Why is the Emotional Eating Cycle so Vicious?

“Why are you drinking? – the little prince asked.
– In order to forget – replied the drunkard.
– To forget what? – inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
– To forget that I am ashamed – the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.
– Ashamed of what? – asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
– Ashamed of drinking! – concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
‘Grown-ups really are very, very odd’, he said to himself as he continued his journey.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Emotional eating can wreak havoc on mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The cycle of emotional eating is referred to as “positive feedback,” which means: “the enhancement or amplification of an effect by its own influence on the process that gives rise to it.” In other words, the more we engage in emotional eating, the greater the feelings of shame and guilt, the less we are able to cope with stressors in a healthy way, and thus engage in more emotional eating. Without intervention or a change in daily habits, this cycle may continue indefinitely.

Emotional Eating Triggers may include:

  • stress
  • suppressed emotions
  • boredom
  • feelings of emptiness
  • childhood habits
  • depression
  • anxiety
  • unaddressed mental health concerns
  • social and marketing pressures
  • a distraction (ex. if you’re worried about an upcoming event or stewing over a conflict, you may focus on eating comfort food instead of dealing with the painful situation)

Four Stages of Emotional Eating

Stage 1: Stressors

The fundamental cause of emotional eating is a compromised ability to cope with stressors. Stressors can be emotional, mental, physical, and/or environmental; they can also be positive as well as negative.

Stage 2: An overwhelming urge to eat in order to cope

The urge to eat will come on suddenly and may be all-consuming. Most commonly, people would crave salt, sugar, or refined carbohydrates.

Emotional eating may look like a Garfield cartoon when his face is in the lasagna pan:

Stage 3: Overeating

Whatever emotions drive you to overeat, the end result is often the same. The relief effect is temporary, the emotions return, and you likely then bear the additional burden of guilt and shame.

Stage 4: Shame, guilt, self-sabotage

An unhealthy cycle continues: your emotions trigger you to overeat, you beat yourself up for getting off your weight-loss track, you feel bad, and you overeat again.

Before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating, you first need to learn how to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. This can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use food to deal with your feelings.

How to Differentiate Between Emotional and Physical Hunger?

Emotional hunger can be powerful, so it’s easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for to help you differentiate between emotional and physical hunger:

1. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly. It feels consuming, overwhelming and urgent. Emotional hunger also creates a craving for specific comfort foods. Physical hunger comes on more gradually, and you typically don’t crave salt, starches, or sugar. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction.

2. Emotional hunger often leads to mindless eating. Before you know it, you’ve gobbled an entire pint of ice cream without really paying attention or fully enjoying it. When you’re eating in response to physical hunger, you are typically more aware of what you are doing.

Eating mindfully is an incredibly effective tool for monitoring the motivation for eating:

3. Emotional hunger isn’t satisfied once you’re full. You often are left feeling unsatisfied, even after consuming an abnormal amount of food (because food cannot satisfy what you are looking for). Alternatively, physical hunger will be satisfied with consumption.

4. Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach. Rather than a growling belly or a pang in your stomach, you feel your hunger as a craving you can’t get out of your head. You’re focused on specific textures, tastes, and smells.

How to Overcome Emotional Eating?     

Use Conscious Eating Technique:
Overcome emotional eating

  1. Notice how you do it: To interrupt a habit or behavioural pattern is to make it visible. Observe and laugh watching how you salivate to death when seeing a muffin at the store, how you stand in line, shake while eating it, saying to yourself that this is the very thing you need.
  2. Feel how it feels: Notice how amazing this muffin makes you feel after it got to the destination, how clear your mind becomes and how it resolves all your life problems in a split of a second.
  3. What are you looking for? Ask yourself: what am I looking for when eating that muffin? Self-love, comfort, peace, distraction? Why am I looking for it there? Does it remind me of my grandma, who used to bake them and made me feel so secure in her home? Does it feel the same way when my mom and I did baking, and I felt such a sense of togetherness and connection?
  4. Reality check: What does love have to do with a muffin? Ask yourself: does it really make me feel the way I hoped it would?

Address eating habits5. Savour every bite: Do not judge and do not punish yourself. Remember that there is another day to start all over.

You must tease out the underlying driving factors and address them in a safe, supported space. With emotional eating, it’s a combination of addressing emotional stressors and re-patterning to cope with future stressors in a healthy way. It may feel overwhelming and hopeless when you’re deep in the cycle, but by consciously noticing what is truly going underneath, you start gaining freedom.

Exercise: This week, if you find yourself binging, go through steps 1-5. Journal your feelings. Repeat the process throughout the week. Most important: do not feel pressured to take action on it, just observe. Write down what you learned about yourself, your habit, and how it changed your perspective.

How can Fresh Start help you with Emotional Eating?

