Emotional Eating: Signs, Symptoms, & Treatment

Emotional eating is when an individual uses food and eating to manage mood or stress. Emotional eating can occur on occasional basis or on a regular basis even up to several times a day. Emotional eating on its own is not an eating disorder and, when it occurs only occasionally, it is not necessarily a major problem. However, it can be a contributing factor in obesity and can lead to more serious eating disorders including binge eating disorder or bulimia. If emotional eating changes a person’s relationship with food so that behaviors around food start to influence mental or physical health as well as a person’s ability to lead a normal, healthy life, then it has become a problem that must be addressed.

If you suffer from symptoms of emotional eating, there is help. At Webster Wellness Professionals, we offer obesity and eating disorder treatment to help individuals overcome disordered eating behaviors as well as to address the emotional factors that contribute to disordered eating patterns. With our outpatient eating disorder and obesity treatment center in St. Louis, we focus on teaching healthy eating behaviors and overcoming emotional issues in order to help individuals achieve complete wellness. To learn more about our treatment for emotional eating, please contact our eating disorder and obesity treatment center today.

Signs & Symptoms of Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is an attempt to mange mood and emotions with food. Emotional eaters will obsess about food as a way to help cope with and overcome emotions. They feel compulsively drawn to eating, and often use emotional eating to self-soothe. Individuals with emotional eating problems typically feel stressed about their relationship with food, but do not know how to stop the compulsive eating behaviors.

Some degree of emotional eating is normal, as food typically becomes a focus during celebrations including holidays, birthdays, or weddings. However, emotional eating is a problem when it becomes a person’s central and only tactic for regulating mood.

Symptoms of emotional eating include:

• Turning to food to regulate emotions
• Feeling compelled to overeat during stressful, depressing, or emotional situations
• Obsessing about food when you are experiencing negative or stressful feelings and situations
• Eating when you are not hungry or beyond the point of being full
• Feeling upset about your eating behaviors but compulsively drawn to eat and unable to stop

Overcoming Emotional Eating: Treatment Options

In order to overcome emotional eating, it is important to understand the mental and emotional issues that are leading you to emotional eating behaviors and to encourage healthy eating and coping behaviors. Therefore, successful emotional eating treatment typically involves addressing both the emotional and behavior issues in an attempt to stop emotional eating behaviors. Treatment should include psychotherapy to help individuals learn new methods for coping with stress and negative feelings as well as treatment and education to teach healthy eating habits. Additionally, for individuals who suffer from obesity as a result of emotional eating, weight loss and weight control will also be an important part of treatment.

To learn more about overcoming emotional eating, please contact Webster Wellness Professionals in St. Louis. At our eating disorder and obesity treatment center, we offer outpatient treatment for teens, adolescents, and adults suffering from emotional eating and other disordered eating patterns. We take a complete approach to wellness to help you overcome disorder eating and the emotional issues fueling these eating behaviors.