This is a guest post from a fellow Eating Psychology Coach, Tanya Mark.
It's been a highly emotional month for me as my husband and I said goodbye to our beloved Moxie who has been our fur child, and only child, for 14 years.
As a result there were days where I didn't feel like eating at all, while there were other days where I ate only foods that felt comforting, trying to fill the empty space that Moxie's loss left inside me.
Peanut butter and steamed broccoli - foods that Moxie loved were foods I just couldn't eat. And simple to digest foods like Lipton's noodle soup and Nabisco saltines were all I could get down because I just felt sick to my stomach with heartbreak, sadness, loneliness, depression, grief.
We can label this as "emotional eating" and something that's bad for our health but the truth is, and I say this with kindness and compassion and a deep sign of relief... Emotional eating is simply part of being a human.
Most likely, because you are human, you've experienced changes with your appetite for certain foods too.
Unfortunately, emotional eating is pathologized by diet culture as something "wrong," "shameful," - a problem that needs to be "fixed" because eating when you're not hungry or eating too much is "bad" and can lead to unintended consequences which tend to be weight gain which our society labels as unhealthy.
But emotional eating can lead to weight loss too (due to under-eating) which is unfortunately praised by diet culture in our thin is better society.
But as an Eating Psychology Coach, Certified in Intuitive Eating, I understand that emotional eating is actually not a food problem.
It's about feelings and how we cope with them.
Why do we as humans go to food when we're emotional and want to feel better? We've learned to equate food with love and comfort and nourishment since infancy, when we were held, loved, and fed.
If we take diet culture out of the equation, emotional eating is a coping mechanism that works - in the short term.
But sadly, because we live in diet culture, the solution is usually to "fix" your emotional eating "problem" through restricting the foods you go to which are often labeled as "bad" by our culture. Thus you've taken away a coping mechanism (and for many of us our ONLY one) leaving you more stressed.
The more time I spend talking to clients about their relationships with food, the more I find that our conversations aren’t about food. Because when we’re talking about food, we’re talking about so many different things. We are talking about the way we're feeling in our current environment.
We're not robots or machines - how, why and what we eat is deeply connected to how we're feeling and living as human beings. It's constantly shifting as our environment changes which impacts how we're feeling from day to day, hour by hour.
So if you or someone you love identifies and feels stressed about being an an "emotional eater," I have compassionate guidance for you.
Start with noticing:
Observe yourself with curiosity and notice what's actually going on without judgment or criticism attached. Are you physically hungry or are you feeling something?
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If you are physically hungry:
This is your body telling you that you need food, so please, please eat. Not honoring your hunger is critical and is Principle 2 in the Intuitive Eating framework that I teach. If you're not eating when you're biologically hungry, it can FEEL like emotional eating when you do eat because you are past gentle hunger. And because we live in diet culture it may be difficult for you to even sense true primal hunger because you've been taught to ignore, suppress, fight hunger and eat as little as possible. So be compassionate with yourself. It may take time to relearn how to feel these physical sensations coming from your body and not your mind and the rules of "healthy eating."
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If you are not physically hungry - what are you feeling?
Can you figure exactly what you are feeling? A lot of times the words that we come up are vague so it can be useful to sit with the descriptions listed on the Wheel of Emotion below:
You can download a copy of the above Wheel of Emotion here:
Give the emotion a name. And then notice where this emotion lives in your body and what it feels like.
For example, I feel Moxie's loss as intense sadness, grief in my chest - like a weight crushing my heart and lungs. Or you might feel anger as tenseness in your shoulders.
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If this is what I am feeling, what can I do to help with this?
Yes, you can use food but what else is there? Or you may choose to have food AND try something else. Or, try another coping mechanism AND if that doesn’t work, food is your backup.
I found that physical movement, getting out of the house, has helped me cope with my sadness. I've spent a lot of time walking or hiking with friends who understood loss, reminiscing about the joy Moxie brought into our lives. Of course these walks are often tear-filled, but I am allowing myself to feel and move through the pain and I do feel better. Each day I continue to cope by getting outside and moving my body as I grieve and this is allowing my appetite for a variety of foods to return.
So I encourage you to try something else in a safe environment. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness is Principle 7 of Intuitive Eating where we discuss other ways to cope with emotions in the short term and long term - again, with kindness. And if you need more support, I have a wonderful list of psychologists, therapists that I can refer you to.
With kindness and compassionate I remind you that emotions are what make you human. And we all eat. It's not possible for emotions and eating not to be linked because every time you eat, you feel something.
Amen, Tanya. Amen.
If this post resonated with you, please consider sharing it to spread the word. It might be of use to someone you know.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, click HERE to book a session with me.
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