Emotional eating is a common topic on a normal day. Emotional eating is generally perceived negatively as it is associated with eating more food and weight gain. The current COVID19 pandemic may be amplifying emotions and the fear of gaining weight while in lockdown, making the topic of emotional eating very relevant at this time. In this article I am going to look at what emotional eating is, why we emotionally eat, and how we can manage it.
Understanding Emotional Eating
One thing that you might not realize is that food isn’t just nutrients and calories, it is also a crucial part of managing emotions. Emotional eating is the tendency to eat in response to a particular emotion that you may be feeling. There is no one reason why someone emotionally eats. There are genetic and biological factors that may predispose someone to develop emotional eating tendencies, but these factors don’t directly result in emotional eating. Culture influences through one’s life plays a much larger role in the prevalence of emotional eating in our society.
From a young age we develop an emotional relationship with food. Food can provide a very healthy and normal way of helping us cope with certain emotions. Food can give us feelings of relief, happiness and pleasure which may help us cope with life situations. In dire times sometimes food can be our only source of these feelings so taking food away could actually be more harmful.
However, emotional eating is still villainized. Most people think that emotional eating is this ‘bad’ thing that they need to control. We often blame eating something that we shouldn’t on the fact that we emotionally ate and then feel guilty that we couldn’t control it. Emotions such as stress, anxiety, emptiness, depression, loneliness, boredom etc. are all examples of emotions that often trigger this ‘bad’ thing that we do called emotional eating.
So, are you ‘bad’ if you emotionally eat? No, you are not ‘bad’, you are simply normal. Life is a roller coaster of emotions and food can provide comfort at times when you need it. Emotional eating only becomes harmful when feelings and emotions are bottled up and not dealt with and food starts to be abused to a point where it hurts your body.
Managing emotional eating
I have clarified that emotional eating can be a normal reaction to help you cope with your feelings. Trying to fix the eating is then a very indirect approach to managing emotional eating. You rather need to focus on what is causing you to experience a particular emotion. Therefore, the question you should be asking is ‘how can you manage the emotion, rather than how can you stop emotional eating’. The first step is to identify the emotion that is triggering the behavior and its cause, and secondly to develop ways to prevent and alleviate the emotion.
As mentioned above, there are a lot of emotions. Stress, anxiety, emptiness, depression, loneliness, boredom etc. In our current situation in South Africa some of the key feelings you may be experiencing are stress and boredom.
Are you stressed because you are worried about COVID19, your family contracting the virus, or the effect that it is having on your finances? Whatever you are stressed about try and put things in place to reduce that feeling:
- Doing things that you find relaxing and help you manage your stress such as exercising, meditating, yoga and cooking, are all things that would help manage the emotion.
- Educating your-self on COVID19, the symptoms, how you contract it, and the protocol if you display symptoms may help to put you at ease.
- Make a plan to get your finances in order to make you feel better about possible having a reduction in your income.
Or are you bored because work is quiet, and housework isn’t enough to full your day? If boredom is the influencing emotion try find things to fill your time that isn’t just watching TV. Here are a few things that may help manage boredom:
- Create a structure for your day. Having a structure of what you are going to do during the day will help to full your time and leave less time to be bored.
- Find a few hobbies that you enjoy, such as gardening, drawing, painting, home renovating, knitting, doing puzzles etc.
- You can work on furthering your education as numerous universities such as UCT, Wits and even oxford, are providing free online courses.
- If you enjoy cooking, Yuppie Chef is doing free cooking courses which can help you work on your culinary skills
- Audible is also providing free audiobooks for everyone.
When it comes to managing your emotional eating, an important thing to remember is that eating for perceived emotional reasons may not always be the reasons for the perceived eating. Emotional eating can thus be confused for other reasons for eating. The next thing that you can do, that is generally over-looked, is to make sure you are nourishing your body and not over restricting your nutrition.
Erratic and restrictive eating behaviors can lead to chemical imbalances and wreak havoc with mood. It can amplify feelings of anxiety and depression which will only worsen the emotional eating response. These feelings can be alleviated by a normal diet. Things that you can do to make sure that you are nourishing your body include:
- Improve the way that you view food. Society has created a lot of food misconceptions which has led you to label foods ad ‘good and bad’. All foods play a role in nourishment., whether it be nutritional or emotional.
- Practicing mindfulness when eating is also a keyway to help you focus your attention on the meal that you are eating. It will limit other phycological factors from effecting your eating experience. https://nutritioninnovated.co.za/2017/10/12/mindful-eating-live-moment-focus-food/
- Avoid cutting calories. This just leads to food restriction and worsens the emotional eating response.
- Full your day with good quality foods that are spread throughout the day
- Make sure your meals contain a balance of all your different types of food (carbohydrate, protein, fat, fruit & veg). Avoid completely eliminating a particular food.
- Aim to eat when you feel hungry, which is usually 3-4 hourly.
- Have a portion that is satisfying. If you find that you are physically an hour later then you probably haven’t eaten enough.
Addressing the cause directly is the most effective way of managing emotional eating. Reducing your emotional triggers and making sure that you are nourishing your body adequately is key. During lockdown, focus on reducing your stress, managing boredom and giving your body the best quality nutrients available. Lastly, If you do happen to find yourself needing to eat the chocolate, don’t guilt trip yourself. It could be an import source of emotional nourishment that maybe you need at this time.