0:00

This episode of Food Psych is brought to you by

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my intuitive eating Fundamentals online

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course. If you're ready to break free

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from diet culture and reclaim the life of

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stole from you. Learn more and sign

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up at christy harrison dot com slash

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course. That's christy harrison dot

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com slash course. Welcome

0:17

to Food Psych, a podcast dedicated to

0:19

critiquing diet and wellness culture, and

0:21

answering your questions about intuitive eating

0:24

and the anti diet approach. I'm

0:26

your host, Christie Harrison, and I'm a registered

0:28

dietitian, certified intuitive eating

0:30

counselor, journalist and author of the

0:32

book's anti it, which is available now,

0:35

and the wellness trap, which will be out in

0:37

early twenty twenty three. And

0:39

by the way, on this show, I avoid saying

0:42

diet culture stuff like weight and calorie

0:44

numbers, but we don't censor swear

0:46

words or other adult language, so listener

0:48

fashion is advised. Hey

1:15

there. Welcome to Food Psych. I'm

1:17

your host, Christy Harrison, and today I'm gonna

1:19

be answering a question I've gotten from many

1:21

people over the years about emotional

1:24

eating. Or should I say so called emotional

1:26

eating actually. This is a topic

1:28

that comes up a lot because so many people

1:31

see themselves as emotional eaters And

1:33

I know I very much did 277 back in my

1:35

disordered eating days a decade or

1:37

two decades ago. But as we'll

1:39

discuss, quote unquote emotional

1:41

eating actually isn't what it seems.

1:44

And identifying as an emotional eater

1:46

can actually be a clue that something else

1:48

might be going on. So

1:50

before I get into all that though, just a couple

1:52

of quick announcements. This episode

1:54

of Food Psych is brought to you by my intuitive eating

1:57

fundamentals online course, which

1:59

is a three month immersion and intuitive eating

2:01

with dozens of hours of content helping

2:03

you learn this anti diet approach, troubleshoot

2:06

common sticking points, and get to a

2:08

place of greater peace with food. It

2:10

also has a huge library of q and a's

2:12

from me and my team to help answer all

2:15

the frequently and not so frequently asked

2:17

questions that come up when you're learning

2:19

or relearning intuitive eating. If

2:21

you're ready to break free from diet culture and

2:23

reclaim your right to a peaceful, easy relationship

2:26

with food, learn more and sign up at

2:28

christy harrison dot com slash course.

2:30

That's christy harrison dot com slash

2:32

course. This episode

2:34

is also brought to you by my second book,

2:36

The Wellness Trap. Break free from

2:38

diet culture, disinformation, and

2:40

dubious diagnoses, and find your

2:43

true well-being. Which is available

2:45

for pre order now. The

2:47

book explores the connections between diet

2:49

culture and wellness culture, how

2:51

the wellness space became a hotbed of

2:53

scams, misinformation, and conspiracy

2:55

theories. Why many popular

2:58

alternative and integrative medicine diagnoses

3:00

are misleading and harmful and

3:03

deeply entangled with disordered eating.

3:05

How well this culture targets vulnerable

3:08

people and ignores social determinants of

3:10

health and what we can do instead to

3:12

promote true well-being at the individual

3:14

and collective levels. Just

3:16

go to christy harrison dot com slash the wellness

3:19

trap to learn more and preorder

3:21

the book for its April twenty five release.

3:23

That's christy harrison dot com slash

3:25

the wellness trap. Now

3:27

without any further ado, let's get into

3:30

this week's question. It's one that

3:32

I've gotten many times over the years in

3:34

my online courses and media interviews

3:37

and one on one coaching with people, and

3:39

it's some version of this. Am

3:41

I doing intuitive eating wrong if

3:44

I find myself eating just because I

3:46

feel bored slash tired

3:48

slash sad, slash otherwise

3:50

emotional or if I find

3:52

myself eating just because I want to eat

3:54

without being hungry per se. So

3:57

thanks to everyone who's asked that great question.

4:00

And before I answer, I'll just give my standard

4:02

disclaimer that these answers and this

4:04

podcast in general are for informational

4:06

and educational purposes only, aren't

4:08

a substitute for individual medical or

4:10

mental health advice, and don't constitute

4:13

provider patient relationship. Also,

4:15

this is just my take as one

4:17

dietitian slash journalist, and I

4:19

hope you'll seek out other perspectives and

4:22

consult your own inner wisdom as well.

4:24

Okay. So here are five things I would say in

4:26

response to that question about emotional eating.

4:29

First, there is no such thing as quote

4:32

unquote doing intuitive eating wrong.

