Emotional Eating: My Experience Eating Emotionally and How I Overcame It

I never thought this day will come when I feel bold enough to let the world in on my experience with emotional eating which has been one major lifestyle struggle.

I can’t say for certain how or when emotional eating began for me but as far back as I could remember, I’ve always been an “emotional being”.

One of the reasons why I quit my first love “Writing Poetry” was because I realized I always needed to be emotionally down to come up with the best pieces. Call me an “Adele” of some sorts and you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Of course, I realized soon enough that it was a very unhealthy way of living and started to slowly withdraw.

But that also meant I didn’t write the best poetries anymore (to me) and guess what I could live with that. But what I couldn’t live without was being conditioned to shell out my best only when my head’s under water.

Because that meant that I sometimes orchestrated my emotions to go bad so I could churn out nice poetries.

The story above gave me one of my strongest conviction when I decided to work on quitting emotional eating.

I told myself, if you could detach yourself from Emotional Writing, you can do the same with Emotional Eating.

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is defined as the “propensity to eat in response to positive and negative emotions” – (Source: Wikipedia)If you ever find yourself using food as a means to an end for something other than hunger, then you are eating emotionally.
Emotional Eating is eating to satisfy emotional needs such as eating to deal with sadness from a bad experience or losing a loved one or eating to relieve stress or boredom.
If the above sounds familiar, honey you are an emotional eater! Don’t be too alarmed though, there are tons of us (emotional eaters) in the world but that doesn’t make it right.

Why Emotional Eating Isn’t Good For You.

I used to belong to the team “food is the solution to all problems” and I never knew that mindset was problematic.

Emotional eating isn’t good for you not only because it messes up with your dieting, causes you to have more weight gain but most importantly, emotional eating messes you up psychologically.

Imagine this scenario- You have a terrible day, maybe lost a contract, you return home, fix yourself a big bowl of “food” alongside a full pack of juice and what not. After feeding yourself fat, you feel “good” and go to bed without as much as dealing properly with what effects losing a contract had on you psychologically.

So yes, emotional eating can be deceitful, gives you a false “feel good” for the moment and sometimes make you leave the major problem unattended to.

Eventually, they start to creep up on you and mess with your mental health.

Write this down somewhere- FOOD WON’T MAKE YOUR PROBLEMS DISAPPEAR.

A Little Back Story On My Emotional Eating Lifestyle

You are currently looking at Gift – A former Chief-Cheerleader of using food as her “I can’t come and kill myself” tactics.

Related: 5 things I’m doing now as an adult.

I used to proudly tell people that no matter what the case was, I would always eat.

When I lost my Grandma, while others had little or no appetite, yours truly was feasting.
After that Experience, I drew conclusions that I was team “no matter what, I stay eating”I didn’t know back then, that what I did was try to use food to cover up the huge vacuum such a great loss left in my heart.

Last year, I had my heart broken for the first time. Mehn, this was a sordid experience and maybe one day I’ll share with you all what happened, how it affected me and how I overcame it.

But firstly, when the relationship hit the rock and my then boyfriend ( now ex) declared his love for another, the first thing I turned to was FOOD!
Yes, I went all out, I indulged my cravings and at the end of it all, I packed on enough KGS.

For the first few weeks after that breakup, all I did was hide my emotions under the guise of food. Whenever I felt sad, I immediately went binge hunting for food especially comfort food which in true sense are junks.
I’ll eat and feel good for the moment.It was all well and good until I nearly hit depression from not dealing with my emotions properly. Please don’t be like me, do better.

How I dealt with Emotional Eating

My goodness, this was hell. In March 2019, I found out I was a chief emotional eater, so I started to consciously work towards overcoming emotional eating.

I Identified My Emotional Eating Triggers

The first step to finding solution for any problem is to know the source of the said problem, emotional eating isn’t any different. You have to start by knowing what triggers you to eat emotionally. For me, my top three triggers are;

• Stress: Once I’m stressed out, I take it out on food.
• Loneliness and Boredom: Leave me doing nothing and with no companion and I’ll spend the day on mindless eating and snacking just to find some comfort.
• Childhood habits: Growing up as a Nigerian child, I still have memories of my parents punishing me for a misdemeanour then using food to pacify me afterwards. To them, food was the way to stop me from crying and it sure did and went on to become my go-to solutions for emotional traumas.

Practising Mindful Eating

Mindful eating has helped me deal with emotional eating greatly. I no longer eat anyhow, I practice eating mindfully, meaning that for every time I want to eat, I know why. And it’s largely dependant on physical hunger and not emotional lack or vagueness.

Mindful eating also helps if you’re weight watching or working towards losing some weight, so it’s been a plus on both sides.

Understanding My Emotions and Knowing How to Deal With Them

These days, I’ve learnt to deal with my emotions ASAP, with the rate of depression now, I’ve learnt to value and protect my sanity as much as I can. With this in mind, even when I have a terrible experience and emotional eating calls to me, I hold on to my will and don’t indulge. It wasn’t easy getting to this point, but I’m here now and I am healthier physically and mentally.

Are you an emotional eater? Here’s how to know.

• You tend to turn to food when anxious or tense.

Always finding solace in food when stressed or exhausted.

• You consider excessive feeding to be a reward of some sort.

• Comfort food are your go to specialty once you are having a bad day.

If you find yourself to be an addict of the aforementioned, then you darling are an emotional eater!

How to avoid Emotional Eating

• When stressed or anxious, instead of turning to food, try to take a bath, burn a scented candle, relax a bit before you get something to eat. This way, you’ve been able to reduce your stress level without binge eating.
• When distressed mentally, seek out someone to talk to, can be your best friend, mum/dad or a professional- which is my preferred choice to talk to when it comes to metal health.Because a professional can proffer better help than your best friend or mum can, I talked more about this in my how loss-induced depression almost consumed me post.
• Lastly, practise mindful eating: always take a moment to ask yourself this question “why am I about to eat this?” If your conscious says; damn girl you’re hungry, then you are definitely not eating emotionally.

Don’t cover up your worries with food or they will come back to haunt you- Gift Collins.

Have you ever heard of Emotional Eating? From the quiz, are you an emotional eater? If yes, please share your experiences with me, just as I have with you. If you find this post helpful and know friends who are Emotional eaters, do well to share this post with them.

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