How to Stop Being an Emotional Eater

I know many of you want to know how to stop being an emotional eater and I am here to help. I am going to teach you how to use your emotions to eat in a way that feels so much better.

I’ll explain

• How emotions affect the how, when, and why you eat.
• 6 common emotional eating patterns
• How to change these emotional eating patterns

What is An Emotional Eater?

When you think of being an emotional eater; do you automatically think that is a bad thing? Whether we like it or not, emotions always play a part in how we eat.

Most of us imagine a woman overeating her ice-cream or binging on chips when she is upset. This of course does happen at times. Being an emotional eater has a bad reputation, but the truth is we ALL are emotional eaters.

The difference in how we eat though, is how we create and use our feelings when it comes to food.

Our emotions play a huge part of how we eat. Here’s where having a good emotional vocabulary helps. I’m not just talking about eating ice-cream when you feel down. I’m talking about all the hundreds of little ways our emotions come into play.

What we do or don’t do is always because of a feeling we’re having or a feeling we want to have, or a feeling we are trying to avoid.

We believe food can help us create many feelings such as happiness, joy, satisfaction, fun, anticipation. Just thinking about food can be exciting. We give food a lot of power when it comes to how we feel.

We can also use food to avoid feeling things. Sometimes we use food to avoid feeling some uncomfortable feelings such as boredom, sadness, anger, or frustration.

We can use food to avoid feeling the urge or desire to eat something. We can feel overwhelmed with desire and we believe we must eat to get rid of that compulsion.

Food can also be the basis for trying to create feelings. Maybe we use food to feel good about ourselves. If we eat less, we can feel worthy. If we eat this amazing food, we get to feel sophisticated.

Why Avoiding Feelings Only Keeps Us Stuck (And What to Do About It)

Your emotions are the key to finding balance and peace with food.

If you are currently feeling stressed about trying to eat like you think you should and not being able to follow through, I’ve got you.

Feelings can, well feel, so inconvenient at times and every woman I know tries to control her feelings in many unproductive ways, that include avoiding, reacting to, or numbing their feelings.

High on the list of ways to numb our feelings, is using food to do so. The problem with avoiding our feelings is that we keep ourselves stuck because we are trying to resisit something that feels like a problem but actually isn’t.

How We Create Our Actions Through Our Feelings

Everything you do is because of a feeling you want to feel or a feeling you want to avoid.

Per our eating, our feelings are created in our bodies through our beliefs and thoughts and when you learn the skill of identifying these thought-feeling-action patterns it becomes much easier to eat intentionally.

When we understand that we have the power to recognize how we are acting based on a feeling we are experiencing in our bodies.

This may be all new to you but I promise you that it is going to help you eat in a way that supports your goals instead of wondering every day, “What just happened to my plan?”

You’ll start learning this by looking at things that have already happened. Then you’ll begin noticing when it’s happening.

Finally, you’ll catch yourself in the act and be able to do something else if you want.

Here’s a simple example but a common one.

Let’s say you are trying to figure out why, no matter what your best intentions are, you always give in to your evening cravings.

When work and dinner is done and it’s time to relax on the couch with a show, you HAVE TO HAVE a bag of chips and a piece of candy.

You know that’s part of the reason you’ve gained 10 pounds this year but you just can’t stop yourself.

Now let’s slow it down. As a life coach, I listen to my clients describe the above situation. So, I will usually start with having the client slow down the scenario by asking some questions.

When you sat down on the couch, what was going through your mind as you thought about your evening snack?

How did you feel in your body?

Did you notice any feeling?

My client responded with the following:

I kept thinking, “I have to have my chips.” “It just won’t be the same without my chips.” “This is the only time I get to relax; I deserve something special.”

And there it is. “I deserve to have something special.” Of course you do! But in this case, this thought is creating a feeling that leads to you getting up off the couch and getting your chips and candy.

Because you feel deserving.

Now, there is nothing wrong with feeling deserving. It’s just a feeling. And when my client recognized that this was happening underneath or consciousness, she was able to notice when it happened.

Then she just let the thought and feeling be there without going to get the snack. Did it feel uncomfortable at first. It sure did. She also let the discomfort be there. She made it okay to feel deserving and uncomfortable without judgment.

My client then created a new thought and feeling. Instead of saying she deserved a treat, she decided to tell herself that she deserved to feel good. When she talked to herself like that, she felt committed to her plan to not eat at night.

