Understanding Comfort Eating

Have you ever found yourself making a beeline for the biscuit tin when you’re feeling overwhelmed?

And have you ever noticed what you’re thinking about as you reach for another chocolate hobnob? Chances are it’s nothing to do with enjoying a sugary snack and everything to do with why you found yourself diving into the biscuits in the first place. You are probably stressed.

So, let’s talk about it.

Stress is a response to threat or pressure. It’s our body’s way of alerting us to a problem and telling us we need to act. This is known as a ‘fight or flight’ mechanism.

It sounds simple and in theory, it is: We see a threat, our brain and body respond to help us deal with the threat, we respond, the threat goes away and order is restored. (See our blog on Stress and Zebras for more information on the mechanics of stress).

The problem comes when we don’t know how to respond to the threat we face, or the options we have make us feel more overwhelmed or stressed. Here’s an example,

Imagine that you work in a busy office, there’s lots of meetings in your diary every week, you have an enormous to do list and you are being bombarded with emails asking why deadlines aren’t being met. You can’t do the work because of all the meetings and each meeting gives you more work to do. On top of that, the washing machine is on the blink, your partner is facing redundancy, your child is poorly and off school and now you’re feeling a bit sniffly too.

You might be feeling more than a little bit stressed, and you might have considered things to manage it like quitting your job. Unfortunately, the reality is that you have a mortgage and bills to pay, and the idea of application forms and interviews fills you with dread. So instead of leaping into the uncertainty of the job market, you take an alternative form of action that has a more immediate impact on your stress……biscuits.

When we are stressed, we tend to seek out foods that are high in carbohydrates, fats, and sugar. These are great sources of fast energy and produce chemicals in our brain that make us feel good and in some small ways reduce our stress levels.

Problem solved right??!

Sadly not, the problems that created our stressors remain because we haven’t tackled them directly. We have instead, given ourselves a temporary reprieve with fatty, carby, sugary loveliness. This is all our brain needs to know at this point and it now associates this behaviour as something that helps to soothe our fight and flight response. So, the next time we feel stressed, the more likely we are to go on the hunt for the biscuit tin.

Technically there’s nothing wrong with this and I’m not here to tell you not to snack. Far from it, no one loves biscuits more than me. The point is that when we have a coping strategy that helps us in the short term, there’s a chance it might have some more negative consequences in the longer term. For example, through comfort eating, we are more likely to gain weight and increase the likelihood of health problems which in turn will have a negative impact on your mood, mental health, and lifestyle.

It’s worth noting here that the stress eating is one type of behaviour that people engage in to manage their feelings. It can be replaced with any other behaviour that follows the same pattern of improving mood in the short term but creating longer term negative consequences. The obvious examples are alcohol, smoking and illicit substances but there are more subtle behaviours that can become problematic over time, this can include things like using social media, gaming, porn, gambling and shopping.

Top tips for managing comfort eating.

• Pay attention to your emotions. We have been talking a lot about stress here but people comfort eat to manage lots of negative emotions such as sadness and loneliness.

• Once you become more aware of how you feel, notice what you do in response to these feelings and why. Look out for ‘self-soothing’ behaviours.

• Explore different ways to self soothe and evaluate their effectiveness. Here’s some ideas to get you started:  

  • Have a hot bath.

  • Talk to a friend.

  • Do some high intensity exercise.

  • Do some yoga or stretching.

  • Go for a walk.

  • Practice mindfulness.

  • If you try different things but still feel stuck, seek help from a therapist, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an effective strategy for untangling unhelpful coping strategies and finding more helpful alternatives.
    

Finally, please be aware that comfort eating and eating disorders are very different and require different types of help and support. If you think you have an eating disorder and by this, I mean you are chasing the pursuit of thinness or the avoidance of fatness by restricting food or binging on food and then purging by vomiting or use of laxatives, please see your GP.