Emotional Eating

People seek relationships for so many emotional reasons beyond the universal ones of wanting Love, Sex, Marriage & Children. Some want to ease their loneliness, some want financial security, some want to feel desired & accepted… and sometimes even to gain status in their friends eyes, or to ease the pressure from their parents to get married!

Likewise, people eat food for so many emotional reasons beyond just physical hunger. If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight or had health issues related to weight, then it is likely that you’ve missed to address this one core question.

“WHY do you eat?”

Even though the question might sound so innocuous and perhaps downright ridiculous, it could reveal the core reason why you’ve not attained the health, fitness and sexy body you’ve always wanted.

So let me outline the answer for you:

Why do we eat?

Physical Hunger – The obvious one

Eating for Pleasure

Let’s face it. We are not robots and food is not just batteries to survive. Food is yummy! Food is tasty! Food is one of the sources of enjoyment in life. And that’s not a bad thing. By all means, enjoy your food. Food is meant to be relished and savored.

Emotional Hunger

Ah… this is the problematic one. When people eat, neither to satisfy their hunger nor for pleasure, that is what’s called “Emotional Eating”.

Emotional Eating is eating because you’re bored, lonely, depressed, anxious, frustrated, or any other reason. Maybe you have nothing to do, so you go to the fridge. Maybe you’ve been single & lonely for a while… and that feels very uncomfortable. So you eat to soothe yourself. Maybe you have some financial anxiety or work-stress, and munching a snack gives you some relief. Here are some stories from the clients I’ve counselling (names changed to protect confidentiality):

Comfort Eating

Tanya escaped from an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship which left her in emotional chaos.  But she kept her pain and feelings to herself. She started isolating herself from friends, her grades went down and with increasing emotional and mental stress she succumbed to a new habit of binge eating. She would often eat as frequently as she could and in unusual amounts as a form of comfort to her mental turmoil. And soon it became a habit upon which she had lost all control. She also started becoming more and more conscious of her weight and appearance. To remove the guilt of consuming excess calories she would often compensate by vomiting or exercising excessively.

Shame Eating

Raghav, a 13-year-old teenager was body shamed. It all started with his friends calling him a “fat pig” as he was a chubby kid. As a result, he started becoming more conscious of his body and started starving himself by frequently refusing meals. He soon lost a lot of weight and got thinner with each passing day. He even refused to drink more than 1-2 glass of water in fear of gaining weight. One morning his condition deteriorated to an extent that he had to get hospitalized with severe malnutrition.

Guilt Eating

One of my client Ragini was famous for her healthy food habits. But, with the increasing family conflicts and her struggle of not able to keep her family together, she started developing guilt that she cannot manage her family. A woman who used to stay miles away from fried and junk food started finding comfort by eating these types of food. Whenever she felt low or stressed she would eat until it became physically uncomfortable. This, in turn, led to many physical problems.

Reward Eating

Ishan had suffered an eating disorder in the past which re-surfaced at his 30s. The roots of this problem lied in his childhood, where his parents rewarded him with food for every good achievement. He thus started associating food as a reward. He would follow extreme workout routines to find an excuse to get himself rewarded with food. He started treating himself with food whenever he would achieve something which ultimately resulted in overeating. Eating had become his primary emotional mechanism as he started eating for comfort.

It’s ONLY Emotional Eating that makes you Fat

You might be thinking that you are overweight because your body is too hungry all the time. Or because you love certain foods so much that you just can’t resist. Both statements are WRONG. Let me tell you why:

Physical Hunger never gets you fat. There’s a saying, “If everyone ate as much as they wanted to satisfy their hunger, no one would ever get fat”. That’s because our bodies are designed in such a way that physical hunger slowly tapers down as you eat. And once your hunger is satisfied, you wouldn’t feel the need to eat anymore.

Eating for pleasure also never gets you fat if you’re actually in touch with the pleasure of eating. The first spoon of chocolate ice-cream tastes so yumm… and so does the second spoon. But then the pleasure you derive with each successive spoon keeps diminishing. Until you reach the “Point of Satisfaction”, where having more ice-cream will give you very little pleasure. At that point, you’ll naturally want to stop.

