What is emotional eating?
Sometimes, emotional eating can sneak up when we’re not really experiencing physical hunger but instead looking for a bit of comfort after a stressful day at work. It’s easy to reach for junk food or unhealthy foods like ice cream or pizza when we’re feeling down, bored, or even lonely. Often, the drive-through becomes a go-to choice in moments of stress, offering that quick reward that promises temporary stress relief. However, indulging in sweets or heavy foods doesn’t actually fix our emotional needs or solve our emotional problems. Instead, this type of eating can make us feel worse than before, leaving us with a full stomach and, sometimes, the feeling of guilt or even overeating. At the core, emotional eating is a way to distract from the original emotional issue but often only serves to deepen it.
Are you an emotional eater?
If you find yourself reaching for food not because you’re hungry but because you’re feeling stressed, mad, or even bored, you may be an emotional eater. Many times, people eat in these moments to feel better, hoping the act of eating will soothe or calm emotions like sad or anxious feelings. It may feel like a comforting reward, like food is a safe friend that’s always there to help. However, this often leads to eating regularly even when you’re already full or stuffed, leaving you feeling powerless and out of control. If this sounds familiar, it’s important to notice these patterns to regain a sense of balance.
The emotional eating cycle
The emotional eating cycle often begins with an intense feeling—maybe you’re stressed, upset, or even exhausted. In that moment, food can seem like the ideal pick-me-up or a quick reward to help deal with those emotions. Without realizing it, eating can become a primary emotional coping mechanism, where each impulse to visit the refrigerator feels justified by stress, loneliness, or boredom. But giving in to this unhealthy cycle can leave you feeling worse afterward, especially when unnecessary calories are consumed without actually satisfying emotional hunger. This can lead to frustration, where you may even beat yourself up for “messing up” or feel like you lack the willpower to make a positive change. The key is learning healthier ways to handle those feelings, like finding ways to conquer cravings and stop emotional eating before it starts. Recognizing triggers is a strong first step toward making that positive change and controlling weight without feeling powerless over food.
The difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger
Emotional hunger and physical hunger feel very different once you can distinguish between them. Emotional hunger often hits suddenly and feels overwhelming, creating an urgent urge to eat comfort foods like cheesecake, pizza, or a whole bag of chips for an instant sense of relief. On the other hand, physical hunger builds gradually and tends to be satisfied by healthy foods like vegetables or nutritionally balanced choices. With physical hunger, you’ll feel it in your stomach with sensations like a growling belly or hunger pangs, and you’re likely to stop eating when you feel satisfied. In contrast, emotional eating can lead to mindless eating until you’re uncomfortably stuffed and may leave you with feelings of regret, guilt, or shame. Recognizing these clues can help you break free from the cycle and respond with awareness rather than an automatic craving.
What causes someone to eat because of their emotions?
Emotional eating is often triggered by external reasons like work stress, financial worries, or relationship struggles. Sometimes, health issues or restrictive diets can fuel a strong desire to eat for comfort. Those with a history of dieting or low introspective awareness may also find it harder to manage emotions in a healthy way, leading to eating as an automatic behavior to cope. Some people experience emotion dysregulation, making it difficult to process or describe emotions—a condition called alexithymia. This can affect the HPA stress axis, where the body’s cortisol response may prompt eating to relieve stress. Over time, this becomes an established habit that feels natural, even though it may not truly address emotional needs.
Is emotional eating an eating disorder?
Emotional eating itself isn’t typically classified as an eating disorder, but it can be a form of disordered eating. When emotions drive eating more than physical hunger, and there are rigid food choices or a habit of labeling foods as good or bad, it may signal deeper issues. Frequent dieting, food restriction, or irregular meal timing can worsen this behavior, sometimes leading to obsessive thoughts about food that interfere with daily life. Feelings of guilt or shame after eating can make it an unhealthy pattern. Although emotional eating doesn’t meet the official criteria for an eating disorder, a mental health professional or registered dietitian can help address any negative relationship with food and assess if further support is needed, as noted by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Alternatives to emotional eating
When feeling depressed or lonely, reaching out with a call to a friend can help you feel better. Sometimes engaging with a pet, like playing with your dog or cat, can lift your mood too. If you’re feeling anxious or have nervous energy, try dancing to a favorite song or squeezing a stress ball. For exhaustion, unwind with a hot cup of tea, a warm blanket, or relax with scented candles. When bored, find joy in a good book, a comedy show, or exploring the outdoors. Engaging in an activity you enjoy—like woodworking, playing guitar, shooting hoops, or even scrapbooking—can be a fulfilling way to handle emotions without turning to food.
