4 Ways You can Befriend Emotional Eating (and use it to your advantage!)

“Food is inherently tied to our emotions.

Yet, in our culture that celebrates dieting and restrictive eating, we are taught to disconnect our emotions from food. We are encouraged to only use food as a tool for nutritional health. If we are doing anything besides that, we are shamed and made to feel guilty.

In my opinion, this is completely the wrong approach.”

“Mijita, come help me sort the beans!” my grandma called. It was winter in the middle of Southern Colorado and below freezing. We had a fire going, and my brother and I were occupied watching cartoons in the living room. But, when I heard my grandma call me, I immediately ran to the kitchen. This was one of my favorite activities.
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She poured out a pile of pinto beans on her white plastic countertop and we started sorting. We pulled out the stones that got caught in the mix, the chipped beans, and the ones that were shriveled and discolored. From there, we each took on a different task—de-seeding green chiles, rolling tortillas, and shucking corn. Each of us chaotically, yet seamlessly, moved through my grandma’s small kitchen, all the while laughing, snacking and bumping into each other. I loved this feeling of being included and taking part in a small, but important tradition my family has had for generations.
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To this day, every time I sort beans and eat a hearty bowl of them with fresh flour tortillas, I feel the warmth and love of my family—even though I am thousands of miles away from them.
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I share this story with you to illustrate that food is inherently tied to our emotions. Yet, in our culture that celebrates dieting and restrictive eating, we are taught to disconnect our emotions from food. We are encouraged to only use food as a tool for nutritional health. If we are doing anything besides that, we are shamed and made to feel guilty.

Enter—emotional eating.

Emotional eating is defined by someone reaching for food as a way to cope with stress or uncomfortable emotions. Individuals who emotionally eat frequently feel guilty, ashamed and out of control after doing so. This is fueled even more by popular “health” advice that pathologizes emotional eating, and encourages women to diet instead.

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In my opinion, this is completely the wrong approach.

Contrary to popular belief, I actually believe that emotional eating is a good thing. I believe that when framed in the right way, you can actually befriend emotional eating and use it to your advantage.

Let’s start by re-framing emotional eating. If you have a tendency to reach for food when you are feeling stressed, upset, or down, you are not out of control. You are doing your best to self-sooth and cope with a difficult situation. This doesn’t make you a weak person with no will power. This makes you human. Many of us are not taught a wide array of tools to handle stress and challenging emotions—so we rely on what we know can give us comfort. For many of us, that’s food. It’s completely natural to find pleasure, joy and comfort in food. Food is not only meant to provide you necessary nutrients, it’s meant to enjoy! So give yourself permission to enjoy it! Food is your friend, not your enemy.
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Now let’s explore 4 ways you can befriend emotional eating and use it to your advantage.

1. Use emotional eating as a tool for self-discovery

When you can drop out of self-judgement and into curiosity, you can find some tremendous wisdom in your emotional eating habits. I invite you to explore what kind of foods you tend to reach for, what situations lead you to emotional eating, and when you tend to emotionally eat. Without trying to change any of your habits, see if you can answer these questions. Doing so will help you learn more about yourself and your life experience. Since food is inherently linked to our emotions, it is also linked with our emotional memory. Many of us crave certain foods because they are tied to certain life experiences or important people in our life.

For example, in my own experience with emotional eating, I have discovered: that I crave cereal at night because it’s something I used to do with my brother and parent Sofia. I crave McDonald’s when I’m sad, because I ate a lot of egg and sausage biscuits during a particularly hard time in my life, and I love eating chocolate—particularly Nutella, because it reminds me of the comfort of my mom. When I bring awareness to these tendencies, I can bring more understanding and compassion to myself, and choose how I want to deal with my underlying emotions. Sometimes that’s indulging in the foods I’m craving, and sometimes it’s using a different emotional coping tool.
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2. Practice holding space for your emotions, and develop multiple tools for dealing with them.

Emotional eating can be a natural and completely healthy way to cope with hard emotions, but it can become an issue if it’s the only way you are dealing with emotions. Now before your mind goes into a vicious shame cycle, I want you to practice becoming curious about your emotional eating habits as I laid out in the first step. Then, instead of trying to tackle it by restricting your food intake, I invite you instead to focus on your emotions. Start by identifying what you are feeling and then work to build healthy mechanisms to process your emotions. Some ideas are: journalling, meditating, going on walks, speaking with a therapist, practicing yoga, and talking with trusted friends and family. The goal here is to build a toolkit with various strategies you can use when you are experiencing stress or hard emotions. Different techniques will work better at different times in your life so it’s helpful to have a multitude of options to draw upon!
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3. Accept that emotional eating is a valid way to cope. Give yourself permission to keep it as an option.

As you start identifying your emotions and finding new ways to process them, remember that emotional eating is still a valid way to cope and you can still lean on it as a tool when you choose. When you consciously choose to use food as a way to cope with your emotions, it allows you to enjoy the experience more instead of falling into the trap of guilt and shame. For example, at the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, I ordered a few cases of pop-tarts. Not only because they never expire, but because they remind me of being a happy, carefree kid. I wanted to feel a sense of safety and comfort during this manic period, and as silly as it sounds, I knew that pop-tarts would help. Especially since at the time I was cut off from many of my other coping strategies.
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4. Plan to eat food and meals that evoke positive emotions.

Too often, we automatically associate emotional eating with negative feeling emotions. This causes us to feel like food is the enemy, and should be controlled. However, I believe there is great power in expanding the definition of emotional eating to include positive emotions as well. Doing so, helps us accept that food is inherently emotional, and that is a gift! I encourage you to plan meals that make you feel happy, loved and excited! For me, this means making a warm pot of beans and fresh flour tortillas. I know that no matter how I am feeling when I make it, it will instantly soothe me and make me remember all the great times sorting beans with my grandma and laughing in her kitchen. I encourage you to make your own list of meals and foods that make you feel good, and plan to eat at least one of them this week!
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Now, I’d love to hear from you! What is your experience with emotional eating? What’s one tool from above you want to try implementing? Comment below and let me know!