After a short amount of time, the nightly craving just disappeared. Instead of nightly eating, she began to relax with a cup of tea.

I always tell my clients that I will teach them to change problem eating in a way that will eventually make them almost forget that they even had the habit. It really is only uncomfortable for a short time, then it just dissolves.

To help you get started, I want to share some common emotional eating patterns. You may recognize some of these or you might have your own.

Emotional Eating Patterns

In my work, I see many emotional eating patterns over and over with the women I work with. Here are 6 that I see often. My wish is that you can take these examples and start noticing your own patterns.

Remember, none of these feelings are a problem; it’s just that we treat them like a problem to be solved with food. Instead you’ll learn to just feel what is going on within you and then you can decide to act based on what you really want to do.

Boredom

This is one that comes up for me almost daily. I will notice I feel a little bored and I’ll want to have something to eat to relieve it. While, I might have this feeling of boredom and urge to eat, I rarely act on it because I’m really clear on the fact that I don’t eat to relieve boredom.

Instead, I just let the boredom be there, until it passes which is really just a couple of minutes. Once I’ve let the feeling be there, I just get back to doing things that relieve the boredom. And if I’m still a little bored, well, that isn’t the end of the world.

Restlessness

Restlessness is another common emotion that can lead to overeating. Feeling restless can often lead to you standing in front of the pantry trying to figure out the right thing to eat so you feel more settled.

Or maybe you try one food but it doesn’t do the trick, so you try another. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a bunch of crap but you don’t feel any better.

Sometimes you can feel something similar to restlessness. The best way I can explain it is that you have “an itch you need to scratch.”

You’re looking for a food to address a general uneasiness you have.

This is a time to get into your body with gentle movement such as a walk, or stretching, or even something like gardening. I find gentle sustained movement will help settle the body without you trying to chase the restlessness away.

Anger

Who hasn’t eaten out of anger?

Anger is such an interesting feeling. It is just another emotion to be felt but it feels like a special one. We think our anger means something. It does. It means you are telling yourself something.

Now I want to say here, that you can be absolutely correct that someone has done something bad or that a situation is unfair. The problem happens when you hang on to that anger and instead of processing it or dealing with the person or situation, you eat.

Eating soothes you and makes the anger a little more bearable.

As women, we have a taboo against anger. Not many women want to be considered an angry woman. I’ve found that many women think if they “give in” to their anger it will envelop them and that they won’t be able to not be angry.

You might be so afraid of getting angry that you will do anything to avoid it. Eating too much and gaining weight may at some level, feel safer than getting angry.

Here’s what I have found. When you actually allow yourself to be angry, feel it in your body, it processes within a couple of minutes and then you have more peace and clarity.

With peace and clarity, you don’t send the angry text and you don’t dive into a pint of ice-cream. You might even discover that you are also really sad.

Again, sadness doesn’t have to be a problem either. When we let ourselves feel our sadness we might need to acknowledge how some things really are in our lives. I’ve had clients realize that their husbands don’t really love them.

Instead of overeating to deal with this, they acknowledge the sadness. Instead of wishing for their husbands to be different, they deal with their real lives and they don’t use food to feel loved. They begin to love themselves.

My clients tend to be in long-term marriages with grown children and grandchildren, and so far, they’ve all decided to stay in their marriages and create a life they can feel good about.

Instead of having this simmering anger in their bodies, they can feel peaceful and be intentional about what they want. This always creates a better partnership and relationship.

This anger can also show up in work situations. So, substitute co-worker or boss for the partner. It’s okay to feel anger. But the real change comes from processing the anger so you can have calm and clarity instead.

Stress

This feeling is probably no surprise to any of you reading this. Who isn’t feeling stressed these days. Almost every client I’ve worked with felt stressed when they started working with me.

They wear their stress on their faces and in their bodies.

Eating is one way they try to deal with their stress. I believe a lot of stress comes from the thought, “I can’t change this.” Or “If I just work harder, I can get ahead and rest later.”

Neither of those statements is true and over the years you create more stress for yourself.

Forget about bubble baths or massages as a way to solve your stress. The only way to deal with stress is to let yourself really feel it in your body.

When I have my clients do this, they’ll tell me how it feels. It can feel like a rock pressing down on their chest. It can feel like someone choking them. It can feel like their heart is being squeezed.