  1. Cellular Re-nourishment. The main reason why we eat a lot is that we consume predominantly foods that lack nutrients. Just think about finishing a bag of chips and how satisfied you feel after. How many of those do you need to eat before you feel totally full? Quite a few, possibly until you hurt. How about lettuce – how much would you need to eat of it to feel full? What is the difference? It is the density of nutrients. When your body feels that there are little nutrients in the foods you eat, it will keep producing the feeling of hunger because it is not the amount, but the quality and balance of a meal is what matters. Many people get surprised, how little they need to eat here, at the retreat, to feel satisfied. This is because our foods are packed with minerals, phytonutrients, enzymes and other essential nutrients that most modern foods are so lacking.
  2. Daily Meal and Routine Structure. At home, we may have difficulty staying on a schedule when it comes to meals or exercise. Adhering to a daily structure, you’ll enjoy experiencing various health benefits, including a healthy appetite, better digestion and a feeling of lightness and mental clarity. In addition, we use the principle: “eat breakfast like a king, lunch as a queen and supper as a pauper.” We make breakfast and lunch main meals and finish our day with a hot vegetable soup. As a result of decreased digestive load, your nervous and hormonal systems start stabilizing, heartburn (if you suffer from it) diminishes, and you sleep better. Most guests love the benefits and take this meal structure home because they see how easy it is to follow it.
  3. Clear Your Taste Buds. Advanced whole body detox heightens the sense of taste and smell. As a result, you start having an appetite for natural foods and can thoroughly enjoy it. Walks in the fresh ocean air and forest will help your healthy appetite, too. When you enjoy what you eat, you digest it better and do not feel like stuffing yourself.
  4. Feeling Guiltless about Foods. Meals should not be associated with guilt. The food that you’ll be consuming here is not just nutritious but also delicious. How much better can it get?! Eating foods knowing that they will not make you gain weight or harm your body will give you immense joy and pleasure.
  5. Improve Your Digestion. As part of the program, we use multiple supplements and drinks, assisting in improving digestive function, including quality probiotics, digestive enzymes, fermented foods and others. When your body’s ability to utilize foods improves, you need to eat less and absorb it better.
  6. Enhanced Hydration. We can easily mix feelings of hunger and thirst and often misinterpret the signals of dehydration that our body sends as the need to eat. At Fresh Start, we have a specific daily schedule of cellular hydration to ensure your body gets an adequate amount of fluids.
  7. Healthy Meal Preparation Classes and Menu Planning Classes. During your stay, you’ll receive a comprehensive education on a healthy lifestyle. You will learn how your body functions, what nutrients it needs and how to create a balanced meal. You also will see how the meals you eat are prepared, will get the Fresh Start Recipe book, and will be able to create a menu to take home. Tip: To learn the entire Fresh Start nutrition principles and system, we suggest you come for all 3 weeks.
  8. Metabolism Reset. When you want to address emotional eating, typically, you want to lose weight also. Some of our guests share that while exercising 5–6 days per week, they could not lose weight for months, yet here they start doing so much more effortlessly and without “killing” themselves in the gym. What is most amazing is that many continue losing weight post-program, too. This is because the program helps reset your metabolism. Some of the methods we use to achieve this are:  regular steam baths, digestive cleanses and abundance of raw foods (since starches in raw foods are ‘detached’ from fibre and are in a form less available to the body, they do not make you gain weight. Raw fibre, like a brush, helps your body move toxins out).
  9. Address Your Emotional Wellbeing. We may use food to cope with, to soothe, or to shut down our feelings. This cannot be dealt with on just a physical level. You need to go to the root of anxiety, depression or trauma. Fresh Start emotional wellness specialists will help you to work with emotional root causes if you need it. Additionally, massages and other bodywork will help you rebalance your nervous and hormonal systems and feeling more relaxed.

Listen to Kim’s Story how she came suffering from emotional eating and got better:

How to Overcome Emotional Eating?

Use Conscious Eating Technique:

1. Notice how you do it: To interrupt a habit or behavioural pattern is to make it visible. Observe and laugh watching how you salivate to death when seeing a muffin at the store, how you stand in line, shake while eating it, saying to yourself that this is the very thing you need.

2. Feel how it feels: Notice how amazing this muffin makes you feel after it got to the destination, how clear your mind becomes and how it resolves all your life problems in a split of a second.

3. What are you looking for? Ask yourself: what am I looking for when eating that muffin? Self-love, comfort, peace, distraction? Why am I looking for it there? Does it remind me of my grandma, who used to bake them and made me feel so secure in her home? Does it feel the same way when my mom and I did baking, and I felt such a sense of togetherness and connection?

4. Reality check: What does love have to do with a muffin? Ask yourself: does it really make me feel the way I hoped it would?

