Are you an emotional eater? An anxiety therapist in Boca Raton offering tips for emotional eating.

You have.a fight with your husband and you run to the kitchen to find something to eat.  You grab the bag of the potato chips and plop yourself on the couch.  Thirty minutes later, you realize you ate the entire bag.  You can’t believe you did that, AGAIN, after telling yourself this morning that you would “be good today.”  Now you are beating yourself up for it. You tell yourself tomorrow you will eat better.  Tomorrow comes and you notice that your friend hasn’t responded to your text you sent a couple of days ago, and you think she must be mad at you.  You go to the kitchen to grab a snack.  You eat half the brownies that were baked earlier in the day.  Again, an hour later, you are hating yourself for eating it.  

Though most of us know there is a thing about emotional eating, and maybe even know we do it, we tend to not think about it in the moment.  All we know is we want what we want. And usually at that point, we are in “f*&^ it” mode and don’t think we care.  

What is happening is a habit that was formed long ago where food was a substitute for nurturing that we needed.  Just like a baby sucks her thumb to stay calm, food is calming.  When eating brought that sense of calm that we weren’t getting from our parents, and that association with food was repeated over and over, it became habit.  Our brain learned that we feel better when we eat.  So when our body has the sensation that it needs nurturing and that familiar anxiety kicks in, we run to the kitchen.  

When we can learn to tune in to our body and give it what it needs, food can become less important.  Those chips that once were yelling to eat them from the kitchen can quiet down.  Our relationship with food can change when we change the wiring in our brain and body.

According to the Mayo Clinic, emotional hunger differs from physical hunger in that emotional hunger comes on suddenly, you only crave certain foods, you may overeat or binge and not sense the sensation of being full and then you feel guilt or shame for eating.  

Here are 5 ways to cope with emotional eating.  

1. Pause. Take a deep breath and notice how your body feels. Often just taking a mindful breath or two calms the body down, and the emotional hunger changes.

2.  Go for a walk in nature.  Nature is known to having a calming effect.  Adding walking to that time time in nature is a health bonus for your body and mind.

3. Call a friend. Talk it out.  Calling a friend can distract yourself AND it might make you feel better to get out what you are feeling.  When that settles, the need to emotionally eat could settle.  

4. Knit or find a hobby that keeps you busy. Knitting keeps your hands busy and you end up with something lovely in the end. Gardening can you get you outside, can be a good workout, and having hands in dirt can just feel good. Gaming! Find a hobby that feels good to you.

5. Journal what you are feeling.  Buy yourself a notebook or put it in notes on your phone. Journaling is a safe place to let out whatever is bothering you with no rules… just write what you feel as you feel it.  

Also important is to pause and ask yourself, “Am I really hungry?”  If you think you are, ask yourself if you would eat a food you hate - that can help gauge how hungry you are and where it might be coming from as emotional eating tends to cause us to crave sweets and carbohydrates, comfort food that brings a dopamine signal to the brain the feels good. 

Emotional hunger is not filled by eating.  It only calms it for the moment but the emotional need is still there which keeps the cycle going.  The cycle can end when one addresses the underlying emotional need.  

Calming the body, calms the mind.  When the mind is calm, you can make a different choice.  If you what to heal what’s underneath your emotional eating and heal those eating patterns, I am an anxiety therapist who can help you uncover and change your pattern.  Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consultation.