You’ve probably seen and heard (and have possibly used) the phrase “emotional eating.” The connotation is often a negative one, as in: “Today was rough. I’m going to order a pizza, open up some Ben & Jerry’s, and eat my emotions.”
Emotional eating is often portrayed as someone using food to tamp down or soothe negative or challenging emotions like anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, or loneliness, often in a way that’s viewed as gluttonous or self-indulgent, says Mary Sabat, RDN, a dietitian in private practice in Georgia.
But that definition (and usage) of the term can be problematic because emotions are linked to pretty much everything we do as human beings — and therefore nearly all eating could be classified as “emotional eating” if you both eat and feel emotions.
“You cannot not have an emotional connection to eating,” says Paula Atkinson, LCSW, a psychotherapist and body justice activist in private practice in Washington, DC.
Get the rundown on why the term is such a complicated one, and how to cope if your emotional health is affecting your diet and eating in a negative way.
How Do Experts Define ‘Emotional Eating’?
“Emotional eating” isn’t a diagnostic or clinical term — and it’s not an eating disorder (like binge eating, anorexia, or bulimia are). Though it comes up across fields of nutrition, medicine, and psychology, there’s no one academic definition of the term, nor a specific set of behaviors it necessarily describes, Sabat explains.
A review article published in 2016 in Frontiers in Psychology pointed out that emotional eating isn’t always associated with an increase in caloric intake, and can take place in response to positive emotions, too.
Where Does the Term Come From?
“The term seems to have emerged as a concept in the early 1990s, around the time when the link between emotions and eating behaviors was becoming more recognized,” says Sabat.
In 1994, binge eating disorder was first recognized as a clinical condition under the umbrella of “Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). It is defined as a behavioral disorder characterized by chronic, compulsive overeating, according to Cleveland Clinic.
And after that, researchers started looking more closely at the connection between eating and emotional state. One study, published in 1996 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, found that individuals with binge eating disorder were more likely to report over eating in response to negative emotions, particularly regarding weight and shape.
It’s worth noting that binge eating disorder is not synonymous with emotional eating, nor is it a symptom of binge eating disorder, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA).
The Problem With the Colloquial Definition of the Term
According to Atkinson, all eating is emotional eating. She explains that to her (and other professionals in her field) the term is reductive and dismissive of the very real and important ways that eating inherently triggers an emotional response.
“I honestly despise the term because it’s shaming on top of being ridiculous,” she says. “Eating is inherently emotional. It’s tied to survival, joy, pleasure, connectedness, and fun.”
In fact, according to research published in 2018 in Cell Metabolism, the feel-good hormone dopamine is released by the brain not once, but twice during food consumption — first when the food enters the mouth, and second when it makes its way to the stomach. That indicates that eating is biologically intended to be a pleasurable experience with a hormonal response that research indicates can naturally help ease stress levels.
Suggesting that emotional eating is “bad,” or that a person can or should separate themselves from their emotions while eating has the potential to be problematic.
“Biologically speaking, eating triggers your parasympathetic nervous system. If we’re stressed or scared, eating calms us,” Atkinson says.
Why and When Emotional Eating Can Be Good for Well-Being
Given that eating is an inherently emotional act, it’s important to recognize that it’s okay, and even beneficial, to lean into the emotions you experience while eating.
“Food is linked to memories, cultures, and customs. Part of having a healthy relationship with food is being able to enjoy food socially with others and to find joy in those moments,” says Rebecca Soto, a licensed mental health counselor, who specializes in eating disorders, trauma, and anxiety, in private practice in New York City.
Sabat adds: “Sharing a meal with loved ones or preparing a special dish for a holiday or celebration can evoke positive emotions and foster social connection.”
Research indeed shows that communal eating — which includes everything from Thanksgiving dinner to the church potluck to a weekly brunch with your best friend — is associated with feelings of happiness, life satisfaction, community involvement, and strong social bonds. Eating in these scenarios reinforces positive emotional health.
Atkinson often congratulates her clients when they share they’ve been “emotionally eating” because she says she wants to normalize the action and acknowledge that, physiologically and psychologically, eating is inherently calming because it triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and relax” system that enables digestion to take place.
“Eating triggers your parasympathetic nervous system, which conserves energy and slows down your heart rate in order to absorb nutrients,” Atkinson explains (and research backs up). That happens each and every time we eat, she says.
When Emotional Eating Can Be Harmful to Health
Of course, just as overindulging in alcohol to “drown out” negative emotions can lead to greater challenges and difficulties like binge drinking or alcoholism, studies indicate that overeating or binge eating in general or as a coping mechanism for perceived stress can lead to negative health outcomes.
Among 3,144 adults in an Everyday Health survey who all had attempted to lose weight at least once in the previous six months, a majority reported eating sometimes or often in response to emotions, including boredom, stress, nerves, anxiety, stress, or worry — or as a reward. A majority also reported having feelings of guilt or shame around eating; and a majority reported experiencing a loss of control around food.
RELATED: Everyday Health’s Survey and Special Report: Weight Loss Reframed
Research also shows that overeating as a strategy of coping with negative emotions is a learned response — meaning the more you do it, the more you will automatically do it.
Here it’s also important to point out, Atkinson says: “‘Emotional eating’ and ‘overeating’ aren’t synonymous.” Eating itself is an emotional experience. This is true whether the emotions you’re experiencing are happy, sad, angry, or something else.
But, emotional eating can be correlated with overeating in some cases, which is why the two are sometimes conflated.
