This isn’t the first time I have written about emotional eating in this blog. For previous posts, please check out Crisps to the rescue and  Don’t take food away from me In this blog post, we will look at other emotions or situations that might lead us to engage in undesired eating behaviors. See what resonates with you! Some may be surprising.

Eating out of boredom

“Boredom? I don’t have a minute free, how could I be bored?”, you might think. Taking care of small children isn’t necessarily intellectually stimulating, so you might very well be eating just in order to have something to do. Or, if you have a tendency to be restless and feel like downtime is unpleasant/unproductive/useless, then eating might give you something to do.

Eating to self-soothe

Many of us turn to food when we experience any negative emotion. This can be because we don’t want to stay with that emotion so we distract ourselves by doing something else, or, like a client of mine recently put it, we put *something* in our mouth in an attempt to stop emotions from coming up to the surface.

Eating as a reward

Many parents eat sweets or binge eat once their children are in bed. Our days as parents are long, and they are hard. In fact, they sometimes feel endless! I remember how anxious I started getting at around 6pm when I was still on maternity leave. The day was almost done, but not quite. I was done though. And when my daughter was finally sleeping after a very long bedtime routine, I felt like I deserved a treat.

Loosening the reins

During the day, you look like (and it feels like) you’ve got it all under control, whether at work or at home. You are “doing a good job”. But when the day is over and your self-imposed discipline and perfectionism isn’t needed anymore, you inevitable loosen the reins. Food is your outlet. There’s no need for control there.

Which of these ring true for you? Perhaps this is the first time you are realising that you assign a function to food. Or perhaps you’ve been aware of this for a while, but you haven’t been able to change it.

That’s what I’m here for.

Awareness is only half the story (and I would argue, not even half). Discover the other half by working with me. Schedule a call now.