Do You Call Yourself and Emotional Eater?
Many of us learned to use food at a young age to self-soothe. Eating can numb a difficult feeling and even make it disappear for a while. The pattern looks something like this:
We feel sad/anxious/angry/lonely.
To cope with the negative feeling, we eat even though we’re not physically hungry.
We feel bad about ourselves for being “emotional eaters.”
In addition to feeling bad about ourselves, we still haven’t dealt with our initial pain.
Intuitive eating teaches us to notice uncomfortable feelings and to use coping mechanisms besides food to support us in those tough moments.
Diet culture loves to label us as emotional eaters without asking this important question:
Are you an emotional eater, or do you lack self- care?
Here are two basics of self-care.
Eating 3 regular meals and snacks each day
Sleeping 7-9 hours a night if you’re an adult, and 8-10 hours if you’re a teen
If you're lacking sleep or restricting food, it’s likely to cause out-of-control eating which is different from emotional eating. Because so many people I talk to restrict, and have for years, they crave a peaceful relationship to food.
Client Story
A client in her mid-thirties came to me after spending decades losing and regaining weight. Through the process of intuitive eating, she is able to enjoy food again in amounts that feel good in her body. Instead of skipping lunch or just “grabbing a protein bar”, she eats a sandwich! When work days are long, she packs a snack, is more productive, and arrives home to her young kids in a good mood.
Even though she’s eating regular meals and snacks now, she notices that she’s still using food when she’s stressed or having a confrontation. Because she’s used food all her life to cope with stress and unhappiness, learning to “feel feelings” and use other coping mechanisms is taking time. This past week, she’s tried walking outside and noticing the smells of her garden and the sounds of insects and birds to cope with difficult emotions. She’s also a fan of watching puppy videos because that momentary distraction helps her come back to her difficult emotion in a better headspace versus just escaping it.
