“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...

We’ve got some more client insights for you! When it comes to working on your mental health in therapy many people have ideas about what it will be like based on what they see in movies and on TV… But it isn’t often like that at all! Therapy is personal and it can be challenging at times too. Often, clients are surprised by certain things that come up for them while working through traumatic experiences. Here are a few examples that hopefully you can relate to, or at the very least give you a more realistic idea of what others have been through.

My binge eating got worse before it got better. 

This is incredibly common! Being honest and open in therapy means that you are working through some very strong emotions and reliving some parts of your trauma. If eating has been the way you’ve chosen to sooth or distract yourself from these feelings in the past, you will absolutely use emotional eating again as a tool. And that is ok! The more you can take pressure off yourself in your ses...

1. Why did you create the First Step Course? 

After 11 years of working with clients on emotional eating, I noticed that there are common patterns and strategies that all clients can benefit from. So, I set out to package these great pieces of information into a course that could be accessible to more people—and it became the First Step Course!

Also, my client roster is currently full, but I wanted to make sure I could still help people who struggle with emotional eating. It is much more common than our shame would have us believe.

2. Who is the course for?

This course is for anyone who feels they need support with emotional eating. There is a focus on what is emotional eating and why we do it (and how we get stuck in the cycle).

The great thing about this course is that while there are common triggers for emotional eating, this course will not only help you identify them, it will also help you build strategies to support your own needs. That way you are better prepared when...

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 ...

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!

Here at the Centre for Emotional Eating we are big fans of therapy! While that may be obvious, we are also big believers that support for your mental health doesn’t always have to be a formal in-person session. Below are a few myth-busting ideas around seeking support for your emotional eating:

Support doesn’t have to mean sitting on a therapist’s couch.

Over the past year we have seen more and more options available for different ways to access therapy. There are more virtual options than ever before! Video sessions and online courses have become more popular and can be done in the comfort of your own living room. Our online course, the First Step Course, can help you understan...

Today we’re sharing three common comments we hear from clients. Often, after we’ve been working with a client for a while, we begin to hear that being in therapy has proved positive in surprising ways!

1. I wish I had started taking care of my mental health sooner.

It is so easy to distract yourself from what you are really feeling—with work, your family, with food. Often it takes a big moment or event that is a tipping point for people to finally invest in supporting their mental health. It is scary to ask for help or admit that you’re not doing ok! While many wish they had started opening up sooner, you have to decide if you are ready to dig deep and start to make changes. Remember: support for your mental health doesn’t have to be formal in-person therapy; even taking small steps to support your mental health will be beneficial. You can start by setting boundaries with others, getting out for a walk regularly, or even just reading in the sunshine.

2. I wish I had known not ...