Food is great!

It nourishes us, it’s delicious, and most importantly, it keeps us alive.

This is one of the reasons why a healthy relationship with food is so important. However, in today’s toxic diet culture, many normal food habits are demonised. If you’ve read the Awaecnan blog before, you’ll know that we’re dispelling the common myths about weight and diet that have been created by this culture.

If this is your first time here, welcome!

This article will be exploring all things emotional eating and answer questions that you may have about it. Let’s start at the beginning.

We don’t use food only to satisfy hunger, we eat it because we enjoy it, and it feels good to eat it. Sometimes, we even use it as a reward for a big promotion or another achievement. We also use it to celebrate; birthday dinners, anniversary dinners, and more all centre around a delicious meal enjoyed somewhere special.

When you consider all this, it’s easy to understand why many of us go to food as a source of comfort. From a neurological perspective, when we eat food, our brain releases endorphins. These hormones are part of the reward system in our brains and make us feel good.

So, what is happening here? We don’t feel good, and we look for something that will make us feel better; food. This is why emotional eating can be completely normal.

Why is emotional eating big in diet culture?

Diet culture loves to zero in on normal habits and behaviours to create a problem and therefore offer a solution and monetise the solution. Diet culture labels habits based on whether they could be perceived as a problem, especially when it comes to ideas of ‘size’.

The idea that is perpetuated is that if you’re a certain size, you should be avoiding eating unnecessarily. Emotional eating falls outside of the eating habits that diet culture deems ‘ok’ because it’s often spontaneous and may involve foods that aren’t the healthiest.

The problem is that dieting in the first place often leads to emotional eating. Diets are forms of restriction on food and don’t allow you to have the food that you enjoy the most.

During good times, ignoring your cravings is easier. However, when you’re not feeling great, your cravings for something that you know will make you feel better increase, causing you to eat the foods that you’ve avoided but with guilt and shame attached.

When is emotional eating a problem and when is it normal?

A healthy diet is all about moderation. This means eating the foods that you enjoy without overindulging uncontrollably or judging yourself if you emotionally eat or have uncontrollable urges. Emotional eating becomes a problem for you when you feel like it’s a problem, which can be harder to judge in the toxic diet culture world.

Generally, be your own best judge on what feels natural and normal to you. For example, If you emotionally eat sometimes and don’t often overindulge, or maybe when it’s at times when you’re happy and the food is super delicious or you’re engaged at the moment enjoying friends rather than watching what you’re eating this all feel natural and normal.

However, if you find yourself in a prolonged state of emotional stress, and you’re eating emotionally as a method of coping, it feels out of control and not healthy for you, or you are finding it hard to lose weight, then is problematic especially if you’re eating large amounts of unhealthy- or even healthy food regularly.

When is emotional eating an eating disorder?

Eating disorders are complicated and very personal. This is why if you’re concerned about your emotional eating, the best that you can do is to speak to a therapist who can offer a formal diagnosis.

The thing to keep an eye out for is what is known as eating episodes. These are periods when you eat emotionally. If these episodes are becoming longer, more frequent, and/or you start to consume amounts of “junk” or “comfort” food, you want to change but can’t, these are the signs that your emotional eating may be turning into disordered eating.

How can I recognise what a healthy amount of emotional eating is and when to seek help?

If you’re concerned about your emotional eating, you’re likely wondering when you need to seek help. As we’ve touched on, the key factor is eating episodes. Take note of your eating episodes and ask yourself the following questions:

• How often do they occur?
• What do you eat and how much do you eat during these windows?
• Are these episodes affecting you physically and or emotionally?
• What is causing these episodes?
• What emotions are you experiencing when they occur?
• Are your episodes increasing in frequency?

Keeping these questions in mind will help you to keep a better track of your behaviour and identify when you may need help.

Discover Your Weight and Wellness Score

…and discover the key to lasting wellness.

 

The Keep it Off Scorecard benchmarks your ability to make lasting changes, lose weight naturally and keep it off. If you to love your life, love who you are at your core and love food again, this tool will identify your baseline.

Take this scorecard and find out how ready you are to Keep It Off – and receive a report that’ll tell you what to work on to make it happen.