10 Principles of Intuitive Eating Series, Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S; and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-S, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND created the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating. These principles were developed to act as guidelines and steps for anyone and everyone to learn about intuitive eating and incorporate them into their lives. We will go into the ten principles individually, what they mean to me and what they can mean for you, and how they will help to guide you on your journey through intuitive eating. Throughout this series of blog posts, we will go in-depth on the individual principles. Today, we continue with Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness.

Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness:

Every time food is introduced through a cultural or life event, the emotional bond with food strengthens. This can be through the presence of wedding cake at the reception, cupcakes at a child’s birthday party, turkey for Thanksgiving, and my fondest memory was my Poppop’s baklava at Christmas. When food is introduced as a means to help us cope with life or comfort us, it deepens our emotional bond with food. Food takes symbolizes different things in our lives; food can be our comfort when we feel a sense of homesickness or loss. Food can be a celebratory. Lastly, food can also be our friend, because we can rely on food. One of the pitfalls of this friendship, is that food can become our only friend when we go through experiences of hurt, loneliness, and distrust. It is at this point, when food can become a coping mechanism. We are trying to expand our toolboxes, so that we have more than just food available when we are struggling emotionally.

Personally, this was the most challenging principle, as I worked through Intuitive Eating. Being a college senior, especially in my last semester, I have had many experiences with emotional eating. Most of these have either been boredom eating or anxiety eating caused by long breaks between classes, waiting for professors to grade final papers and projects, and boring assigned readings or prerecorded lectures. Emotional eating can appear differently for everyone, but how we learn from our behaviors and work to find their source matters. There are different emotions that can be attached to eating; they can be pleasant and joyful, sad and depressed, anxiety, anger, and boredom.

Different Forms of Emotional Eating:

Borderdom Eating:

Boredom eating is a form of emotional eating that most of us are familiar with. This can look like eating through a bag of snacks while waiting for a call back from a coworker or project manager. This kind of eating is not emotionally charged but can be the same as using food to numb strong feelings. Overeating can create feelings of guilt and shame, spiraling as a trigger for true emotional eating. While in a state of boredom eating, we tend to go into a state of numb and mindless eating. Food can be used in boredom eating to fill time or make a boring task more tolerable. There is nothing wrong with boredom eating, the trick is to be tuned in to when you are doing it.

Eating for the Sense of Comfort:

Think back to a time during childhood when you were sick; what meal did your parent or caretaker make for you? Whether it was a specific soup or a dish they specialized in, it comforted you when you were unwell. These foods are Comfort Foods. Whenever I had to come home sick from school, my mom would make me a bowl of ramen that she would have when she was a kid. Eating for a sense of comfort can be seen after losing a loved one, losing a job, or ending a relationship. Please don’t think that eating for comfort is a sign of weakness. I can remember when I failed a test for a psychology class, I ended up eating an entire package of Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. Eating for comfort becomes a problem when we isolate ourselves with food and view that as our ONLY source of comfort.

Eating for Sedation:

Eating for sedation is what it sounds like it is; eating to the point of self-numbing. With this eating style, the individual’s main goal in eating is to go into a figurative food coma. Eating as food to numb yourself from whatever you are currently going through, wanting to forget it all. This can lead to a food coma and even a food hangover. Much like an alcoholic hangover, one might feel sluggish and low energy the next day.

Eating for Punishment:

Eating for sedation can, unfortunately, turn into eating for punishment. Where eating for sedation turns bad is that the eating becomes forceful in nature. Leading to self-hate and self-blame, it can potentially cause hatred for food. A person who is showing signs of punishment-style eating eats large quantities of food in a forceful manner.

Experiencing Your Feelings:

There are different ways for recovering dieters to cope with their feelings that do not involve food. One of these methods is learning how to receive nurturance from others instead of food. Find ways to feel comforted and calm that don’t HAVE to involve food. For me, these look like discussing how I feel and what I’m going through with my partner, walking down by the water and the boardwalk, or simply spending quiet time with my cat. Give yourself the opportunity to experience your feelings; experiencing feelings and emotions is natural and not something that should NOT be defined by gender. When you give yourself a chance to experience your feelings, ask yourself, what are the physical feelings you experience with emotion?

While you are experiencing your feelings, remember that you can also take a break from your feelings. And acknowledge that you are losing food as a coping mechanism.

Coping with your emotions with kindness can look like different efforts for different people. When food is introduced as a means to help us cope with life or comfort us, it deepens our emotional bond with food. Just as with every principle in Intuitive Eating, be kind to yourself as you are unlearning dieting mentality and diet speak. If you have questions about Intuitive Eating, please message Robin Harris through email at robin@bodypositiveacupuncture.com to schedule a workshop. Look forward to more posts like these, which will cover the ten principles of Intuitive Eating.