What is ‘emotional eating’?
Too much on your plate?
Swallowing down your anger with food?
Frustrated at your yo-yo dieting?
Eating when bored, or on your own?
Feeling out of control around food?
Eating in secret?
Bingeing and purging?
Feeling sad and eating to fill a void inside?
Rewarding yourself with food after a hard day?
Let’s first be clear, and define emotional eating as a behaviour that occurs only in the developed world, the lands of perceived plenty. Negative self-judgements; obsessive over-thinking about calories; skipping meals; bingeing and purging; or any of the other many aspects of emotional eating do not exist in countries of food scarcity or where people struggle for survival. It’s noteworthy that as third world countries emerge economically onto the world stage they open their doors to western influences and their seductive power. The socially mobile classes of any indigenous population quickly develop a taste for western fashion, and music, as well as western foods. The Standard American Diet of refined carbohydrates, calorie-dense fast-foods and fizzy drinks is now exported all over the world. Adopting it is a way of aping western consumption, and values, and can be found in the cities of China, Russia and India, as well, increasingly, as in more remote outposts. It also causes sectors of the population of these countries to judge themselves negatively against the narrow, westernised standard of perfection. With that comes self-dissatisfaction – a step on the road to emotional eating that was not apparent just a few decades ago.
Over-thinking about food and negative self-judgements, both of which are key indicators of emotional eating, require a level of compliance to socially accepted norms. In the West the definition of an acceptable body-type for women, and increasingly for men, is force-fed to us through the media, and imposes an impossible ideal. Unattainable standards of physical perfection are loudly proclaimed on all media platforms by ‘body fascists’ who deride anyone, especially the famous, who fails to comply with their narrow definition of perfection. The constant dog-whistle of not being good enough – read ‘slim enough’, read ‘perfect enough’ – forms part of the almost subliminal white-noise of self-admonition heard constantly by many men and women, reminding them of their own failings and inadequacy. No one is exempt from some degree of negative self-judgement about their body as the bar of perfection is out of any normal human being’s reach. This not-being-good-enough influences everyone to varying degrees, and, as well as colouring how most people judge themselves, it also inevitably affects how they relate to food.
It is impossible not to have made some emotional connection with food as we grow from a dependent, vulnerable baby through to the beginnings of self-definition in adolescence, and into the autonomy of adulthood. Food is an enjoyable, vital source of sustenance for every human. It is impossible to grow and thrive without proper nourishment. Food and eating become complicated for many people when they become something other than an aspect of being alive and well. Social, cultural and psychological constructs influence everyone, and not all these influences encourage a healthy relationship between oneself and food. The effects on each individual are unique.
The degree to which negative versus positive emotions are triggered around food and eating is a key factor in whether a person develops emotional eating issues. Another factor is the extent to which a developing person is allowed to express their emotions within their family. Families that do not permit their offspring to express uncomfortable emotions – such as anger or sadness – often demonstrate in non-verbal ways that those emotions are unwanted, perhaps even shameful. Children learn ways to compensate for not being heard, and may turn to food as a coping mechanism to swallow down, or cover over, their true emotions. Other scenarios where food is used as a tool of control, or reward, can sow the seeds for an emotional response to food in future life. So too can memories of growing up in a chaotic household where the provision of food was erratic or inadequate.
A recent scientific paper presented by clinical psychologist Johnathan Egan, at the 2014 annual conference of the Psychological Society of Ireland, discussed how research showed parental behaviour can have a lifelong effect on a child’s relationship with food. The research looked at a group of 550 individuals, most of whom were women. It highlighted that the daughters of strict parents who put their own needs first ahead of those of their children had a higher incidence of emotional or comfort eating, and were typically most likely to gain excess weight in the long term. The daughters of easy-going, liberal parents fared somewhat better. The most favourable outcome for the women – having the lowest levels of emotional eating and correspondingly lower body mass index (BMI) – was found in those with a strict but responsive mother and an easy-going father.
In the work that we, the authors, have undertaken we have become aware of a link between emotional eating and the mother of the household being emotionally absent in some cases. It is worth noting that emotional absence is completely different from physical absence. A working mother who leaves her children each day so as to work away from the home is not necessarily increasing her children’s chances of emotional or comfort eating. If the working mother has an adequate emotional connection with her children when she is at home, her offspring can expect to have similarly positive outcomes to if she had been a stay-at-home mum.
Young children learn in non-verbal ways if their mother is withdrawn through depression or mental illness; or is emotionally immature herself and egotistically puts her own needs above theirs; or if her behaviour is chaotic and her emotional absence is due to drug addiction or alcohol abuse; or if she lives under the constant threat of sexual or violent behaviour. These, and similar situations of maternal emotional absence, can block children’s natural search for care as they observe their world to be fragile and unsafe. They learn not to express their emotions, to withdraw, and to use food as a way to sooth themselves, literally swallowing down their emotions.
