What to do
Stop Dieting. Many of my clients try to resolve emotional eating by going on a weight loss diet – restricting calories or certain foods. But this is an ineffective strategy to deal with eating issues. Most diets fail – they’re a temporary fix and, in the long run, often lead to weight gain.
From a psychological perspective, diets involve deprivation. The anticipation or experience of not being able to have what you want can make you want it more – which, in turn, leads to overeating or bingeing. If you’re thinking about not eating pizza, pasta or ice cream, then you’ve got pizza, pasta or ice cream on your mind. That puts the focus on the wrong thing, which is what you’re eating, instead of why.
Ultimately, diets fail because they deal only with food. They don’t address what makes you overeat in the first place. If you’re turning to food, you’re turning away from something else. Instead of dieting, you need to consider what’s eating at you.
Crack the code of emotional eating. An important first step is to work out the link between your emotions and your eating. Each time you notice a period of eating emotionally, make a note of how you were feeling before it happened, and see if you can identify any patterns.
Many people, for example, overeat to avoid emotions. Remember how Arlene ate so much that her stomach hurt? That was our first clue to solving the mystery of why she couldn’t stop eating doughnuts. I learned that Arlene had been raised in a family in which everyone was expected to be grateful and happy all the time. If she was hurt or upset, she was told to ‘stop whining’.
The message from her parents was clear: it wasn’t acceptable to express emotional pain. By eating doughnuts until she was in physical pain, I suggested that Arlene was unconsciously avoiding her emotional pain by converting it to a physical feeling. When she was able to process this disavowed pain during therapy instead of blocking it out, she stopped overeating doughnuts.
Western society often promotes the idea that expressing feelings is a weakness. Many girls and women are taught that it’s not nice to feel or express anger. Of course, that’s impossible, so instead many will get angry with themselves for eating too much or gaining weight. Really, they were already angry: their anger belongs to something or someone else. But they’ve been told they’re not supposed to express it. Similarly, boys get a sense from an early age that ‘boys don’t cry’ – then they grow into men who have a hard time expressing vulnerability.
In part because of these societal expectations, many people that I see grow up feeling like they can’t admit or process their feelings. For them, emotional eating can be a way of dissociating from the world and temporarily escaping whatever is upsetting them. My patients often describe the experience of ‘zoning out’ while eating, being in a numb state without thought or emotion. That blank state is a temporary protection from pain.
Emotions are simply reactions to situations, not character flaws. When you find a new way of coping with your feelings, you won’t need to rely on food. Cultivate healthy ways of expressing your emotions, such as talking with a loved one or journalling – writing down what you’re thinking and feeling. You could also try practising supportive self-talk, such as telling yourself: ‘I’m doing the best I can. I’m in a process of change, and I’m going to be gentle with myself right now.’
If you find yourself zoning out while you’re eating, try to stay in the present with a grounding exercise. One way to do that is to look around your environment and note one thing you can touch, see, hear and smell. If possible, say them aloud. Using your senses to name your environment helps you centre yourself in the present moment.
Consider if there are any specific feelings you’re trying to avoid. If you automatically eat when you’re upset, it’s vital to be curious, not critical, and discover why you’re heading for the kitchen. There are many reasons for emotional eating; I highlight several of the most common here. For example, you might feel deeply lonely or dissatisfied – an internal sense of emptiness, which you might then symbolically fill with food. Consider the following questions: what do you need more of in your life? In what areas do you feel deprived? Your answers can help identify what’s missing. Whether you’re unfulfilled in a relationship, or lack satisfaction in other parts of your life, you can take steps to create change. This will help you to stop figuratively getting fulfilment from food.
Others turn to food to manage helplessness – a sense of feeling powerless, and one of the most painful experiences of human existence. The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Lance Dodes proposes that addictive behaviour (such as compulsive eating) is a way of reversing helplessness. Feeling helpless about a situation out of your control is displaced onto helplessness over food – it’s easier to feel helpless over food than over the exigencies of life.
To deal with helplessness – at work, in an argument, when your train is cancelled – acknowledge that you’re powerless in the moment. Come to terms with the limitations of your ability to impact your world, while recognising where you do have a sense of agency and control. Remember times in your life when you overcame adversity, for perspective and reassurance. If you’re better able to tolerate helplessness in other areas of your life, you’ll be less inclined to displace it onto food.
Finally, it’s also common to overeat when bored. Boredom is the state of feeling like you have nothing to do, along with a sense of restlessness and tediousness about the day. I call boredom an ‘umbrella emotion’ because it covers other emotional states, particularly loneliness, but also emptiness and anxiety.
