Why does emotional eating happen?

People who eat when they are upset may not listen to their body's hunger signals. A part of our brains, called the hypothalamus, controls the signals. Blood sugar levels, the stomach and intestines, and hormones also affect hunger¹.

Getting back in touch with your hunger signals might make a difference. Three types of hunger signals tell us when to eat, what to eat and when to stop. Learn to recognize these three hunger signals:

Hunger, including stomach growling and hunger pangs—these are feelings that tell us it’s time to eat
Fullness—it’s the feeling of satisfaction we get when the nerves in our stomachs tell the brain that it’s full
Appetite—this is a desire for or an interest in food that is linked to sight, smell or thoughts of food

Because appetite overrides hunger and fullness, you may eat more when you’re upset because you’re thinking about food. To find out what signals cause you to eat, try to keep an eating journal for a week or two. Write down everything you eat, plus the time of day you ate and what you were feeling right before you ate. This will help you understand what starts your emotional eating².

Start with small changes

The next time you want to eat when you’re upset, try doing something else to occupy your mind. You could take a walk, do sit-ups or push-ups, read a book or even reorganize your junk drawer. This will be challenging at first, but after a few weeks, instead of reaching for snacks in those upset moments, you’ll start doing other activities.

Changing your eating habits takes time and practice. Emotional eating is a barrier—something that gets in the way of making a change and staying with it. If you’re an emotional eater, you should know that it’s also normal to feel like you've slipped once in a while on your eating goals.

Keep trying, and soon you will get closer to reaching your healthy-eating goals. If making changes is hard for you, begin with small changes where you can see your progress. For example, if you decide to walk when you are upset, track on a calendar how many times you walked. By the end of one month, you’ll be able to see that instead of eating when you were upset, you walked a number of times. Then, you can set a goal to increase that number the next month. Before you know it, when you’re upset, you will have the urge to walk instead of the urge to eat. Your deeper feelings Emotional eating means that you eat too much or too often because you're sad, stressed or lonely. Food can be soothing and can distract you from what's really bothering you. However, sometimes eating when you’re upset is caused by low self-esteem. If your self-esteem spoils your efforts to stop eating when you are upset, counseling can help. The success of changing your eating habits might also further improve your self-esteem. Remember, with the right resources and support, you do have the ability to change your eating habits and resolve your deeper feelings.