Cards on the table. I am a textbook emotional eater. I eat in response to emotions I don’t even know I’m feeling. Sometimes they’re emotions I don’t even realize are actually emotions. The “aha” moment tends to happen after the damage is done. Emotional eating is a very temporary comfort when you don’t know what to do with whatever’s going on in your mind and body. Sadly, the comfort it provides is extraordinarily temporary and generally followed by myriad levels of discomfort. Emotional eating doesn’t turn off your feelings. It just compartmentalizes them and they don’t like that. They come back angry, with a vengeance.
And then there’s binge eating. I have a history of doing that too. Emotional eaters are not necessarily binge eaters but it’s hard to imagine a binge eater who isn’t numbing some sort of feeling as they storm eat their way through a pantry.
When COVID started, like so many others, I added binge watching to my repertoire. I’ve learned that my binge watching experience is not complete unless it’s accompanied by binge eating. I binge away on my couch and question every bite and each next episode but find it exceptionally hard to stop myself.
Ending Emotional Eating
Ending emotional eating and binging is not about dieting. And it’s not about willpower or laziness. It won’t be solved by hitting the gym. Exercise is great for your mental health and to strengthen your bones and muscles, including your heart. It might even be a great antidote to a binge that is not yet underway but it’s not a reliable way to end a binge that has already started. I generally try to limit the amount of snacks I have at home, which helps to an extent. But if you’re an emotional binge eater short on supply when demand is raging, you can get incredibly creative.
Ending emotional eating and binging is about understanding what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and breaking the pattern of behavior by reprogramming your systems. If your system always responds to the same triggers the same way, you need a new or reprogrammed system or you’ll never achieve a different outcome. This applies to any behavior in which you engage for the purpose of numbing or avoiding feeling something. Food is my drug and binging my maladaptive behavior of choice. There are many choices. It is maladaptive to avoid situations that may be stressful or difficult, hide feelings rather than assert individual opinions or emotions, experience outbursts of anger, withdraw from social situations that may cause anxiety or discomfort, or engage in self-harm or substance misuse to cope with feelings of distress, anxiety, or other emotions.
The notion of reprogramming or fixing your systems rather than working toward goals comes from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. Clear points out that it isn’t goal setting that makes it possible to create new habits. We know this because many of us may set the same goal and we don’t all or always reach the goal we’ve set. Goal setting on its own is not dispositive but when it’s treated as a component of a more layered strategy, it can provide a helpful focus and purpose.
Clear says we don’t rise to the level of our goals but, rather, we fall to the level of our systems. The goal is the desired outcome. The system is the collection of daily habits that get us there. This makes a lot of sense to me. His preferred strategy calls for
- committing to a process rather than a goal
- releasing the need for immediate results
- building feedback loops (they allow you to keep track without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything)
- measuring backward, not forward (you learn from what you’ve accomplished, not what you’re hoping to accomplish)
- doing what you can (i.e. small steps daily) to sustain change
So where does this leave emotional eaters or other maladapters like me and maybe some of you? My goal is to feel my feelings and put an end to my emotional eating. I’ve started by acknowledging the goal and setting it aside. The process I’m adopting instead is to take a pause and be mindful about everything I eat. Slow it all down. Remember that I actually have the time to slow down. Chew. My process includes checking in with my mind and body and acknowledging how I feel.
To be clear, this is not about losing weight, hating my body or being physically unhealthy. I eat a reasonably healthy diet, I exercise, and the results of my bloodwork are in a healthy range. I’m also a postmenopausal woman who carries a lot of extra weight my body does not want or need but finds it challenging to lose. This is about behaviors that I’ve adopted to give me a break when the emotions that come up for me are uncomfortable and by taking the break binging affords me, I end up holding onto the discomfort longer than I have to. I see that now.
Our bodies get us through so much. I’m grateful for what mine has made possible. It’s my armor. One way our bodies protect us is by holding our feelings when they overwhelm us. We can learn to feel our feelings by identifying an emotion and then identifying where in the body we feel it. Rather than roll your eyes and assume you don’t feel any emotions in your body, maybe experiment a little. When I feel sad, I feel something in my stomach – it’s not pain but rather an emptiness or hollowness. I tend to feed that emptiness even if I’m not feeling hungry because it makes me uncomfortable. I feed the sadness.
Feeling your feelings can be extremely difficult. Feelings can be uncomfortable and even painful. There’s a reason so many of our systems work hard on avoidance. And there’s no quick fix to any of this. Change takes time. Small steps make it possible and sustainable.
By gaining awareness of your emotions, you can learn to better regulate and control them. I may not realize I’m sad or anxious at times but when my stomach feels empty and hollow, even if I’ve recently eaten, I realize it’s my sadness and/or anxiety speaking to me. If I stop for a minute when I choose to eat something (and don’t munch on Oreos while I choose what to eat) then I honor my body and give it the respect it’s due. It also gives me a chance to consciously expand my comfort zone by allowing space for discomfort. We may not like or want discomfort but by letting it in, we then have the opportunity to let it out and let it go.
Musical Playlist as You Ponder This Post
Hungry Like a Wolf by Duran Duran; Eat It by Weird Al Yankovic; Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffett; American Pie by Don McLean; Cake by the Ocean by DNCE
Thinking and Trying
Something to think about: “When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.”― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Something to try: It’s time to get in touch with feelings. Identify an emotion and track it for a day. Write notes about who you’re with, what time it is, where you are, what you’re doing, and how intense the emotion is. Include where and how you feel that emotion in your body. This can be a helpful exercise in learning to help manage your feelings better. Try and remember that all feelings – even the good ones – are fleeting. We’re not helping ourselves by holding onto negative emotions when they would really rather move on and move out.
Coaching Can Help
Coaching can help if you want to develop a mindfulness practice, keep a gratitude journal, or be more present but you’re feeling stuck. Sign up for a free 15 minute discovery call here and let’s see if we can’t unstick you.
I think that I have the opposite “condition”–I’m an emotional “faster”, if that’s a thing. In other words, when I get stressed or upset, my appetite vanishes, sometimes almost completely.