Overcoming Emotional Eating: 3 Common Mistakes People Make

Emotional eating is essentially eating food in response to emotional triggers rather than your physiological hunger cues. It can involve eating to numb or suppress uncomfortable feelings or seeking comfort through food. It often occurs impulsively and can lead to overeating or binge eating. Navigating this eating behaviour can be tricky, and many fall into common traps when trying to overcome it.

The three common mistakes people make:

1. Thinking Emotional Eating Is Always a Bad Thing

Emotional eating is a behaviour that’s deeply ingrained in human nature and contrary to popular belief, isn’t inherently negative. During celebrations we might eat delicious cake when we’re not hungry. Perhaps because it’s a happy event, to be sociable and connect with others.

However, it's important to recognise when emotional eating becomes problematic. This happens when these eating patterns become your primary coping mechanism or lead to feelings of guilt and shame. Instead of berating yourself for turning to food for comfort, it's important to embrace self-compassion. By understanding that seeking comfort through food is a natural human instinct, you can shift away from negative self-judgment that keeps you stuck in the never-ending cycle of guilt and shame.

2. Falling into All-or-Nothing Thinking

"All or nothing" thinking is a cognitive distortion that can exacerbate emotional eating patterns. This mindset categorises behaviours as either entirely good or entirely bad, leaving no room for flexibility. For instance, you might think, I've already eaten something I shouldn’t have, so I might as well just continue

Breaking free from this loop involves challenging the black-and-white thinking and adopting a more balanced approach to eating and self-care. Your relationship with food is a life long journey but one that gets easier as you collect the required tools and strategies along the way.

Rather than viewing food choices as moral judgments, it's critical to work on self-awareness and mindfulness around your eating habits. This includes recognising triggers for emotional eating events and developing alternative coping strategies.

3. Turning to Dieting as a Solution

For many people, the instinctual response to an emotional eating episode is to start a new diet. However, this approach often backfires, exacerbating the very issues it aims to solve. Dieting commonly fuels feelings of deprivation, leading to intensified cravings and an unhealthy preoccupation with food.

Rather than viewing dieting as a solution to emotional eating, think about what might have led to the eating behaviour. Were you sad, lonely, angry, premenstrual, tired or sleep deprived? Did you experience a body image situation, have a disagreement, or notice a recurring source of distress? Become curious without offering up self-judgement and you may be amazed at the transformative power it holds.

If the idea of tackling your eating patterns feels overwhelming and you're unsure of where to begin, take a look at my FREE guide Breaking the Cycle - Your First Steps to Healing Your Relationship with Food to kickstart your journey today

This invaluable resource will help you:

✔️Know when you’re really hungry and when you’re not

✔️Learn when to eat that’s best for you

✔️Know the best snacks to help you stop craving and feeling out of control

What triggers your emotional eating?

Have you ever thought about the emotions, experiences, and life situations that trigger your emotional eating? From boredom to stress, sadness to loneliness, or the ever-lingering anxiety, these triggers can lead us to seek comfort from food. A gruelling day at work often leaves us craving a reward for making it through, and that's where emotional eating can come in.

For many, food has become a coping mechanism, a temporary relief from life's challenges. However, it's a fleeting escape that rarely brings lasting comfort. More often than not, the aftermath leads to shame, guilt, and self-loathing - far from the reward you were seeking.

Think about it – when faced with a hard day, a packet of biscuits becomes the automatic response. But what if, beneath the surface, what you truly need is a way to de-stress, find stimulation, or simply get some rest?

This survival mechanism often turns into an ingrained habit, one that's developed from early childhood – were you ever given a treat to sooth you as a child? With the prevalence of dieting behaviours you are likely to have become disconnected from your body, making it all the more harder to know if you are eating for hunger or something quite different.

When working with clients, one of my goals is to guide them towards more helpful ways of feeling better by focusing on self-care and non-food-related rewards. Often, they do not feel worthy of doing positive things for themselves – is this the same for you?

It can be an empowering exercise to reassess your behaviours in a non-judgemental way and ask yourself – is this truly serving me? Is it time to explore what does? Take a moment to identify activities that can become a part of your daily life. What brings you joy? What makes you feel good? How can you relax and de-stress?

