Emotional Eating & How to Stop It

Adapted from a Help Guide article by Melinda Smith, M.A., Jeanne Segal Ph.D., and Robert Segal, M.A.
Last updated: September 2019.

Do you eat to feel better or relieve stress?

These tips can help you stop emotional eating, fight cravings, identify your triggers and find more
satisfying ways to feed your feelings.

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What is Emotional Eating?

➢ We don’t always eat just to satisfy physical hunger. Many of us also turn to food for comfort, stress
relief, or to reward ourselves. And when we do, we tend to reach for junk food, sweets, and other
comforting but unhealthy foods. You might reach for a pint of ice cream when you’re feeling down,
order a pizza if you’re bored or lonely, or swing by the drive through after a stressful day at work.

➢ Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better—to fill emotional needs, rather than your
stomach. Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional problems. In fact, it usually makes you
feel worse. Afterward, not only does the original emotional issue remain, but you also feel guilty for
overeating.

Answering “yes” to any of these questions are signs of emotional eating.

1. Do you eat more when you’re feeling stressed?
2. Do you eat when you’re not hungry or when you are full?
3. Do you eat to feel better-- to calm and sooth yourself when you’re feeling sad, mad, bored, anxious, etc.?
4. Do you reward yourself with food?
5. Do you regularly eat until you’ve stuffed yourself?
6. Does food make you feel safe?
7. Do you feel like food is a friend?
8. Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?

Occasionally using food as a pick-me-up, a reward, or to

celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But when eating is your primary emotional coping

mechanism—when your first impulse is to open the
Fran Taccone, RDN LDN
refrigerator whenever you’re stressed, upset, angry, lonely,
Beth Wright, RDN, LDN exhausted, or bored—you get stuck in an unhealthy cycle
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019 where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.
 Emotional hunger can’t be filled with food.

➢ Eating may feel good in the moment, but the feelings that
triggered the eating are still there. And you often feel
worse than you did before because of the unnecessary
calories you’ve just consumed.

➢ You beat yourself for messing up and not having more

willpower. Compounding the problem, you stop learning
healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a
harder and harder time controlling your weight, and you
feel increasingly powerless over both food and your
feelings.

➢ But no matter how powerless you feel over food and your
feelings, it is possible to make a positive change. You can
learn healthier ways to deal with your emotions, avoid
triggers, conquer cravings, and finally put a stop to the
emotional eating cycle.

The Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger

Before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating, you first need to learn how to distinguish
between emotional and physical hunger. This can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use
food to deal with your feelings. Emotional hunger can be powerful, so it’s easy to mistake it for physical
hunger. But there are clues you can look for to help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart.

Emotional Hunger Physical Hunger

Comes on suddenly, it hits you in an instant and feels Comes on more gradually, the urge to eat doesn’t feel as
overwhelming and urgent. dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t
eaten for a very long time!)
Craves specific common foods, such as junk food or sugary
snacks that provide an instant rush. You feel like you need Almost anything sounds good-- include healthy foods like
cheesecake or pizza, and nothing else will do. vegetables

Often leads to mindless eating- before you know it, you’ve You’re typically more aware of what, and how much, you
eaten a whole bag of chips or an entire pint of ice cream are eating
without paying attention to it or fully enjoying it.

It isn’t satisfied once you’re full. You keep wanting more It doesn’t need to be stuffed, you feel satisfied when your
and more, often eating until you’re uncomfortably full. stomach is full.

It isn’t located in the stomach, you feel your hunger as a It is located in your stomach, you feel a growling belly or
craving you can’t get out of your head, you’re focused on pang in your stomach telling you its time to eat again.
specific textures and smells.

Often leads to regret, guilt, or shame. if you feel guilty You’re unlikely to feel guilty or ashamed because you’re
after you eat, it’s likely because you know deep down that simply giving your body what it needs.
you’re not eating for nutritional reasons.
Fran Taccone, RDN LDN
Beth Wright, RDN, LDN
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019
 Putting a STOP to Emotional Eating

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shadow-it-in-its-tracks/

The first step in putting a stop to emotional eating is identifying your personal triggers. What
situations, places, or feelings make you reach for the comfort of food?

Most emotional eating is linked to unpleasant feelings, but it can also be triggered by positive
emotions, such as rewarding yourself for achieving a goal or celebrating a holiday or happy event.

Common Causes of Emotional Eating

Stress – Ever notice how stress makes you hungry? It’s not just in your mind. When stress is
chronic, as it so often is in our chaotic, fast-paced world, your body produces high levels of the
stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet, and fried foods—foods that
give you a burst of energy and pleasure. The more uncontrolled stress in your life, the more
likely you are to turn to food for emotional relief.