5. Savour every bite: Do not judge and do not punish yourself. Remember that there is another day to start all over.

You must tease out the underlying driving factors and address them in a safe, supported space. With emotional eating, it’s a combination of addressing emotional stressors and re-patterning to cope with future stressors in a healthy way. It may feel overwhelming and hopeless when you’re deep in the cycle, but by consciously noticing what is truly going underneath, you start gaining freedom.

Exercise: This week, if you find yourself binging, go through steps 1-5. Journal your feelings. Repeat the process throughout the week. Most important: do not feel pressured to take action on it, just observe. Write down what you learned about yourself, your habit, and how it changed your perspective.

How can Fresh Start help you with Emotional Eating?

  1. Cellular Re-nourishment. The main reason why we eat a lot is that we consume predominantly foods that lack nutrients. Just think about finishing a bag of chips and how satisfied you feel after. How many of those do you need to eat before you feel totally full? Quite a few, possibly until you hurt. How about lettuce – how much would you need to eat of it to feel full? What is the difference? It is the density of nutrients. When your body feels that there are little nutrients in the foods you eat, it will keep producing the feeling of hunger because it is not the amount, but the quality and balance of a meal is what matters. Many people get surprised, how little they need to eat here, at the retreat, to feel satisfied. This is because our foods are packed with minerals, phytonutrients, enzymes and other essential nutrients that most modern foods are so lacking.
  2. Daily Meal and Routine Structure. At home, we may have difficulty staying on a schedule when it comes to meals or exercise. Adhering to a daily structure, you’ll enjoy experiencing various health benefits, including a healthy appetite, better digestion and a feeling of lightness and mental clarity. In addition, we use the principle: “eat breakfast like a king, lunch as a queen and supper as a pauper.” We make breakfast and lunch main meals and finish our day with a hot vegetable soup. As a result of decreased digestive load, your nervous and hormonal systems start stabilizing, heartburn (if you suffer from it) diminishes, and you sleep better. Most guests love the benefits and take this meal structure home because they see how easy it is to follow it.
  3. Clear Your Taste Buds. Advanced whole body detox heightens the sense of taste and smell. As a result, you start having an appetite for natural foods and can thoroughly enjoy it. Walks in the fresh ocean air and forest will help your healthy appetite, too. When you enjoy what you eat, you digest it better and do not feel like stuffing yourself.
  4. Feeling Guiltless about Foods. Meals should not be associated with guilt. The food that you’ll be consuming here is not just nutritious but also delicious. How much better can it get?! Eating foods knowing that they will not make you gain weight or harm your body will give you immense joy and pleasure.
  5. Improve Your Digestion. As part of the program, we use multiple supplements and drinks, assisting in improving digestive function, including quality probiotics, digestive enzymes, fermented foods and others. When your body’s ability to utilize foods improves, you need to eat less and absorb it better.
  6. Enhanced Hydration. We can easily mix feelings of hunger and thirst and often misinterpret the signals of dehydration that our body sends as the need to eat. At Fresh Start, we have a specific daily schedule of cellular hydration to ensure your body gets an adequate amount of fluids.
  7. Healthy Meal Preparation Classes and Menu Planning Classes. During your stay, you’ll receive a comprehensive education on a healthy lifestyle. You will learn how your body functions, what nutrients it needs and how to create a balanced meal. You also will see how the meals you eat are prepared, will get the Fresh Start Recipe book, and will be able to create a menu to take home. Tip: To learn the entire Fresh Start nutrition principles and system, we suggest you come for all 3 weeks.
  8. Metabolism Reset. When you want to address emotional eating, typically, you want to lose weight also. Some of our guests share that while exercising 5–6 days per week, they could not lose weight for months, yet here they start doing so much more effortlessly and without “killing” themselves in the gym. What is most amazing is that many continue losing weight post-program, too. This is because the program helps reset your metabolism. Some of the methods we use to achieve this are:  regular steam baths, digestive cleanses and abundance of raw foods (since starches in raw foods are ‘detached’ from fibre and are in a form less available to the body, they do not make you gain weight. Raw fibre, like a brush, helps your body move toxins out).
  9. Address Your Emotional Wellbeing. We may use food to cope with, to soothe, or to shut down our feelings. This cannot be dealt with on just a physical level. You need to go to the root of anxiety, depression or trauma. Fresh Start emotional wellness specialists will help you to work with emotional root causes if you need it. Additionally, massages and other bodywork will help you rebalance your nervous and hormonal systems and feeling more relaxed.

Listen to Kim’s Story how she came suffering from emotional eating and got better:

Kimberly, WA, USA

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Disclaimer:

Though we have professional staff with advanced health expertise and most of our guests receive deep health results, the Fresh Start cannot guarantee health recovery from any specific disease or symptom, as the healing process is individual, gradual and depends on many factors. Please be realistic in expectations as there is no such thing as quick fixes when it comes to healing.