Note: This article is based on the blog post by Nina Savelle-Rocklin, in which she talks about emotional eating.
She was trying to have one bite every time, but it was getting followed by another, then another. Before she knew it, she’d eaten three or four donuts.
Each time this would happen, Arlene would be so ashamed of herself and vow to take more control. This would be followed by sticking to a strict diet for several days. Eventually her willpower would dwindle, and she would revert to binge-eating donuts.
“I eat so many donuts that my stomach hurts, and I tell myself, ‘You don’t have any willpower'," she said, with eyes full of tears. Then she sighed in horror and said, “I know it’s bad for my health, but I can’t stop, and that doesn’t make any sense. How do I overcome this awful donut problem?”
I reassured Arlene that the real problem isn’t the donut. It is perfectly acceptable to eat donuts or other desserts every once in a while as part of a balanced diet. However, Arlene wasn’t just eating donuts to enjoy them; she felt compelled to eat so much at a time that she’d feel pain, which made her feel ashamed.
During therapy sessions, it became clear to me that Arlene had turned to donuts because of a fundamental problem: the difficulty of identifying and processing certain emotional states. By focusing on donuts and her weight issues, she was able to successfully distract herself from what was really bothering her.
This is known as emotional eating, which is a common problem. Emotional eating can be both friend and foe; it provides temporary comfort, but it also damages your body and your self-esteem.
Emotional eating also hides the real cause of the problem. Every gardener knows that when you pick a weed, it will grow again. In order to eradicate these weeds for good, you have to uproot them. Likewise, we have hidden feelings and thoughts that are outside our consciousness but still direct many of our actions.
Self-defeating behaviors like emotional eating may not hold any exterior meaning, but they hold an underlying one. As I often tell my patients, “It’s not logical, it’s mental.”
As a therapist, I take a psychoanalytic approach to solving emotional eating problems or any other problem. I dig deep into the hidden parts of my patients’ minds, which can take some serious effort.
For example, Arlene became so good at turning to donuts for comfort that most of the time she wasn’t even aware of what was causing her distress. This is because it was hidden from her conscious mind to begin with.
One helpful way to achieve lasting change is to identify and search for those fundamental problems and learn a new way to respond to yourself. It’s helpful to do this with a therapist, but I will give you some instructions below to at least get you started.
What should you do?
1. Stop sticking to any diet you follow
Many of my patients try to solve the emotional eating problem by following a diet to lose weight. This is done by restricting the calorie intake or avoiding certain foods. However, this strategy is not effective in dealing with eating problems.
Most diets fail, and that’s because they are a temporary solution, and most of the time they actually lead to weight gain in the long term. From a psychological perspective, diets involve deprivation. The experience of not being able to get what you want can make you want it even more. This, in turn, leads to overeating or binge eating.
If you’re thinking about not eating pizza, pasta, or ice cream, those foods will become the focus of your thinking. This makes you focus on the wrong thing. You’ll think about what you’re eating rather than why you’re eating it.
In the end, these diets fail because they are only concerned with food, and they don’t address what made you overeat in the first place. If you are rushing towards food, you are running away from something else. Instead of dieting, think about what eating means to you.
2. Find a solution for emotional eating
The important first step is to find the connection between your emotions and food. Each time you notice that you are going through a period of emotional eating, write down how you were feeling prior to that period and note if you can identify any particular patterns.
For example, many people overeat to avoid emotions. Do you remember how Arlene used to eat so much that her stomach would hurt? That was our first clue to solving the mystery of why she couldn’t stop eating donuts.
I learned that Arlene grew up in a family that raised everyone to be grateful and happy all the time, and if she was ever hurt or upset, they would tell her to stop whining. Her parents’ message was clear: it was not acceptable to express any emotional pain.
By eating donuts until she felt physical pain, I think Arlene was subconsciously avoiding her emotional pain by turning it into physical pain. When she was able to tackle this hidden pain during treatment rather than hiding from it, she was able to stop binge-eating donuts.
