“Why do I eat emotionally? What do I get out of it?”

Sound familiar? We know emotional eating gives us feelings of shame and guilt, it can lead to weight gain, it can begin a spiral of negative self-talk, none of this we would volunteer to experience. But emotional eating gives us other things too; it is powerful. When you let your emotions guide what you eat, it isn’t about what you eat but why.

Eating emotionally…

… works as a distraction: you’re focussed on the food and not how you feel. In some scenarios, you eat so much you can only focus on the physical discomfort of overeating and not on the emotional discomfort.

… gives us pleasure: we reach for foods—like mashed potatoes, doughnuts, and pizza—that overload our senses (our mouth waters, our nose loves the smell). Sometimes the foods we reach for can even remind us of happy memories: meals at grandma’s house, birthday parties with friends, or even incredible meals had on vacation.

… gives us a sense of control. When everyth...

December is a delicious time of year! There are family recipes that get baked, holiday parties with seasonal cocktails, and who is going to argue with an advent calendar that lets you have a piece of chocolate every day!

If you read the above and immediately felt overwhelmed (or like you’ll need to restrict your eating this time of year), STOP. This time of year, can be triggering for a lot of people, not only are all sorts of foods more available, eating until bursting is encouraged by family members and in the media, and stress if running high—hello mall shopping and family drama! This time of year is a rollercoaster that can have your emotional eating get the best of you.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Here are a few ideas on how you can challenge the holiday expectation to overeat, overexercise, overreact. 

• Trying eating food that you actually enjoy and tastes good to you. After a couple of days of gingerbread, you may find yourself wanting a more balanced meal.

...

It can be a difficult time of year for many people. While holiday movies portray happy families and festive get-togethers, it can leave many of us feeling left out if we don’t have the ‘perfect’ holiday experience.

Abuse, loss of a loved one, comments about your weight, divorce, missing loved ones due to Covid-19 restrictions, eating disorders, pressure to drink alcohol, are all situations that can make people uncomfortable and dread the upcoming holiday season.

To make the holiday season a bit more bearable, start with what you can control. You don’t have to say yes to every gathering (even if it is with family). In fact, saying “no” is a great example of setting clear boundaries with others and is a great way to protect your mental health. It can be freeing to not put yourself in a situation you know will be triggering.

And on that note: do some thinking around what might be triggering you. You can talk to someone you trust—or reach out to a professional—or grab your journal and l...

Take a deep breath. And another one.

Binges are full of emotions before, during, and after. Food has a way of giving us a sense of calm and numbness, but anyone who has eaten emotionally knows that the intense emotions that lead up to a binge and then the ones that follow after—guilt, shame—can leave you feeling so much worse than before any food was eaten.

Emotional eating is a common coping mechanism that many people use to manage everything from stress, to not getting enough sleep, to depression. While your mind may be telling you there is something shameful about emotional eating, the truth is that it is a sign that you are doing your best to manage everything life throws at you. And sometimes life can be overwhelming or scary or just plain crappy.

So, you’ve binged on all your favourite foods in an attempt to escape your negative feelings. As you slowly come out of the binge mentality and regret begins to blossom, take a moment to pull out your journal and try one or a few of t...

This blog post is the one of a series where we’re giving advice on tools you can try and see if they are worth adding to your ‘toolkit’ when you’re faced with emotional eating. Some tools will work for you and others you won’t find as helpful—check out our previous posts here and give some of them a try!

Have you had a busy day at work, and you sit with some chips next to your computer, only to find yourself scraping the bottom of the bag without realizing it? Or maybe it is late at night and you’re in front of the TV and scooping from an ice cream pint until there isn’t a bite left?

Often those of us who binge eat will do so in a rushed way. This could look like hopping from sweet to salty and back to sweet again, or maybe it’s a panicked shopping spree at the corner store before up ending the bag of goodies in bed where you intend to indulge. Ultimately, we’re hoping the binge will give us some relief from how we’re feeling or create a false sense of control when it seems like eve...

We have all been there. Whether it is after binge eating the night before or a pair of pants no longer fits as we’d like them to or we’re out with friends and believe we’re the biggest body there, we have all had days where our body image is negative. Often a single day can become a few days, or a week, and it so often leads to (more) emotional eating.

It can be so easy to think that the solution to “snap out of it” would be to restrict your food intake and get in a long workout the next day (hands up if you’ve been there!). But this starts the restrict-binge emotional rollercoaster again—a ride we hate and want to get off of!

Here are 5 tips of things to do instead of beating yourself up with tasteless salads and torturous workouts:

1. Put on an outfit that you feel good in. This could mean your softest sweater, most flattering leggings, or your favourite dress, whatever is going to give you a little mood boost to see yourself and feel your body in. This is a way to show your body ...

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

• You’re out to dinner with a group of friends and you all decide to ‘splurge’, only to spend time talking to each other about how you’ll make up for it tomorrow.
• Other parents are talking about how much wine they drink once their kids have gone to bed, and you feel the pressure to do the same to relate.
• You and your spouse are both complaining about how you both have no willpower to work out; thinking that if you plan to work out together, you’ll both get it done.
• You make a pact with a friend to both start a new diet in the countdown to a big event, swearing you’ll keep each other on track.

It has become a big part of our social interactions to commiserate with others about dieting, indulging, and what we should be doing in the name of ‘health’. Doesn’t it sometimes feel like sharing stories about failing on our strict diets is the only way we’re relating to one another? We’re focussing on the negative.

Let’s take back the conversatio...

No, we don’t mean calling your emotional eating Bill or Angela (although if you think that might be helpful—go for it!), we suggest trying to name the emotion you’re feeling while reaching for food. Emotional eating is trying to satisfy a feeling with food that may make you feel good for a moment. Maybe that’s chips for you or maybe your sweet tooth calls for chocolate bars, no matter: when you find yourself reaching for these try and check in with naming what you are feeling.

You may start off by thinking “Am I angry? Or am I feeling sad?”. But these well-known emotions aren’t just the only ones you might come up with, emotions can be linked to each other and there can be a few layers. Other ones to think about that may be less obvious:

• If you’re angry, maybe you’re also feeling irritable or frustrated or jealous.
• If you’re sad, it could be that you’re feeling lonely or grieving or not good enough.
• If you’re nervous, think about if you’re also feeling embarrassed or confused ...

"What do you mean it's not about the food?" Here are 7 Compelling Reasons WHY

Most people believe their struggles with food and weight have to do with FOOD itself.  Before I go any further, the good news is you don’t need another Diet, you don’t need another boot-camp, you don’t need to buy apps that tell you when you should stop eating, you don’t need any of this stuff….bare with me!

You can save yourself thousands of $$$ by addressing the true root cause of why you struggle with food and weight. Think of how much money you’ve already spent on these products and services that lead you right down the rabbit hole, yet AGAIN.

Emotional eating, overeating, and binge eating have NOTHING to do with eating less and exercising more. You can absolutely try these 2 strategies, but often they will FAIL YOU because they don’t lead to long term change…or happiness!

If it’s not about the food, then what is it about?? Here are the ROOT causes for emotional eating: 

1. SOCIETY: the fo...