Overeating Can Worsen Metabolic Health
More specifically, one study found that among overeating or binge eating in response to high levels of perceived stress was linked to higher insulin resistance (a marker of poorer metabolic health, which can lead to diabetes and other complications).
Overeating and Weight
While there’s not much research to date on specific associations between overeating and heart disease, diabetes, or other similar chronic diseases, one prospective study published in 2022 in The Journal of Eating Disorders found that those who reported overeating and binge eating behavior had higher levels of fat mass and more markers of inflammation (which puts them at greater risk for heart disease in the future) five years later than those who didn’t report such behaviors.
Research indicates that binge eating is associated with increased risk of overweight and obesity as well as depression. And both binge eating and overeating are associated with increased marijuana and other drug use.
Overeating and Self-Esteem
And if emotional eating affects your self-esteem or self-image, that can certainly affect wellbeing, too.
Take one study where women ate an apple, a chocolate bar, or nothing and rated their feelings afterward. The apple and chocolate eaters enjoyed increases in positive affect after eating the foods, but some of those who ate the chocolate also experienced feelings of guilt — a response authors postulated to be due to negative food-related perceptions.
Emotional Eating and Your Relationship With Food — and Eating Disorder Risk
The more commonly used definition of emotional eating that frames it as a negative or immoral thing can lead to people having a less healthy relationship with food and eating, Soto says. “The problem comes when people feel out of control when eating, or feel shame and discomfort after eating that doesn’t easily dissipate.”
And research suggests in these cases, there is often an underlying eating disorder, per a review published in 2020 in The Proceedings of the Nutrition Society.
This type of research would suggest that negative health outcomes don’t come from the link between emotions and eating itself, but rather from eating behaviors and attitudes that could be considered disordered eating, or even an eating disorder.
Emotional Eating as an Unhealthy Coping Mechanism
A review study published in March 2023 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that individuals who had experienced traumatic events and PTSD were more likely to experience greater eating disorder symptoms (without specifying which eating disorders).
A study published in 2020 in the journal Appetite reports that post traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are associated with binge eating behaviors in individuals who struggle with emotional dysregulation and emotional eating.
Atkinson says that the negative portrayal of emotional eating could actually be a contributing factor to the negative health outcomes.
Societal expectations of thinness and associated fat-shaming send the message that unrealistic, unemotional eating behavior is aligned with being “good,” “healthy,” or “successful.” And such behavior is certainly not the way or the only way to be all of those things, Atkinson says. “The shame we have been programmed to feel because we’ve not successfully accomplished unemotional eating (which isn’t possible) — or because we believe we are eating ‘too much’ — is extremely harmful.”
3 Things You Can Do if Emotional Eating Is Hurting Your Health
If you’re feeling uncomfortable about the eating habits you’ve developed in response to dealing with your emotions, it’s worth paying attention and taking steps to ensure you’re cultivating a healthy relationship with food.
But remember that’s not synonymous with taking emotions out of eating. Allowing for emotional eating in your diet might be one of the best ways to work toward a healthy relationship with food, according to Atkinson.
More specifically, try the following strategies:
1. Keep a Food Journal to Track Your Emotions
“It’s important to cultivate awareness and mindfulness around eating behaviors and emotional triggers,” says Sabat. “This can involve identifying the emotions that prompt overeating or craving certain foods, and finding alternative ways to cope with those emotions.”
The best way to cultivate this mindfulness is to actively pay attention to your eating habits. Keeping a journal where you jot down how you’re feeling before and after eating, as well as what and how much you eat (without judging yourself for whatever you write down) can help you see whether there are associations between your emotions and your food-related behaviors. This is information you can provide to a mental health professional or dietitian if you want to change your eating behaviors or your relationship with food.
2. Give Yourself Permission to Enjoy Your Favorite Foods
Allowing yourself to enjoy food without shame can be an important step in your eating journey. Sabat says that developing a flexible and nonrestrictive approach to food that allows you to eat your favorite items without judgment or guilt is an important measure that can help stop the overeating cycle that has a tendency to emerge with food restriction.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that food is meant to be enjoyed. “Food is wonderful!” emphasizes Atkinson. “Eat to remember, eat to relax, eat to connect, eat to love being alive. Give yourself permission to enjoy each and every thing you eat.”
To overeat less, if that’s challenging for you, show yourself compassion and understanding, she adds. “I know that seems dangerous given our culture’s obsession with rules, restriction, and the belief that ‘health’ is a product of restraint. But giving yourself permission to emotionally eat inadvertently creates the space and compassion to not use food in that way if one’s body doesn’t actually want or need food in that moment,” she says.
3. Seek Out Professional Help
All three experts emphasize that talking to a dietitian or a mental health professional may help you identify and address your relationship with food so that you get to a point where you truly enjoy eating.
Talk to a Health at Every Size (HAES) provider (HAES defines itself as an approach to health that focuses on equity, ending weight discrimination, and promoting access to healthcare regardless of size) — or use the Psychology Today therapists listings to find a therapist specializing in eating disorders near you.
“In my experience, the people who enjoy food with the most zeal are the ones who have the most ‘healthy’ relationship with food,” says Atkinson. And if you have a healthy relationship with food, you’re unlikely to engage in eating behaviors that could be considered an unhealthy coping mechanism for managing your underlying emotions.
Everyday Health’s Weight Loss Reframed Survey queried 3,144 Americans nationwide ages 18 and older who had tried losing weight in the previous six months. The study was fielded between July 10 and August 18, 2023, across demographic groups, genders, and health conditions. Survey recruitment took place via an online portal, in app, and via email. The margin of error for the sample size of 3,144 is +/-1.7 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
