Emotional Eating: Definition, Causes, & How to Stop

What Is Emotional Eating?

While normal eating habits are driven by someone’s hunger cues, emotional eating stems mainly from a person’s feelings, mood, or stress levels. Sometimes, emotional eating is also referred to as “stress eating.” Many find that negative emotions are the most common trigger, but positive emotions can also feed into unhealthy eating patterns.⁴

While some people find that their appetite is suppressed when they’re upset, sad, or stressed, many emotional eaters experience the opposite.^2,5 Instead of eating less when feeling emotionally dysregulated, they will overeat to cope with these difficulties.² It’s also common for people to turn to “comfort foods,” which are high in salt, fat, and sugar, as opposed to healthier options.⁶

Is Emotional Eating an Eating Disorder?

Emotional eating is not an eating disorder, but it can be a symptom of one. For example, overeating without being physically hungry can be an indicator of a binge eating disorder.⁷ Additionally, those living with other eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia may also adopt this coping mechanism.^1,2,5 Moreover, emotional eating is also common among those diagnosed with a mental health condition like depression. Still, there are many without a diagnosable condition who will struggle with emotional eating.¹

Why Do I Overeat?

While there are different theories about how and why someone may engage in emotional eating, research suggests that the habit is linked to emotional regulation. In other words, emotional eating is less about the relationship between food and one’s feelings, and more about how one copes with those feelings.^2,5

A person’s coping styles seem to be a determining factor in their emotional-eating habits. For instance, those who openly process and express their emotions are less likely to experience the urge to emotionally eat, as opposed to those who avoid or suppress them.^2,5 In addition, a person with a low emotional awareness will be more inclined to overeat.³

Potential Triggers of Emotional Eating

Research has both raised awareness about emotional eating and provided clues that may help people overcome the habit. Despite being linked to poor emotion regulation, emotional eaters may report a variety of reasons for their behavior.⁵

Triggers for emotional eating may include:

• The need to feel more in control
• Attempting to suppress negative emotions
• Trying to evoke positive emotions
• Lacking control of their actions
• Eating to enhance emotions

The Emotional Eating Cycle

Sometimes, emotional eating can become its own cycle. People may feel guilty after they overeat, and that guilt can trigger their desire to eat even more. Those who engage in all-or-nothing thinking might believe that “the day is ruined” after engaging in overeating, so they continue eating while promising that they will stop tomorrow.

Emotional Hunger Vs. Physical Hunger

Emotional hunger is different from physical hunger. Physical hunger is primal, and the only way to fix it is to eat. Most people note physical hunger through physical sensations, including their stomach growling, feeling lightheaded, or difficulty concentrating.

Emotional hunger comes from emotional cues and is not necessarily indicative of actually needing food.

Here are some of the key differences between physical hunger and emotional hunger:

• Emotional hunger comes on suddenly: This type of hunger can be rapid, and it tends to be in response to intense emotions like sadness, anger, boredom, or even joy.
• Emotional hunger craves comfort food: When someone is emotionally hungry, they tend to crave certain foods, like those that they ate growing up.
• Emotional hunger often sparks mindless eating: People who eat for emotional reasons may eat while being distracted or in a rush.
• Emotional hunger isn’t satisfied once you’re physically full: If you emotionally eat, you may still feel a sense of “hunger” or a void, even after you’ve eaten enough.
• Emotional hunger often leads to shame and guilt: Many people feel ashamed or guilty after emotional eating. This can be heightened when people struggle with more chronic disordered eating habits.

How to Stop Emotional Eating

Emotional eating can leave you feeling uncomfortable, guilty, and bad about yourself, while also contributing to health issues such as obesity. However, there are ways that you can address the behavior, either on your own or with professional treatment.⁸ You can start by identifying your triggers, learning healthier coping mechanisms, and keeping a diary where you track your moods and what foods you ate.

Here are 17 tips on how to break the connection between food and your feelings:

1. Identify Your Triggers for Emotional Eating

When trying to stop the cycle of compulsive or emotional eating, it’s important to know what triggers your urges to overeat. Identifying your daily sources of stress is often a good place to start. Also, think about which emotions usually lead to episodes of emotional eating. For many, stress, sadness, and boredom are common triggers; however, some people overeat when they’re happy.⁴

After determining the causes of your emotional eating habits, the next step is to identify situations in which triggers occur. If you find yourself overeating when you’re bored, a large amount of free time may be to blame. This can include excessive screen time, spending too much time at home, or open weekends. When you understand what triggers you, you can make a targeted plan to prevent emotional eating by planning other activities to do during those times.⁸

2. Be More Intentional Around Triggers

Becoming more self-aware and intentional when you encounter your triggers is key to overcoming emotional eating. It’s often easier to make good choices proactively, instead of relying on sheer willpower when experiencing the urge to overeat. Being more intentional about your eating habits can help break the cycle.