There are people out there in the wide world who generally eat what they like and, remarkable as it may sound, are not racked with self-loathing or guilt. Feeling relaxed about food means these very same people pay little mind to what they ate at their last meal; nor for that matter do they agonise over what they will eat at the next one. These people have developed few negative triggers around food and view eating as just one of life’s many and varied pleasures. They feel little or no concern when considering the prospect of being invited to a celebratory party with a lavish gourmet buffet; they even relish the prospect of a fancy restaurant meal with friends; they don’t even baulk at the idea of eating together with their extended family. Their calm take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards food magically keeps their minds liberated to muse on things other than food in their lives, such as their hopes and aspirations, their career, their interests and their loved ones.
It will come as no surprise that these men and women are not our client group. The clients who seek out our therapeutic approach to stopping emotional eating make almost constant negative judgements about themselves in the context of their eating and what their bodies look like. These negative judgements, and the effect of these on their self-esteem, morale, and ability to accept themselves, are what set them apart from non-emotional eaters.
There is no single definition of a typical emotional eater. It’s a common misconception that all emotional eaters are overweight. Many are within normal weight range but only because of their obsessive dieting, bingeing and disordered eating that will be a well-kept secret they share with no one. The same negative judgements emotional eaters make about themselves are common to the overweight and the obese, and the dangerously underweight for that matter. All share the trait of unrelenting over-thinking about food coupled with harsh, critical self-judgements.
To give you a sense of a typical emotional eater you need to understand that their innate sense of self-worth – how they actually see themselves as a worthy person – is closely linked to the numbers on their bathroom scales. A pound lost, or a pound gained, can set the tenor of their entire day. Also, foods are never neutral. They are forensically studied and determined to be good or bad.
Emotional eaters battle with their own body’s hunger and cravings. They know there have been times when they have succumbed and eaten one ‘bad’ food only for it to start a tsunami of overeating, or even bingeing and purging, with all the accompanying feelings of shame and self-loathing. An emotional eater’s attitude towards him/herself and food is not logical. The extent of his/her preoccupation with food and body weight is often a private source of great personal distress and shame. The reasons for this all-consuming link between food, body weight, self-definition, and how the individual feels about being him/herself in the world, are varied and inevitably complex.
Non-emotional eaters also come in all physical shapes and sizes. Some may decide they are heavier than they would like to be. This realisation may come to them gradually over an extended period or more suddenly, as they think about wanting to look their best for a wedding or graduation, or a special birthday or some other milestone life-event. Around this point they now have two main choices – to lose their excess weight or to accept themselves as they are.
For non-emotional eaters who decide to lose some weight, this would mean making appropriate changes and adjustments to their food choices and portion sizes, and maybe even incorporating regular exercise in their routine, until they have reached their goal weight. Unlike emotional eaters, non-emotional eaters do not define themselves completely by how much they weigh or what they look like. Therefore, for them losing weight is no more of a challenge than any other aspect of their lives, such as learning conversational French or taking up water-colours as a hobby. They often successfully lose weight, and even if they do eventually pile on some extra pounds they have the option of just applying their tried-and-trusted methods until they are at their goal weight again.
For non-emotional eaters who decide to stay as they are, being over-weight is not an important issue. Having had the wake-up call that their ‘love handles’ have become grab rails, they may realise that their weight doesn’t really bother them enough to do much about it. It makes it easier to accept their expanding waist lines and bigger clothes sizes when most people they know are, similarly, expanding versions of their former selves. They may consider it hard to feel their weight gain is all that important when the trend of increasing pounds is a familiar trait with their partner, members of their family and friends. They simply get used to buying a size or two larger in their clothes, let out their belts another notch and ultimately pay it little mind.
In many ways there has never been a time when it has been more normal to be overweight. Recent government figures confirm what most people already know from reading the newspapers, watching the news or simply observing larger-sized people wherever they go. Statistics indicate that in the UK over 66 per cent of adult men and over 57 per cent of adult women are overweight or obese. Figures for the USA continue to increase so that at the time of writing just over 71 per cent of all men, and just under 66 per cent of all women, are classed as obese.1 USA research also shows that in the last decade the heaviest Americans have become even heavier.2
The experts’ definition of an ‘obesogenic’ environment (one that promotes significant weight gain) is one where many disparate factors come together to encourage people to eat unhealthily and lead mainly sedentary lives. Predictably, cities are prime examples of an obesogenic environment, inevitably making it more common-place to be overweight: urban living encourages the use of a car over walking, and the multitude of cheap, calorie-dense takeaways along every high street puts temptation within the reach of many whatever the time of day or night.
