How to Stop Emotional Overeating
And Find Your Healthy Weight for Life
I spent the first few decades of my life in the throes of an eating disorder.
My first port of call was anorexia. I starved my body in my early teens, restricting my food intake to the extent that I almost fainted on the sports field.
My next stop was binge eating disorder. At 16, I switched from an under-eater to an emotional overeater and this self-harming behaviour plagued me until my mid-30s.
I binged until my stomach felt like it would explode.
I binged on anything and everything, from crisps, to toast, to chocolate, to dry oats (I kept spooning the oats into my mouth well after the yoghurt and milk had run out).
I went from shop to shop, buying snacks and junk food, pretending to the storekeeper that I was hosting a party for friends that night. Then I scurried home, closed my curtains and hunkered down with my booty.
Later, I hid the sweet wrappers at the bottom of the bin even though I lived alone because I felt ashamed. The next morning, I raced around the park, desperate to burn off the calories I’d consumed.
Nobody knew I was a binge eater.
Not even I knew, until I came out of denial.
I interspersed my binge eating with periods of starvation, extreme dieting and compulsive exercise (exercise bulimia), to try to curb the weight gain.
In my early 20s, I was almost three stone heavier than I am now and I hated how I looked, hiding my body beneath baggy clothes, keeping my arms and legs under wraps.
Now, at 54, I happily run around the beach in a bikini, feeling content in my body and comfortable in my own skin.
I’ve learned to feel my feelings rather than eat on them and to love my body rather than loathe it. As I’ve done so, I’ve removed my blocks to intimacy and allowed love in. I wonder if I’d still be single today if I hadn’t overcome binge eating.
I have experienced a profound transformation, a near miracle, and I’m incredibly grateful that I found the courage to change.
My addictive, compulsive, self-harming behaviours extended beyond food.
From my teens until my mid-30s, I engaged in binge drinking, frequently vomiting up the contents of my stomach at the end of the night or the next morning (often on street corners in Mexico City, holding my then boyfriend’s hand).
I behaved compulsively around work, sex and relationships too, and all my addictions are interlinked, but in this article, I’m going to focus on the food.
Come out of denial
The first thing I want you to know if you’re struggling with disordered eating is that there is a solution.
That’s the good news, although I’ll add a caveat: there isn’t an overnight cure, a magic bullet or, indeed, a magic pill.
Emotional overeating is a complex disorder and healing takes time.
But all journeys start with a single step and my hope is that this article encourages you to shuffle forwards, to begin your healing journey or to deepen it if you’ve already started. (For additional support, watch my workshop on How to Stop Emotional Overeating or reach out to me directly via email).
As with any addiction, the first step we must take is to come out of denial and into awareness.
I was in denial for years. I couldn’t understand why I was overweight and why the countless diets I forced myself to go on didn’t work. I always ate salads when out with friends and my shopping trolley was usually packed with vegetables.
This was my public persona.
Behind closed doors, I behaved differently, eating to excess until all I could do was roll on the floor and drag myself to bed, clutching my stomach as tears rolled down my cheeks.
I started to come out of denial by telling my friends about my binges, even though they struggled to believe I overate. By this point, I was 30 and I’d lost my excess weight through a combination of extreme exercise and dodgy diet pills I picked up from private doctors in Mexico and Brazil.
But I kept being vulnerable and honest with others, until I had my breakthrough - I shared my overeating with someone who was healing from his own addiction and he opened my eyes to what was going on and directed me to people who could help.
This brings me to my next point …
Break the shame
Binge eating, as with any addiction, thrives in the shadows and feeds off our shame, compelling us to draw the curtains, disconnect from others and isolate.
We break addiction’s hold on us by shining the light on the dark recesses of our soul and by openly sharing the behaviours that leave us feeling so ashamed.
My healing journey accelerated when I found the courage to tell someone that I’d just had a binge rather than hide my eating, bash myself over the head and frantically run around the park.
My recovery started when I chose honesty, vulnerability and self-compassion over secrecy, self-recrimination and self-punishment.
In the beginning, I would overeat first and then share the details of my binge with a trusted friend. In time, I managed to phone someone before I picked up the food, to tell them what I was about to do and to allow them to talk me down from the ledge.
What courage. What a transformation.
This brings me to my next point …
Pause before picking up
Binge eating, for me, was a knee-jerk reaction - an ingrained, automatic response to fear, pain, boredom, stress, anxiety, grief, sadness, anger, hurt and to a host of other emotions.
I felt uncomfortable and I reached for instant gratification, for something to take the pain away and transport me to a different place.
Food brought momentary relief - a brief high or temporary numbness - but soon the feelings would return. Then I’d have two problems: the initial discomfort and the self-loathing that came with overeating.
It was only when I learned to put a pause between stimulus and response that I could understand what was truly going on and step away from the food.
The pause between stimulus and response goes like this:
I feel triggered or compelled or stimulated to eat by an event, a comment or an uncomfortable feeling, but instead of reaching for the food, I pause for a second and ask myself what’s really going on inside.
This brings me to my next point …
It’s about feelings not about food
Binge eating has very little to do with food and a great deal to do with our feelings.
By pausing before eating, I give myself a millisecond to ask:
What am I feeling? Why am I hurting? What am I afraid of? What feelings am I trying to numb or run away from?
I also get to ask:
What do I truly need or long for in this moment?
When I ask these questions, I might discover that I’m angry, or resentful, or scared, or lonely, or hurt, or sad, or tired, or bored, or thirsty, or craving company, or that I lack belonging, or that I need to rest, or sleep, or stop work, or go outside, or have some fun.
So, when you feel compelled to eat, ask yourself what you truly feel and what you truly need, and then try to process those feelings and meet those needs.