If you often find yourself in the local fast-food drive-through after long days at the office, consider taking an alternative route home to avoid your typical spots. However, when it isn’t possible to avoid a trigger, remain vigilant and self-aware of your actions. For example, try not to multitask or engage in screen time while eating.⁸

3. Learn to Recognize & Listen to Your Hunger Cues

Physical and emotional hunger are experienced differently. Noticing these differences is only possible when you’re tuned in, centered, and in focus with your body. Throughout your day, periodically note any sensations and feelings you are experiencing internally.

Here are some of the differences between real physical and false emotional hunger cues:⁸

4. Keep a Food Diary

Similar to dissociation, those who emotionally eat tend to ‘zone out’ when eating, leading them to overlook or ignore their sense of fullness.³ A food diary can be an excellent tool for overcoming this habit.⁸ Tracking and logging your food intake allows you to pay closer attention to what and how much you’re eating. In turn, you’ll be less likely to mindlessly binge.

Some people prefer to use apps to track their food, such as My Fitness Pal or Noom, while others may choose to keep a written log instead. It’s important to remember that the point of maintaining a food diary is not to obsessively count calories; these tools are meant to increase intentionality around eating habits.

5. Track Your Mood & Get in Touch With Your Feelings

You may not be able to overcome emotional eating just by knowing when, what, and how much you eat. Research shows that those who struggle with emotional eating also experience difficulty with emotional awareness and regulation.^2,3 To gain more control of your eating habits, you’ll need to be able to identify and describe your feelings. In this way, you won’t be caught off-guard by strong emotions and give in to the urge to overeat.

If you’re not sure where or how to begin practicing this, try starting a mood log. Make an effort to write down how you’re feeling at least three times a day.

Be sure to include these in your entries:

• The day and time of your entry
• Your overall mood (e.g., happy, annoyed, bored)
• Any sensations or feelings in your body (e.g., a tightness or heavy feeling in your chest)
• Urges or cravings for food

6. Find Healthy Outlets to Express Your Feelings

Avoiding or suppressing negative emotions can lead to bigger problems later on, as these feelings build up and accumulate over time.³ To prevent this, find healthy outlets in which you can express how you’re feeling. Eventually, these activities can be used to replace your emotional-eating habits.

There are several healthy ways to cope with stress and difficult emotions, including:

• Talking with a loved one
• Seeing a therapist
• Journaling for your mental health
• Writing, music, and other creative activities
• Playing sports or exercising

7. Start a Mindfulness Routine

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present and aware in a moment, instead of being distracted or caught up in your thoughts. This exercise has been shown to improve both a person’s physical and mental health; it can also be used to help someone overcome emotional eating. Mindfulness prevents the dissociative, mindless habit of eating when you’re not really hungry.⁸ If you’re just starting out, you can try out a meditation app or find meditations on YouTube.

You could also try some of the simple meditation techniques below:

• Breath awareness: Take slow, deep breaths. Notice your breath going into your lungs, expanding, and slowly releasing as you exhale. To switch things up, try visualizing breathing in one color and out another.
• Body scan: To do a body scan, bring awareness to one part of your body, starting at the top of your head and down to your toes. Notice any sensations or feelings in each part, and release any tension stored there before moving onto the next.
• Single task: Single Tasking is the practice of doing one thing at a time, and doing so with your full, undivided attention. Exercise this skill by devoting your full awareness to and maintaining focus on a certain task, such as eating without distractions.

8. Try Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is a mindful eating practice that helps change your relationship with food and eat in ways that are more intentional. Intuitive eating teaches you to rely on your body to determine what and how much to eat, as well as when to stop eating.⁹ Because of this, you can learn how to enjoy food without feeling controlled by it.