There are key factors that make emotional eating, and disordered eating in general, more complex than any other type of compulsive behaviour. If someone feels out of control and powerless to resist gambling, smoking, alcohol or drugs, they can be helped therapeutically to end their compulsive behaviour. The measure of success in these cases is often complete cessation of that behaviour. However, when the compulsive behaviour is around food, the person cannot simply stop eating – everyone needs to eat. True success in stopping emotional eating means achieving a healthy integration of food into one’s life, possibly for the first time ever. The measure of success here is to arrive at a difference in thinking and self-belief so that it is possible to be calm and relaxed around food, once and for all stepping off the merry-go-round of obsessive over-thinking and critical self-judgement.
The men and women who self-diagnose themselves as emotional eaters care very much about how much they weigh. However, they are also tired of having so much of their waking time consumed with thoughts of food. Weight loss can be an initial goal for an emotional eater but what they also want in equal measure is to ‘feel normal’ around food. They want to find a way to turn off their obsessive thinking and to stop berating and hating themselves for every mouthful they eat. They often feel overwhelmed and incapable of making the necessary changes in their thinking about themselves without professional guidance.
Over the last decade, we, the authors, have worked almost exclusively with clients who identify themselves as emotional eaters. Although working independently in our own private practices, we have communicated regularly to share ideas about good practice and insights into successful therapeutic approaches. It was from sharing our successful approaches to stopping emotional eating that we first decided to launch a series of weight-loss workshops in London, focusing on the emotional reasons for overeating. These early (2005) workshops were among the first to use alternative therapies to focus on resolving and releasing the often negative emotions that cause compulsive eating, cravings and self-sabotaging behaviour around food.
Over the years we have honed our approach and this book is a distillation of everything we have learned working in groups, and one-to-one, with clients who experience the challenges of emotional eating. We are confident we have developed a highly effective set of therapy tools so that people can lose weight appropriately, successfully maintain a healthy weight and, most importantly, feel calm and comfortable around food.
This book describes the therapy tools we have found most effective in stopping emotional eating. These are ‘emotional freedom technique’ (EFT) (see page 21), percussive suggestion technique (PSTEC) (see page 39) and hypnotherapy, singly and in combination. (The first two may well not be familiar to you and your understanding of the third may well not correspond with what you will discover here (see page 47).) For each individual, the situation is different: some clients may recall specific events or memories that made them think negatively about themselves, most commonly in childhood or adolescence; others may not have any sense of what initially triggered their emotional eating habits. It is not essential to know why the emotional eating began as the therapy focuses on how clients feel about themselves in the here and now.
The therapy tools can be used to reframe or adjust a person’s usual negative thoughts about themselves as the first step towards self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. Self-acceptance doesn’t mean giving up. It is, however, a vital step in ending harsh, critical self-judgements and exhausting self-blame.
All the therapy tools are described in detail in the book and can be easily learned and applied to dealing with whatever life has in store. Everyone working through the Seven Steps to Stop Emotional Eating will approach this book from their own unique perspective. However, we are confident we have provided an easy-to-follow route through the emotional maze towards feeling calm around food and eating for nourishment instead of self-punishment.
As we have said, the therapy tools we have found to be the most effective are hypnotherapy, EFT and PSTEC. Although therapists regularly use one, or sometimes two, of these therapies in combination, we have created our unique approach using all three tools, applying each for its specific strengths, to resolve emotional eating. We have seen the life-changing results from our face-to-face work with clients and have put our knowledge and insights into creating the simple-to-follow self-help format described here.
In-depth information about, and the backgrounds to, each of the therapy tools is given later in the book. However, we acknowledge our first challenge when beginning work with a new client is overcoming their understandable scepticism about what can seem weird and outlandish.
To the uninitiated, EFT probably seems the strangest of all the three therapies as it involves following a pattern of tapping with fingertips on parts of the face and upper body while repeating a spoken phrase. We grant it does seem odd. However, it actually has a proud history in America of helping countless Vietnam military veterans overcome chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it remains a successful and increasingly well-documented intervention for the troops in contemporary theatres of war.3, 4, 5
We use EFT to help clients get in touch with suppressed emotions that are blocking them from achieving what they desire. The EFT process helps to encourage a client’s own intuitive insight. From this process clients gain a greater awareness of some of the negative feelings that have been driving their emotional eating. Gaining awareness is an important step to being able to resolve those negative emotions.
