Key Takeaways

• Emotional eating involves using food to deal with strong emotions.

• People who experience emotional eating are significantly more likely to be overweight, and also find it significantly harder to lose weight with traditional weight loss programs.

• It’s possible to overcome emotional eating and develop healthy eating patterns.

• Keeping a food journal helps you to discover the triggers that lead to emotional eating.

• Developing healthier coping mechanisms that don’t involve food will allow you to gradually get away from emotional eating.

• Support from a team of professionals is very helpful for many people in going through this process.

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating involves using food to deal with strong emotions. Rather than eating because you’re hungry, you’re eating in order to help manage how you feel.

Virtually everyone experiences emotional eating from time to time. However, when it becomes a habit or your usual way of dealing with the world, then a person’s health and weight can be affected. 

Sometimes people refer to this type of eating as “stress eating disorder” or “emotional eating disorder.” However, it’s not technically an eating disorder, but rather a pattern of using food as a coping mechanism.

Emotional eating commonly becomes a vicious cycle. A person experiences challenging emotions, so they overeat unhealthy food. Although they may feel better temporarily, they soon feel guilty for having given into temptation and binged on something unhealthy. The guilt makes them feel even worse – and soon they’re reaching for food to help cope with that emotion.

The Psychology of Emotional Eating

Emotional eating very commonly occurs because of stress. This is sometimes referred to as stress eating. When a person is experiencing a lot of stress, comfort foods can be very appealing. The modern world certainly contains a lot of things to be stressed about – jobs, traffic, inflation, chronic disease, wars. Many of us feel stressed most of the time, and eating is one way that some people deal with this stress.

However, stress isn’t the only emotion that can provoke emotional eating. Other common triggers for emotional eating include: 

• Boredom 

• Fatigue

• Sadness

• Grief

• Anxiety

• Anger 

When people feel difficult emotions, they automatically seek ways to cope with those and feel better. These are known as coping mechanisms. Food is a very common coping mechanism, because it can have a powerful impact on our mental state and emotions. 

Research has shown that being in a negative emotional state causes people to crave foods high in sugar and/or fat. These foods can change the release of neurotransmitters (signaling chemicals) in the brain, which then has an impact on mood. For example, eating sugar has been found to increase both dopamine and serotonin in the brain. 

The shifts in neurotransmitters that occur when a person eats unhealthy foods can actually be very helpful, bringing them into a more positive mental state. If this happens only once in a while, it’s not a problem. However, if this becomes a person’s usual or habitual coping mechanism, then it can easily lead to overeating, which can then have negative consequences for health.

Emotional Eating and Weight Gain

Studies have shown that people who regularly use emotional eating to manage their emotions are significantly more likely to be overweight. In fact, researchers believe that this may be one way that depression and obesity are linked. When feeling depressed, many people find themselves experiencing emotional eating, and this causes them to gain weight.

Increased Cortisol Production

Stress, and other negative emotions, increase the level of a hormone called cortisol in the body. Cortisol acts on many different body tissues, including the brain. It has been shown to increase cravings for sugary and/or fatty foods. Cortisol also promotes the storage of calories as fat.

Everyone’s body produces cortisol to some degree, but some people’s bodies are more sensitive than others. People who have a stronger cortisol response have also been shown to be more likely to overeat unhealthy foods in response to stress. If you’re among those whose body reacts more strongly when under stress, then you may find that you’re more tempted to use food to cope with difficult emotions. This can make you significantly more likely to gain weight when you’re stressed.

Sleep Impairment

Stress also impairs your sleep. This increases the levels of ghrelin (the hormone that makes you feel hungry), and decreases the levels of leptin (the hormone that makes you feel full). This can make you more likely to reach for food, particularly when feeling difficult emotions. It’s important to find alternative ways to manage stress, so it doesn’t set you up for weight gain. 

Research has shown that people who commonly experience emotional eating find it much more challenging to achieve weight loss. Because their draw towards food is emotional, it’s hard to overcome it with willpower. In fact, those who experience emotional eating are only about half as likely to succeed with a traditional weight loss program.

Identifying Emotional Eating Patterns

In order to overcome emotional eating, the first step is to identify the patterns that cause you to overeat. During this first stage, don’t try to change what you’re doing. The only goal is to get a complete sense of what’s happening. Don’t try to stop yourself from overeating, or from eating junk food – but rather, try to understand why you’re tempted to do that.

A food logging journal can be an extremely useful tool for becoming aware of these patterns. Each time you eat anything, write down what you ate, what your hunger level was before eating (on a scale of 1 to 10), what you were doing just before you ate, and what you were feeling just before you ate. 

It’s a good idea to keep a food journal for at least two weeks. This gives you enough information to start to understand the patterns. Look over your food journal and see what patterns you can find. Pay particular attention to the times when you ate, but weren’t particularly hungry at the time. What feelings tend to trigger you to eat? For example, you might find a pattern of stress eating, eating out of boredom, or eating when you feel sad.

