particular foods often?
Have you ever rewarded yourself with food?
If you answered yes to only one or all of these, just know that we all use food to deal with emotions and stress, but that is okay! I am going to help you understand WHY you do this so you can finally be in control of your eating patterns. I did it, and I want you to feel that freedom, too.
When you finish this book and take time with your emotions and behaviors, you’ll be able to finally break free from your food triggers and start having a healthier relationship with food.
I know you can do this! If a frequent Domino's customer like me can do it, you totally can.
Section 1: Understand
Step 1: Understand the Causes of Emotional Eating
After reading this chapter, you’ll know the causes of emotional eating and what exactly you're dealing with so you can understand the problem and find the right solutions.
Eating is and always has been an emotional process. Culturally, we associate eating with togetherness, good times, family, and celebrations. We also connect food to traditions and memories. That positive emotional power is awesome. It’s when we take those positive associations with food and emotion and use them as our only tool to feel better.
Often, we eat to regain happiness, or soothe ourselves. We often use food as rewards. Emotional eating patterns can be learned. For example, a child who is given candy after great achievements for her entire childhood will likely grow up to use candy as a reward for a job well done in her adult life. A little girl who is given cookies as a way to stop crying may learn to associate cookies with comfort when feeling sad in her adult life.
Emotional eating provides a momentary sense of satisfaction and pleasure when you feel something you don’t want to feel. It is a way of suppressing feelings that may be unpleasant. In a way, it has a numbing or even distracting effect. Let’s get into some of the connections between emotions and eating.
Emotions and Eating
Emotions are useful for providing us with information about the situations we face, they prepare us to respond to the situation and influence how we behave. For example, when seeing a close friend, we may feel excited and happy to see them, which leads us to give them a hug. If we’ve had a bad day, however, we might feel stressed and unhappy and we might be a bit snappy or argumentative.
People learn, sometimes subconsciously, that food can give comfort and they may often turn to food when they have emotional ups and downs. When you eat certain foods, such as those high in fat and sugar, it stimulates the release of hormones in your brain which gives you a sense of well-being or happiness. It’s literally comfort food!
So, eating these types of food when experiencing negative emotions really does provide a sense of relief and feelings of comfort - you’re not imagining it.
Eating for emotional reasons is fairly common, and it is estimated that 75% of overeating is caused by emotions (Cleveland Clinic, 2021). This action of eating for comfort, reinforces the behavior of eating to feel better in response to feeling uncomfortable emotions. This is how we can end up forming emotional eating habits that are hard to break, because they work when it comes to making us feel better, at least temporarily.
All kinds of emotions can result in overeating, and the resulting weight gain just adds to the emotional distress and frustration. This becomes a bit of a vicious circle, and many people get stuck on a merry-go-round of overeating, weight gain, and dieting. Worst merry-go-round ride ever.
Emotional eating isn’t just prompted by negative emotions and feelings. Positive feelings can also be a trigger for emotional eating, such as falling in love, celebrating a success or big occasion, or after a really productive day in the office when you want to “reward” yourself.
As we grow up, we learn lots of different behaviors for everything in life. Eating is no exception. Early childhood experiences may shape our relationship with food and eating. It is common for children to be taught to finish everything on their plate, and as adults, it is very hard to leave something on your plate, even when you feel full. This sort of behavior or habit can be unlearned and reshaped, but it takes time and deliberate effort. I’m going to teach you how to do that.
What Causes Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating can impact us physically and mentally. Physically, there are the effects of poor nutrition (I’m assuming you’re not comfort-eating bags of spinach, right?). Mentally, there are much worse effects. We can feel shame, helplessness, disgust, and a host of other negative feelings that start to seep into our outlook and mindset.
What makes this happen? Why is it that some people, knowingly or unknowingly, turn to food for comfort?
Emotional eating is a general term that refers to eating habits where physical hunger is not the motivational factor. It is more common among women than men, but men are not immune - especially young men in their teens and twenties. Those who suffer from emotional eating associate food with emotional comfort and will turn to eating to escape negative feelings or celebrate positive ones. Let’s look at some of the most common feelings that people associate with eating for comfort.
