Emotional Eating Therapy: Can It Make A Difference?

If you have noticed that you tend to turn to food as a source of comfort when experiencing negative emotions, you may be relying on emotional eating. Emotional eating is a coping mechanism that may occur due to a mental health condition. Still, you do not have to have a mental health diagnosis to develop emotional eating habits. 

Life can be turbulent, and seeking comfort food occasionally when stressed may not be unusual. However, if you regularly want to eat when you are not hungry, are concerned about your food cravings, binge eat, or do not think you can stop emotionally eating, it may be advantageous to seek the support of a mental health professional. 

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating is the practice of eating not when you are necessarily hungry but as a response to challenging emotions. These emotions may be negative feelings like anger or sadness. However, emotional eating can also be a response to positive feelings like happiness or excitement. This compulsive behavior is often referred to as stress eating, as stress is one of its most frequent triggers. 

Potential emotional eating triggers

Various life situations may result in an emotional eating episode, including but not limited to the following: 

• General stress
• Romantic relationship challenges, like a breakup 
• High-pressure situations at work or school
• Financial worries
• Health conditions or symptoms, like chronic illness or fatigue
• Relationship conflict with friends or family
• Concerns related to parenting
• Major life events and changes like getting married, changing jobs, relocating, or losing someone close to you
• Daily challenges or routines 

Risk factors for emotional eating

At its core, emotional eating is often a coping mechanism to suppress intense feelings and avoid processing them. As such, some people may be more at risk for developing emotional eating patterns. Behavioral, psychological, and genetic risk factors may come into play, including the following: 

• A history of trauma
• A need to perceive being in control
• A mental health condition like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Regularly engaging in unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance use
• Low self-esteem
• Difficulty recognizing, controlling, and expressing emotions
• Being related to someone who has also experienced emotional eating
• Being on a diet that requires you to restrict food intake or type 
• A history of dieting or otherwise denying yourself food (or other pleasures)
• Exposure to unhealthy eating patterns
• Growing up around family members with disordered eating patterns 
• Internalized harmful societal messages related to weight loss, body image, and food consumption

Emotional eating can develop into a cycle where a person eats to suppress negative emotions and then feels stronger negative emotions, such as guilt, as a result. As an individual processes how much they eat, they may want to eat more to suppress their feelings again. Emotional eating therapy techniques may address this cycle and rewire the emotional eating habit. 

Relationships between emotional eating and eating disorders

Engaging in emotional eating is not the same as having an eating disorder, though the two can be related. Emotional eating and similar behavior can be symptoms of an eating disorder like binge eating disorder, but it can also occur in people with no other symptoms of mental illness. If a person uses emotional eating as a coping mechanism, that habit may increase the risk of developing an eating disorder.

If you are experiencing a crisis related to an eating disorder or would like further resources, contact the ANAD Eating Disorders Helpline at 1-888-375-7767 from Monday through Friday, 9 am to 9 pm CT. 

Techniques you may learn in therapy for your eating patterns  

Connecting with a licensed therapist to discuss your emotional eating patterns may initially cause fear. However, a therapist skilled in addressing these concerns can work with you to develop practices to combat the urge to eat emotionally.

Keeping a food diary

In emotional eating therapy, the first step you and your therapist take might be to make a plan to keep a food diary. A food diary records when you eat, what you eat, and how much you eat. 

Your food diary can involve more than diet tracking in emotional eating therapy. Your therapist may encourage you to write about your emotional state before and after eating. Before eating, you might write about your feelings and thoughts. After you eat, you can write down whether your emotions felt more manageable or if you stopped eating because you felt full.

Keeping tabs on your feelings about your eating behaviors can help you and your therapist recognize how specific emotional experiences may translate into increased food consumption. You may also better recognize the difference between eating from hunger and eating incited by an emotional event. 

Over time, as your emotional eating is under control, you may find yourself documenting instances where you experienced an inciting event in your food diary but did not engage in unwanted behavior. 

Your therapist might not recommend a food diary if you have other eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, as tracking the time you eat, your weight, and the type of food you eat in an attempt to achieve weight loss can be unhealthy when done as a symptom of an eating disorder. Weight management can be healthy when done correctly and when you find a doctor specializing in this area instead of controlling the process on your own. 

Mindfulness and mindful eating

Mindfulness is the practice of grounding yourself in the present moment and increasing awareness of what is happening with your body. It can be crucial to better understanding and combatting emotional eating patterns. If you want to stop emotional eating and using comfort foods to cope, you may benefit from talking to a mindfulness-based mental health professional. 

Your therapist may encourage you to develop a habit of mindful eating, which may involve taking smaller bites of your food, chewing your food more slowly, not choosing food for comfort, and focusing on your body's physical reaction to food consumption. This shifted mindset may help you better recognize when your body needs food for sustenance instead of seeking food for emotional comfort. 

Working on negative thought patterns

Since emotional eating is often a response to strong emotions, emotional eating therapy may work on developing more healthy ways to address emotional turbulence. One potential method of cultivating emotional resilience is unpacking negative thought patterns. The cycle of emotional eating can prompt intense feelings of shame, which can lead to negative self-talk. 

Emotional eating therapy can work on helping you learn ways to turn negative self-talk into more positive messaging, which can help build self-esteem and prevent additional episodes of emotional eating in the future. 

How to find support

Though you may feel ashamed of emotional eating, you're not alone in experiencing this condition, and emotional eating therapy can often address various symptoms. Some areas may also have support groups available to help participants stop emotional eating and feel healthier. Depending on your situation, your therapist may also recommend you connect with a doctor or certified nutritionist. Physical health can correlate with mental health, and understanding your dietary needs may shift emotional eating patterns.

If you are having difficulty finding a local therapist specializing in emotional eating therapy, you may want to consider online counseling to find a therapist. Online therapy through platforms like BetterHelp can connect you with thousands of licensed mental health professionals with a wide range of training and techniques to address mental health concerns, including emotional eating. 

Research demonstrates that online therapy may be an impactful method of addressing emotional eating patterns. One study based on clinical trials found that internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy can effectively treat binge eating disorder, an eating disorder based on emotional eating behaviors. If you hope to find support with emotional eating habits, online therapy could be a helpful resource.