Most of the time, societies promote the idea that expressing feelings is a weakness. Girls and women are taught that it is not a good idea to feel or express anger, which is impossible, of course. Instead, they’ll get angry at themselves for eating too much or gaining weight. They would be really angry, but their anger would be because of something or someone else. However, they have been told they weren’t supposed to express it. Likewise, they plant in the minds of boys from an early age the idea that they should never cry, and then they grow up to be men who find it difficult to express their vulnerability.
Partly because of all these societal expectations, many people I see growing up feel they can’t acknowledge or deal with their feelings. To them, emotional eating can be a way to disconnect from the world and a temporary escape from everything that is bothering them.
Most of the time, my patients describe the experience of escaping their consciousness while eating as being numb without thinking or feeling. This empty state is a temporary protection from pain, where emotions are just reactions to different situations, not personal flaws. Once you find a new way to deal with your feelings, you won’t need to rely on food. Come up with healthy ways to express your feelings, such as talking to a family member or writing in your diary about what you’re thinking and feeling.
You can also try giving yourself a pep talk, like saying, “I’m doing my best; I’m in the process of changing, and I’m going to be kind to myself starting now.”
If you find yourself slipping out of your awareness while eating, go back to the present with a grounding exercise. One way to do this is by looking at your environment and noticing one thing that you can touch, see, hear, and smell. If possible, speak loudly, as using your senses to name your environment helps you focus on the present moment.
3. Consider if there are any specific feelings you’re trying to avoid
If you eat spontaneously when you’re feeling upset, it’s important to be curious, not critical, and find out why you’re going to the kitchen. There are many causes of emotional eating, and I will highlight some of the most popular ones nowadays, such as feeling extreme loneliness, dissatisfaction, or inner emptiness, which you may symbolically fill with food.
Consider the following questions: What do you need most in your life? What are the things that make you feel deprived?
Your answers can help define what is missing. Whether it’s a relationship you’ve had that didn’t fulfill your desires or your dissatisfaction with other parts of your life, you can start taking steps to make change. This will help you stop getting satisfaction symbolically through food.
Others turn to food to deal with their own helplessness or feeling unable to do anything, which is one of the most painful experiences of human existence. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Lance Dodes suggests that addictive behavior, such as compulsive eating, is a way to get rid of feelings of helplessness.
Feeling helpless about a situation outside of your control translates to helplessness against food. It is easier to feel helpless about food than to feel helpless about life necessities. To deal with feeling helpless at work, for example, or in an argument, admit to yourself that you are helpless at the moment.
Accept the limits of your ability to influence your world while focusing on identifying where you can be in control, and remember the many times in your life when you managed to overcome difficulties, so that you can, as a result, correct your perspective and achieve some peace of mind.
If you are able to better tolerate helplessness in other areas of your life, you will be less likely to try to replace it with food.
It is also common to overeat when bored. Boredom is a state in which you feel like you have nothing to do, as well as feeling agitated and dull throughout the day.
I call boredom an ‘Umbrella emotion.’ This is because it takes over other emotional states, especially loneliness, in addition to emptiness and anxiety.
The solution to boredom is to try to change something. If boredom hides a difficult feeling like loneliness, start addressing that need in you. If you’re lonely, connect with someone or think of ways to meet new people.
Of course, sometimes we can’t get rid of boredom. If there is nothing to do or no one to meet, responding to yourself comfortably, which I describe below, is very important.
4. Consider whether you’re eating for comfort
Our first experience of feeding as babies is associated with feelings of love and connection. Think about what happens when a baby is breastfed: it feels safe and loved in its mother’s arms. Even in adulthood, eating is associated with this earlier feeling of love and safety. When we need comfort, turning to food makes sense. Because that’s what we were doing earlier in our lives.