Stuffing emotions – Eating can be a way to temporarily silence or “stuff down” uncomfortable
emotions, including anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment, and shame. While
you’re numbing yourself with food, you can avoid the difficult emotions you’d rather not feel.

Boredom or feelings of emptiness – Do you ever eat simply to give yourself something to do,
to relieve boredom, or as a way to fill a void in your life? You feel unfulfilled and empty, and
food is a way to occupy your mouth and your time. In the moment, it fills you up and distracts
you from underlying feelings of purposelessness and dissatisfaction with your life.

Childhood habits – Think back to your childhood memories of food. Did your parents reward
good behavior with ice cream, take you out for pizza when you got a good report card, or
serve you sweets when you were feeling sad? These habits can often carry over into
adulthood. Or your eating may be driven by nostalgia—for cherished memories of grilling
burgers in the backyard with your dad or baking and eating cookies with your mom.

Social influences – Getting together with other people for a meal is a great way to relieve
stress, but it can also lead to overeating. It’s easy to overindulge simply because the food is
there or because everyone else is eating. You may also overeat in social situations out of
nervousness. Or perhaps your family or circle of friends encourages you to overeat, and it’s
easier to go along with the group.

Fran Taccone, RDN, LDN

Beth Wright, RDN, LDN
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019
 Steps That You Can Take to Avoid Emotional Eating

1. Keep an Emotional Eating Diary

You probably recognized yourself in at least a few of the previous descriptions. But
even so, you’ll want to get even more specific. One of the best ways to identify the
patterns behind your emotional eating is to keep track with a food and mood diary.

Every time you overeat or feel compelled to reach for your version of comfort food
Kryptonite, take a moment to figure out what triggered the urge. If you backtrack,
you’ll usually find an upsetting event that kicked off the emotional eating cycle.

Write down what you ate (or wanted to eat), what happened to upset you, how you
felt before you ate, what you felt as you were eating, and how you felt afterward.
Over time, you’ll see a pattern emerge. Once you identify your emotional eating
triggers, the next step is identifying healthier ways to feed your feelings. https://aansneurosurgeon.org/aansstudent/my-bucket-list-summer/open-notebook-with-blank-
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2. Find Other Ways to Feed Your Feelings

If you don’t know how to manage your emotions in a way that doesn’t involve
food, you won’t be able to control your eating habits for very long. Diets so
often fail because they offer logical nutritional advice which only works if you
have conscious control over your eating habits.

It doesn’t work when emotions hijack the process, demanding an immediate

payoff with food. In order to stop emotional eating, you have to find other
ways to fulfill yourself emotionally.

It’s not enough to understand the cycle of emotional eating or even to

https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2018-03-16/more-adults-exercise-but-obesity-is-rising understand your triggers, although that’s a huge first step. You need
alternatives to food that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment.

3. Alternatives to Emotional Eating

If you’re depressed or lonely, call someone who always makes you feel better, play
with your dog or cat, or look at a favorite photo or cherished memento.
If you’re anxious, expend your nervous energy by dancing to your favorite song,
squeezing a stress ball, or taking a brisk walk.
If you’re exhausted, treat yourself with a hot cup of tea, take a bath, light some
scented candles, or wrap yourself in a warm blanket.
If you’re bored, read a good book, watch a comedy show, explore the outdoors, or
turn to an activity you enjoy (woodworking, playing the guitar, shooting hoops,
scrapbooking, etc.).
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4. Pause When Cravings Hit and Check in With Yourself

Most emotional eaters feel powerless over their food cravings. When the urge to eat
hits, it’s all you can think about. You feel an almost unbearable tension that demands
to be fed, right now!

Because you’ve tried to resist in the past and failed, you believe that your willpower
just isn’t up to snuff. But the truth is that you have more power over your cravings
than you think. Take 5 before you give in to a craving

Emotional eating tends to be automatic and virtually mindless. Before you even
realize what you are doing, you’ve reached for a tub of ice cream and polished off half
https://jamesclear.com/junk-food-science of it. But if you can take a moment to pause and reflect when you’re hit with a
craving, you give yourself the opportunity to make a different decision. Can you put
Fran Taccone, RDN, LDN off eating for five minutes? Or just start with one minute. Don’t tell yourself you can’t
Beth Wright, RDN, LDN give in to the craving; remember, the forbidden is extremely tempting. Just tell
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019 yourself to wait.
 5. Ask Yourself These Questions When Checking in With Yourself
How are you feeling?
What’s going on emotionally?

