How to Use Intuitive Eating to Uncover Your Emotional Eating Triggers: 3 Tools

Have you ever reached for a snack when feeling stressed or sad, only to realize later that it wasn’t physical hunger driving you? Many of us have experienced emotional eating—a common behavior that involves eating in response emotions. In this blog, we will explore the concept of emotional eating, uncover how intuitive eating can help with this behavior, and detail strategies to identify and approach emotional eating triggers effectively.

Understanding Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a coping mechanism where food is used to suppress or soothe emotions that are perceived as distressing and uncomfortable. Often it’s followed by guilt and even more intense emotional discomfort. Common triggers for emotional eating include stress, boredom, loneliness, frustration, anger, or shame. If left unaddressed, emotional eating can develop into more serious behaviors, and let’s be real… it commonly does because of what we hear about it from diet culture and how it’s often pathologized.

Contrary to what you might often hear in the media, you aren’t a bad person, undisciplined, or lacking in self-control if you find yourself eating to soothe, avoid, assuage, or shift uncomfortable emotions. I have often said, emotional eating isn’t self-sabotage– it’s self-protection.

Many of the people I’ve worked with have a history of using food to soothe, but what has compounded their shame around this behavior, is what they perceive to be their personal failure to be “good dieters.” They restrict in order to mitigate the effects of the eating (because we live in a culture that demonizes certain types of eating, certain foods, as well as bodies that don’t fit the “ideal”), and end up in a vicious cycle.

Many of us learned to care for ourselves by eating, relying on both the act of eating and the serotonin release that food provides. From birth, food was a legitimate tool to soothe us! Food– and the warmth, physical, and emotional connection that accompanied it by our caregivers– provided us with comfort, satisfaction, and pleasure.

The Power of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating offers a holistic approach to nourishing your body while strengthening your mind-body connection. By tuning into your body’s cues, you’ll understand what drives your eating, including the pull toward restrictive diets. Intuitive eating helps you honor your body’s needs, build a healthy food relationship, and support well-being.

That being said, many people overlook the privilege that accompanies intuitive eating. If you’re food insecure and facing limited access, mindful eating may not be realistic. However, your approach to food remains valid. I have colleagues who support individuals struggling to find regular meals. Intuitive eating isn’t something that will be appropriate for them.

Intuitive eating is not a diet. Additionally, it is not a “program” or “protocol” designed to change your body or make you eat less. It’s about connecting with yourself, not restricting food.Many misconceptions about intuitive eating exist. People who’ve struggled with compulsive eating, disordered eating, or chronic dieting often turn to intuitive eating. They hope it will help them escape the cycle of on-again, off-again dieting or binge-restrict patterns. Rightfully so. Intuitive eating has helped many reclaim their lives. It restores a sense of agency and allows them to tune into their needs without diet culture’s rules. They learn to approach food, eating, and their bodies with more compassion.

Uncovering Your Emotional Eating Triggers

To navigate your emotional eating triggers, it is essential to cultivate self-awareness and mindfulness around your eating habits. Here are some strategies to help you uncover and address your emotional eating triggers:

• Journaling: Keep a food and mood diary to view your eating patterns and emotional states. Look for patterns or correlations between specific emotions and your food choices. Take note of any restriction you’re engaging in and learn the different ways that hunger can show up. Many of my clients when they start working with me have one cue for physical hunger– their stomach growling. Hunger at different levels can show up as anxiety, frustration, being unable to focus, even anger. You may actually be eating not because you want to avoid emotion, but because you are genuinely hungry.
  
• Mindful Eating: Practice mindful eating by slowing down when you eat, tasting each bite, engaging your senses, and observing your emotions without judgment. Mindful eating can help you distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. It can also give you the space to discern whether it’s something else completely. Sometimes we may not be physically hungry, but we would do well to eat because we know that it will be a while before we can again. This is called practical hunger. There are many situations in which we don’t eat when we’re physically hungry, and that doesn’t mean we’re engaging in emotional eating.
  
• Identifying Triggers: Pay attention to situations, people, or emotions that precede your urge to eat emotionally. By identifying your triggers, you can begin to reflect on other methods of resourcing yourself to address them. Again, try this with a lot of curiosity and compassion. You’re not looking for faults or deficiencies in yourself. This is about getting to know your tendencies and genuinely, noticing the types of situations in which you maybe feel “unsafe” and are using food to care for yourself. I often ask my clients to practice a pause after they observe a “craving” or an “urge” to eat. The intention isn’t to stop them from eating, it’s to observe what comes between the urge and the eating. What they often notice is how keyed up, racey, or activated they are in their bodies. Now they have new information they can use to help themselves.

Emotional eating is a complex behavior influenced by various internal and external factors. As I’ve mentioned in previous writings, the relationship we have with our emotions is a primary influence. But that relationship is also complex.

Our comfort with feeling emotion in general, as well as emotional expression, is multi-layered and influenced by our learnings as young people, what we witnessed (or didn’t) growing up, traumatic experiences, cultural conditioning, among other variables.

But understanding our emotional eating triggers is a crucial step toward freeing ourselves from the cycles that limit and hold us back from being engaged in our lives and nurturing a positive relationship with food.

By committing to developing awareness of our emotions and thought patterns, we not only take proactive steps towards a healthier and more balanced approach to eating, we shift the relationship we have with ourselves. Very often, self-criticism evolves into self-compassion.

Conclusion

As you consider your relationship with food, intuitive eating, and emotional well-being, remember that progress occurs with patience, presence, and perspective. In my experience, while we absolutely can do it on our own, it’s hard. It can feel like we’re in an echochamber of our own minds. If possible, it’s extraordinary to have a mentor or coach to guide you into these explorations safely and to provide the support for you to bravely touch into new ways of being and feeling. By exploring your emotional eating triggers and the emotions that you find most difficult to experience, you can begin to cultivate a nurturing relationship with food and yourself. Stay mindful, stay curious, and above all, be kind to yourself on this transformative path.

Looking for more support?

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