Understanding Emotional Eating

Understanding Emotional Eating
By Pavel G. Somov, Ph.D.


Emotional eating is misunderstood and often unnecessarily demonized. However,
emotional eating � that is, eating to feel good, often termed "compulsive
eating" � isn't the problem. It's emotional overeating and mindless emotional
eating that can be both psychologically and physically unhealthy. Emotional
eating works as a coping strategy and stress reliever if approached with
mindfulness and moderation.

Emotional Eating Is Inevitable

Whether you eat or overeat, whether you eat mindfully or mindlessly, one thing
is clear: people only eat what they like to eat. How a particular food tastes
is a fundamentally emotional consideration. Let's face it: your body doesn't
give a hoot whether you eat something that tastes good or not so good, as long
as the food isn't rotten. Taste is the business of the mind � a matter of
pleasure. Bottom line: Everyone eats for pleasure, so emotional eating is
inevitable.
Emotional Eating Is Coping

Aside from emotional eating to feel good, some of us also eat to cope � that is,
to reduce emotional distress. Eating for pleasure or eating to reduce daily
stresses are two sides of the same coin but our all-or-nothing minds divide this
indivisible coin in half. On one hand, we are encouraged to slow down and enjoy
the food we eat. On the other hand, we are told by popular culture to never eat
for emotional reasons. If this sounds like hypocrisy, it is. Any pursuit of
well-being is simultaneously a reduction of distress.

Why Emotional Eating Works

There are several good reasons why emotional eating is so appealing as a coping
strategy.

�Eating is oral coping: From day one, feeding has been a default parenting
intervention and the pacifier has been our first coping tool. Eating to relieve
oral tensions � for example, after quitting smoking � is an intuitive soothing
choice.
�Feeding is caring:Many cultures explicitly equate feeding with caring.
Remember grandma's home-baked chocolate cookies after a hard day at school?
�Meal time is support time. Family meals are a family ritual, and at their best
are a time of togetherness, an opportunity for social relating and belonging and
as a means to emotional well-being.
�Eating is grounding. Eating is a ritual, and as such, it's comforting in its
predictability. Eating is a sensation-rich, unambiguously physical activity.
As such, eating is an effective reality check at a time of uncertainty or
confusion, a behavior that grounds and centers a busy or overworked mind.
�Eating is relaxing. From the physiological perspective, a choice to eat can be
seen as an attempt to directly manipulate the nervous system, by switching on
the part of our wiring that is associated with relaxation and rest.
Leveraging More Coping Per Calorie

Given the fact that we all eat emotionally on some level or another, here are a
few suggestions for making your meals more mindful, effective, grounding,
relaxing and nutritionally beneficial:

1.Accept emotional eating as a legitimate coping choice, not a coping failure.
2.When eating to cope, have an appetizer of relaxation first. Take a few moments
to notice your breath and smell your food. Preload on the fullness of the
moment.
3.Follow a predictable eating ritual, with clear starting and ending points.
Begin with breathing, focus on your food throughout your meal and end with a
healthy dose of self-acceptance.
4.Use pattern-interruption techniques (such as eating with a non-dominant hand
or using the wrong utensils) to keep your mind aware, guessing, present and
focused during the mindful emotional eating episode.
5.If you want to binge or "veg out," to regress into a bit of mindless
"hand-to-mouth" trance then consider a harm-reduction strategy: mindfully choose
what you will mindlessly eat. Instead of "inhaling" a bag of M&Ms, fill up on
carrot sticks. The objection that carrot sticks don't taste as good as M&Ms is
irrelevant here. Remember, this "hand-to-mouth" trance isn't about taste after
all, but about the soothing activity of self-feeding.
6.Know your comfort foods. Mindful emotional eating is an attempt at self-care.
So, if you are going to try to self-medicate with food, you might as well use
the right "medicine." Allow yourself to have exactly the experience of pleasure
that you seek. Or risk filling up on what you don't want to eat and then feeling
doubly disappointed.
7.Indulge on quality, not quantity. Mindful emotional eating is not about
meeting your caloric quota or about how much you eat but about how much you
enjoy this moment of eating. So, as you purchase your comfort foods, pay the
premium price, get the top-shelf foodstuffs. This additional financial
investment will likely intrigue your tongue and help you slow down to mindfully
notice this moment of self-care.
8.When you eat to cope, just eat. The suggestion of "eating when you eat" is the
backbone of all mindful eating know how. It is particularly important when it
comes to mindful emotional eating. When you sit down to eat to cope, turn off
the TV, put the reading aside. Or risk missing out on the very self-care moment
you have so courageously allowed yourself to have. So, when you eat to cope,
then just cope. If food is your therapist at this moment, then you have to show
up for this session with yourself.
Building a new habit is a process. Give mindful emotional eating a try. Fine
tune this self-care strategy until you find the sweet spot of moderation. As
with most life-modification plans, self-acceptance is a healthy place to start.
Remember: emotional eating doesn't have to lead to emotional overeating.

* * * * *

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. writes about how to use mindfulness to overcome overeating,
perfectionism and self-esteem problems. He is the author of "Eating the Moment:
141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" and "Present
Perfect: A Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need to
Control." Find out more about Dr. Somov at www.eatingthemoment.com

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and the author of "Eating the
Moment" (New Harbinger, 2008), "Present Perfect" (NH, 2010), "The Lotus Effect"
(NH, 2010), "Smoke Break" (in press, 2011), and "Reinventing the Meal" (in
press, 2012). He is in private practice in Pittsburgh, PA.