Emotional eating and food concerns
Understanding emotional eating
Is food constantly occupying your thoughts?
- What to eat next (while you might still be eating)
- Wondering if you just ate enough
- How long until I can eat again
- What shall I order tonight?
- Planning meals excessively
This constant chatter — sometimes called food noise — can feel intrusive, exhausting, overwhelming, and never-ending.
Many people find themselves turning to food in times of stress, sadness, or overwhelm. Eating becomes more than just nourishment — it can serve as comfort, distraction, or even a way to feel in control when life feels unmanageable. Over time, this can create what’s often described as an “unhelpful relationship with food".
Emotional eating is not about willpower, self-discipline, or body size. It can affect people of any age, gender, or weight. Because these patterns often develop gradually, it’s easy not to notice how eating has shifted from something natural into something that feels more like a coping strategy — and how food noise has crept into the background of everyday life.
The good news is that emotional eating isn’t random or a sign of weakness — it has roots we can gently uncover, and with awareness, we can begin to change the story.
Why It Happens
Food can temporarily soothe feelings we may find hard to face directly. Carbohydrates and other “comfort foods” trigger the release of serotonin and other brain chemicals that help us feel calmer, even if just for a short while.
When this happens often enough, the brain can unconsciously begin to associate food with relief from stress or emotional pain. If we don’t understand why we seem locked in a cycle of eating—even while our logical side knows the behaviour is destructive—this is often the reason: our brain has learned to seek food as a shortcut to comfort.
"Over time, repeated behaviours, emotional defences, and reward-seeking patterns carve deep pathways in the brain, like grooves in a well-worn track. For those struggling with weight, these pathways influence decisions in ways that can make everyday choices feel like climbing uphill."
"We often assume we’ve outgrown our prehistoric human cravings, but the truth is, our brains are still running Stone Age software in a high-tech food world. But our biology didn’t get the memo that we now have Uber Eats, snack aisles the length of football fields, and food advertisements popping up between emails."
(Both quotes are discussed in my book, Just Call Me Fat: Jumping Off The Food Noise Merry-Go-Round).
Many people turn to food for reasons that go far beyond physical hunger. Eating can become a way to cope with emotions or circumstances that feel overwhelming or hard to express. Some of the experiences that may underlie emotional eating include:
- Stress at work or home
- Bullying
- Loneliness or isolation
- Grief or loss
- Past trauma or unresolved experiences
- A sense of having little control in other parts of life
Although food can provide short-lived comfort, it rarely eases the root cause of distress.
This can leave people stuck in cycles that feel frustrating, confusing, or even shameful.
Beyond the eating itself, these struggles can ripple into how we see ourselves. They can make us question our relationship with our bodies—bodies that are constantly changing depending on how we eat, how others respond to us, and how we measure ourselves against those responses.
At its heart, this isn’t just about food; it’s about how we see ourselves, and the longing to feel at home in our own skin.
How Counselling With Me Can Help
Through our counselling work together, we can start to explore your relationship with food, your body, your identity, and the emotions behind it. Together we can:
- Gently uncover the feelings and experiences that may be driving your eating patterns
- Understand how and why your brain has learned to link food with comfort
- Find new, healthier ways to cope with stress, anxiety, or emotional pain
- Build a kinder, more balanced relationship with food
- Begin to feel more at home in your body, rather than at war with it
- Explore how food and body image connect with your sense of self and identity
The focus is not on diets, numbers, or quick fixes — but on self-understanding, healing, and creating lasting change.
Emotional overeating is also something I have personal experience with. Having lived with an unhealthy relationship with food myself, I know just how complex and layered it can feel. I instinctively understand the nuances — the guilt, the comfort, the secrecy, the frustration — and how hard it can be to even put these experiences into words.
Because of this, I am uniquely placed to offer support. I bring not only professional training, but also a lived understanding of what it means to struggle in this way. That combination allows me to meet you with genuine empathy, compassion, and insight.
My role is never to judge or blame, but to walk alongside you at your own pace, helping you feel truly understood and supported. Together, we can begin to gently untangle these patterns and move towards a kinder, healthier relationship with both food and yourself.
Change may not happen overnight, but step by step. It is possible to find freedom from food noise and begin living in a way that feels lighter, calmer, and more authentic.