Is emotional eating always bad for you? This is what a new study says
Having a healthy relationship with food is important to avoid developing eating disorders. Emotional eating doesn’t have to be inherently bad.
Food is necessary to fuel our bodies but maintaining a healthy relationship with this vital source of sustenance can be a challenge for many. That is especially true when it comes to foods that produce strong feel-good emotions in us.
“If you think about it, our lives are centered around food,” Daisy Miller, a weight-inclusive eating disorder dietitian in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, told CNN. “Food can be really comforting, and a lot of us build traditions in all of our cultures around food that is nostalgic and sentimental.”
Is emotional eating always bad for you?
Miller says that people should not apply strict rules or shame-based strategies when trying to cope with their eating habits. “Simply eating a food, sometimes for emotional reasons, is not a problem and not something that you need to judge or beat yourself up for,” she said.
It’s important for people to embrace nuance in her opinion when it comes to the ways in which they eat while still keeping in mind that there is a line at which emotional eating can become unhealthy. “We can’t ever say this is entirely good or this is entirely bad without knowing the big picture of what’s going on in somebody’s life,” she explained.
People need to think about why they are seeking out those foods that they enjoy and that make them feel strong emotions. Is it because they avoiding addressing some issue versus simply giving themselves some pleasure reward after a hard day or as part of celebrating an achievement?
Jennifer Rollin, founder of The Eating Disorder Center in Rockville, Maryland for her part warned about the idea of only treating food as fuel. She says that our bodies are built to enjoy food, so desiring something that tastes or feels good when you feel strong emotions is logical.
Denying yourself that pleasure because it is the unhealthy option may mean that you will be missing out on many of the moments in life that involve food. She gives the example of enjoying a dessert out with a friend when you’re not necessarily hungry. “Social relationships are one of the biggest predictors of health and longevity,” she explains.
Habits that people can watch out for signaling that their relationship with food is “problematic” can include relying too much on food to cope or engaging in binge eating. Warning signs of this can be “eating larger quantities than most people would in a short time, feeling a loss of control, feeling guilt and shame, eating in secret, and often eating way past the point of fullness,” she told CNN.
“If you’re eating more than you feel comfortable eating, and then you’re engaging in restricting or purging or compulsive exercise, that would be another sign that your relationship to food is problematic,” added Rollins.