Emotional Eating

Emotional eating can subside if we free ourselves from diets and extremes. But first we need to understand the reasons driving our behaviour.

Understanding what causes it and ways to tackle it

Emotional eating tends to occur as a result of stress, anger, pressure, a deprivation mentality, loneliness, boredom and even happiness. We use food to feed our feelings, or fill the gap if something’s missing in our life. From a holistic point of view, ask yourself these questions: How am I feeling? Are there any emotions that I’ve been pushing down and bottling up? Is there a part of my life I feel I need to manage a little better?

As always, awareness is the first step. Bingeing, like emotional eating, can be linked to stress, anger, pressure, happiness, dieting, deprivation and distraction. In my experience, it’s usually the result of having a complicated relationship with food, adopting a diet mentality and succumbing to pressure, as well as a general feeling of not being good enough.

People also tend to binge when they feel like there may not be ‘enough’ food. This could be due to dieting for a long time, or say, for example, if the cook of the household doesn’t make enough food. As we know, when we deprive ourselves of food, we develop fear around food – which can lead to overeating.

Often, we fall into a pattern of bingeing without even realising what’s happening. It’s part of the diet culture, and I believe it has become an epidemic. While many people joke about it, bingeing can be a truly scary experience.

For women especially, the way we beat ourselves up after a binge or overeating spree is worse for our health than any bad food. You are too precious for this.