Why Some People Struggle With Emotional Eating

If I only had 60 seconds to give my younger self some health advice

Why did I do that?

You log off from work, and your eyes are strained and tired from sitting at a desk and staring at a screen all day. Your brain feels foggy, heavy even, and you’re desperate for relief from the dullness behind your eyes.

So you get up to go to the kitchen, grab that snack that you bought earlier this week, and go back to the living room couch. You won’t look at the nutrition label but you’ve already memorized the amount of calories and sugar in the product. It’s not good.

You told yourself you were cutting down on sugar.

You told yourself you were not going to eat junk anymore.

You told yourself you were going to eat healthier.

But you still finish it.

Why did I do that?

It makes you sad and frustrated, to feel like you have no control. There were apples in the fridge. Hummus and carrots too. Yet you chose something unhealthy.

Why did I do that?

You feel gross, maybe even an acute disgust toward yourself. You think you are a failure. So you think to yourself that you might as well dig the hole deeper, and make it really hurt.

Why did I do that?

It’s a vicious thought pattern I’ve faced before myself. An awful loop of fatigue, leading to emotional eating, leading to shame, leading to more emotional eating, until you physically feel like you can’t eat anymore. We feel crazy almost, for being unwilling to stop eating even as we think to ourselves that we are hurting our own well-being.

But it’s important to remind yourself that these instances are not your fault.

So let’s talk about “Why did I do that?”

It’s been ingrained in us since we were schoolchildren, that healthy eating looks a certain way — plenty of vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains, and lean proteins.

This is not technically wrong, but what this messaging also did was that it demonized “unhealthy” foods. Ads, magazines, celebrities, and sometimes the people we trusted would tell us that fried foods and sugary desserts were essentially poison, that it caused heart disease, weight problems, cancer, and diabetes. That we need to avoid it at all costs.

On the flip side, the irony is that these unhealthy foods are also the center of our celebrations and commemorations. We eat birthday cake on birthdays, celebrate with french fries and milkshakes after performing well on an exam, and go out for ice cream when we get the job promotion.

Modern western culture has made us believe we need to both simultaneously self-restrict the exact foods we emotionally tie to positive occasions. And this “food on a pedestal” mindset coupled with an intense state of fatigue or stress, makes us feel out of control with food.

Have you ever agonized over the decision of whether to eat a dessert which was meant to be a celebratory occasion? Why do we do this?

But it is normal to crave unhealthy or comfort foods in times of fatigue or stress, it is human. And that choice to eat out of comfort is just a natural reaction to doing your best to self-heal. We have been taught to tie food to our emotional health, and when we are stressed, fatigued, or anxious about something in our lives, it becomes the go-to solution.

At the moment, it can feel like the only solution.

Yet if you’re still with me here reading this, and understand exactly what I’m talking about, then you’ve reached the silver lining: You still hold empathy for yourself, which means that you are not trapped by this.

The 60 seconds of advice I would give to my younger self

If I only had a minute to give my younger self some advice when it comes to finding an organic balance with food and health, this is what I would tell her:

1. Learn to find your body’s natural balance again using principles of harahachi-bunme.
2. It is possible to decouple your emotions from your relationship with food using Japanese self-compassion towards human nature.
3. Finding joy, inspiration, and love from food becomes a given when you prioritize quality — quality of food, but also experience. With luxury in mind, eating food will never make you feel bad about yourself again.
4. The silver bullet cure is variety. Seven a day if you can.
5. Your health is the rest of your life, there is little left when this foundation is not built well and strong — so take it slow, with the right support, and do it properly. The tortoise always wins.

The journey may not feel easy all the time, but it also doesn’t need to be wearying to the spirit or hurtful to the soul — find the right support, lean into your curious side, and enjoy the ride. Eventually you’ll find that life and lifestyle are one and the same.

Learn to be healthier, inspired by life in Japan:

I teach about health inspired by simple Japanese philosophies and lifestyle practices, so you can learn to find peace, fulfillment, strength, and health in your own body. Stay in the loop and get access to free resources: Sign up here!