Sounds fun, right?

When you actually feel what stress is doing in your body, you get more motivated to deal with it. Again, it’s by feeling and letting it process, and giving yourself some breathing room.

When your body feels calmer, you can become more intentional. Instead of eating to feel better; you may start taking a lunch break during the workday. You may decide an hour walk after dinner is better for you than working for an extra hour.

As you experience feeling better, you’ll want more of that. You’ll begin to evaluate requests for your time and energy.

Often as women begin to value their own time and energy, they focus on the essentials of their job and quit doing work that isn’t theirs. Counter-intuitively, they may find themselves getting bonuses, a raise, or even a new job offer.

Longing

What are you longing for? You might know and you might be afraid of knowing. So many women feel stuck in some way and they are aware of a deep longing inside of them.

The problem is that they believe the longing is either wrong or unachievable. When we believe something we desire is either wrong or unachievable, we feel bad in some way. You might feel shame, frustration, or disappointment.

Again, food can be used to compensate for what we want that we think is either wrong or impossible. How do you win, a no-win situation?

You let it be there. You allow yourself to feel the longing and acknowledge that you want what you want. Wanting something isn’t bad. And if it isn’t something that will ultimately be good for you, it’s much better to face it head-on.

For example if you work in a job that you don’t love and you really long to be an artist, you might feel afraid to let yourself long for that kind of work. However, if you let the longing be there and feel it, that’s when you can find some peace.

My coach called this divine discontent. This means that you do feel discontented and that life is calling you forward in some way. You long for something.

Eating may keep this longing at bay but your happiness might be in this longing. It might be calling you to make some changes.

When you make changes from clarity, you see solutions you literally couldn’t see before. Opportunities might appear suddenly. Accepting your longing doesn’t mean blowing up one life for another. It just means you love yourself so much that you trust your desires and aren’t afraid of them.

Coping

I had a client who once she realized that she was using food to cope with her family and work situations, she was able to shift so many eating patterns.

Instead of being able to deal with things, she ate. She gained weight and nothing got better. Once she decided to not use food to cope, she had more energy to deal with her work and family situations.

This didn’t happen overnight but it turned out to be well worth the effort. When food wasn’t being used to cope, actual positive changes began to happen. She changed her beliefs about what was possible in her work and in her family.

She adjusted her work schedule to one that worked better for her. She and her husband went to therapy and through her work with me and her therapist, she strengthened her relationship to her husband.

Instead of coping with her life, she took creative control of it and ended up feeling happier than she had in years.

Happiness, Celebration & Connection

Sometimes we use food to either create or extend positive feelings. The other night I was out with my daughter and her family for dinner. I felt so happy to be with them that I found myself eating more, way more than usual.

And even when I was full, to extend that happy feeling, I ate candy with the girls. I just wanted that happy feeling to last forever.

I’m writing this in hindsight since I didn’t realize at the time that was what I was doing. I don’t feel bad about it but now that I’m aware I do that sometimes, I can decide with more clarity how I want to eat.

We use food to connect with other people through the sharing of meals or special foods that we prepare for each other.

And food is always the highlight of celebrations. In our family we love to celebrate with food and that’s okay.

Here’s where it can be a problem. It’s when we think we are going to have to overeat. Women tend to gain weight over the holidays because they believe the food is going to be a problem.

When you recognize that eating to celebrate, be happy, or connect are emotional patterns of eating, you get to decide what you want to do and what you want to eat.

Instead of eating yourself into a stupor, you concentrate on the feelings of happiness, connection, and celebration. You focus on the people around you, not just the food.

My clients always find that they enjoy the food they choose to eat even more when they don’t have the compulsion to overeat.

Breaking Emotional Eating Patterns

Up until now, you probably thought your way of eating was just the way you are. I hope you can now see that these patterns are really just ingrained habits that you’ve formed to deal with feelings.

One of the things I love about my work is that it isn’t about depriving yourself of food you like. In fact, most women enjoy eating more when they are intentional about it.

And as you remove food as the way you deal with your uncomfortable feelings, you finally begin addressing those issues in your life in a healthy loving way. You don’t make changes because of how you feel in the moment.

In the moment you feel what you feel. Then when you have calm and clarity, you make sound decisions that you now have the energy to follow through on. This creates a fuller richer life rather than a deprived life.