The hunger for happiness

Eating your feelings is a common response to stress or boredom, but it is more hindrance than help, writes

We have all done it: hit the pantry or fridge when we are feeling stressed, upset, overwhelmed – or just bored. But while it is normal to self-soothe with our favourite snacks every now and then, there is a cost to our physical and mental health when it becomes the go-to strategy for dealing with emotional distress.

Emotional eating is eating in response to difficult feelings. It is hugely common: studies suggest that up to 75% of all eating is emotionally driven. So instead of eating because we are hungry, we eat because we are stressed, bored, upset or need a pick-me-up.

The problem is that emotional eating can become a habit, occurring often or involving excessive amounts of food, as in binge eating.

As well as being physically unhealthy, it can set up a tortuous psychological cycle of guilt and shame.

Emotional eating erodes our ability to read our body’s signals. Instead of trusting the body to alert us to when it is hungry or full, we eat to suppress or soothe strong feelings rather than to fuel or nourish it, or to enjoy food with friends.

But I eat when I am happy

One woman I worked with was what she called a ‘‘happiness eater’’. Eating was all about rewarding herself and feeling good.

Food – browsing cookbooks, trying recipes, shopping, preparing, cooking, eating – gave her pleasure.

But the pattern still troubled her because she felt guilty and ashamed about the amount she was eating and her lack of control over it. And her creeping weight gain was distressed her.

However, when we unpacked it, there were other feelings driving her eating, primarily anxiety, which is hugely common in many types of disordered eating.

While positive feelings – like pleasure, excitement and reward – can lead to distorted eating patterns, emotional eating is more commonly linked with negative emotions.

People in therapy cite sadness, disappointment, stress, loneliness, overwhelm, anger and boredom as the main reasons they cope with food.

While some people wrestle with food-related feelings constantly (their anxiety and guilt over food choices never goes away), others struggle more when stress levels rise.

They will have emotional eating ‘‘episodes’’, which flare when difficult feelings kick in, and die down when they are more relaxed.

Work stress, relationship problems, money worries and health problems are key triggers.

There are complex reasons why people use food to cope.

It may be buried in your history: the way your family used or perceived food, the early messages you received about eating and your body, the way you ate to alleviate early stress.

Or it may have developed later in response to trauma or to fill a void or to gain some control over your circumstances or life.

The irony is that devouring a block of chocolate because you feel you need or deserve it can cause you to feel even more out of control and worse about yourself.

The irony is that devouring a block of chocolate because you feel you need or deserve it can cause you to feel even more out of control and worse about yourself.

What to do

The first step is to clear your most stresssusceptible environment – usually home or work – of temptation. Don’t rely on willpower to stay out of the pantry. Your environment needs to support – not undermine – how you want to eat. Beyond that, here is a strategy to help.

Identify the emotion

When you feel the urge to eat, pause and identify the emotion you are feeling. Are you bored? Lonely? Restless? Scared? Sad? Exhausted? And what is happening right now to cause it? Identifying your key emotional drivers makes you aware of what you are doing before you do it.

Ask yourself a question

There is always a gap between the stimulus (craving a food) and the response (eating it). So before you indulge, ask yourself: Will eating this make me feel good tomorrow?

Thinking ahead to how you will feel after eating helps you make a helpful, and healthy, choice.

Take action

You need to have another go-to response when the urge to eat strikes. Choose one simple activity to replace eating. It just has to break the cycle in the moment, but ideally should be something that makes you feel good – music, reading, a puzzle, a shower, some TikTok videos. A portable activitythat travels with youis best.