The solution to boredom is to try to change something. If boredom is covering up another difficult emotion such as loneliness, then address that underlying need. If you’re lonely, try giving someone a call, or think about ways you might meet new people. Sometimes, of course, we can’t just make boredom go away. If there’s nothing to do or nobody to be with, responding to yourself in a soothing way – which I describe below – is crucial.
Consider whether you’re eating for comfort. Our initial experience of feeding, as babies, is tied to feelings of love and connection. Think about what happens when a baby is fed: they feel safe and loved in the arms of a caring parent. Even in adulthood, eating is connected with that early sense of love and safety. When we need comfort, turning to food makes sense, because that’s what worked earlier in our lives.
That’s why – and this might seem a little strange – I believe that, deep in our psyches, food actually represents people. We don’t actively think of it that way, but we use the same words for both food and love, describing relationships as fulfilling or satisfying. We talk about being hungry for love, or starving for attention. Food and relationships are intertwined in our minds.
People can be unpredictable, unreliable and unavailable, whereas, for many of us, food is the opposite: a reliable, readily available source of comfort. That’s why it can feel easier and safer to turn to food instead of people when we’re upset. Eating for comfort really means expressing a wish to be cared for by someone else.
Learn new ways to self-soothe. While the specific details differ from person to person, nearly everyone who eats emotionally is trying to soothe themselves. The key to change is to find new ways to comfort yourself, with words instead of food. Here are some strategies to do exactly that.
Change the way you talk to yourself. First, identify your inner critic. Arlene told herself: ‘You have no willpower. You’re so gross.’ Nearly everyone I’ve ever treated has spoken to themselves in a vicious second-person voice like this. If you use the pronoun ‘you’ when speaking to yourself, consider who is really talking. It might be the voice of someone who criticised you in the past. It might just be your own internal voice – a stance you developed to try to keep your behaviour in line. Either way, being self-critical never helps. It makes you feel worse.
When I asked Arlene to say ‘I am so gross’, she couldn’t do it because it felt too mean. She also realised that she was talking to herself in the same dismissive way that her mother had. She had absorbed her mother’s critical stance toward her and was now speaking as dismissively towards herself as her mother had done.
When you start criticising yourself, imagine saying those words to someone else. If you wouldn’t say something to a friend, child or loved one, don’t say it to yourself. Imagine you have a friend who’s upset because she ate too much pizza. Would you say: ‘That’s really disgusting. How could you have eaten all of that?’
Of course not. The best response is along the lines of: ‘I’m so sorry you’re upset. That’s really tough. How can I help?’ Start treating yourself as if you were your own friend. I developed the VARY acronym to do exactly that:
Validate – Recognise and accept what you’re feeling, without judgment or apology.
Acknowledge – Affirm the importance of what you’re feeling.
Reassure – Put yourself at ease and remind yourself that you’re not always going to feel this way.
Yourself – That’s you! Ask yourself what you need to feel better.
When you talk to yourself, take care with your tone. The same words can feel very different depending on how you say them. When Arlene tried talking positively to herself, she reported that it didn’t work. I asked her to repeat what she had said. In a very flat, slightly exasperated tone, she stated: ‘This is upsetting. Of course it is. And it’ll be okay.’
She sounded as if she were reciting statistics. No wonder she didn’t feel better. I repeated exactly what she had said, only my tone was different. ‘This is upsetting,’ I said with warmth and kindness. ‘Of course it is. And it will be okay.’
Those same words had a completely different impact on her. That’s because a soothing tone can feel like a verbal hug.
Find alternatives for food. Many people respond to physical needs with food, for example, eating when they’re sleepy in order to perk up, or when they feel tense as a way of calming down. If this sounds like you, consider what else you might need rather than automatically reaching for food.
For instance, if you’re tired, you need to rest. Take a 10-minute nap to let your mind and body recharge. If you’re wired, have a cup of herbal tea or do a calming exercise such as progressive muscle relaxation. To do this, tighten your legs, then your stomach, and next your arms. Make fists and keep your muscles extremely tight. Hold that tension as long as possible, a minimum of 15 seconds. Then release.
Feel that? You’re likely feeling more relaxed. The idea of this exercise is that when your body is relaxed, your mind will follow. See the Links and Books section below for a six-minute progressive muscle-relaxation exercise to try.
You might also want to find new treats for yourself. Our culture uses food as a reward: we go out to dinner to recognise graduations, anniversaries and other milestones; we celebrate birthdays with cake. Many parents say: ‘No dessert unless you eat your dinner.’ It’s no wonder that so many of us use food to celebrate or create happiness.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a celebratory cake or dessert. But if you find you’re always turning to food to mark minor accomplishments, or that you’re heavily dependent on food as a reward, it might be worth considering other options – whether that’s watching a fun TV show, giving yourself a manicure, taking a walk or reading a ‘guilty pleasure’ beach read.
