Rachel Wilson is a dietetic intern at Cox College. She is originally from Long Island, NY. She decided to study to become a dietitian with an intent for helping people conquer emotional eating and disordered eating. In her free time, Rachel enjoys yoga, spending time with family and friends, and watching Bravo.

Emotional to Mindful Eating

When you are feeling stressed, sad, angry, or even happy, do you sense yourself eating more? Food is sometimes used as more than fuel to satisfy our hunger; it is used to satisfy our loneliness, sadness, or boredom as well. When this happens, we aren’t listening to our body’s natural cues to let us know when we are hungry and when we are full. This often happens when we are having a stressful day (or week) at work, experiencing family or relationship problems, or even celebrating an accomplishment.

Signs You May Be an Emotional Eater

We may change our eating habits from time to time, but when this becomes a pattern you may be an emotional eater.

Here are some signs: 

• You eat when you’re not hungry.
• You eat to fill a void.
• You eat to put off doing something else.
• You reward yourself with food.

It is important to remember that emotional eating is common and if you do one of these things once in a while it doesn’t necessarily mean you are an emotional eater.

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is all about paying attention to the act of eating, and more importantly enjoying it! A lot of emotional eating comes from having a bad relationship with food and having a sense of shame associated with eating. A lot of people go straight to dieting to try and correct this; however many diets are restrictive and may even become a trigger to fall back into old habits. Mindful eating is giving yourself permission to eat instead of trying to fit yourself into a box of a certain diet to change your eating habits. The more you stop to listen to your body for the cues for hunger and fullness, the better you’ll be able to distinguish if you are eating to fuel your body versus your emotions.

Emotional to Mindful

Becoming a mindful eater is a journey and that journey begins with self-love. Mental health and eating are really intertwined. One way to help make the transition from an emotional eater to a mindful eater is to identify what triggers you to eat. For example, if you find that after a long day of work you immediately go to the refrigerator, take that and write it in a journal. When you go to eat something, take an extra second to stop and ask yourself if you are actually hungry, or if there is another reason you are reaching for food.

If you are unsure, walk away and do something else to occupy your time like calling a friend or running an errand. If you do feel hungry grab a small snack and remember to focus and enjoy it. Another way to move towards mindful eating is to eat with others and move the focus from the food to the people you are eating with. It’s important to keep in mind no one’s eating is perfect, but we can each work to improve our habits and our bodies well.

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