With this new-found awareness, PSTEC – the most recently created modality of the three we use – is then used to reduce or erase negative emotions attached to thoughts or memories so that clients can be free of triggers from their past that would have previously led them to self-sabotage their progress. Of the remaining therapy tools, hypnosis is probably the most misunderstood. Most people’s opinion of it has been gleaned from watching TV shows where a charismatic entertainer mesmerises volunteers from the audience. The dramatic inductions and trance-like states achieved in the blink of an eye transform ordinary folk into automatons barking like a dog or clucking like a chicken. Hypnosis delivered in a therapy setting could not be more different – it is about inducing a state of complete relaxation that will allow the acceptance of new ideas.
We use hypnosis to support and reinforce all the positive changes being made.
We have made the therapy tools we recommend as easy to learn and use as possible, with printer-friendly worksheets to support the process where appropriate. We have also included links to free audio recordings, to be downloaded and listened to regularly.
We want you to know that our Seven Simple Steps process isn’t arduous and can be surprisingly enjoyable. Many people have felt literally weighed down by negativity about themselves for such a long time they have found it a very uplifting process to take the steps to feel lighter and happier in themselves. We have learned through many thousands of hours working with clients that emotional eating is never about being greedy, and never about food. That’s why diets don’t work, and even bariatric surgery isn’t guaranteed to deliver successful weight loss in every case. Hard-won weight losses inevitably turn into weight gains if the underlying reasons for emotional eating are not fully resolved and released. Our approach encourages listening to oneself, and bearing witness with oneself to end critical self-judgements, so that the negative emotions that drove emotional eating can finally stop.
If losing weight were only a matter of balancing calories in versus calories out, or cutting down on eating while exercising more, then everyone would simply achieve their natural weight and stay there forever. This is clearly not the case for many people who have struggled with food and weight issues for most of their lives. The simplification that people are overweight because they have no willpower or are greedy ignores the subconscious reasons that compel many people to overeat.
Anorexia and bulimia are already recognised medically, and socially, as eating disorders. Kathy Leach, in her book The Overweight Patient: A Psychological Approach to Understanding and Working with Obesity,* explains that these behaviours are acknowledged as coping strategies that most often occur between early childhood and adolescence in response to psychological, environmental and social factors. Obsessive behaviour around food provides a partial sense of control when the individual mainly feels powerless and overwhelmed in other areas of their lives.
Leach continues to observe that overeating and obesity are not so commonly regarded in this way. She states that in her clinical experience, staying overweight and overeating are ‘survival decisions’. That is to say, the individual has a subconscious belief (until brought into awareness) that he/she will not survive unless he/she overeats or remains obese.
In our therapeutic experience, weight gain and obesity are the conspicuous byproducts of using food as a strategy to deal with uncomfortable emotions, either to avoid feelings of inner pain, or to block out feelings of boredom, dissatisfaction, anger, sadness or loss.
For some people, the idea of being slim feels like an impossible prospect. Although they often judge themselves harshly for being overweight, they remain stuck. Their conscious resolve to lose weight is at odds with – and overruled by – unconscious fears, and limiting beliefs.
For some overweight people, recollections of being slim trigger memories of trauma, or of personal unhappiness that occurred around that time. Considering losing weight can – on a deeply subconscious level – make them feel insecure and at risk all over again.
These fears can be so deeply entrenched that the individual will unconsciously self-sabotage his/her own weight loss to keep him/herself ‘safe’. This is typified in yo-yo dieting: successful weight loss isn’t maintained but is followed by weight gain followed by further efforts to lose weight – a repeated pattern of behaviour.
Returning again to Kathy Leach, she explains in her book what the goal of therapy is: ‘Ultimately, the person struggling with weight issues needs to establish a sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-love and self-validation, and from this position can decide whether she/he will lose weight, or not. The psychotherapeutic goal is autonomy and empowerment.’
Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating sets out how you can discover for yourself the reasons for your own emotional eating so that they can be resolved and released. The book is a written version of the therapy approach we have developed, both together and separately, to work with clients to explore the subconscious, and reveal often hidden benefits from staying overweight.
In place of fear and frustration, we will encourage you in these processes to find new and creative ways of taking care of yourself that do not rely on you swallowing down your emotions with food.
We believe that then, and only then, will you allow yourself to be slim and stay that way, happily and safely, forever.
Seven Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating shows you how to target your body by changing your mind. What that means is that you will:
The book is based on how we work with clients in our own individual practices. It is written in seven simple steps to reflect how we structure our work.
