Emotional Eating (Part Two)
Written by Ellie Steele, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Advanced EFT Tapping Practitioner, Holistic Health Coach
In part one we had a look at the philosophy I teach to my clients around food and eating; mainly, emotional eating is normal and it’s not something we need to have shame around, but we should also be mindful of the powerful negative effects eating unhealthy food can have on our life. Over twenty years of personal and professional experience have shaped my current recommendations and thinking on emotional eating and I’m sure this will continue to evolve, but here are three guidelines I use and encourage when using food to manage tough emotions.
Guideline #1
Get and stay conscious. If you’re constantly reaching for hyperpalatable foods, eating more food than your body needs or eating late at night, exploring and understanding your own behaviour is an important step. Our feelings can often be operating below the level of our conscious awareness and sometimes we’re just automatically reaching for food to medicate feelings we’re not even aware of. We all know there are better ways to handle our feelings and our needs than to reach for food, but we have to be aware of them before we have any opportunity to address them effectively. It’s also possible that our biochemistry is driving the craving more than, or in conjunction with, our emotional states. Consider that if you’re sleep deprived, dealing with an imbalance in blood sugar, neurotransmitters, gut bacteria or hormone levels, these biological drivers could be playing a role in your cravings too.
The next time you’re tempted to eat for non-hunger reasons, explore the potential for emotional drivers by getting quiet and asking yourself what’s really going on with you. You may come up with a number of things: I feel disconnected from my partner, I hate my job, I don’t feel appreciated, I’m lonely, I’m anxious etc. Once you acknowledge how you really feel you may have an “ah-ha moment” on how to actually solve that problem instead of medicating it with food. If you come up short on a specific emotional driver that’s okay, be willing to explore it more later, but seek some assistance on those other drivers from a qualified holistic health professional to address them.
If you can’t sort out what’s driving the craving, solve the problem or process the emotion you’ve become aware of, you may choose to eat something because you really just need to feel better in the moment, which is totally fine. Stay conscious, go ahead and eat and enjoy the food. See if you can become aware of the hit and acknowledge the fact that this food you’re eating is causing a flood of brain chemicals that will temporarily make you feel good. It’s hard to keep doing something that you know doesn’t serve you when you stay conscious to it. You could even say something like “I’m going to eat these chips because I’m exhausted and my brain is looking for a chemical hit even though I know these chips won’t help me as much as going to bed early would and in fact they’ll probably hurt me more than they help me, but I’m going to eat them anyway.” If you know how to do EFT Tapping, you could tap just before you eat, while you eat or immediately after you eat to start breaking the cycle of using food as a form of therapy or for the chemical hit or, more commonly, both.
Guideline # 2
Use harm reduction strategies so you don’t wreck yourself with food. Choosing the healthiest indulgences you can is one great form of harm reduction. If chips are your thing, buy organic chips fried in healthier oils without a bunch of crappy flavourings and preservatives on them, or better yet, opt for homemade, organic potato slices fried in pork fat or avocado oil. If chocolate is your go-to, opt for organic, dark or even milk chocolate instead of a typical chocolate bar made with inferior ingredients and a bunch of preservatives. Make your own cookies or muffins from a healthy recipe instead of store-bought varieties or swap ice cream for organic whipping cream whipped with maple syrup and topped with berries or nuts. When you choose these unprocessed, healthier indulgences your brain will still get a dopamine hit from the concentrated sugar, fat and salt, but it’s much more manageable than ultra-processed foods that have been engineered to be addictive and make you eat way more than a reasonable portion. You may find you need less of these more natural foods to satisfy you, you’ll be avoiding a lot of man-made chemicals that burden the body and you’ll get some healthy vitamins, minerals and other nutrients! Don’t get me wrong, even healthy indulgences can cause harm, just a little less harm, which leads to the next guideline.
Guideline # 3
For occasional use only. We all have those days. The ones that just rag-doll us and while we know it would be better if we just had a bath, did some journaling or some EFT tapping and went to bed, we reach for something tasty. It’s okay; just don’t let emotional eating be your go-to method of trying to manage challenges. The holistic approach to health is all about dealing with the root cause of a problem to find a permanent solution and emotional eating is no different. Using food to control emotional symptoms, create false happiness through unnatural surges of brain chemicals or in response to physical imbalances that need to be corrected, has serious repercussions on the body, messes with the gut microbiome, suppresses immune function and actually worsens mental and emotional health with long-term use.
I recommend using cravings as way to explore your true feelings and your unconscious programming. They can be a great doorway into a deeper relationship with yourself and show you what you need to see or feel, in order to create a better life for yourself.
There was a time not so long ago, when I was already years into my own personal growth and had found some great solutions to emotional eating, that I had a powerful epiphany. I was driving home from my boyfriends’ house on a Sunday afternoon and my work week was about to start. I had just finished brunch and wasn’t hungry at all, but I felt a tiny flash of emotion and then had the thought that I should keep driving past my house and go to the local cheese factory for a bag of fresh cheese curd. It was the very first time, after years of work and exploration of my own food programming that I was consciously aware of the emotional flash and the instantaneous thought of food that followed it. My brain had taken over the operations of dealing with tough feelings with food so well, for so long, that I hadn’t had conscious awareness of that particular emotion before that day. I was amazed and excited! EFT Tapping is always my first choice for dealing with tough feelings, so I immediately started tapping on that little flash of emotion that had preceded the craving. I quickly discovered that I was feeling sad that the weekend was over, that I wouldn’t be seeing my boyfriend again for two days and that I had to go work. Bummer. Cheese curd seemed like a good solution to all of those hard feelings to my brain so the thought occurred to me, seemingly out of the blue, without my awareness of the deeper feelings. Brains are awesome automatic problem-solvers like that, except when the solution it’s offering isn’t the best option.
At any rate, once I became aware of what I was feeling, I was able to deal with it, had a little cry, I passed on the cheese curd and I gained a better understanding of what I needed to be happy that helped me re-arrange my life.
To recap, keep an open mind when you’re dealing with the urge to eat for emotional reasons and know that it’s okay. Do you best to get and stay conscious, choose the best quality indulgence you can and keep working on strategies you can use so eating isn’t your main method of dealing with tough things.
Ellie helps her clients eat better, think better and live better through a unique combination of holistic nutrition, energy medicine and healthy lifestyle coaching. She is a registered holistic nutritionist, advanced emotional freedom techniques practitioner, social service worker, sports nutrition advisor, personal trainer specialist and 3rd degree Reiki practitioner.
If you’re interested in learning more about fermented foods, including some resources to start your own ferments, feel free to reach out to me! Email me at Ellie@natural-route.com
