According to Dr. Susan Albers, psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, comfort eating (also referred to as “stress eating” or “emotional eating”) is not uncommon, nor necessarily unhealthy — unless it becomes a very frequent habit. And since stress eating can be tied to our own personal relationship with food, often going back to early childhood, it can be extremely difficult to avoid once started. Let’s consider first some of the biggest reasons we do it.
What’s the science on it?
Although there can be many reasons for our own personal comfort eating, Dr. Albers identifies a few of the main reasons people do it including biology, tuning out, beliefs, convenience, and food as “entertainment.” Our human biology responds to stress by kicking up the body’s cortisol hormone, making us crave things like fatty foods, sugar, and carbohydrates. When these foods are consumed, chemical changes occur in the body which are very soothing. You can see why this could subconsciously become a habit — especially with foods that taste good anyway, like chocolate or cheese-drenched french fries. Once this process becomes a habit, we may gain considerable weight trying to get those soothing chemical change feelings more often.
Tuning out can be very pleasurable
Further, Albers adds, when we tune out while eating, we can feel relaxed because we’re distracted from the painful or stressful experience of the moment. Again, a habit can easily be created from this when we do it too often.
Beliefs, convenience, and entertainment factors
Beliefs that food will make us feel better (remember grandma’s home-baked cookies being offered when we skinned our knees playing outside?), the convenience of fast food and other calorie-rich, unhealthy items (a value meal with a chocolate shake should do the trick on a stressful lunch break, right?), and the entertainment value of eating out or ordering delivery (Domino’s or Pizza Hut?) can also contribute heavily to this problem habit. Consider also the fact that serving sizes have increased substantially over time and fattening sugars, chemicals, etc., are added without us even knowing, and we’ve got a pretty sizable dilemma on our hands. But what can we stress eaters do?
Get mindfully aware, and find some good replacers
Dr. Albers suggests using mindfulness to maintain awareness of our feelings and stressors as they occur, and an assortment of replacers to help us manage them until they pass.
Black tea, sex, breathing exercises and journaling
Black tea, Albers notes, can reduce cortisol levels within one minute, and help us restore ourselves quickly to equilibrium. A foot rub, self-massage, yoga, stretching, and deep breathing exercises can also provide a great deal of relief from various stressors. Some folks recommend replacing the eating behavior with other similarly pleasurable activities to help control the habit. For example, meditation, exercise, baths, listening to our favorite relaxing music, and even sex can activate increased dopamine production and create some of the same types of relaxed, soothing sensations to help manage the stressful feelings in the body instead of eating. Albers also believes writing down how we’re feeling and where we are, what we’re doing, etc., in a journal can help us gain clues to why we stress eat if we don’t know.
Make it more difficult for yourself to grab unhealthy snacks
Others indicate making it more difficult for ourselves to stress eat can also help a bit. Not having certain foods in the house at all (in my friend’s home, for example, potato chips simply may not enter — for me, it’s pizza), storing it out of sight in the lowest refrigerator drawer, or out of reach on the highest kitchen cupboard shelf, or keeping it frozen in the freezer may be helpful. Thinking about positive things, calling a friend on the phone, looking at pretty pictures on tumblr, reading our favorite Thich Nhat Hanh book, or reminding ourselves about the things we are grateful for, etc., can be good temporary replacers as well.
Try it all out when you aren’t stressed first
Dr. Albers points out that we need to practice our replacers when we aren’t experiencing negative emotions or stressors so that we are better able to use them when we are. Says Albers, wisely, “You wouldn’t want to learn how to swim in rough water. Nor do you want to learn the art of soothing yourself without food on a very stressful day.”