4:34

As long as you're practicing it in good faith

4:36

and not like trying to sell it

4:38

to others as a weight loss plan which

4:41

goes against spirit of intuitive eating. But

4:43

if you're doing intuitive eating in good faith,

4:45

you're trying to practice it. You know,

4:47

this approach is not about doing things perfectly.

4:50

Right? It's not about checking all the boxes

4:52

or never wavering. It's not

4:54

about being on the wagon or

4:56

off the wagon, good or bad.

4:58

It's not about these moralistic and perfectionistic

5:01

sort of ways of seeing things because that kind of

5:03

perfectionism is diet culture's

5:06

bag. And Intuitive Eating

5:08

is very much an anti diet approach. So

5:10

instead 277 eating is about experimentation,

5:14

letting go of diet culture's rules, and

5:16

figuring out what works for you with lots

5:18

of self compassion. If you're

5:20

asking yourself questions about a particular

5:23

pattern you have with food, then that's a

5:25

great thing to explore and definitely

5:27

very much in the spirit of intuitive eating.

5:29

I just encourage you to move away from black

5:31

and white labels like quote unquote doing

5:33

it wrong because that feels very self

5:36

critical. Number 277,

5:38

there is nothing inherently wrong with eating

5:40

when you simply want to eat. Even

5:42

if you don't necessarily feel hungry.

5:45

There are lots of reasons to eat even in the

5:47

absence of obvious hunger, including

5:49

eating as a part of a celebration. Eating

5:52

for comfort and pleasure, or

5:54

even eating preemptively as a matter of

5:56

self care, like before going into a situation

5:59

where you won't have access to food for a while.

6:02

Those are all very much a part of intuitive

6:04

eating and aren't a cause for concern,

6:07

guilt, or self flagellation. On

6:10

the other hand, if you're eating in what

6:12

feels like a quote unquote emotional way

6:14

because you're actually deprived and not

6:16

eating enough overall, or

6:18

if you're doing it because you don't have any other

6:21

coping mechanisms other than eating,

6:23

then those can be signals that something

6:25

needs attention. But in those cases,

6:28

the solution is not to push yourself

6:30

to quote unquote stop eating emotionally because

6:33

that's just more deprivation, that's just more

6:35

trying to stop something, trying to not do

6:37

something. But instead, the solution

6:39

is to take care of the deprivation and

6:42

to add other coping skills in addition to

6:44

eating. And we'll talk a little bit more about that

6:46

in a moment. Number

6:48

three, it's often the case that

6:50

just having thoughts of food or

6:53

feeling like eating actually

6:55

is a sign of hunger. So a lot

6:57

of people, especially those who've been restricting

6:59

their eating in some way for a long time,

7:02

think that hunger only manifests as

7:04

a sense of growling or emptiness in

7:06

the stomach or just like overwhelming,

7:09

you know, deprivation or depletion. I

7:11

know I thought that back in the day when

7:13

I was dieting and disordered eater

7:15

as well. But the truth is that

7:17

those are pretty late stage hunger signals

7:20

for many of us or perhaps most of us.

7:22

And they only happen when we're profoundly hungry

7:25

or maybe even on the verge of like a hangry

7:28

emotional meltdown. So there

7:30

are lots of subtler signs of hunger that

7:32

show up much earlier in the process, including

7:35

thoughts of food and just wanting to

7:37

eat. Believe it or not,

7:39

for people who have a peaceful relationship

7:41

with food that is unmarked by

7:44

ongoing deprivation, right? People who've

7:46

healed with their their relationship with food

7:48

and don't have that ongoing deprivation or

7:51

those rare lucky few who have never

7:53

had any sort of deprivation in their lives

7:55

and relationships with food. For those

7:57

folks, there are typically stretches

7:59

of few hours between meals and snacks

8:02

where we're not thinking about food or wanting

8:04

food at all. And I know that's very much

8:07

true for me as someone who was

8:09

an intuitive eater and then fell

8:11

into dieting and ordered eating and then healed

8:13

my relationship with food, it's just miraculous

8:16

now to think like there are hours that go

8:18

by where I just am not thinking

8:20

about food. And then I start thinking about it

8:22

again and that's a sign that I'm getting hungry.

8:25

So for those people who are still living

8:27

with deprivation or in the earliest stages

8:30

of recovery from disordered eating. Thoughts

8:32

of food can sometimes feel persistent

8:35

and just unrelenting. Which

8:37

signals actually a deep need for food

8:40

and renourishment in an ongoing way.

