Today, many people have already recognized that not all of their eating is the same. There is the kind of eating that comes as the result of a slow but clear signal from the body that energy is decreasing and that the system needs fuel. The signs are weakness, difficulty remembering and thinking, confusion, and a feeling throughout the entire body that it needs food… any food that will give it energy again.

But there is also a different kind of craving for food: emotional eating. Intense, aggressive, demanding, and specific. A craving that will not look twice at a banana, an apple, or boiled potatoes and salad, but one that wants very specific products, most often in the category of processed food. Craving chips, chocolate, cheese, prosciutto, cookies, and pastries is not a sign of a physical need, but of something else, something deeper. 

Of suppressed and denied emotions and conflicts.

Today we will look at what causes so-called emotional eating and how we address it.

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The Origin of Emotional Eating : Your Childhood

When we mention to people today that the cause of some of their adult behaviors is rooted in childhood, some sigh wearily and say: why do we always have to go back to the past? I want to live in the present, not spend the rest of my life chewing over what’s already gone.

I understand that looking back can seem counterproductive, but today I want to show you why taking a realistic look at your childhood is essential.

Imagine that your body-mind (an inseparable unit of body and mind) is a house.

Every house first needs a foundation, which must be laid on stable ground and must be deep enough to hold the house upright. Even if that house eventually has several floors. Foundations are always laid at the beginning of construction and are the basis for everything built on top. If the foundations are rotten, weak, or laid on sand, living in that house will later become dangerous. Whether during construction or once people have already moved in.

The walls will crack, the basement will leak, the house will shift. All of this because of the foundation. No matter what materials or paint colors you use on the walls, they will crack. But the fundamental problem won’t be the walls — it will be the foundation.

Your Childhood: The Foundation of Your Nervous System’s Settings

In our childhoods, the FOUNDATIONS are laid for how we function in life. When we are born, we carry enormous potential for neurological development, but the way that potential manifests depends entirely on our environment. If we grow up in a loud environment, our entire nervous system will adapt to tolerate noise. But as a consequence, it will significantly reduce its ability to tolerate or even detect quiet sounds.

If we grew up in an environment where, because of volatile parents, we had to be constantly careful not to say or do anything wrong, then we will imprint that same vigilance into our nervous system and carry it forward through life. If we learn in childhood that it is not safe or acceptable to express our negative or positive emotions, we will learn to close off our emotional world in adulthood as well.

These are the foundations of the nervous system. And these foundations determine whether, in adult life, you will be calm, confident, and at ease, or whether you will be constantly tense, frightened, and stressed.

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How Are Nervous System Settings Connected to Emotional Eating?

People who grew up in environments with little warmth, with many conflicts (including the quiet ones), in environments where they could not fully express their authentic emotions, grow up into tense adults.

And that tension has a significant impact on the body: the shoulders droop, the heart rate is elevated, the hands and feet are cold, the breathing is shallow, and stress hormones flood the system, like adrenaline and cortisol.

The human body does not want to remain in such states for long. Human beings naturally long to feel good, relaxed, joyful. We are drawn toward being flooded with happiness hormones: serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine. These are the hormones that wash over us when someone holds us with love, when we feel seen and heard, when we discover something new, when we are playful.

The problem is that some children grew up in environments where these moments of happiness were rare. Some people don’t know how to have fun, because fun simply wasn’t on the menu in their childhoods.

If you’ve never tasted a dish, you probably won’t know how to cook it, right?

And this brings us to why emotional eating happens. We have a child who is not receiving the experiences and attention that would naturally flood them with happiness hormones. Yet the child, unconsciously, still longs for those hormones.

And that child discovers, early on, substances and activities that (at least temporarily) flood them with those hormones. This might be video games, television, books, and for some children, that “antidepressant” is food.

Why Is Sweet, Salty, and Fatty Food an Antidepressant?

Processed food with high amounts of fat has been shown to most powerfully stimulate the brain’s pleasure centers. Pastries, chocolate, and chips allow the body to be flooded with happiness hormones during the act of eating.

A person who is in chronic stress — stress primarily FOUNDED by the way they grew up — will use food to keep themselves from sliding into depression. They will eat in order to feel at least approximately okay. The more they eat, the greater their actual emotional distress, which they have never acknowledged and never been able to set down anywhere.

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Emotional Eating Is Not a Character Flaw. It Is a Signal

The next time you see someone “stuffing” themselves with food beyond their limits (even if that person is you), remember this piece of writing. Instead of asking the judgmental question — “How can they eat like that? Don’t they know they’re getting fat?” — ask this one, the compassionate question: “I can see this person is in distress. I wonder what happened to them that they had to flee their feelings into food?”

If that person is you, and you catch yourself unable to stop eating and intensely craving food that you know does not support your health… Remember that this food was the best possible emergency exit available to you.

Until now.

Now you know that this food is an escape from accumulated feelings for which you have not found a safe relationship or space to express.

The solution to your emotional eating is not discipline or redirecting your attention. The solution is to turn your gaze toward the place where the problem began. Toward your childhood. It is time to look at that childhood from a realistic rather than an idealistic perspective. Dr. Gabor Maté’s books will be of great help to you here, as will the wonderful book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.

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