Once you’ve gained greater awareness of what emotions tend to trigger you to eat, then you’ll be able to start to work on gaining control of your eating habits.

Strategies to Manage Emotional Eating

Overcoming emotional eating is entirely possible. Even if you’ve spent years developing these unhealthy patterns, it’s possible to change them. You can develop healthy eating habits, which will help you to maintain a healthy body weight and support your overall health. Research has shown that there are effective ways to curb emotional eating and achieve a healthier body weight.

It’s absolutely crucial not to develop a sense of guilt around emotional eating. This will just make you feel worse, and could actually trigger emotional eating. Remember that using food as a coping mechanism is very common, and it’s nothing to feel bad about. Most people use food to manage their emotions from time to time. You aren’t a broken person – you’ve just developed certain habits.

Ultimately, the goal is to find healthier ways to manage your emotions, so that you won’t be as tempted to use food to manage them. Once you’ve identified your common emotional eating triggers, the next step is to identify some other coping mechanisms that aren’t based around food.

Some possible ideas include:

• Go for a walk

• Do some deep breathing exercises

• Put on your favorite song and dance to it

• Call a family member or friend

• Watch a funny movie, TV show, or comedy show

• Meditate

• Be creative – make some art or music

• Try a new hobby (for those who find themselves eating out of boredom)

Try out different ways of coping until you find one or more that works well for you. Then, when your emotional eating trigger arises, try using your new coping mechanism instead of reaching for food. For example, when you start to feel stressed and anxious, instead of using food to decrease stress, you will go for a 15-minute walk. 

It’s also helpful to press the pause button each time you’re thinking about eating. Before you eat, ask yourself whether you’re truly hungry. Check in to see what you’re feeling in your body. Are you feeling the signs of hunger, such as stomach discomfort or growling, low energy, feeling shaky, or having trouble concentrating? How long has it been since you last ate, and what have you done since then? 

If it doesn’t seem that you’re physically hungry but you’re feeling the desire to eat, maybe what you actually need isn’t food, but another way to cope with emotions. However, if there are signs that you’re hungry and it’s been a while since you last ate, then you probably truly need some food.

Developing a Healthy Relationship with Food

Although the process of overcoming emotional eating may sound simple, it can be more challenging than it sounds. You’re trying to undo habits that you may have had for years. It can also be hard to see your own patterns of behavior.

It can be very helpful to have support as you go through this process. A nutritionist can help you to choose healthy foods, so that you ensure you’re giving your body everything that it needs. A health coach can help you to develop an exercise program and to find ways to stick with your new approach to eating. They can also help you with the process of uncovering the emotional patterns that lead to emotional eating, and support you as you find healthier ways to manage these emotions.

It’s crucial to take a holistic approach. If your new plan is unrealistic or excessively restrictive, then there’s very little chance that you’ll be able to maintain it over time. Working with a coach can help you to create a plan that will work with your life. You also don’t have to do everything at once – this can be overwhelming. Instead, by making just one small change at a time and then staying consistent with that new habit, you’ll reach your larger goals over time.

Our NOVI Optimum program is designed to provide our clients with all of the support that they need to achieve lasting weight loss. This includes support from doctors, nutritionists, and health coaches, along with a custom-designed app to help you reach your goals. 

You may have tried to change your eating habits in the past, but found that the changes just didn’t stick. For many people, the support and accountability provided by a team of experts is what finally helps them to achieve their goals, and to maintain those changes for the long term.

If you’re dealing with very difficult emotions (such as having had a traumatic experience in the past), then you may also benefit from working with a mental health professional to help you process these. We can refer you to someone if you believe that this would be beneficial for you.

Evidence-Based Medical Weight Loss

If you’ve already taken steps to curb emotional eating and to live a healthier lifestyle, but you’re still struggling to lose weight, then it’s possible that you would benefit from a class of medications that can help some people to lose weight. Known as GLP-1RAs, these medications are also used to help control blood sugar in people living with diabetes. Medications in this class include semaglutide and liraglutide. 

By mimicking a natural hormone called GLP-1, these medications act in the brain to decrease hunger and cravings, which helps people to eat healthier. In addition, they slow down emptying of the stomach, and they interact with other hormones to help your body keep blood sugar from rising too high. These medications are intended to be combined with healthy lifestyle changes, so it’s still important to commit to healthy eating and exercise.

GLP-1RAs are only available with a doctor’s prescription. It’s important that you have a doctor overseeing your treatment, in order to ensure that it’s both safe and effective. We offer these medications as part of our NOVI Optimum Plus program. This includes all of the support from a team of experts that’s included in our NOVI Optimum program, but with the addition of the medication. If you’d like to find out whether you’d be a good candidate for trying these medications, please book a consultation here at our clinic.