8:43

And for others who are little farther along in

8:45

recovery, You might notice too

8:47

that there are times when there's a marked absence

8:49

of thoughts about food followed

8:51

by an uptick in those thoughts. So

8:54

wherever you are on that continuum, it

8:56

can be helpful to try eating sooner

8:58

than you otherwise would 277 the extent

9:00

that that's available in your economic circumstances.

9:03

So eating when you start thinking about

9:05

food or you start feeling like you want

9:07

to eat rather than waiting until

9:09

you get to that stage of stomach growling,

9:12

empty feeling, hunger. So

9:14

in other words, far from being quote unquote

9:16

wrong, eating just because

9:18

you 277 eat might actually be a

9:20

great form of self care. I

9:23

talked about this more on my episode of the ten

9:25

percent happier podcast with Dan Harris,

9:27

who's actually one of the people who asked me that question.

9:30

And we'll link to that in the show notes for this

9:32

episode. I also go into a lot

9:34

more depth about how to navigate emotional

9:37

eating, reject diet culture

9:39

and find peace with food in my

9:41

277 eating fundamentals course, which

9:43

you can find at christy harrison dot com slash

9:45

course. And then we'll talk next

9:48

week on this podcast about some

9:50

of the other subtle signs of hunger that

9:52

might help alert you that it's time to eat.

9:55

Because thinking about food, wanting

9:57

food are definitely some of the

9:59

subtle signs of hunger, but they're not the only

10:01

ones. So we'll get into that more next week.

10:05

Number four. Seeing yourself

10:07

as an emotional eater. So seeing

10:09

yourself as someone who eats in response to

10:11

feelings rather than hunger might

10:13

be a clue that diet culture is afoot.

10:16

There have been decades now of psychological

10:19

research on emotional eating, And

10:21

the conclusion that many researchers have come

10:23

to is that it may not be a scientifically

10:26

sound concept actually because In

10:29

experimental settings, self

10:31

identified emotional eaters don't

10:33

eat anymore in the presence of emotional

10:35

stimuli than anyone else. Instead,

10:38

those people who identify as emotional eaters

10:41

seem to be simply more worried about their

10:43

eating and feel like they lack

10:45

control over it. And follow

10:47

external rules about quote unquote healthy

10:49

eating. There's also evidence

10:51

that people who see themselves as emotional eaters

10:54

have a greater tendency to attribute

10:56

any perceived overeating to

10:59

emotions. So

11:01

that's really interesting. Right? And begs

11:03

the question, why do so many of us worry

11:05

about so called emotional eating? Well,

11:08

that would be because of diet culture, really, which

11:10

has a deep investment in making you feel

11:12

like your eating is driven by mere

11:15

emotions, quote unquote, instead

11:17

of by legitimate needs that diets will

11:19

never meet. And instead of by deprivation because

11:22

diets don't 277 to admit that they're depriving

11:24

you in this day and age. And so

11:26

diet culture has a major stake in making

11:28

you feel like a failure. Right? Making you

11:31

feel like you gave into your emotions rather

11:34

than knowing the truth, which is that diets

11:36

themselves are the failure. The

11:39

concept of emotional eating really

11:41

took root in the nineteen sixties from

11:43

my research and weight watchers

11:45

and other diet companies did a

11:47

pretty great job of disseminating that

11:50

idea. It was really an ingenious

11:52

way to sort of pass the buck deflecting

11:54

attention from the fact that dieting made

11:56

people feel so unhinged around

11:59

food and that people

12:01

were eating in ways that felt really out of

12:03

control. It's nice to, you know,

12:05

for diets to have something to blame, like, oh,

12:07

it's your emotions that are driving that out

12:09

of control behavior. So if

12:11

we can pull back from diet culture and

12:14

stop letting it control us like this,

12:16

we can see that there's no reason to demonize

12:18

the practice of eating to sue the emotions

12:22

and that when we truly heal from dieting

12:24

and deprivation, we likely won't

12:26

quote unquote eat our feelings as much anymore

12:29

either. Finally,

12:31

number five. Adding other

12:33

coping skills can definitely be helpful

12:36

once you've addressed the underlying deprivation

12:38

that's there. So for many people

12:40

who identify as emotional eaters, finding

12:43

additional ways to cope with difficult emotions

12:45

is definitely important too. Some

12:48

folks have labeled themselves as emotional

12:50

eaters for so long, that they

12:52

don't have many other tools in their coping

12:54

tool boxes if you will. And so

12:57

if that describes you, right, if

12:59

you're one of those people who seems

13:01

to turn to food for comfort and for

13:03

soothing all kinds of emotions and don't feel like

13:05

you have a lot of other 277 to cope.