When we work with clients we usually see them weekly for around six or seven weeks, so we feel, as a guide, it would be appropriate if you allowed yourself at least that amount of time to work through the seven steps in this book. Imagine how, by taking no more than an hour or so one evening a week, you can do work that is powerful enough to make a real and lasting difference to your life. That has to be worth fitting into your schedule, however busy you are.
Extending the seven simple steps process over several weeks allows you to process the changes in how you think and feel about yourself, and about food. However, there are no hard and fast rules except that it would be advantageous not to rush yourself, or hurry your work. Some of your habits and thoughts have been with you for a long time and will need some gentle attention to dismantle and release.
Be kind to yourself. If you feel blocked on an issue, then break it down into smaller aspects. We will show you how to do this later in the book when we explain how to apply the therapeutic tools we use (see page 51).
Give yourself the best chance of success by avoiding beginning the seven simple steps process when you are extra busy or stressed, at work or at home, or if you are unusually busy with a spate of social engagements. We want you to have the time to prioritise yourself and to embed positive changes in your behaviour and thoughts that will allow you to take care of yourself in new and improved ways.
Try to resist weighing yourself more than once a week. Just choose a day and stick to it. This is about losing your excess weight for the last time, about you bringing your life back into balance; your weight loss and increased sense of wellbeing will therefore reflect that as you release the emotional drivers behind your emotional eating.
In any one of our client sessions we often use several of the therapy tools featured here. We choose how to work from what naturally arises during the session, and we suggest that you approach your own work in the same way. If one of the therapy tools does not resonate with you, then focus on some of the other tools instead.
We encourage you to begin at Step One and work through to Step Seven so that you can comprehensively address all the factors in, and aspects of, your emotional eating. However, we also acknowledge that you might be tempted to dip in and out, as topics catch your imagination. You can successfully achieve shifts with either approach, but we do recommend you take the time to familiarise yourself with the therapy tools in Part One at the outset. This is so that as you explore your emotions you will have ways to resolve and release old, negative memories and events so that they no longer trigger you to eat, or bother you.
You will learn:
You will discover how old eating habits that no longer serve you can be gently released and effortlessly discarded.
The seven simple steps include three powerful hypnotherapy recordings so that you can harness this wonderful modality to support changes in your behaviour and thinking by speaking directly to your subconscious mind. Other therapeutic modalities included in the programme include:
There are worksheets within the book with space dedicated for working out your thoughts and feelings as you disentangle and unfurl the different aspects of your own emotional eating. There is also a pdf version of the worksheets for you to download (see Resources, page 183) and print if you prefer.
Before you begin this process we suggest you dedicate a carefully chosen notebook just for this work, and keep it close to hand. Write at the beginning your goal weight, goal dress size, or goal trouser-waist measurement. Use whatever scale of measurement most resonates with you. The point of this is to make a declaration. Over time the desire for weight loss can become shrouded in disappointment and frustration, especially when previous failed attempts stand in your way of fully committing to your goal. It is as if failure is simply inevitable. The act of writing your desired goal is to make a stand – a declaration of your intent. You make this stand by setting a clear goal, and your goal needs to have a date by which you will achieve it. Anthony Robbins, the world-famous life coach, said any goal without a date is merely a dream.
Set yourself a goal for the first month, then the weight you want to be one year on. Set incremental steps for your weight loss depending on how much weight you want to lose.
In your mind, plan and plot how you will look and feel and what you will wear on your next birthday, next Easter, at Christmas, at your friend’s wedding, and so on. This process is called ‘scaffolding’, and it becomes the tangible evidence of your intention.
Attach old photographs of yourself when you were the size you want to be. If those photographs do not exist, or are not accessible, then cut out pictures from magazines of body shapes and types you admire.
Feed your imagination with images of what you want for yourself. Strengthen your scaffolding by including lots of photographs: tear sheets from magazines of the clothes, shoes and jewellery you will wear at your goal weight, or size; include pictures of the holiday places you want to visit and of the sort of enjoyable leisure activities you want to do. Perhaps you can remember some of the things you used to enjoy taking part in, but stopped doing years ago? All of this adds clear intent to your subconscious mind so that it knows exactly what you most desire.
Set down your intentions clearly in your notebook. Write yourself a letter from the vantage point of having achieved your goal weight or size. In the letter tell yourself how proud you feel to have achieved your heart’s desire. Forgive yourself for not taking care of yourself in the past. Perhaps explain how difficult life has been. Reassure yourself of how much you value you, and how you are determined to take better care of yourself in the future. Send love, and forgiveness from your future self back to you, the person beginning your weight-loss journey.
*The Overweight Patient: A Psychological Approach to Understanding and Working with Obesity. Author Kathy Leach. Published by Jessica Kingley 2006, United Kingdom.