This needs to be individual to you, but here are some examples to consider:

🎵 Immerse yourself in calming music

🧘‍♂️Dedicate a few minutes to yoga or Pilates

🚶‍♀️ Take a gentle walk in peaceful surroundings

📰 Enjoy some quality time with a favourite magazine

🌿 Find tranquillity by sitting quietly in the garden

🛁 Indulge in a soothing bath

📞 Connect with a good friend over the phone

🧘‍♀️ Take 10 minutes for peaceful relaxation

Use this as an opportunity to improve the quality of your life and build in new ways of feeling joy and enriching your experience of life.

THE SIMPLE STEPS TO TAKE:

1️⃣ Recognise when you are turning to food as an emotional crutch.

2️⃣ Seek out alternative ways to make yourself feel good. (That do not involve food)

3️⃣ Try out the new choices - see what resonates with you.

4️⃣ Adjust and adapt until you find a helpful solution.

5️⃣ Keep practicing until it becomes second nature. You might find you don’t always manage - this isn’t about berating yourself. Instead observe without judgment what might have happened and try again next time.

Ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery and making peace with food? Start by downloading my FREE guide, 'Breaking the Cycle - Your First Steps to Healing Your Relationship with Food.' This invaluable resource will help you:

This structured 4 step guide is an essential resource for anyone who suffers from emotional or disordered eating.

In this guide you’ll learn how to: 

✔️Understand the best way to structure your eating routine

✔️Develop a better understanding of your body’s appetite cues 

✔️Navigate snacking to help you reduce cravings and feel satiated

✔️Use the journaling pages (included) to gain a deeper understanding of your eating behaviour, thoughts and emotions 

Also included: 

✔️My free appetite tool 

✔️My free journaling pages

✔️Snack ideas

Emotional eater? Here’s why dieting is not the answer

As someone who works with women who consider themselves to be emotional eaters, I’m asked this question ALL the time. But what defines an emotional eater? And will dieting stop it in it’s tracks?

To some extent we all emotionally eat. During celebrations we might eat some delicious cake when we’re not hungry. Perhaps because it’s a happy event, to be social, connect with people, take joy from the whole experience. It might not have been a conscious decision to eat the cake.

Often, emotional eating isn’t a problem that needs solving. Sometimes we do eat for comfort when we are feeling sad, angry stressed or alone. It is a coping mechanism we can turn to for a sense of solace. Comfort is after all defined as ‘a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint’.

However, emotional eating can be complex. When it becomes our ONLY mechanism for soothing ourselves, and leads to anxiety, obsession, and overwhelm, emotional eating is no longer our friend.

The difficulties occur when it becomes a never-ending cycle, channelling feelings of guilt and shame. Often ‘all or nothing’ thinking is at the heart of this cycle - ever said to yourself “I’ve blown it today so I may as well just carry on”?

Many women battle with this for years of their life and repeatedly turn to dieting to put a stop to it. If this resonates – let me ask you this, is dieting the solution to your emotional eating or the solution to the feelings of contempt you have for your own body?

The problem is that dieting (AKA food restriction) often plays a role in emotional eating or bingeing. The scientific literature explains that there are several complex mechanisms and research is still ongoing. Put simply we know that dieting often leads to food obsession, hunger and intense cravings. Perhaps you are burdened with those relentless thoughts 24/7, that hijack your headspace on a daily basis? Dieting is not the solution but the fuel to the fire.

SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

• Learning to be able to clear your head of diet thinking and cultivate a new mindset; giving yourself the permission to eat what you love without feeling out of control.

• Learning to eat in a way that helps you to feel satisfied so that you no longer have cravings

• Learning to reconnect with your body and know when to start and stop eating

• Learning to acknowledge your emotions, not push them away and find other, more helpful coping mechanisms.

AND WHERE CAN YOU START? 

If perpetual dieting has left you in a muddle about food and eating, and you feel overwhelmed anxious and confused about what, how much and when to eat then have a read of my free resource ‘What the Diet Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know’

You can download this HERE to support you on your journey to dismantle your diet mindset and begin the process of breaking free from dieting, binge eating or emotional eating.