by: Emilie Hebert, dietitian at Nourishing Minds Nutrition

A topic that seems to come up every time I ask my Instagram audience for questions is stress eating. I get it – our culture puts a lot of shame on any type of emotional eating.

I want to talk about why stress eating isn’t necessarily “bad” like many media outlets and even health professionals like to say. However, I also want to acknowledge that you may feel like this behavior isn’t bringing you the comfort you need in a stressful moment and is actually making your stress worse.

My goal is to help you bring more awareness to this behavior (if it’s relevant to you) in a neutral, non-judgmental way.

Why Stress Eating Happens

Unfortunately, we live in a stressful world – jobs, personal lives, socioeconomic barriers, global situations, the list goes on. In times of high stress, the body releases extra cortisol to help you handle that stress better.

Your body can’t distinguish between the stress of disordered eating, financial insecurity, running from a tiger, or an impending work deadline. Your body is preparing you for all of these situations in the same way – release cortisol, prepare for famine, and conserve energy.

There are two reasons why it’s no surprise, then, that our go-to stress eating foods are typically high-energy foods like cookies, ice cream, or chips:

1. If you’re struggling with disordered eating or orthorexia, times of high stress may be the only time you allow yourself to have these “forbidden” foods.

2. Biologically, our body wants lots of energy to handle the increased stress it’s under. These types of food easily give our bodies energy.

I’m explaining everything above not to shame these types of foods (that’s not what we do here!) but to say: stress eating is totally understandable and normal.

You’re not broken. It makes a lot of sense why we reach for food in times of high stress: food is reliable comfort. If we’re reaching for the same foods in times of high stress, it’s a sign we’re craving familiarity and normalcy when we feel like things around us are out of control.

Shame Adds Even More Stress

Something I’m saying all the time to clients is “can we remove the shame here?” Truly, holding shame about a particular behavior does nothing but make us more stressed in the moment and more guilty afterwards.

There is nothing inherently negative about emotional or stress eating. AND, we don’t want to use food as our only coping mechanism for stress. Think about it: if our only coping mechanism for stress was calling a particular friend, that would put too much pressure on that friendship. It doesn’t matter what the coping mechanism is (calling a friend, journaling, exercising, cookies, wine) – if we only have one, we’re not handling stress in a healthy way.

A good place to start with examining our stress eating is removing the shame. Shame pushes us further into the diet cycle: if we’re eating ice cream when we’re stressed, then we start to feel bad about what we’re doing, what do you think happens next? We start saying awful things about ourselves and our body, then we swear off ice cream for good. Ice cream cravings increase with restriction, then we inevitably find ourselves at the bottom of the pint so quickly that it wasn’t even enjoyable. Restrict & binge, rinse & repeat.

You don’t have to feel shame about finding comfort in food. You are allowed to find comfort in food.

How to Handle Stress Eating

Once my clients can start to let go of the shame around stress eating, we can look at the behavior neutrally to examine what’s going on and what’s serving them.

1. Bring awareness to what’s happening.

Sometimes stress eating happens so fast or is so automatically that we don’t have time to think about what we need in that moment or how we’re feeling.

We can start looking at stress eating neutrally by simply bringing awareness to what’s happening. We’re not trying to change or reflect on anything at this point – we’re just saying to ourselves “right now, I am eating these chips because I am stressed.” Simple, neutral awareness.

2. Look at our toolbox of coping mechanisms.

I like to use this toolbox metaphor when talking about emotional or stress eating. Eating is one tool in the toolbox for stress (let’s compare it to a hammer). A hammer is a great tool sometimes, except when we need a screwdriver. We use different tools in different moments when we have different needs.

If you look in your toolbox, is eating your only tool for handling stress? If so, time to create some new coping mechanisms! Here are just a few:

· Journaling

· Watching a comfort TV show

· Calling a friend or family member

· Talking a walk

· Putting on music and dancing (my personal favorite!)

· Singing loudly in your car

· Coloring or drawing

· A good ole cry

And guess what? Even when you have developed more coping mechanisms for stress, you will still choose food in moments when you’ve decided that’s the best tool.

3. Reflect on how we feel afterward.

This goes for when we engage in any coping mechanism for stress. How do you feel after? Do you feel a sense of comfort or safety? Do you feel just as stressed, or maybe even more stressed?

Reflecting afterwards gives us information we can use for next time. It’s not meant to shame us or make us feel guilty in that moment for picking the “wrong” tool. It helps Future You cope with stress later in a more productive way!

If you’re struggling with stress eating and the shame around stress eating, I can help support you in your journey to reduce this shame and find comfort & pleasure in food. Click here to learn about how to work with me as a 1-on-1 client!