I help people stop using food to manage stress,

discomfort, pain or unwanted feelings.

Many of us occasionally engage in emotional eating. We eat as a way to deal with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings. We eat when we didn’t get an expected promotion, or had a fight with our spouse, or are stressed about making  a thorny decision. However, sometimes these behaviors become habitual, and we begin to feel the physical and emotional consequences of using food to cope. We get discouraged because we want to change, but can’t seem to do it.  Sometimes we try eating very little during the day, only to find we are doubly hungry in the evening and overeat at night, often feeling bad about ourselves the next morning.

Eating to feel better is not an unusual phenomenon. In fact, advertising slogans encourage us to eat to change our mood: “Bake someone happy” or “taste the relaxation.” But sometimes, because we live where we are surrounded by food and reminders of food, and we feel pressured by the media to look/do/feel different from how we are, turning to food for solace can become habitual. And sometimes we find that, instead of taking control of when we use food to cope, we feel controlled by food.

When Emotional Eating Becomes A Problem

Are  any of these scenarios familiar?

You repeatedly decide you are not going to eat to cope with upsets, but you find you keep doing it anyway.

You can’t seem to stop spending evenings grazing through the refrigerator.

You decide not to bring home foods you can’t resist, but you buy them anyway, believing that this time will be different.

You stand in front of the mirror and berate your body, and then feel so bad that you eat to feel better.

You get hooked on a vicious cycle of diet-on/diet-off.

“Oh no! I did it again!”

Habitually using food to feel better – whether undereating, overeating, or making poor food choices – brings unwanted physical and emotional consequences. Our behaviors may cause us to have headaches or not sleep well, to have mood swings, or cause weight gain and resulting health problems. And we begin to feel worse about ourselves because we can’t seem to control our behavior. We get self-critical and prone to depression and isolation.

If not addressed, emotional eating sometimes leads to bigger problems down the road. In certain people, emotional eating can progress to compulsive eating and a craving to satisfy emotional needs with food. And sometimes, depending on your stress levels, emotional eating can develop into an eating disorder.

No one “chooses” to have an eating disorder. But emotional eating can be progressive. Even if the food-related behaviors do not lead to an actual eating disorder, they can have painful physical, psychological and emotional consequences.

Awareness both of the progressive nature of emotional eating, as well as of the other signs and symptoms of eating disorders, can alert you to the need for help, whether for yourself or for a loved one. For more information on eating disorders, click here.

How Does Therapy for Emotional Eating Work?

Therapy addresses a number of aspects of emotional eating. When we eat for emotional reasons, we use food to soothe painful thoughts and feelings, and doing this can become a bad and self-destructive habit. In therapy, you can learn to identify the disturbing thoughts that trigger eating episodes. Sometimes these thoughts are exaggerations, or they put a very negative twist on something that has happened. For example, you may have thoughts like "I'm never going to find a job," or "I always choose the wrong kind of guy," or "I'm just a loser."  When you feel bad about a situation --a job offer that hasn't come through, a disagreement with your partner, or a general sense of things not turning out right for you—you may personalize these events and feel bad about yourself, which can drive you to use food to feel better. As you learn to recognize your "trigger thoughts," therapy can help you learn more neutral self talk and less demeaning language to describe difficult situations. Perhaps the job you didn't get wasn't the best fit for you; in any event, it's doubtless not the last chance you will have to apply for a job. And maybe you don't "always choose the wrong guy," but you and he or she have had an argument. Therapy can help you learn to navigate difficult times with your partner and to repair ruptures in your relationship, without blaming yourself and becoming hopeless.

Therapy can also help you cope with painful emotions. Many of us have never learned healthy coping skills—our parents may not have had the tools to teach us. Therapy is a place to learn to understand, accept and manage your emotions. Painful emotions are a part of life, and feeling bad is uncomfortable, and at times may seem unbearable. With the help of an emotional eating therapist, you can learn about the broad range of your emotions—from mild irritation to rage, from slight disappointment to profound grief, from little sparks of happiness to unbridled joy, and from barely discernible fear to being really frightened.  You can learn non-food ways to calm yourself in the face of emotion.

You may be triggered by specific people or situations—running into an ex at the grocery store or gym, talking with your sister on the phone—and an emotional eating specialist can help you learn to manage unexpected, stressful events. For some of us, certain food-centered situations can trigger a desire to overeat. Whether your Achilles' heel is formal dinners or buffets—or both—a therapist can help you learn to handle these events. And sometimes, it's not a situation so much as a food itself, such as bread, or ice cream, or chocolate, and once we've eaten a little, we can't resist having more. Through emotional eating therapy, you can learn about your food triggers and what to do about them, so you don't feel at their mercy.

Most of all, an emotional eating therapist can help you learn to be more compassionate with yourself, whether you are dealing with painful thoughts, emotions, situations, people...or your own relentless negative self talk. When you treat yourself with more kindness, you are better able to handle the slings and arrows that come your way.

Help For Emotional Eating

Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help when we think we “should” be able to help ourselves. But most of us need support, guidance and direction to change. We need structure and plans, and we need other people to encourage us. And we’ve probably tried to do it by ourselves already, and it hasn’t worked. We need reminders that we are not bad for having this problem – we have a problem not we are a problem. Getting help is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength and wisdom.

Acknowledging that you want to change but don’t know how is the first step in doing something constructive to help yourself. And the sooner you get help, the sooner you can start to make the changes that will lead you to feeling better and creating a better life for yourself.

If this sounds like you, you are not alone. Please feel free to contact me at 415-602-1403.

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