Emotional eating is a common topic on a normal day. Emotional eating is generally perceived negatively as it is associated with eating more food and weight gain. The current COVID19 pandemic may be amplifying emotions and the fear of gaining weight while in lockdown, making the topic of emotional eating very relevant at this time. What is emotional eating? Why do we emotionally eat? How can we manage emotional eating?

Understanding Emotional Eating

What you may not realize is that food and eating is not just nutrients and energy. It is also a crucial part of managing emotions. Emotional eating is the tendency to eat in response to a particular emotion that you may be feeling. There is no one reason why we emotionally eat. There are genetic and biological factors that may predispose us to develop emotional eating tendencies, but these factors don’t directly result in emotional eating. Culture influences through our life plays a much larger role in our society in prevalence of emotional eating.

From a young age we develop an emotional relationship with food. Food can provide a very healthy and normal way of helping us cope with certain emotions. Food can give us feelings of relief, happiness and pleasure which may help us cope with life situations.  In dire times sometimes food can be our only source of these feelings so limiting food intake could actually be more harmful.

However, emotional eating is still villainized. Most people think that emotional eating is this ‘bad’ thing that they need to control. We often blame bad eating habits on the fact that it was an emotional response to a situation and then we feel guilty that we weren’t able to control it. Emotions such as stress, anxiety, emptiness, depression, loneliness and boredom are all examples of emotions that often trigger this ‘bad’ thing that we do called emotional eating.

So, are you ‘bad’ if you emotionally eat? No, you are not ‘bad’, you are simply normal. Life is a roller coaster of emotions and food can provide comfort at times when you need it. Emotional eating only becomes harmful when feelings and emotions are bottled up and not dealt with and food starts to be abused to a point where it hurts your body.

Managing Emotional Eating

As emotional eating can be a normal reaction to help you cope with your feelings, trying to fix the eating is then a very indirect approach to managing emotional eating. You rather need to focus on what is causing you to experience a particular emotion. Therefore, the question you should be asking is ‘how can you manage the emotion, rather than how can you stop emotional eating’. The first step is to identify the emotion that is triggering the behaviour and its cause. Secondly to then develop ways to prevent and alleviate the emotion.

In our current COVID19 situation some of the key feelings you may be experiencing are anxiety, stress and boredom.  Perhaps you are worried about your family contracting the virus or what effect will the current situation have on your  job and your finances?

Whatever you are stressed about try and put things in perspective to reduce that feeling:

  • Acknowledge that your are an emotional eater and understand your personal emotional profile that causes your eating habits.
  • Focus on things that you find relaxing and that help you to manage your stress. For example exercising, reading, meditating, yoga or cooking.
  • Educate yourself on COVID19, the symptoms, how it is contracted, and what to do should you or anyone in your family display anyo of the symptoms.
  • Take as many precautionary measure possible to minimise being infected
  • Draft a budget and plan ways to get your finances in order based on your particular circumstances.

Or maybe you are eating because you are bored. If boredom is the influencing emotion try to find things to fill your time that is not just watching TV. Once again acknowledge the problem and work out a solution if you don’t want to put on weight during lockdown.

Here are a few things that may help manage boredom:

  • Create a structure or routine for your day. Having a structure of what you are going to do during the day will help to fill your time and leave less time to be bored.
  • Find a few hobbies that you enjoy. For example gardening, drawing, painting, home renovating, knitting or doing puzzles.
  • You can work on furthering your education. Numerous universities such as UCT, Wits and even Oxford, are providing free online courses.
  • If you enjoy cooking, Yuppie Chef is doing free cooking courses that can help you work on your culinary skills.
  • Audible is also providing free audiobooks for everyone.

When it comes to managing your emotional eating, it is mportant thing to remember that eating for what you think are emotional reasons may not always be the reason for your eating patterns. Emotional eating can therefore be confused with other reasons for eating. Whatever the reason please ensure that your eating habits  are nourishing your body and not  restricting your nutrition.

Erratic and restrictive eating behaviours can lead to chemical imbalances and mood swings. It can amplify feelings of anxiety and depression which will only worsen the emotional eating response. These feelings can be alleviated by a normal diet.

Things that you can do to make sure that you are nourishing your body include:

  • Improve the way that you view food. Society has created a lot of food misconceptions which may have led you to label foods as ‘good and bad’. All foods play a role in nourishment., whether nutritional or emotional.
  • Practicing mindfulness when eating is also a keyway to help you focus your attention on the meal that you are eating and will limit other psycological factors from affecting your eating experience.  https://nutritioninnovated.co.za/2017/10/12/mindful-eating-live-moment-focus-food/
  • Avoid restrictive eating. This leads to nutritional food restriction and worsens the emotional eating response.
  • Fill your day with good quality foods that are eaten throughout the day
  • Make sure your meals contain a balance of all different types of food (carbohydrate, protein, fat, fruit & veg). Avoid completely eliminating a particular food or group.
  • Aim to eat when you feel hungry, which is usually 3-4 hourly.
  • Have a portion that is satisfying. If you find that you are physically hungry an hour later then you probably haven’t eaten enough.

Identifying and directly addressing the cause is the most effective way of managing emotional eating.  Reducing your emotional triggers and making sure that you are nourishing your body adequately is key. During lockdown, focus on reducing your stress, managing boredom and giving your body the best quality nutrients available. Lastly, if you do happen to find yourself needing to eat the chocolate, do not guilt trip yourself. It could be an important source of emotional nourishment that you might just need at this time.

Article Credit: Michelle Tolmay. Michelle is a registered dietitian in private practice in Durban and Umhlanaga. She is specialised in disordered and emotional eating.