13:08

Adding more of those tools can help

13:10

address the vast array of feelings

13:13

and situations that might come up for you over

13:15

the years. And that's not to say that

13:17

you must stop turning to food for comfort

13:19

at all. Right? That's not what I'm saying.

13:21

Whatsoever. It's just a matter

13:23

of adding more coping skills so that you

13:25

feel better equipped to deal with

13:27

life and everything it throws at you.

13:30

Dioculture's MO is to say

13:32

take a bath instead of eating. Right?

13:34

You see this in the so

13:36

called emotional eating literature that is

13:38

very much still rooted in diet culture. Well,

13:41

what I'm saying is, what if

13:43

you call a friend after you finish that ice

13:45

cream? Right? Or what if you do some other coping

13:47

skill in addition to eating.

13:50

So with enough practice at intuitive eating,

13:52

the desire to eat in response to emotions

13:55

typically does decline on its own as I mentioned

13:57

before. But in the meantime, there's

13:59

absolutely nothing wrong with eating

14:01

if that's what you feel like doing when you're bummed out

14:04

or having whatever emotion you have.

14:06

Right? And if you're recovering from chronic

14:08

dieting, you probably will feel like

14:10

eating in those moments. So

14:13

bottom line to all this, is that if you

14:15

identify as an emotional eater, it's

14:17

not your fault. Really, I'd

14:19

say that it's the fault of diet culture,

14:22

and it's perfectly okay to eat for emotional

14:24

reasons rather than strictly biological

14:27

ones. Because how can you really distinguish

14:29

between the two anyway? Right? Dieting

14:31

and restricting foods creates such

14:33

a chronic deprivation that there's

14:35

almost always some hunger going on, some

14:38

physical need not being met, in

14:40

addition to whatever emotional need is

14:42

there. And sometimes that deprivation

14:44

is actually what's driving emotions in the first

14:46

place. Right? Chronic food deprivation

14:49

can make anyone feel anxious, cranky,

14:52

sad, depressed, all of those

14:54

things. So instead of trying

14:56

to substitute other coping mechanisms for

14:58

eating every time you find yourself

15:01

soothing a feeling with food. You

15:03

might instead try to stop demonizing

15:05

emotional eating and stop following

15:07

diet culture's rules, really letting

15:10

go of that deprivation. You

15:12

might still comfort yourself with food sometimes

15:15

and that's a completely understandable part

15:17

of a peaceful relationship with food and an

15:19

intuitive relationship with food because

15:21

even the most intuitive eater occasionally

15:24

eats in a quote unquote emotional way,

15:26

and there's nothing wrong with that. So

15:28

thanks again to everyone who's asked some version

15:31

of that question. And if you want to submit

15:33

your own question for a chance to have it answered

15:35

either here or in my Food Psych

15:37

weekly newsletter, you can go to

15:39

christy harrison dot com slash questions.

15:42

That's christy harrison dot com slash

15:44

questions. And then

15:46

you're hearing this episode when it airs

15:48

and you 277 ask be all your burning questions

15:51

about intuitive eating for the next

15:53

three months or so, plus get support

15:55

from a great community forum during that time

15:58

you can come join my online course 277

16:00

eating fundamentals. The course

16:02

closes for enrollment on June twenty fourth,

16:05

So now is a great time to sign up if you

16:07

want to take advantage of all those bonuses.

16:10

The course also has thirteen modules of audio

16:12

and written content teaching you the ins and

16:14

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16:17

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16:19

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16:21

sign up. If you're ready to break

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16:25

food, you can learn more and sign up

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for the course at christy harrison dot com

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slash course. That's christy harrison

16:32

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16:34

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Podcasts or wherever you listen

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christy harrison dot com slash subscribe.

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To get full show notes and a transcript of

16:55

this episode, go to christy harrison dot

16:57

com slash two seventy seven. That's

16:59

christy harrison dot com slash two seventy

17:01

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17:07

big thanks as always to our editor and sound

17:09

engineer, Mike Wolland, community

17:12

and content associate, Vinci Chuay, an

17:14

administrative assistant, Julian Wojtaszek,

17:16

for helping me out with all the moving parts

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that go into producing this show. Our

17:21

album art was photographed by Abby Moore Photography,

17:23

and the logo was designed by Melissa Alam.

17:26

Her theme song was written and performed by Carolyn

17:28

Penny Packer Rigs. And I'm your host

17:30

and producer, Christie Harrison. Thanks

17:33

again for listening, and until next time,

17:35

stay site.