Behind the Loaded Plate: Emotional Eating, Part Two in the Series

To change the perception linking emotional needs with food, let's dedicate a few lines to the topic of emotions.

First, we must internalize that emotions influence our consciousness. When we are anxious, tense, or sad, we experience reality entirely differently than when we are happy and content. When we are sad, we view the future as bleak, even if there is no substantive justification for it. Consequently, we might avoid investing effort in proactive and productive action, in work or studies, since the feeling is that there is no point in investing—since the future seems to hold nothing but bad. Conversely, when we are happy and content, the future looks bright and sunny, and we are filled with motivation to improve it.

Moreover, it's important to know: when we do not express our emotions, they do not disappear. Quite the opposite: they remain hidden within us, and from there—they covertly take control over us without us noticing their existence!

For example, a person who suffered abuse in childhood and is now reserved and reluctant to talk about feelings. That person might think they are coping with the trauma they experienced because, in essence, they successfully avoid confronting the pain, and might even function excellently in daily life.

However, in reality, often the hurt still simmers within them, affecting their perception: the world will seem like a bad and threatening place, causing them to be less creative, less initiative-taking, less sociable, and unable to contain the emotions of others, which might seem threatening after they were hurt by them in the past. Such a person may settle for the minimum in every area of their life. Such a person is merely "going through life"—without feeling that their emotions, harmed in the past, have taken over them and are preventing them from engaging with real life.

Therefore, discussing emotions is very important, as King Solomon, the wisest of all men, has already said in the Book of Proverbs (12, 25): "Anxiety in a man's heart weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad," and sages interpreted in the Talmud, Tractate Yoma (75a): "Let him tell it to others."

In other cases, the person might internalize their emotions without expressing them, due to experiencing neglect of their feelings in the past. Since these emotions remain, they will continue to demand acknowledgment, leading the person to potentially become addicted to eating—every time they experience difficult feelings, they might try to distract themselves with food.

If this person were aware of these emotions' existence and the fact that they need acknowledgment—they could face them in a healthy and correct way. However, because they are unaware, this emotional demand is repressed, causing the person to resort to eating to avoid confronting their negative emotions.

Fattening Distraction

If we summarize what has been said so far, we see that for food not to serve as an emotional response, to stop the cycle that leads us to compensate for difficult feelings using food, we must strive for a state of emotional balance.

Let's remind ourselves: emotional eating is seemingly intended to create the illusion that we are addressing emotional needs, and it can turn into the primary coping mechanism in our lives. It could lead us to food every time we feel sad or angry. In particularly stressful and busy periods of our lives, as usually happens—the odds are high that we will eat a lot and frequently.

However, in truth, we emphasize unequivocally: you cannot satisfy emotional hunger with food! Food is not a solution to any problem unrelated to hunger. It is merely a distraction, and this distraction is particularly fattening and dangerous!

Moreover, not only does food not solve problems, but the opposite is also true: the more we eat—the worse we'll feel! It is possible, and unavoidable, that at a given moment the ice cream will sweeten the challenge and the chocolate will uplift the mood. But this elevated feeling will last only briefly, after which we will feel much heavier and sadder, because we will be frustrated with ourselves for succumbing to food.

People addicted to emotional eating describe difficult feelings, which, in extreme situations, amount to self-disgust. The person promises themselves not to succumb to food again, but this decision lasts only until the next emotional challenge they cannot manage. Then, they return to escaping from the difficult feelings into the comforting embrace of food.

The reason for this is simple: willpower alone is not strong enough to change a person's lifestyle habits. Routine is much stronger than willpower, despite it being a very potent force. Therefore, to solve problems—willpower alone is not enough; there is a need to find tools in daily life that help a person successfully confront the problem.

Ineffective Diet

On the surface, a diet could be an excellent solution for emotional eating. If we limit and define our food intake through clear rules, we won’t be able to use food as a distraction in heavy emotional situations. However, as emphasized, this is only "apparently" so. Because in practice, emotional eating is a sure recipe for the collapse of any weight loss process. The emotional need we think we can satisfy with food is much stronger than all the beautiful decisions we make when starting a structured diet.

As long as we do not know how to deal with our emotional state through alternative means, we might refrain for a certain period from consuming food in response to emotional states, but the result will be sadness and frustration. We are essentially depriving ourselves of the factor we perceive as an appropriate response to emotional distress, without providing an alternative, and this simply will not hold! At some stage, we will break, and in situations of difficulty at work, with children, or in domestic peace—we will give up the diet and return to eating, to dull the emotional distress we experience.

For the same reason, in many cases, even stomach reduction surgery will not help, because emotional eating is not initially intended to fill the stomach, but to empty the negative emotion.

The solution, therefore, lies in identifying problematic emotions and confronting them.