"Emotional Eating" is the
use of food to manage mood

Do you sometimes feel out of control with food? Do you find yourself eating whenever you're bored, stressed, angry or lonely? Do you habitually start to think about food so you can distract yourself from uncomfortable thoughts or situations? Then you may be an Emotional Eater.

Are You An Emotional Eater?

• Serious emotional eaters obsess about food

• Emotional eaters rely on food as their primary means to self-soothe

• For an emotional eater, somewhere along the way, food became the No. 1 means of entertainment and distraction

• Emotional eaters feel distress over their relationship with food. They often describe their eating as compulsive eating or food addiction, and they don't know what to do to stop!

You want to stop overeating. You feel trapped. When you're not obsessing about diets, you're back into compulsive overeating. Despite all efforts, diets and self-help books, your compulsive eating, your emotional eating continues. Being an emotional eater leaves you feeling like a failure. Then, of course, you eat even more to “stuff down” your “out-of-control” feelings!!!

Where do you think you fall on the Emotional Eating Continuum? Please use the links in the green box, top left, to
learn more about the different areas in the Emotional Eating Continuum.

I was stuck in a self-defeating cycle!
I felt out-of-control with food! I was either overeating
or dieting. In either mode, I felt I was never good enough. I had
willpower and stick-to-itiveness in many other areas in my life.
So why couldn't I apply that same resolve to my eating habits?

I wasted so much time, energy, and money
I was obsessed with my weight. Living like that was
miserable. Today, I understand that weight was not the
problem. It was actually a symptom. The real problem was that
I was an "emotional eater".

Emotional Eaters use food to manage feelings
We use food to self-soothe. People who have struggled with it,
and the professionals who treat it, call it by many different
names; compulsive overeating, emotional eating, and
food addiction. No matter what it's called, people USE food because food works!

1. Food works as a tension reliever
   Both eating food and thinking about food work as
   distractions from uncomfortable feelings. Being food-
   focused takes the edge off any feeling that a person
   would rather not feel or tolerate (boredom, stress,
   anxiety, anger, loneliness, etc.).

   For example...You're feeling bored. Suddenly you find
   yourself thinking about the ice cream in the freezer. As
   soon as you start to think about the ice cream, you are
   no longer focused on feeling bored.

   Food and food thoughts can be used in reaction to and
   as a defense against any intense feeling or stressful life
   situation. The use of food to manage mood becomes a
   self-reinforcing habit. (Today, scientists are also focused
   on the biology & brain chemistry of overeating. There
   may also be many physiological reason why we keep
   turning to food even when it feels self-defeating to do so.)
   

2. Emotional Eating happens on a continuum
   Emotional eating is normal. We all celebrate with food.
   When something sad occurs, friends and neighbors
   arrive with cakes and casseroles. It's only when
   emotional eating begins to have impact on one's
   emotional and/or physical well-being, and it's used as
   a person's primary strategy for mood regulation, that it
   becomes a problem. When eating becomes a primary
   coping strategy, it greatly impacts a person's quality of
   life. At the most extreme point on the emotional eating
   continuum, there may be a diagnosable eating disorder
   present-such as bulimia or binge eating disorder-and
   often, clinical depression as well.

3. Here's how food works as a mood regulator:

   • First, an emotional eater experiences an
     uncomfortable feeling. For example...You just had
     a fight with a family member and you're feeling
     really angry!
     

   • Next, you have a FOOD THOUGHT and you find
     yourself reaching for a bag of chips. (You may or
     may not be conscious of when or why you are having a food thought.) Once you are focused on
     the chips, you are no longer focused on how angry
     you feel. The use of food as a distraction works...

   • You eat the chips, warding off the anger, for a little
     while. Then, the anger comes back. Now, in
     addition to the anger, an emotional overeater has
     to deal with the guilt and shame he/she feels every
     time he or she eats chips (or any other food that
     he or she has labeled as "forbidden").

4. This is the self-defeating cycle--the trap for an
   emotional eater
   Until you develop healthier coping strategies, and you
   overcome the "good food vs. bad food" beliefs, the only
   way to avoid the guilt and the shame that results from
   emotional overeating--is more emotional overeating!
   Every time we swear we'll be "good" on a diet today,
   and then turn back to food for comfort, we feel like we
   have "failed". Then, to "stuff down" our frustration, or
   shame, or desperation, we turn back to food.

5. So, what can you do if Emotional Eating is a problem for you?
   Make a conscious effort to become more aware of (more mindful of) how and why you use food as a distraction from other things in your life. Most importantly, find resources for learning new skills for emotional regulation (very few of us are lucky enough to come by these skills naturally).
   

   If you need support to develop ways to self-soothe without using food, seek professional help. Hire a skilled Coach or a Licensed Psychotherapist who specializes in emotional eating issues. The focus of any such intervention should be on the development of self-care and distress tolerance skills -- on improved emotional, physical, and spirtitual well-being -- on learning how to shift away from dieting and toward intuituve eating and improved fitness. Only then can movement toward a healthier, more fit body occur naturally...and actually last!
   

   Remember, dieting is a trap for an emotional eater. If a person is using food to distract from any thoughts, feelings, or sensations that he or she would rather avoid, then dieting (which is all about restriction, not mood regulation) promises to be a set-up for more feelings of failure. If excess weight is due to the use of excess food to self-soothe, then dieting is destined to lead to more emotional eating. Take a risk! Seek out a new way to break this frustrating, self-defeating cycle. It's worth it!

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