Past Trauma
For some who eat emotionally, the problem stems from past traumatic events and/or a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. Trauma often has long-lasting effects, and past trauma or unmet needs may cause a person to turn to emotional overeating. Often, emotional eating happens because these traumatic root causes need to be addressed (Behar et al., 2016), but studies have also found that it is the PTSD itself rather than the trauma that contributes most to disordered eating (Brewerton, 2007; Hudson et al., 2007). If you have experienced trauma, I urge you to speak to a mental health professional. You can find resources at the end of the book.
Poor Self-Image
People who suffer from low self-esteem and a negative self-image may seek escape by overeating. Unfortunately, overeating often leads to feeling worse physically and feelings of guilt and shame mentally. This then kick starts the process all over again to soothe those sensations. It’s a terrible cycle to be caught in. This is something that happened to me when I was going through a bout of depression, and it was agony.
Self-Medication
Like alcoholics, those who struggle with emotional eating may be unconsciously using food as a drug. Eating numbs or dulls the emotions that might be too hard to deal with otherwise. Food addiction is a less-discussed type of addictive behavior, but it has a strong pull on the sufferer.
For those suffering from an addiction to food, foods rich in fat, sugar, and/or salt trigger chemical reactions in the brain reward center. Food addicts become dependent on the “high” they get after consuming these types of food and often eat when they aren’t hungry to satisfy their mental hunger (Food Addiction Institute, 2022). Avoidance and issues with long-term goal setting were found to be associated with food addiction, so this goes beyond just overeating or a bad habit for those who suffer from it (Food Addiction Institute, 2022; Wolf et al., 2016).
If you think this might apply to you, make sure to read the What if it’s More than Just Emotional Eating? chapter for more information and ways to get help.
Depression
Studies indicate a strong correlation between depression and emotional eating (Konttinen et al., 2016; van Strien et al., 2016). Unfortunately, the research also shows a cyclical relationship between emotional eating and depression where depression leads to the emotional eating behavior and the aftermath of the eating leads to depression. If you are experiencing depression, you will want to discuss it with your healthcare provider, as leaving it untreated may hinder your work in this book.
Stress
Prolonged, unrelieved stress can have a profound effect on the body. We will discuss this in detail in the Be Aware of the Common Emotions that Lead to Eating chapter. Stress stimulates the body to produce, among other chemicals, the hormone cortisol. Cortisol has a hunger-stimulating effect, and as the stressful emotions increase along with the cortisol, a cycle of emotional eating can play out.
Individual Triggers
There are triggers or causes of emotional eating that are not necessarily in the categories above. Some examples might be:
Boredom
Oral need or a need to satisfy your mouth's need to do something
Social pressure or embarrassment at eating in public, resulting in overeating in private
Financial stress
Relationship difficulties
The next part will go into detail about emotional eating, especially the causes and triggers introduced here.
What is Emotional Eating?
Here is the most important point when it comes to emotional eating - It is not about the food you’re eating. It's not even about how much you're eating. It's about your emotions. How you feel before you eat, how you’re feeling while you eat, and how you feel after you eat.
Millions of people eat emotionally, and they don’t even realize it because it’s so common. If you’re bored at home and just walk over to the refrigerator to see what’s inside, you're probably going to emotionally eat. In this case, you're fighting off boredom. You’re just eating something to pass the time and feel good. But that good feeling is temporary. After a while, the sugar high will crash and you'll feel worse off than you were before. So what do you do? You get up and walk to the refrigerator again.
This vicious cycle is played out millions of times a day all over the world. People eat when they’re sad, bored, angry, and every other emotion in-between.
While it’s fine to celebrate a victory by having a fun dinner and drinks, to some extent this is emotional eating, too. You're happy and food and alcohol make you happier. This is okay because it’s only an occasional thing.
What is dangerous is resorting to eating when you’re feeling stress and negative emotions. Instead of finding ways to de-stress and/or remedy your problems, turning to food to soothe yourself is insidious. Depending on your brain chemistry and habits, it can cause food cravings, food addiction, eating disorders, and many other problems when left unchecked.
Emotional eating isn’t really about food. It’s about how you feel - that mental hunger. To fix emotional eating, you'll need to self-reflect and understand why you’re eating, which is exactly what we’ll do in the Observe section.
While this self-observation is going to be important, you might also benefit from getting the support of the people close to you - especially those who can help you realize emotional triggers early. One of my clients put it well: “I was successful in changing my behavior due to the knowledge I armed myself with, and getting my friends and family involved all proved very effective for my awareness levels.”