Emotional Eating - Breaking Free From The Cycle

After yet another shocking statistic I heard about obesity and excess weight, I started thinking again about how serious this issue is - first, from an emotional perspective, and second, from a health standpoint.
Why do we eat? Is it because we are truly hungry and need nutrients, or because we are stressed, feeling a void, bored, upset, desperate, or lonely? When we eat not out of nutritional needs but for emotional reasons, we are engaging in emotional eating or overeating. We use food for something it is not meant for - for self-soothing and satisfying emotional hunger. Food becomes a substitute for nourishment in the form of love, hugs, shared experiences, and care. When those are missing, people turn to a replacement - one that is anything but healthy. An emotional eater often lives from a place of lacking love, loneliness, abandonment, self-dislike, fear, insecurity, and self-hatred. Emotional eating becomes a way to reduce stress, to self-soothe, and as a defense mechanism. All these unmet needs get redirected toward food or, in other cases, toward substances like drugs and alcohol, gambling, shopping, social media, movies, TV, and various activities - all intended to fill the emptiness inside.

Eating, particularly consuming carbohydrates, is a quick and effective way to temporarily reduce cortisol levels, one of the main stress hormones. However, this relief is short-lived and comes at the cost of our overall health. I have caught myself reaching for something sweet whenever I was feeling off or had a difficult conversation or situation. Food acts like a drug - it stimulates the same brain centers and pathways, which is why developing an addiction to it is not difficult at all. The goal of overeating is to fill the void and feel better - I would call it a false and fleeting comfort. But of course, this doesn’t actually help because the void remains; it is internal, not external, and cannot be filled by something outside of us. When those unmet needs, emotional lacks, and the functions we assign to food disappear, emotional eating also fades away. This happens when we change our relationship with ourselves - from toxic to nourishing. That’s when we experience emotional lightness, and losing weight becomes easier, just like any desired change. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, but it stops feeling like such a struggle and resistance.

In other words, the more we learn to truly love ourselves, the easier change happens. New habits and a new way of life (or returning to a healthy one we once had) become more natural. Accepting ourselves as we are in this moment and phase of life allows for real transformation. Because we cannot change something while we are too busy denying it or pretending it isn’t there. This is self-love - the kind that is unconditional, gentle, nourishing, compassionate, and yet disciplined. Our goal is to learn to love ourselves unconditionally, but not with pity - to set healthy boundaries for ourselves so that we stay away from food dependency. Meeting and talking with loved ones, engaging in sports, hobbies, meditation, and psychotherapy - all these help. When those deeper needs are met, emotional eating disappears.