"Intuitive eating and emotional eating – tips to overcome"
Emotional Eating can be defined, according to the oh so scientific source of Wikipedia, “the propensity to eat in response to positive and negative emotions”. See that, it’s a neutral definition. But we’ve created synonyms for emotional eating such as stress eating and emotional eating - focused on the negative.
First things first, and most importantly. Emotional eating is not wrong. Or bad. It is completely normal. Repeat that as many times as you need to. It is when eating becomes your only method of dealing with difficult emotions that you may need to work on it.
A little more on Emotional Eating
The Emotional Eating scale - many years ago (I used Arnow et al 1994 as a base for the below) a scale was created, if you want to draw it yourself and have a go then listen to my instructions and draw the following - a table with the columns reading No Desire to Eat, A small desire to eat, Moderate Desire to eat, Strong urge to eat and Overwhelming urge to eat. The column reads emotions such as Resentful, Discouraged, Worn out, Inadequate, Excited, Rebellious, Sad and Uneasy..
Other emotions include - irritated, jealous, worried, frustrated, lonely, furious, angry, guilty, bored, helpless, upset… add any that you want to or feel you wish to.
What is your relationship like with emotions and food? Do some have a more direct relationship than others? Maybe it changes day by day…
Or ask yourself the following - do you agree with:
“I eat when I’m stressed”
“I have trouble saying no when I need to”
“I tend to be impulsive”
“I feel out of control when eating if overwhelmed”
“It’s hard for me to stop eating when I’m full”
Source - Intuitive Eating Workbook
Ask yourself -
How has emotional eating helped you?
How has emotional eating not helped you / negatively impacted you
Compare the two - do the pros outweigh the cons
A very quick run through of Intuitive Eating if you’re new here
Intuitive Eating is a framework developed by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. It consists of 10 principles based on their work helping people with their relationship to food - the ten principles are: reject the diet mentality, honour your hunger, make peace with food, challenge the food police, find the satisfaction factor, feel your fullness, cope with emotions with kindness, respect your body, movement - feel the difference and gentle nutrition.
In terms of crossover with emotional eating the principles cope with your emotions with kindness details all of the below - but also removing shame / guilt via making peace with food helps you detach emotions from what you eat.
How diets contribute to emotional eating
Diets by their nature link emotions and food - we associate shame, guilt, failure with food. It becomes a source of stress, and sometimes of relief - think diet “cheat meals” etc. Do you naturally think of negative effects of eating when happy or stressed - or has this something you’ve learnt?
So how do I deal with emotional eating?
Coping with your feelings without food - a trio of ideas from the Intuitive Eating workbook for ya.
Self care / Compassion
Sitting with your feelings
Distractions (helpful)
Self compassion - fundamentally you have to believe that you have emotional needs that are important and should be met. Do you feel that you don’t deserve to feel a certain way or . Meeting your needs through mechanisms such as comfort and warmth, expressing your feelings, sensual pleasure, enough sleep etc. etc.
I’m going to put an open ended question that isn’t in any way a call out or made to shame you. We’ve all done it -
“Do you take care of others’ needs while neglecting yours”
This can sometimes lead to guilt, or resentment. Or plain exhausted.
Sometimes we need to go above and beyond taking care of basics - how often do you engage in things such as
Reading for pleasure
Booking experiences such as massages
Take a walk with nowhere to go
Listening to music you enjoy
What activities provide nurturing for you? And try and think of ones like the above that aren’t costly - because then we have to weigh up the cost of nurturing…
Sitting with your feelings
“What am I feeling right now”
This takes time, not only to practice, but also literally. Taking 5 minutes to figure out what you’re feeling and if this is affecting what you want to eat. Now I know this method has sometimes been hijacked by diet culture into ‘you’re not hungry’ and people talk themselves out of eating - and this may be the case. But it’s not with the end goal of restriction but rather sitting with emotions that we realise are occurring. If that happens to be with food that’s okay. Feeling lousy, acknowledge it and realise you still want comfort food. Then great. Maybe you utilise another tool alongside food.
Am I physically hungry - think stomach growling, maybe feeling a little tired etc.
Practice non-judgement - if you realise
Break storylines down into reasoning e.g. ‘I need some quiet time for myself, I need to set some boundaries….” into I need connection, I need a sense of balance, I need to feel nurtured, I need to feel valued
“What do I really need at this moment”
“How can I fulfil this need without just turning to food”
Helpful distraction
This out of the three is for when you’re building those emotional muscles of the other two, because being realistic is super important. Sometimes we don’t want to face our emotions, we need respite and distraction can give that. And that distraction should be helpful - not that eating isn’t. But if it fuels guilt, shame and any negative emotions then it’s not being helpful or conducive.
A note here that often movement is considered a good distraction - and I get it because I love to run when stressed. But we don’t want to turn a reliance of food to deal with all emotions to relying on movement. This is where sometimes unhealthy relationships to movement arise. When you can’t stop exercising regardless of injuries or negative effects e.g. losing your period it’s a sign it’s too much of an emotional crutch.
Ideas include
A movie or book or magazine
Music / dancing / singing to music
Mind puzzles - Sudoku, Crossword, Jigsaw
Playing games - computer or board
Some more tips coming your way -
Find your emotional triggers - maybe it’s when you’re constantly stressed, sad etc. Notice patterns in yourself and then you can work on them. For some it’s more covert emotions such as rewarding yourself for work - “I achieved ____ I deserve cake” or even procrastination “after I’ve eaten ___ I”ll [hard task here]”. It can be rebellion against someone such as a critical parent (which is why sometimes family gatherings can be triggering) or a way of rebelling from a perfectionist lifestyle - either self imposed or otherwise.
Find YOUR coping mechanisms - double underline the your there. For some exercising and going for walks is their jam, for others it’s journaling or phoning a friend. And as someone who has taught martial arts hitting stuff can be a great outlet and I’ve seen hundreds of people benefitting from it.
Tap into your support system, or build one - it can be really really hard to talk about not feeling great with friends / family but there are many benefits from climbing that hill. And if you really don’t want to then maybe professional support will be helpful, or finding online groups - anonymous or not.
It’s really important for me, and any health professional really, to know that we have a scope of practice. If you’re depressed, low, anxious etc. it may be worth seeking out professional help.
Use visualisations - visualising best case scenarios can help them become reality.
Think of a stressful situation, now imagine food is available.
Which emotions might you feel? What challenges might this bring up>
What strategies will you use to avoid turning to food
What would it feeling like to eat, but not feel out of control
How would you feel after knowing you dealt with your emotions without using food
Start to see how emotions sit in your body - tables such as the below can be helpful. But it can be a lot less technical. It can be feeling stressed, closing your eyes and asking yourself where is this in my body. Slowly you will learn that physical sensations indicate a certain emotion…
List emotions - where do they feel in your Eyes, Mouth, Neck, Shoulders, Heart, Lungs, Stomach, Bladder and Legs. This can be in table or listed….
Lastly….
Know you’ll get it wrong. Sorry. But Intuitive Eating is a journey - it’s one of its main features. There are no failures just learnings. And again emotional eating is okay. Repeat that as many times as needed.
We just need supplementary skills to help build a range of tools to deal with emotions - positive and negative.
A disclaimer - the double edged sword of no longer using food
Sometimes emotional eating can be beneficial, and so losing that crutch can feel not great. This is normal, comes with time - and you know have a tool set to deal with it (hooray).
