The Eating Family: Emotional Eating, Part Four in the Series

Studies show that in many cases, emotional eating develops due to difficulties that arise within the family setting: A child who becomes overly dependent on their parents might develop emotional eating because they are not equipped with the proper tools to independently cope with emotional challenges. Conversely, when parents become dependent on the child, they hinder the child's emotional development, which may lead to emotional eating, as the emotional burden is too heavy for the child to bear. In either case, it is a mechanism meant to distract from the threatening emotional challenge and serves as a substitute for coping with it.

Similarly, sometimes it becomes clear that emotional eating results from emotional neglect during childhood. When parents do not show interest in the child's well-being, or worse, do not provide a space for them to express their feelings, they create a void that stirs "hunger." At its core, this is a hunger for affection, esteem, and attention. However, when this hunger is not satisfied, it is translated into hunger for food, emotional eating. Of course, eating will not fill the emotional void that has formed within the child, but that is exactly the problem: Since the void can never be filled this way, the child continues to eat more and more, even as an adult, in an attempt to fill the persistent void.

In other instances, the situation is reversed: The child suffers from excessive intrusion by parents into their emotional world. For instance, when they express sadness over failing a test, the parents might dismiss this feeling, conveying to the child that the situation does not justify sadness. Implicitly, they send the message that one should never feel bad in life, and always feel happy. Since we do not live in a utopian world, the child is bound to experience emotional challenges on numerous occasions, and if they've learned to think these feelings are illegitimate, they will do everything to repress them, including through emotional eating.

Therefore, it is crucial for parents to internalize and be aware of the significant influence they can have on their children's future, including in this aspect of eating, weight gain, and everything it entails. When identifying emotional eating in a child, it is important to explore the underlying causes and address them promptly before the situation solidifies, making it difficult for the child to change even in adulthood.

Destructive Eating

We emphasize: Not all cases of emotional eating stem from difficulties that arose during childhood. Emotional eating can result from many other factors rooted specifically in adulthood.

In other cases, emotional eating is used by individuals to cover up conflicts in their life and sweep them under the rug. Sometimes these are internal moral conflicts, sometimes between the individual and their family, their friends, or their workplace. When someone feels incomplete or not true to their values, they might try to forget these troubling conflicts by focusing materially on food, which allows for a brief disconnect from life's moral aspects.

However, in most cases, emotional eating stems from a general dissatisfaction and lack of happiness in one's life. Many mistakenly believe that weight gain affects their happiness and that if only they were thinner, they would automatically be happier. However, this is a mistake! Excess weight can certainly trigger difficult and unpleasant emotions at specific moments, but it is not the cause of someone’s unhappiness. In most cases, the reality is the opposite: It is the lack of happiness that leads a person into the realm of emotional eating, with weight gain being a result of unhappiness, not the cause.

The perspective should be reversed: A person should understand that if they are happier, they will eat less, and thereby perhaps be thinner... not as one typically thinks, that being thinner will lead to more happiness.

In general, from a psychological standpoint, obesity can sometimes express a sense of lack, often relating to past or present emotional deficiencies, like feelings of emptiness and loneliness. When someone lacks sufficient positive emotional experiences in their life, they feel an emotional hunger that does not find satisfaction, which is erroneously interpreted as physical hunger.

As we have repeatedly mentioned, emotional hunger cannot be satisfied with food, and this only exacerbates the problem. Because a person can eat more and more, while the hunger remains unchanged. Emotional hunger can only be satisfied through emotional means, which we will address immediately.

So What Can Be Done?

After understanding the causes of emotional eating, recognizing the dangers it holds, and deciding to eliminate it — the question arises: How is this done? As mentioned in previous articles, deciding on a diet does not always help, so we must ask: what can be done?

The answer has already been briefly mentioned above: To get rid of emotional eating, we must provide a quality and genuine response to our emotional needs. When we have a genuine response to the emotional challenges each of us faces – we will not need to suppress them, and the reliance on eating as a distraction will naturally cease.

We can consider emotional eating under a particular lens as signals that we are dealing with unsolved emotional difficulty in an inappropriate way, which leads us to resort to distraction through emotional eating.

Of course, we can ignore these signals and continue seeking immediate relief through food. However, on the other hand, we can pay attention to the signals the soul sends, and realize that our emotional difficulties need to be solved, truly solved, and not suppressed into a corner where they will continue to grow.

For instance, if we identify a sense of victimhood in our lives, or notice disinterest or boredom, we should face these feelings directly and provide them with a relevant response. We must consider how to improve our emotional life's quality, enhance our activities, and daily routine, thereby eliminating the need for "painkillers" that do not solve the problem but merely delay it for a fleeting and limited time.

When we learn to face unpleasant emotions without being intimidated by them and find ways to resolve them constructively, we can rid ourselves of emotional eating. Moreover, we will gain improved quality of life that positively impacts every aspect of our lives!