To begin practicing intuitive eating, try these steps:⁹

• Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full
• Eat what your body wants and what makes it feel good
• Use food to nourish your body and provide physical energy
• Don’t limit or restrict foods or food groups
• Reject strict diets and diet culture
• Eat slowly

9. Limit the Unhealthy Options You Have Access To

Emotional eaters are more likely to turn to foods that are unhealthy when they are stressed. These habits can trigger feel-good chemicals like dopamine to be released in the brain. This in turn makes certain foods harder to stop eating, even when you’re full. Eating too much can also leave you feeling uncomfortable, sluggish, and drained. For these reasons, it’s a good idea to limit unhealthy food options when trying to stop emotional eating. Get rid of and stop buying junk foods. Instead, opt for nutritious snacks and meals that are more balanced, and easier to have in moderation.⁸

10. Think Differently About Food

Emotional eaters may tie their eating habits to feelings associated with a particular situation or circumstance, some of which can make overcoming their behavior harder. This is why it may be necessary to create new associations with your food. For example, instead of thinking about food through an emotional lens, try focusing on its nutritional properties, how it looks, and how it affects your body.

Here are some ways to shift the way you think about food:⁹

• Thinking of food as energy and assessing what provides the best, cleanest form of energy, as opposed to ones that leave you feeling tired or drained
• Thinking of food as vitamins and nutrients that sustain different organs in your body; focus on eating more nutrient-dense superfoods.

11. Unlearn Unhealthy Childhood Eating Habits You May Have Picked Up

We pick up many eating habits from our families of origin, even if we don’t always realize it. Spend some time thinking about the messages your family had about food. Did you see your parents regularly emotionally eat? Did they reward you with food? Or punish you by taking away desired foods? In your adult life, you may need to reexamine some of these patterns if you’ve embodied them yourself.

12. Pause and Reflect Whenever You Get a Craving

Think about what your body might be telling you. Sometimes a craving for food is actually a craving for something else like rest, support, or love. Even if you can’t necessarily fulfill those needs, it’s important to remind yourself that food won’t fulfill them, either (even though it might temporarily satisfy the urge).

13. Have a List of Other Activities to Do When You’re Bored

Write down various coping skills or activities you can refer to when you typically engage in emotional eating. Make sure some of them are very easy to do and don’t require planning, money, or other people. For example, you might include action-based skills like taking a walk, listening to a favorite song, or writing down something you’re grateful for.

14. Tell a Trusted Friend for Accountability

It may be helpful to tell a trusted loved one about your desire to change your eating habits. The goal of accountability isn’t for them to police your food or reprimand you if you make a mistake. But a good friend can provide you with kindness and remind you of your goals if you’re struggling.

15. Find Healthy Swaps for Your Go-To Comfort Foods

Some people engage in a harm reduction approach where they alternate one food for another food. For example, instead of eating store-bought cookies, you could make some at home with less sugar or swap them for apple slices. Or instead of drinking soda, you could opt for flavored water. This may satisfy the urge to eat while also being mindful of your body’s needs for certain kinds of nutrition.

16. Work on Your Positive Self-Talk

Positive self-talk can help improve your self-esteem and cultivate a sense of self-compassion. This may make you more likely to take care of yourself when you’re emotionally struggling. In turn, you might be more apt to turn to healthy coping skills that properly address your emotional needs. Positive self-talk is also helpful if and when you slip, as it reminds you that it’s perfectly okay to be human.

17. Schedule Your Mealtimes

If you get too hungry during the day, you may be setting yourself up to overeat or emotionally eat. That’s because your impulse control can weaken the more hungry you get. If you’re working on emotional eating habits, consider scheduling regular meals and snacks. This signals to your brain that you won’t be depriving yourself.

When You Might Need Professional Help for Emotional Eating

Emotional eating can be a symptom of other mental health conditions. Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses, and most people who develop eating disorders first struggle with emotional eating. Keep in mind there are several types of eating disorders, and there isn’t a single look or presentation of them. Because they can be so life-threatening, professional treatment is always recommended.

Emotional eating can also coincide with depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, and substance use disorders. It’s also sometimes a way people cope with stress, grief, low self-esteem, trauma, or loneliness. Therapy can help address and treat those underlying factors, and that may reduce or even eliminate your patterns of emotional eating.

Therapy for Emotional Eating

Therapy can help a person make lasting changes to their eating habits by showing them healthy coping mechanisms to replace their urges to overeat or binge when stressed. In therapy, clients are supported as they identify their triggers, process their feelings, and adopt new coping skills. Moreover, therapists can also diagnose and address underlying issues like depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions that sometimes co-occur with emotional eating.

Choosing a therapist who specializes in eating disorders can be especially beneficial in this case. Utilizing an online therapist directory is a great tool, as it allows users to filter results by location, insurance, and areas of practice.

In addition to therapy, some may also benefit from support groups like Overeaters Anonymous or Food Addicts Anonymous, where they can relate to and receive encouragement from others experiencing similar struggles.