Emotional Eating in the Time of Quarantine
So I don’t know about you, but I’m going on week 4 of social distancing and quarantine. That’s a whole month since I’ve seen my friends, go out to eat, grab drinks after work, or even step foot in my office. I’ve settled into a routine of sorts. I can’t say I want this to go on forever, but I have adapted a bit to this “new normal.” But no matter how settled I am beginning to feel, my nervous system is still trying to find its grounding. Our bodies are still very aware that we all are experiencing a collective trauma. We are scared, we have no idea what is going to happen, and we have no resolution in sight.
Despite experiencing this trauma together, we are still being setting unrealistic expectations for ourselves, particularly around food. I still log into Facebook and Instagram and feel bombarded with posts from people either criticizing themselves or others for emotional eating. If I see one more post referring to the “Quarantine 15,” I might scream.
I’m going to tell you something important though. Emotional eating is a myth. Now, I know there are plenty of diet books and programs that are going to disagree with me on that. Diet culture has us under its spell and has us believing that feeding our body when it is in distress is a bad thing.
I’d like to challenge that thought and see if I can’t convince you otherwise.
Our bodies are experiencing anxiety consistently right now, meaning our brains are working on overdrive. The part of our brain that is constantly on the lookout for danger is being shown over and over again that there is a real danger to be on the lookout for. The time-keeper part of our brain is looking for an ending, but we have no idea when that is. Our brain as a whole is trying to make sense out of this experience, to decipher what to believe and what not to believe, and we’re hyper-vigilant of each touch of the face and exactly how long we are washing our hands. That brain of ours is getting quite the workout. And just as we need to feed our body to fuel physical exercise, we also need to give our brain fuel to do exactly what it needs to do. Our brain needs extra fuel right now to do its job.
When you are stuck at home for days on end, the pleasures we are able to indulge in are restricted. Shouldn’t I be allowed to eat foods I want and enjoy? If eating that bowl of ice cream can provide a bit of joy to your day, that feels important. Find joy where you can. It’s grounding for us.
Diets and restrictions help us avoid feelings and disconnect from our bodies. It gives our brain something else to focus on. We also know that less food and higher levels of stress hormones help us to numb feelings. Okay, so what does that have to do with emotional eating? When we restrict, the natural result is for us to binge. Restricting and dieting are praised by society, even in the midst of a global pandemic. Showing “restraint” and “self-control” when working from home and the kitchen so close seems to be deserving of a gold star. But, anytime you restrict and deny yourself food, biology tells us that we are going to want more of it when we are allowed to have it…our body doesn’t trust that it is ever going to get this again because that’s what we’ve trained it to believe. So maybe that’s a binge, maybe it’s “emotional eating,” or maybe it’s just eating something you have told yourself you “shouldn’t.” However you define it, your body is just doing what your body does. It doesn’t know when it’s going to get this again and it’s making sure it’s getting enough to last until next time. So rather than looking at the binge or emotional eating behavior, let’s instead take a second look at the dieting and restricting behavior. Instead of numbing our feelings and disconnecting from our body, we can feed it and process what is actually happening to us.
There was a study done back in the ’80s where two groups of people were shown a movie about polar bears. After the movie, one group was told to NOT think about polar bears. The other was given no instructions in regards to thinking about the polar bears. After a period of time, each group was asked to recount how often they thought about polar bears. Not shockingly, the group that was instructed to not think about polar bears actually thought about them more often. I tell you about this for 2 reasons. 1. When we label food or behavior as bad and say we cannot have that food or do that behavior, we actually are creating a situation where we want it more. When we tell ourselves that we CANNOT emotionally eat, it is going to end up being the exact thing we have the urge to do. 2. Suppressing an urge or a thought has the same consequence. We can’t just push a feeling or thought down and pretend it is not there because it’s going to make that urge/feeling/thought even stronger. That urge to eat a bowl of ice cream, that feeling of anxiety, or even those thoughts about wishing you can go that one restaurant you love that you can’t go to now. All of those are going to get stronger the longer we try to deny that they are there.
So okay, fine, maybe you are begrudgingly buying in that emotional eating isn’t a thing. Chances are, you’re saying something along the lines of “That makes sense but it doesn’t apply to me.” But you are not a special magical unicorn. If we can buy in about this for everybody else, we can also buy in about it for ourselves.
Despite knowing all of this, you may still be feeling a bit binge or that you are overindulging. So now what?
Drop judgments. Quit beating yourself up for fueling your body. And remember that all foods provide some fuel for our bodies.
Allow yourself to have the food. No restriction. No rules. You don’t have to earn it, you can just enjoy it. When we take the “forbidden” from it, it loses some of the holds it has on us (see polar bear story above).
Accept imperfection. We are all functioning with whole new stress right now. We have no playbook. Our bodies may change, they may not. Changes or not, those are not a reflection of your character, how well you are coping, or anything else. Our lifestyles have changed, it is expected that other things will change along with it.
Still, following social media accounts that make you feel bad about yourself for not living up to their ideal of how THEY think you should be coping? Unfollow that garbage! We are all different people, we bring different life experiences and ways of coping into this pandemic, and we are all going to respond differently. Nobody on Instagram, friend, or influencer either one, has the right to make me feel bad for how I am or am not coping with a global pandemic and trauma.
Concerned about your own relationship with food? Wondering if an anti-diet or HAES approach is right for you? If you would like more information or have questions about individual counseling, schedule a free 20 min consult here.
Embodied Self Counseling is located in Maplewood, MO. We work with clients struggling with eating disorders, body image, anxiety, gender identity, and life transitions in Maplewood and surrounding communities in the greater St. Louis area.