Am I Emotional Eating?

We often talk about “comfort” food, or find ourselves turning to food as a treat or reward. But when does this become a problem? The best answer is when it is having a significant impact on you - either on how you feel or on how you live your life.

Often people don’t realise that this is a psychological problem; instead they view themselves as “greedy” or “weak-willed”. However, although emotional eating is not an ‘eating disorder’, it can be very distressing.

Most people who emotionally eat will have done for a significant proportion of their life, meaning that they may be unaware that they do this. Below are some questions to help you think about whether your relationship with food is based on your emotions rather than on your physiological needs…

• Do you seek refuge in food during stressful or hectic times?

• Do you find yourself eating more as a response to anxiety, stress or distress?

• Do social occasions involving food fill you with panic as you won’t know what you ‘should' eat?

• Do you find yourself eating when you know you are not hungry?

• Do you find it difficult to stop eating once you have started, or continue to eat once you are full?

• Have you found yourself eating in secret?

• Have you eaten food that doesn’t belong to you?

• Do you sometimes find it almost impossible to stop thinking about food?

• Do you often eat, or graze on food when you are bored?

• Is your response to a difficult day to head to the nearest food cupboard?

• Are you constantly trying to change either the way you are eating, or the way you look?

• Do you experience weight loss or gain in response to life changes or significant events?

• Do you feel unable to eat when things in your life are not going well?

• Do you use eating as a way of managing emotions or coping with stress?

• Do you wish that you could have more control over your eating during times of stress?

If you recognise many of these difficulties, then it is likely that you are struggling with emotional eating, and you would benefit from treatment. It is important that treatment focuses on both the relationship that a person has with food and the relationship that they have with their emotions.