For both physical hunger & eating for pleasure, there’s a point you’ll naturally want to stop (Unless you’re disconnected from your body feelings– in that case you may not feel it when your body wants to stop. But that’s a separate therapy issue altogether) In contrast, Emotional Eating is a bottomless pit. No matter how much you eat, you’ll always want more. Emotional eaters eat till they can’t eat anymore.

Why is it so hard to stop when you’re eating emotionally?

Emotional Eaters eat because they are trying to soothe themselves of some very uncomfortable emotions. Loneliness, Boredom, Frustration, Anxiety, Stress etc. The catch is that food only gives temporary relief. For a while, they feel soothed. But the uncomfortable feeling always returns.

This often leads them to a habit of soothing themselves with more and more food. But it is a never-ending vortex, as the underlying emotion never goes away. And their bodies pay the price.

For Physical Hunger, Food is the Solution. For Pleasure-Eating, Food is the Solution. For Emotional-Eating, Food is only a Temporary Relief.

How to Break the Cycle

Our Clients are always delighted when we tell them that there’s a clearly defined process to get over emotional eating once and for all. Often they’ve been struggling for years with weight and health issues, and it’s an “aha” moment when they finally uncover the root of their problem.

It starts with the question we asked at the beginning – “Why do you eat emotionally?”

Once we identify the emotion which is causing distress, we systematically work on addressing the emotion head on.

All this while, Food was used as a soothing-mechanism, as a distraction, because the emotion was too distressing. Now, we address the emotion head on, and once we are done, the client often doesn’t feel the need to eat so much.

We find that often clients are not aware of the deeper layers behind their over-eating behavior. Maybe he/she was eating because of loneliness. But upon further exploration, we might discover that they unconsciously push away people because of a deep-rooted fear of intimacy. And once we address that fear, he/she feels more competent and comfortable with the company of others, and no longer feels the need to eat. Another person might recognize that they are eating because they are not happy with their lives – and then proceed to improve the quality their life step-by-step with our hand-holding. Very often, addressing the emotion underlying the over-eating behavior brings unexpected breakthroughs in other areas of their lives.

Overcoming Emotional Eating comes with another side-benefit – they learn to actually enjoy their food! Emotional eaters often forget to truly relish the taste of food because they’re too focused on soothing the emotion. Once we help them reconnect to the pleasure of eating, they learn to enjoy their food even more while eating much less!

Reconnecting to your Body

In the process of addressing long-buried emotions, our clients learn to be more in-tune with their bodies. This leads them to experience a greater sense of wholeness and general well-being.

We use various therapy modalities to facilitate this process for our clients.

But Wait… isn’t Diet & Exercise the REAL way to lose weight?

Yes, it is!

And that’s why taking professional advice from a Nutritionist & following a consistent exercise regimen is a non-negotiable part of the process.

But you already know that don’t you? And so did every client who came to us with emotional over-eating issues – they already knew that they need to diet and exercise.

But then why haven’t they succeeded already if they knew it? We have known people who started a diet plan but couldn’t keep it up for more than 2 months. We’ve known people who dieted for several months and actually lost weight – only to regain it back (and often more) over the next few months. All of them have been dedicated, committed, and truly tried their best in losing weight. But as they were unaware of the emotional reasons behind their over-eating habit, it always undid all their hard work, leaving them frustrated and disappointed.

That’s why, even though the first step we encourage our clients to do is getting a diet-plan from a professional nutritionist and starting an exercise routine suitable for their bodies, we simultaneously tackle their emotional over-eating habit. This helps them stay consistent with their diet plan and maintain their hard-earned results long-term.

Working on your emotions requires commitment and hard work just as any work of change does. It can sometimes be uncomfortable, to face and tackle distressing emotions instead of drowning them down with food. Sometimes you’ll be sorely tempted to just wolf down a pizza like you always used to. And that’s okay. The people who get results aren’t the ones who never fall, but the ones who get back up no matter how many times they fall. And once you’ve overcome the hurdles, healthy eating will come to you naturally and effortlessly. You’ll learn to enjoy your food even more.

The healthy, fit, and sexy body you’ve always wanted is within your reach. Let’s undo the triggers that control your emotional over-eating habit and take control of our Health & Goals…

It’s Never Too Late…to Get Started!

Lets take the journey together. Book your consultation today!