This is easier said than done, of course, and it takes time to change a well-established habit or a survival tool that we learned in childhood.
But it is possible, one small step at a time.
When you ask these questions, you might discover that your life is set up to keep you in a cycle of binge eating.
Maybe, when you pause before overeating, you identify that you are tired but you don’t have time or space to rest, so you binge instead.
Maybe you identify that you need to stop working but you have a deadline to meet so you reach for food to get you through the afternoon.
Maybe you identify that you need company but you haven’t taken the time to create solid friendships or to form a healthy relationship so you choose food comfort.
If this is the case, you might need to ask a deeper question: what needs to transform in my life so that I can set myself up to succeed and make it easier for myself to avoid excess food?
The answer to this question might feel daunting, but again, step by step, one day at a time, you can implement tiny changes, if you believe you’re worth it and if you’re hungry enough for change.
Some of you will be well practised when it comes to feeling your feelings and to engaging in deeper self-enquiry.
For others, feeling may be an entirely new experience.
This brings me to my next point …
Understanding the roots
Binge eating, like other addictions, is a dysfunctional coping mechanism - a survival tool that many of us learned in childhood to numb or escape our feelings because there was no other way.
Maybe the pain we felt was too much for our young self to manage so we found an escape route.
Maybe there were no emotionally mature adults around to help us to process our anger or pain, so we turned our anger inwards and found a way to numb out.
Maybe we learned at a young age to block our feelings and we’re only just learning to feel, and we’re scared that if we take the lid off our trapped emotions, we’ll be overwhelmed by our pain.
I can relate to all these experiences.
I used food as a child to numb my pain, grief and loss and to escape my feelings. I turned my anger inwards through binge eating and I used excess sugar and carbs to anaesthetise my fear of people, of life, of living.
Only I was trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole.
The hole was love-shaped or belonging-shaped or safety-shaped, but I was filling it with food. This is why my stomach was a bottomless pit. This is why the food didn’t touch the sides. I needed to eat more and more of it and I still didn’t feel full. (This analogy works for alcohol and for other addictions too).
Eventually, though, the food stopped working.
I reached the tipping point where the pain and shame I felt from binge eating was greater than the pain and fear I was trying to suppress.
I had to learn to put down the food and to feel.
But I was terrified. I thought the feelings would engulf me, destroy me, wipe me out.
Which brings me to my next point …
Don’t go it alone
Most binge eaters are incredibly self-reliant and self-sufficient, especially if we picked up the behaviour in our childhoods as a way to withstand huge amounts of pain, especially if there was nobody around to help, nobody we could trust.
It follows, therefore, that we will struggle to ask for help today.
But this self-reliance doesn’t serve us.
Healing from binge eating or any other addiction is virtually impossible to do in isolation from other humans, as mentioned above in relation to shame.
So, who can you ask for support?
Find someone you trust, someone you feel safe with, someone who is able to empathise and show you understanding and compassion (reach out to me if that feels right).
While we recover in connection with others, there is something we will need to learn to do for ourselves.
This brings me to my next point …
Learn to self-soothe
Children need to feel seen to feel soothed, and they need to feel soothed to feel safe and secure.
Seen.
Soothed.
Safe.
Secure.
If we didn’t feel seen or heard by our caregivers, it’s likely that we didn’t feel soothed, or safe, or secure.
In this insecure state, feeling adrift, feeling scared but wired for survival, we will have reached for something to soothe us.
And what’s more soothing than sugar and carbs?
The bad news is our childhood ship has sailed - we can’t get the soothing that we needed back then from our caregivers.
But the good news is we can learn to see ourselves, soothe ourselves in healthy ways and meet our own needs, so that we feel safe and secure and can forego our unhealthy crutches.
What does this look like in practice?
It means noticing our feelings rather than numbing them, feeling them rather than fleeing from them, and meeting our needs rather than dismissing them.
It means saying to ourselves, in a gentle, compassionate voice, ‘I see you. I hear you. I understand your pain. I’m here for you. What do you need?’
It means finding healthy ways to calm our nervous system, such as journaling, meditation, being in nature, cold water swimming, taking a bath and so forth.
And it means being a good parent to ourselves - showing up as a responsible, mature, compassionate adult in our lives so that the scared inner child knows she can trust us, that she is safe and that all is well.
What steps can you take today to soothe yourself and to help yourself to feel secure?
Other people can also be sources of soothing, of course, but only if we can discern between healthy people and unhealthy people. For example, a booty call with our ex can soothe us momentarily but it’s not good for us long-term. Once the temporary high has dissipated, we’ll likely feel rubbish about ourselves.
But we can co-regulate our nervous system with other humans - through laughter, through singing in a choir, through group meditation, through sharing with trusted people, and through other forms of healthy connection.
And finally …
Forgive yourself
When you binge eat, forgive yourself.
When you overeat, shower yourself with compassion.
When you resort to other unhealthy coping mechanisms, love yourself through the experience.
Step away from self-judgement, self-punishment and self-criticism.
You are already hurting. There is no need to inflict any more hurt.
You are enough.
You are perfectly imperfect.
You are human.
And you’re doing great.
If you enjoyed or appreciated this article, please like and share it with your friends and if you related to my journey, please share your reflections in the comments. It would be wonderful to connect. I appreciate you.
Resources & Workshops
‘How to Stop Emotional Overeating and Find Your Healthy Weight for Life’ is a 75-minute workshop that will support you to find food and body freedom. You can view the workshop recording (it was hosted live on April 1) for £26. Explore the details here.
My book, ‘How to Fall in Love - A 10-Step Journey to the Heart’ includes chapters on self-love and self-esteem and tells my story of recovery from binge eating as well as from unhealthy romantic relationships.
You can also hear my recovery story in my TEDx talk.