Do you ever wonder how your emotions can influence what you eat? What you eat? And how you eat it? Here, we’ll explore the emotional and psychological foundations of eating and how they can affect what, when and how much you eat. Uncovering the psychological aspects of eating can help you make healthier choices and foster healthier eating habits – and a life-long healthier relationship with food. Let’s look at how the subconscious mind can drive what we eat – and why. Mind Matters brings psychiatry out of the ivory tower and into the real world. Our unparalleled coverage sheds light on the crucial issues surrounding mental health. Click here to help us continue our vital work, and to learn about the impact we have on the world of mental health.
Table of Contents
When you have a tough day at work, do you find the call of an ice-cream tub hard to resist? Or whenever you’re faced with a sad or stressful event, do you turn to comfort eating? Feelings can be a powerful influence on your eating habits. In this article, we will look at the psychology of eating, as it relates to mind-eating, exploring what feelings influence what we put into our mouths, and how much we do so.
Understanding Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is a fairly common experience in which you use food as a coping mechanism, using food to eat away your emotions. This occurs when you experience strong emotions, like stress, anxiety, sadness, or even boredom which come and go very frequently. During these instances, you may use food to distract your mind. Eating food when you’re not hungry may be a common pitfall if you ever turn to food to cope. When it occurs, people tend to eat more calories than they need.
The difference between physical and emotional hunger is that physical hunger manifests gradually and permeates the body as a whole, sometimes with physical pangs such as a rumbling stomach or lethargy. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, is often more abrupt and can start as a yen for a specific food after experiencing a specific emotion or scenario.
Signs of Emotional Eating
- Eating when you’re not physically hungry
- Craving specific comfort foods
- Eating to numb or suppress emotions
- Feeling guilty or ashamed after eating
- Eating in response to external cues such as stress or boredom
If you’re showing these symptoms on a regular basis, then your feelings are taking the lead in your eating.
The Role of Stress in Emotional Eating
Stress is a common cause of emotional eating. When you’re in a high-stress situation, your body reacts by releasing the hormone cortisol into your bloodstream. Cortisol stimulates your appetite, which may explain why comfort food seems more enticing under the influence of stress.
In addition to instinctively turning to junk food to fill your stomach, chronic stress can also disrupt your eating schedule and motivate you to emotionally graze. This can set up a biochemical feedback loop where stress triggers emotional eating, where emotional eating leads to feelings of guilt and shame, and where those emotions ultimately further ratchet up your already destructive stress levels.
Coping Strategies for Stressful Eating
- Practice mindfulness and awareness of your emotions
- Find alternative ways to manage stress such as exercise or meditation
- Keep healthy snacks on hand to curb emotional eating urges
- Seek support from a therapist or counselor to address underlying emotional issues
With better stress management skills, you can totally disrupt this feedback cycle.
The Influence of Mood on Food Choices
Prevailing mood can also have a strong effect on food choices. When you are feeling happy or celebratory, you are more likely to indulge in rich foods; when sad and anxious, you are more likely to seek comfort foods that tend to be familiar and familiarising.
Mood-Boosting Foods
There’s now evidence that specific foods can boost your mood, largely because of the nutrients that they provide. Incorporating these foods into your diet can help you feel better overall:
| Food Group | Mood-Boosting Nutrients |
| Fruits and Vegetables | Vitamins, minerals, antioxidants |
| Whole Grains | Complex carbohydrates for steady energy |
| Omega-3 Fatty Acids | Found in fatty fish, walnuts, and flaxseeds |
| Probiotics | Gut-healthy bacteria for improved mood |
By focusing on nutrient-dense foods that support a healthy mood, you can positively influence your emotional state and reduce the likelihood of emotional eating.
Strategies for Overcoming Emotional Eating
Defeating the compulsion to emotional eat requires an exercise of self-awareness, behaviour modification and emotional support. Through identifying and addressing the emotions that underlie these dysfunctional tendencies, a better relationship with food can be forged and more adaptive coping mechanisms employed.
Mindful Eating Practices
- Pay attention to hunger cues and eat only when you’re physically hungry
- Avoid distractions such as watching TV or using electronic devices while eating
- Slow down and savor each bite, paying attention to taste, texture, and satisfaction
- Stop eating when you’re comfortably full, even if there’s food left on your plate
With mindful eating, you can heal your relationship with food and reduce impulsive or emotional eating behaviours.
Emotional Regulation Techniques
- Identify triggers for emotional eating and develop alternative coping strategies
- Engage in stress-reducing activities such as yoga, meditation, or deep breathing exercises
- Seek support from friends, family, or a mental health professional
- Keep a food journal to track emotions and eating patterns
When you learn to regulate your emotions in healthy ways, you interrupt the cycle of reflexive emotional eating and make healthier eating decisions.
Seeking Professional Help for Emotional Eating
Emotional eating that substantially compromises your physical health, emotional wellbeing or ability to function in your daily life may warrant professional support, such as from a registered dietitian, therapist or counsellor. With the right assistance, you can create a plan for leaving emotional eating behind.
Treatment Options for Emotional Eating
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to address negative thought patterns and behaviors
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to improve emotion regulation and coping skills
- Nutritional counseling to establish balanced eating habits and address nutrient deficiencies
- Support groups or online communities for individuals struggling with emotional eating
But remember that you don’t have to struggle with emotional eating alone. Support is available, and seeking help from a qualified professional can provide the space to make positive change and start building a healthier relationship with food.
Conclusion
Emotions can be a major driver of eating. We tend to eat when we are feeling stressed, bored or sad (or happy, but that’s another topic for another time). If you are one of these people who tend to turn to food for emotional support, the best thing you can do is first become more self-aware, then engage in some mindful eating practices, and finally acknowledge you don’t have to do it alone. You can get help. It will do you no good to stigmatise yourself for engaging in emotional eating, and then make yourself feel even worse by beating yourself up for this failure. At some point, maybe it’s happening now, you need to take a healthy approach to your eating, and that means recognising reality and then moving forward. Your emotional health is just as important as your physical health, so take care of yourself.
