Get to grips with your emotional eating

We must nourish our bodies and food is one of life’s great pleasures – but, as a nation, we’re comfort eating to an unhealthy level. Take the angst out of your relationship with food and fuel yourself well, without self-sabotage and guilt

THE DAY WENT downhill fast. The spiral started when I reached over to pop a jug of porridge into the microwave, an action that somehow knocked over a canister of teabags from a shelf. It landed upside down inside the jug. Breakfast and a mass of teabags ruined! That set the tone and it snowballed from there – missed trains, fraught deadlines and a vexing phone call with a friend. The only thing that kept me going was the prospect of a lovely glass of merlot and some cheese when I finally got home.

It’s likely that this scenario, possibly with different ingredients, is familiar to many, particularly since lockdown. A survey* found that the pandemic has caused people living in Britain to become the biggest comfort eaters in Europe, with a 29 per cent rise in alcohol consumption and a similar spike in spending on convenience foods – and even more on a category called ‘tasty treats’. With statistics like these, it’s no surprise that a study by King’s College London found that almost half of us have gained weight since Covid hit.

This could be expected given the stress and boredom that characterised lockdown for many people. With limited activities and little to look forward to, it was all too easy to cheer ourselves up with croissant breakfasts, chocolate biscuits for elevenses and sticky toffee pudding and salted caramel ice cream for dessert every night as a reward for making it through yet another day.

But what exactly is it about food that gives us comfort, particularly those items that we are fully aware are not good for us? Rationally, it doesn’t make any sense. Most of the time, I am pretty healthy (see aforementioned porridge), I walk a minimum of 10,000 steps a day and love going to the gym.

But I also know that my cake intake probably went up by 30 per cent during lockdown.

Pleasure principle

A major factor is the physiological impact of sugar, often a component of comfort food. As psychologist Cinzia Pezzolesi explains: ‘During lockdown, we were all searching for ways to feel good. Sugar has a strong effect on the brain – it stimulates the reward system. When we eat, say, an ice cream, we produce a hit of dopamine, the feelgood brain chemical. Humans evolved this mechanism because we needed to remember where we found food that was not poisonous.’

Unfortunately, our primeval brains have not caught up with the fact that the corner shop is usually a safe bet for non-poisonous fruit and nuts! The brain learns to produce dopamine every time you eat a food that you find enjoyable to eat.

‘On a day when you feel sad, or even just a bit flat, you reach for the comfort food because you crave those chemicals,’ Pezzolesi says. ‘But what happens as time passes is that the brain generalises that feeling. So, one day, you feel sad and the brain remembers that eating something delicious makes you feel better. That starts the craving cycle. But, over time, you don’t even need to feel low to crave the food – all you need is to see the item and it’s linked to the memory of feeling good. You see it and you want to eat it.’

This explains why someone might always buy a cake when they walk past the patisserie, regardless of whether they are hungry, let alone feeling blue.

Under pressure

Stress can also trigger comfort eating. A study published in The American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition found that women suffering from

“Since Covid, we’ve become the biggest comfort eaters in Europe, along with a 29 per cent rise in alcohol consumption”

work-related stress were more likely to eat when feeling anxious or depressed. ‘Stress destabilises our sense of safety. When we don’t feel safe or well, we are conditioned to believe that food will help us, and we end up stress eating,’ says Pezzolesi.

‘Another reason we eat when we feel overwhelmed is that it’s a form of procrastination. If you’re facing a difficult task you don’t want to do, food provides an escape. You can’t face the task but, by eating, you are still doing something rather than nothing, and you can justify it by telling yourself that you need to eat anyway.’

We knew it all along

The tendency to turn to food for comfort is rooted in unhelpful messaging we may receive in childhood. ‘As babies, we are born with great instincts about food,’ says nutritionist Laura Thomas, author of How To Just Eat It (Pan Macmillan, £14.99). ‘My baby isn’t in his high chair worrying about the calories in a banana. He’s kicking his legs with joy. When he’s finished a meal, he throws the rest on the floor. He knows when he’s full.’

But messages around food, such as ‘you can’t go out to play until you’ve eaten your broccoli’ or ‘if you pass the test, I’ll buy you a sweetie’, reinforce the idea of food as punishment or reward. ‘We need to get rid of the guilt, shame and judgment we have acquired around food and our bodies,’ says Thomas. ‘We cannot unlink emotions from food – all eating is emotional eating if you think about it. We are humans, we have emotions and we have to eat. Neither can we turn off our emotions while we eat.’

Thomas believes that we need to return to a less complicated way of eating. ‘Although different foods have different nutritional values, we should start viewing everything as neutral, rather than morally good or bad. Using terms such as “junk food” is setting ourselves up for a loaded experience. It highlights the message that if you eat it, then you are an unworthy person. It’s ludicrous, it’s just food.’

cinziapezzolesi.com; londoncentreforintuitiveeating.co.uk