Keep an emotional eating diary
Keeping an emotional eating diary can help you recognize and identify specific patterns behind your urge to eat. By writing down what you ate, how you felt before and afterward, and noting if any triggers led to overeating or reaching for comfort food (your personal Kryptonite), you may start to see a pattern emerge. This can help you understand if stress eating happens around certain deadlines, family functions, or an upsetting event that leaves you gorging. Use the diary like a critical friend—an honest tool that gently guides you to backtrack on the emotional eating cycle and explore healthier ways to feed your feelings instead of food.
Schedule your meals
Using behavioral strategies like scheduling regular meals can help curb emotional eating by managing both physical hunger and emotional hunger. By setting a planned time for each meal, such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack, it becomes easier to avoid impulsive eating driven by emotions. According to research, there’s a cold-hot empathy gap where, in a cold state (feeling neutral and calm), we often underestimate future hunger. When in a hot state (feeling intense cravings), we might overestimate how much food we actually need. To prevent this, try meal planning ahead, perhaps a week’s worth that includes a variety of foods to support diet quality and even reduce obesity risks. Prep a weekly meal plan for each day of the week—whether it’s Monday or Sunday—and aim for a meal every 3 hours or within a 12-hour window before bedtime. If you feel an intense desire to eat, try waiting half an hour to see if the craving fades.
5 Strategies to Help You Stop Emotional Eating
Sometimes, after a stressful day or a fight with a spouse, it’s easy to head straight to the freezer for ice cream or sit on the couch and mindlessly munch through a bag of chips. This kind of emotional eating—or stress eating—is a common way to handle negative emotions like anger, sadness, or stress, but it can turn into a bad eating habit that makes us feel even worse over time. Experts like registered dietitian Anna Kippen, MS, RDN, LD, from the Cleveland Clinic, suggest that these feel-good foods may provide temporary relief but can cause long-term damage to our health and diet. Instead, trying strategies that address the root causes of these emotions can help manage cravings. Practicing these approaches regularly can make a big difference in keeping emotions in check without reaching for food to cool the feelings.
1. Get down to the root cause
Emotional eating often stems from deeper issues rather than just a bad day at work or a fight with a friend. Sometimes, it’s rooted in long-term concerns like chronic stress, anger, or even depression. These bigger issues make it hard to control cravings, especially when short-term problems feel overwhelming. To tackle this, it helps to identify the true source of your emotional needs. Counseling, stress management, and exercise are powerful techniques that can help, along with other strategies aimed at handling emotions. By addressing the root cause of emotional eating, you can make meaningful changes to your health and well-being.
2. Ask why you’re eating
Before reaching into the refrigerator, pantry, or vending machine, take a moment to pause and ask yourself a simple question: “Am I truly hungry?” Kippen suggests using a hunger rating scale from 1 to 5—with one meaning you’re not hungry at all and five meaning you’d eat the food you hate most in the world just to satisfy the urge. If your hunger clocks in at a level of three or four, it might be time for a healthy, balanced snack within 15 minutes, or a meal in 30 minutes. But if your physical hunger is lower, consider an alternative activity like drinking a cup of fruity herbal tea or going for a walk to reset your mind and avoid mindless eating without true motivation.
3. Instead of taste, rely on other senses
When you’re not physically hungry but feel the urge to eat, try using other senses to distract your mind and manage emotions. Relying on sight-based activities like a nature walk in a pretty neighborhood or visiting museum exhibits can provide a refreshing sensory experience. For a scent-based approach, inhale the aroma of essential oils or the smell of fresh-cut grass. If you enjoy sounds, try listening to music, nature sounds, or a white noise recording to keep your mind busy. For touch, fidget toys, stress balls, chewing gum, or mints can offer a soothing alternative to eating, helping you develop a coping skill that doesn’t rely on taste alone.
4. Choose foods that fight stress
Certain foods can help fight stress and promote a healthy mind. Hot teas like green tea, matcha tea, or white tea have soothing steam and contain antioxidants and L-theanine, an amino acid that can help reduce stress levels. For a late-night snack, dark cherries offer a sweet treat that boosts melatonin to aid sleep. Salmon and other fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids are also great choices. Even dark chocolate with at least 72% cacao and whole grains, nuts, legumes, fruits, and vegetables can support emotional well-being. Kippen suggests stocking up on these options and avoiding processed junk, which may only make you feel worse in the long run.
5. Make emergency packages
If you’re prone to stress-related snacking, it helps to prepare small emergency snack packages to avoid binge eating or overindulgence. For example, you can pre-portion healthy snacks like nuts, popcorn, or sliced veggies into baggies or containers. Having these healthy options ready can be a simple recipe to combat cravings on an ongoing basis. If emotional eating feels hard to control, consider seeking medical help. A doctor can provide a treatment plan to address emotional issues such as stress, depression, anger, and other negative emotions that might drive unhealthy eating habits.