Even if you end up eating, you’ll have a better understanding of why you did
it. This can help you set yourself up for a different response next time. Learn
to accept your feelings—even the bad ones.

While it may seem that the core problem is that you’re powerless over food,
emotional eating actually stems from feeling powerless over your emotions.
You don’t feel capable of dealing with your feelings head on, so you avoid
them with food.

Allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions can be scary. You may

fear that, like Pandora’s box, once you open the door you won’t be able to
shut it. But the truth is that when we don’t obsess over or suppress our
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emotions, even the most painful and difficult feelings subside relatively
quickly and lose their power to control our attention. To do this you need to
become mindful and learn how to stay connected to your moment-to-
moment emotional experience. This can enable you to rein in stress and
repair emotional problems that often trigger emotional eating.

6. Practice a New Way of Eating- Mindful Eating

Indulge without overeating by savoring your food. When you eat to
feed your feelings, you tend to do so quickly, mindlessly consuming
food on autopilot. You eat so fast you miss out on the different tastes
and textures of your food—as well as your body’s cues that you’re full
and no longer hungry. The Mindful
But by slowing down and savoring every bite, you’ll not only enjoy your
Eating Plate
food more but you’ll also be less likely to overeat. Slowing down and
savoring your food is an important aspect of mindful eating, the
opposite of mindless, emotional eating. Try taking a few deep breaths
before starting your food, putting your utensils down between bites,
and really focusing on the experience of eating.

Observe your food. Pay attention to the textures, shapes, colors and
smells of your food. How does each mouthful taste? How does it make
your body feel? By slowing down in this way, you’ll find you appreciate
each bite of food much more. You can even indulge in your favorite
foods and feel full on much less. It takes time for the body’s fullness
signal to reach your brain, so taking a few moments to consider how
you feel after each bite—hungry or satiated—can help you avoid
overeating.

When you eat, eat. Be in the moment when eating. Avoid doing other
tasks while eating. Eating while you’re also doing other things—such as
watching TV, driving, or playing with your phone—can prevent you
from fully enjoying your food. Since your mind is elsewhere, you may www.eatingmindfully.com @Susan Albers 2015
not feel satisfied or continue eating even though you’re no longer
hungry. Eating more mindfully can help focus your mind on your food http://eatingmindfully.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mindful-eating-plate-full-color.pdf

and the pleasure of a meal and curb overeating.

Fran Taccone, RDN, LDN

Beth Wright, RDN, LDN
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019
 7. Support Yourself With Healthy Lifestyle Habits

When you’re physically strong, relaxed, and well rested, you’re better able to handle the curveballs that life
inevitably throws your way. But when you’re already exhausted and overwhelmed, any little hiccup has the
potential to send you off the rails and straight toward the refrigerator. Exercise, sleep, and other healthy
lifestyle habits will help you get through difficult times without emotional eating.

Make daily exercise a priority. Physical activity does wonders for your
mood and energy levels, and it’s also a powerful stress reducer. And
getting into the exercise habit is easier than you may think.

Aim for 8 hours of sleep every night. When you don’t get the sleep
you need, your body craves sugary foods that will give you a quick
energy boost. Getting plenty of rest will help with appetite control
and reduce food cravings.
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Make time for relaxation. Give yourself permission to take at least

30 minutes every day to relax, decompress, and unwind. This is your
time to take a break from your responsibilities and recharge your
batteries.

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Connect with others. Don’t underestimate the importance of

close relationships and social activities. Spending time with
positive people who enhance your life will help protect you from
the negative effects of stress

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Ask for additional help if needed. It’s OK and recommended to seek

additional support if you need help with unresolved emotions, stress
management, addictions, sleep problems, housing, financial and
related concerns and problems.

Licensed behavior health professionals and social workers are trained

and ready to help you. Check with your health insurance to access
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these additional benefits available to you.

Other Resources for Healthy Eating:

A Guide to the New Nutrition (Harvard Medical School Special Health Report)
10 Tips for Mindful Eating- how mindfulness can help you fully enjoy a meal and the experience of eating- with
moderation and restraint (Harvard Health Blog)
Emotional Eating- Aimed at teens, the difference between physical and emotional hunger, and how to break the
cycle of emotional eating. (Teens Health)
Weight Loss: Gain Control of Emotional Eating- Tips to regain control of your eating habits. (Mayo Clinic)
Why Stress Causes People to Overeat- Tips on controlling stress eating. (Harvard Health Publishing)
Mindful Eating Meditations- Free online mindfulness meditations. (The Center for Mindful Eating)

Fran Taccone, RDN, LDN

Beth Wright, RDN, LDN
Caroline Wilson, RDN 11/8/2019