This is why—and this may sound somewhat strange—I think that deep down in us, food actually represents humans. We don’t consciously think about it that way, but we use the same words to describe food and love. We describe relationships as fulfilling or satisfying. We say that we are thirsty for love and attention. Food and relationships are intertwined in our minds.
Some people can be unreliable and unavailable, while for many of us, food is otherwise an available and reliable source of comfort. This is why it may be easier and safer to turn to food rather than people when we are upset. Eating for comfort is an expression of the desire to receive care and attention from another person.
5. Learn new ways to calm yourself
Although certain details differ from one person to another, everyone who indulges in emotional eating is essentially seeking to calm themselves. The key to change is finding new ways to calm yourself down with words rather than food.
You can do this by changing the way you talk to yourself. First, get to know your inner critic. Almost every person I’ve treated has spoken to themselves in that hostile voice. If you use the pronoun “you” when talking to yourself, think about who is actually speaking. It may be the voice of someone who has criticized you in the past, or it may just be your inner voice, which is the defensiveness you have developed in an effort to maintain discipline in your behavior. Either way, self-criticism never helps. It will make you feel even worse.
When I asked Arlene to say to herself, “You’re disgusting,” she couldn’t do it because she felt it was too insulting. She was able to realize that she was talking to herself in the same unaccepting way her mother used to talk to her and that she had adopted her mother’s critical attitude towards herself. She now treats herself as dismissively as her mother used to treat her.
When you start to criticize yourself, imagine saying those words to someone else. If you can’t say something like that to a friend, child, or loved one, then don’t say it to yourself. Imagine having a friend who is upset over binge-eating pizza. Would you say, “This is disgusting; how can you eat all of that?” to them?
Of course not. The best response would be, “I’m sorry you’re upset. That must be really hard on you; how can I help you?” Start treating yourself as if you were your own friend.
For that purpose exactly, I have coined the acronym VARY, which represents the following words:
- Validate: Know how you feel and accept it without judgment or excuses.
- Acknowledge: Affirm to yourself the importance of what you feel.
- Reassure: Take things easy and remind yourself that you won’t always feel the way you do
- Yourself: Ask yourself about what you need to feel better.
When you talk to yourself, pay attention to the tone of your voice. Words can convey very different feelings when you pronounce them differently.
When Arlene tried to talk positively to herself, she said that it didn’t work, so I asked her to repeat what she had said. “This is annoying, but everything will be all right,” she said indignantly, in a very cold tone.
She seemed like she was reading some statistics. It's no wonder she wasn’t feeling better. I repeated to her exactly what she had said, only with a different tone. I told her warmly and gently, “This is annoying, but everything will be all right.” These same words had an entirely different effect on her. This is because a calm tone can make you feel comfortable.
6. Look for alternatives for food
Many people respond to their physical needs by eating. For example, some people eat when they feel sleepy in order to get some energy or when feeling stressed as a way to calm down. If that applies to you, think about what you really need instead of automatically going to eat.
For example, if you are tired, you need to rest. Take a 10-minute nap to allow your mind and body to recharge.
If you’re stressed, have a cup of green tea or do soothing exercises like progressive muscle relaxation. To do this, tighten your legs, then your stomach, then your arms, clench your fists and keep your muscles very tight. Maintain this tension for as long as possible, at least 15 seconds, and then relax your muscles.
You will likely feel more comfortable. The idea of this exercise is that when your body is relaxed, your mind will follow suit.
You may also want to pamper yourself in new ways. Our culture uses food as a reward; we go out to dinner to celebrate graduations, anniversaries, and other things that matter to us. Even birthdays are celebrated with a cake. It’s no wonder that many of us use food to celebrate or to create a feeling of happiness.
Of course, there is no problem with eating a cake or dessert as a celebration. But if you find yourself always turning to food to celebrate the smallest accomplishments or relying heavily on it as a reward, it may be worth it to consider other options, whether it’s watching a fun TV show, taking a walk, or reading a book that’s fun to you at the beach.
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