It was June 2015, and I was an emotional eating, stressed-out, unhealthy mess.
Outwardly, I had it all:
- Handsome husband
- Just graduated top of my class with my Masters in Nutrition.
But inside…
I felt the anxiety of trying to control everything in my life, and by all accounts, I was succeeding…
Except where food was concerned.
My bar-of-chocolate-a-day (plus some!) habit certainly wasn’t keeping the doctor away
…and it had earned me 20 pounds in less than 2 years.
I felt like a fraud. I felt stuck.
Nothing I learned in school helped me control my emotional eating.
By all accounts the restriction-indulge cycle seemed to make it worse.
I knew I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
I decided things had to change. But I didn’t know how…
Fast forward several years, I was a stressed out Mom with a newborn.
My baby-weight wasn’t going anywhere and my only self-care was using Ritz Crackers and Tillamook Extra Sharp White Cheddar.
I was in a bad place: physical pained, anxious, and unhappy. Not how I wanted motherhood to go.
I realized I needed radical self-care to feel good in my body and about my body.
And when I stopped believing that my less-than-healthy food choices were the byproduct of a character flaw or weak will, I got curious about what might be causing my emotional eating.
I worked with my naturopath, dietitian (yup, a dietitian has a dietitian, we all need help…) and therapist, read plenty of books, and spent time digging through scientific research.
I discovered that when I properly cared for my hormones, emotions, and mindset I eliminated food cravings and emotional eating.
If you want help to balance your hormones in order to stop emotional eating, grab my guide, “You’re Done Dieting but Still Want to Heal Emotionl Eating”. You’ll learn the daily routine that allows you to say “no thanks” to junk food without willpower.
What is emotional eating
Simply put, emotional eating is eating to care for your emotions, rather than for physical nourishment.
For example:
- Boredom eating
- Eating to stay awake
- Eating when stressed or angry
- Sneaking or hiding food
- Eating at the end of a loooong day because you’ve put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own all day and indulging is how you spend “me” time.
And it isn’t a problem… until it becomes a problem
The dangers of emotional eating
Food can be used to numb your feelings… think every sitcom break-up scene ever with a pint of ice cream.
We emotionally eat because it works.
But when you numb that bad stuff… you numb the good stuff too.
In her book, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage, Brené Brown says:
You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.
I don’t know about you, but I want to feel the good… so I needed to learn how to feel bad.
Hormones that make you eat
If you want help to balance your hormones in order to stop emotional eating, grab my guide, “You’re Done Dieting but Still Want to Heal Emotional Eating”. You’ll learn the daily routine that allows you to say “no thanks” to junk food without willpower.
You need to understand that besides emotions there are other powerful biological forces causing you to indulge…
I’m talking about hormones. And you just can’t fight your hormones, they win every time.
1) The stress hormone cortisol – causing intense food cravings, fat to be moved from other parts of the body to your belly and hormonal fat storage mode. Plus… stress. You can read all about cortisol here.
2) Ghrelin – the longer it’s been since you last ate, the more the appetite hormone ghrelin builds up, ultimately influencing you to choose something convenient and quick. Eating regularly is one way to keep ghrelin at bay.
3) Menopausal hormone changes – mood shifts, greater activation of your sympathetic nervous system, and imbalance cortisol can all lead to more emotional eating.
Little-known lifestyle factors that cause emotional eating
Stress… you had to see that coming
Some people seem to be more susceptible to abdominal weight gain and obesity caused by stress than others.
It’s important to note that short-term stress or stressful seasons in life are less likely to have this impact than chronic stress.
Besides clearing your schedule, one way to handle chronic stressors is to change the way you think about them.
One of the key pillars of self-care in the Courage to Trust Method is developing a curious and compassionate mindset.
Many members report working on mindset has provided significant calm and peace, even going so far as to be able to reduce anxiety medication:
If you want help to balance your stress hormones in order to stop emotional eating, grab my guide, “You’re Done Dieting but Still Want to Heal Emotional Eating”. You’ll learn the daily routine that allows you to say “no thanks” to junk food without willpower.
Sleep
In a meta-analysis of 11 studies, researchers found that for every hour of sleep people are deprived, they eat an average of 385 extra calories.
Who here has eaten to stay awake?
Sleep deprivation can also imbalance the stress hormone cortisol, another theory for why sleep deprivation leads to weight gain.
Skipping Meals
This one makes sense… if you go without food for too long, you’ll be hungry.
And yet, some of the most impactful advice I give members of the Courage to Trust Method is to eat regularly throughout the day. Many women find that emotional eating is reduced by half or more with this simple trick.
Time to reflect
Having reflective time in your day to process your emotions and complete your stress cycle is critical to heal emotional eating.
Many people forgo reflective time for escapism. Watching TV, reading books, listening to podcasts that allow them to “tune out” because emotions are too messy or not safe.
Can I get personal for a moment?
This was totally me. Despite my best efforts and actually genuinely enjoying journaling… I spent my downtime consuming podcasts and scrolling my feeds.
After getting curious about this pattern and talking it through with my counselor I realized I wasn’t making time for reflection because I was still operating on internalized messages from childhood about emotions being embarrassing, too intense for me to handle, or unsafe.
It wasn’t until I discovered *why* I was avoiding reflective time that I was able to stay present to my emotions rather than bury them in food or podcasts.
Another example comes to mind, a woman I talked to enjoyed quilting. I asked her if that was reflective and she said no, she always has the TV on. She said if she turned the TV off, her mind would be filled with self-criticism. No wonder reflection wasn’t safe for her!
Here’s an exercise to help you figure out why you’re struggling with spending time reflection:
- Set aside some time to reflect. You might go for a walk without listening to anything, journal, or sit quietly.
- Think back over your day, remembering the sequence of events from rising until now.
- Get curious about the emotions you may have experienced during the events of your day.
- What thoughts are coming up for you around the events or emotions? Are you thinking of to-do lists, being self-critical? Are you trying to minimize the importance of how you felt?
Where your thoughts naturally go may be the reason you struggle with reflection. If it always ends up putting more pressure on you because it adds items to your to-do list, or it doesn’t feel safe because you mentally beat yourself up… you won’t want to do it.
If you struggle with emotional eating, you will not heal until you can create safety for yourself to feel and process your emotions… so that ultimately you don’t need food to numb them.
If you want help to balance your hormones in order to stop emotional eating, grab my guide, “You’re Done Dieting but Still Want to Heal Emotional Eating”. You’ll learn the daily routine that allows you to say “no thanks” to junk food without willpower.