Hear from registered dietitians about how not all emotional eating is bad because it exists on a continuum.
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Not all emotional eating is bad; its actually very normal.
Experts in This Article
Lindsay Martens, RD, is a registered dietitian withProactive Health Nutrition.
Lindsay Martens, RD, is a registered dietitian withProactive Health Nutrition.
Food does so much more than provide the body with energy and nutrients.
Its pleasure, community, connection, and yes, comfort.
Im not saying that food should be youronlycoping mechanism when youre feeling difficult emotions.
Emotional eating is a valid and accessible coping tool, and its time we stopped demonizing it.
She explains that at one end of the continuum, we have eating for sensory gratification.
This is the mildest form of emotional eating and happens when we eat simply for pleasure.
Further along, we get to comfort eating.
In the middle of the continuum, we have eating as a distraction.
This kind of emotional eating shows up when we eat to distract ourselves from difficult emotions or stressful situations.
Lindsay Martens, RD, is a registered dietitian withProactive Health Nutrition.
It is often mindless in nature.
Next on the continuum, we have sedation eating, says Martens.
This comes up whenever we use food to numb our emotions or escape reality.
Finally, we have punishment eating at the more intense end of the emotional eating continuum.
It often occurs in tandem with restricting our food intake or following extreme diets.
After all, how many people can say theynevereat for reasons other than hunger?
Emotional eating is a universal coping skill and helps provide satisfaction from eating, explains Martens.
You havent done anything wrong if you use food to cope with difficult emotions.
Plus, emotional eating involves more than just food and emotionsits also closely tied to dieting and diet culture.
Martens sees this often in her practice.
This can create complicated feelings.
This can complicate our relationship with food even more.
But those out-of-control binges may not actually be driven by emotion.
In other cases, out-of-control binges are truly related to emotions.
It can be hard to distinguish between the two when you are restricting your intake.
But that may not be the case.
The longer the participants were on a calorie-restricted diet, the greater the activation of these brain regions.
Calorie restriction (i.e., dieting) causes us to crave highly palatable foods.
Is it possible to stop emotional eating?
It would be virtually impossible to stop all forms of emotional eating.
She also suggestspracticing other coping skillswhen possible.
Once youve tried to process your feelings, reassess whether you still need to engage in emotional eating.
This will increase the enjoyment you get from eating and the likelihood that it will make you feel better.
The key is that emotional eating can be a conscious choice rather than a knee-jerk reaction to stress.
Martens also recommends cultivating your nurturer voice.
The Nurturer is the self-compassionate voice that tells us its okay to mess up or feel bad.
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