How to Cope With Your Emotions Without Just Using Food

Do you struggle with emotional eating? Turning to food as a way to cope with boredom, tiredness, anger, frustration, sadness? You're not alone, friend. Food can be so comforting when we're having a bad day. But what can happen is we can sometimes look to food to be our number one source of comfort and hope that it'll meet a need of ours that it can't ever truly meet fully. So knowing that, let's talk about ways to cope with your emotions without just using food.I say, "just" because I believe that there's a space for coping with our emotions with food. Food makes us feel good. It brings us to places in our past. It's so much deeper than just the energy that it provides. And because of that, I believe it can have a healthy place in our ability to cope with emotions. If you've ever come home from a stressful day and wanted a bowl of ice cream, you're not a bad person. You're totally normal. And if you eat chocolate cake in celebration of a big achievement, that's part of just what we do because food is celebratory!But like I said, when we look to food as our only form of comforting ourselves, when we look to it as a way to suppress and not deal with our emotions, that's when it can become problematic. 

USING FOOD TO COPE WITH EMOTIONS IS LIKE TRYING TO FIT THE WRONG PUZZLE PIECE INTO A PUZZLE

It's like this...imagine you're working on a puzzle and you're finally at the last missing spot in the puzzle. You have one last piece, but try as you might, that piece won't fit! After a lot of frustration, you realize that the piece you were trying to fit in that final hole actually goes to a totally different puzzle. And after searching, you find the missing piece that fits in the puzzle you're working on.When it comes to our emotions, if all we're doing is using food to cope, it'll be like that illustration of the puzzle. You'll keep eating, and eating, looking for food to meet your emotional needs. But because food's role isn't to fully meet our emotions, we will never feel satisfied. 

COPING WITH EMOTIONS STARTS WITH SITTING WITH AND THEN NAMING YOUR EMOTIONS

Healing emotional eating is all about 1.) Sitting with your emotions, 2.) Naming your emotions, and 3.) Coming up with a healthy way to cope with those emotions straight on.For example, if while sitting with your emotions you figure out what you're feeling is sadness, and then by asking yourself why you're sad you figure out it's because you've been lonely lately, think about what a healthy solution to that emotion might be. For loneliness, maybe what you need is to get together with some girlfriends to catch up.I recognize that you may have a lot of pent up emotions that are scary to sort through on your own. Know that that is ok. If you need, seek out a trusted friend, a counselor, a pastor to share with so you don't have to go through it alone. This is actually something I work on with a lot of my 1:1 clients.So I wanted to share some ideas for some things that you can do for each of the different emotions. This is not an exhaustive list, by any means. But I thought it might be helpful to have somewhere to start from. What emotion are you feeling right now? What action can you match up as a healthy coping mechanism? 

IS IT EMOTIONAL EATING OR IS IT FOOD RESTRICTION?

Emotional eating can feel very intense. But so can the result of food restriction. The difference is that with food restriction the intensity you feel around eating is due to you not having eaten enough throughout the day (or a few days) or it can even be a psychological restriction from food fear. By the time evening comes, your body kicks into survival mode and signals to you to eat with an intensity that would come if you'd been starving. It's a protective measure your body takes to ensure you get enough energy. If you're not sure if the chaos you're feeling around food is due to emotions or food restriction, start by taking a look at what you're eating throughout the day. If you're not eating at least 3 meals and a couple snacks and feeling satisfied by the food you're eating (as in you eat and stop thinking about food), maybe you need to try eating more during the day to keep you from going into that primal drive to eat.But if you are eating enough, and you know you are because you honor your hunger and aren't suppressing hunger by chewing gum and drinking seltzer, then maybe explore if there are any undealt-with emotions. I know this can be challenging to navigate alone. That's why I love the work I get to do with my 1:1 clients where we deep dive into how they can feel more calm around food. 

THE CONTINUUM OF EMOTIONAL EATING

There's a continuum to emotional eating. At the beginning, food provides sensory gratification. This is totally a healthy part of your relationship with food! Food provides us good, happy feelings when we eat it. I used to be so afraid of "enjoying food too much", but now I know that that's part of what makes food satisfying and what keeps us enjoying the process of energizing our bodies.Next on the continuum is food for comfort. I, also, believe that this is part of a healthy relationship with food. This is where, after a bad day at work, eating a bowl of ice cream is 100% acceptable!Then we move into food for distraction, sedation, and punishment. These three are where we get into the unhealthy uses of food for emotions. This is where we turn to food to meet a need that it just won't be able to meet and so we keep eating because we just can't get satisfied. If you've noticed yourself turning to food for any of these three reasons, ask yourself, "Why am I trying to suppress my emotions?" and "What if I gave myself space to feel my feelings?" 

ACKNOWLEDGE THAT EMOTIONAL EATING HAS POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Emotional eating, contrary to what you may read on the internet, is not all bad. And in order to heal emotional eating, I think it's important to recognize this. There are far more harmful coping mechanisms available than food such as smoking, drinking, drug use, self-harm. I like to look at it as, food helped you get to where you are but now it's ok to part ways with it being your only coping mechanism.So while yes, emotional eating numbed certain joys in your life...it also was a way you numbed your bad feelings.While yes, it left you feeling overfull and uncomfortable...it also was able to soothe you. 

WHEN EMOTIONAL EATING COMES WITH EATING TOO LITTLE

We often think of emotional eating being eating too much. But another way I see women coping with emotions with food is by restricting and controlling food. I resonate most with this type of emotional eating. I sought out comfort from having control over food when things in my life felt uncertain and scary. If I could go back and recognize that that's what was going on, I would have recognized that I was scared and a healthy way to cope may have been opening up about my fears at that time with a close friend or mentor.The same concept applies with this form of emotional eating as with eating too much. You're trying to get something out of food that can't fully be met by food. I know emotional eating can be so complex and tricky to navigate alone. I know that sometimes, once you start to peel off one layer you realize there's something underneath that isn't so comfortable to confront. But I hope that this shed some light on emotional eating and gave you some practical ways to think about it for you, specifically. Comment with any questions you have! Here to work through this with you! What emotions are you suppressing and trying to use food to cope with? What action can you do to start practicing a healthy approach to your emotions that doesn't involve food?