Making peace with emotional eating

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A lot of my coaching clients identify as an “emotional eater”. They describe feeling low, stressed or overwhelmed, and finding themselves reaching for food in a way that feels difficult to control. Often, there’s a lot of shame attached to it too.

But when I sat down to write this post about emotional eating, I got a bit stuck. Because I don’t really identify as an “emotional eater”. It isn’t something I feel I’ve particularly struggled with.

Although when I actually think about it, I frequently eat in response to my emotions.

Sometimes I love a comforting dinner on the sofa, eaten somewhat mindlessly because it feels soothing. On long car journeys, I reach for the sweets when I get bored. If I’ve had a really stressful day, I’ll often order a takeaway because I simply cannot face adding cooking to my mental, physical, and emotional load. And if there’s birthday cake going, I’ll often have a piece whether I particularly fancied cake or not.

So perhaps the interesting question isn’t whether we ever eat in response to our emotions. Perhaps it’s why some of those experiences feel completely unremarkable, while others leave us feeling ashamed and out of control.

We eat for lots of reasons

We sometimes talk about eating as though physical hunger is the only “proper” reason to do it – but that just isn’t how human eating works.

Our eating is driven by a complicated mixture of physical hunger and fullness, pleasure and emotions, and also our environment and habits. These things interact too: being hungry might make the biscuits sitting on the kitchen counter much harder to ignore; getting into the car might make me think about sweets because I’ve eaten them there so many times before. Food can also give us pleasure, comfort and distraction.

None of those things is inherently bad.

Food is a huge part of our cultures, celebrations and relationships. Sometimes I eat cake because someone I love is having a birthday. Sometimes I eat something delicious because it cheers me up. I don't particularly want to reach a point where every single thing I eat has to be justified by the precise level of physical hunger in my stomach.

So if you're struggling with emotional eating, my first instinct isn't necessarily to work out how to stop you doing it - it's to get curious about what's actually going on.

How is it serving you?

Food can be pretty effective at making us feel better in the moment. It can bring pleasure and comfort, but it can also distract us from whatever else is going on. And when something gives us some relief, even temporarily, it makes sense that we learn to do it again.

Feeling shame about it doesn't help us much either. Research has linked shame with emotional eating, whereas greater self-compassion is associated with lower levels of emotional eating and other difficulties around food.

So rather than immediately trying to resist the urge to eat, I often encourage clients to get curious about it.

Some useful questions might be: How am I feeling right now? What happened just before I wanted this food? What happened today? How do I feel while I'm eating it, and afterwards?

This isn't an exercise in catching yourself doing something “bad”. You don't even have to stop eating while you do it. It's simply about understanding a behaviour that might previously have felt automatic or inexplicable.

And sometimes, what we discover is that emotions aren't the whole story.

Is it actually emotional eating – or are you just hungry?

One thing I often find myself discussing with clients who struggle with emotional eating is whether they're actually eating enough.

Perhaps they find themselves raiding the cupboards in the late afternoon, but they've skipped lunch. Or they're ravenous before bed after a day of being “good”. Or they've eaten meals which technically filled them up, but weren't particularly satisfying.

Our different drives to eat don't exist independently of each other. A desire for food can be more likely to develop into a strong craving when there's a sense of deficit – for example, when we're hungry. 

I know this one from experience. I need an afternoon snack most days. If I don't have one, I almost inevitably end up snacking while I make dinner, then can't finish the dinner itself. That’s not “failing to control a craving” - it’s just that I’ve not eaten enough and I’m hungry.

Restriction can complicate things further. If you're constantly having to consciously control what you eat (deciding which foods you're allowed, how much you can have, or whether you've been “good” today) - that takes effort. Research suggests that negative emotions can make that restraint harder to maintain, and that restrained eaters can also be particularly susceptible to emotion-induced eating.

I've experienced a version of this too. There was a time when eating a huge bowl of pasta felt incredibly comforting and indulgent. At the time, I was also being careful about the amount of carbs I ate (anyone else ever weighed their breakfast cereal?! 🙈). These days, when I routinely eat a decent amount of carbs, pasta doesn't have quite the same forbidden magic.

Sometimes the answer to feeling more in control around food isn't more restriction. It might actually be making sure you're eating enough, enjoying what you eat, and loosening some of the rules you've built around food.

What else is in your emotional toolbox?

Of course, sometimes we really are eating because we feel sad, stressed, lonely, bored or overwhelmed.

Again, I don't think that means we have to remove food as an option - but it can be useful to ask whether it's our only option.

This is something I've been working on myself recently. I've jokingly been calling it my “feeling era” 😂. With the support of a great therapist, I've been getting better at actually stopping and noticing how I'm feeling rather than immediately moving on or distracting myself.

Sometimes I'll try to notice where I can feel an emotion in my body, or describe what it actually feels like. Sometimes I need to cry. Sometimes talking to someone helps. Sometimes getting outside does. And sometimes I want a bath, some terrible TV and something lovely to eat.

The point isn't to build a list of approved activities that you're supposed to do instead of eating - it's to have more than one way of responding when things feel difficult.

Maybe control isn't quite the goal

The word I hear again and again when people talk about emotional eating is control.

“I just want to feel in control around food.”

I completely understand that. Feeling as though you're doing something you don't really want to do, over and over again, can be horrible.

But I think there's a difference between control meaning “I must stop myself from eating this”, and having enough awareness and choice to decide how you actually want to respond.

Sometimes that might mean realising you haven't eaten enough and making yourself something substantial. Sometimes it might mean noticing that you've had an awful day and what you really need is to have a cry or call someone. Sometimes you might notice an urge, sit with it for a while, and find that it passes.

And sometimes you might think: Yep, today I want the comforting dinner on the sofa. That's still a choice.

For me, the aim isn't to eliminate emotional eating. It's to understand our eating well enough that it doesn't feel like it's running the show, and to have more ways of looking after ourselves when we need them. That's also the approach I use with urges more broadly: notice what's happening, understand what might be driving it, and then respond.

Sometimes that response will still be food. And I think I'm pretty happy with that.

A little note: if eating regularly feels out of control or is causing you significant distress, it's worth speaking to your GP or an eating disorder specialist. Coaching isn't a substitute for clinical support.