Intuitive eating with the Bible; Cope with Your Emotions without Food

Learning how to stop emotional eating means learning what emotional eating is and isn’t, learning how to explore and meet your true needs, and learning how to accept grace for how you cope.

What we describe as “emotional eating” is typically the result of restriction.

Hang with me here.

Putting a limit on the amount or types of food you can eat often leads to emotional eating due to physical and psychological deprivation.

Deprivation Leads to “Emotional Eating”

Physical deprivation is not eating enough to satisfy biological hunger. This person thinks that they shouldn’t be hungry because they ate the amount that was deemed “enough” from their diet plan. When they eat past the amount allowed by their meal plan, it feels very traumatic because of all the emotions wrapped up in wanting to stick to the plan. The truth, however, is that their diet has left their body so physically deprived and undernourished that it is having a biological response that is encouraging them to eat.

Psychological deprivation occurs when we have deemed certain foods not-allowed and we feel deprived even when we are physically full. It takes more than physical fullness to be satisfied with a meal.

When we place certain foods off-limits, we typically end up eating that food until we’re overly full. This eating feels very emotional; we may feel out of control and we eat past fullness. In reality, forbidding that food is what caused the eating.

Are we putting too much blame on “emotional eating”?

Food usually has emotional associations for all of us. We connect to food emotionally the first time we were offered milk to soothe our crying as an infant. This emotional relationship with food continues to develop as we celebrate with feasts, receive comfort from warm soup when we’re sick, and attach recipes to memories of loved ones. Food is emotional.

True Emotional Eating Exists on a Continuum

The mildest feeling food can create is pleasure, a normal healthy part of the human experience. Comfort associated with food comes in second. We receive comfort from a hot cup of coffee on a snowy day—also very normal and healthy.

We can start to get into trouble when we use food (either eating or not eating) to distract ourselves from feelings we don’t want to experience. A bit of this is normal and can be coping tool. BUT, when we get to a place of using food to numb ourselves, we lose connection with our intuitive eating signals. If food is our only coping tool, we are unable to process and manage feelings.

At the very end of the emotional eating continuum is using food for punishment. When we use food to numb our feelings, we often experience a lot of guilt and shame around that behavior. These intense emotions can lead to eating large quantities of food or abstaining from food for a long period of time in an angry, condemning way.  

How to Stop Emotional Eating Step 1: Remove the Restrictions

Food does not have the power to determine your righteousness. In Mark: 18-20 Jesus declared all foods clean.

Start here:

How to get started with Intuitive Eating

Reject the Diet Mentality

Honor Your Hunger

Make Peace with Food

How to Stop Emotional Eating Step 2: Explore Your Needs

If you find yourself wanting to eat when you are truly not physically hungry, sit down in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what your true need is. You can pray out loud or in a journal.

Express to the Lord what you’re experiencing, and ask him to show you the root of it. Be sure to take some time to listen to His answer.

How to Stop Emotional Eating Step 3: Meet Your Needs

Once you know what is going on, you can choose to do something about it. If it is circumstance or mindset, you can take steps to change it.

• How to take steps to change your circumstances:
  • Change your schedule to get more rest
  • Create boundaries
  • Leave an unhealthy relationship
  • Improve living situation
  • Improve job situation
• Explore the mindset. Ask the Lord for a renewing of your mind. I highly recommend working through The Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer.
• Maybe you need some guidance or emotional support to change your mindset. Here are a few ideas to try.
  • Connect to the Father
  • Get some rest
  • Experience pleasure
  • Express your feelings
  • Be heard and accepted
  • Be intellectually and creatively stimulated
  • Receive comfort.

Changing your circumstances or shifting your mindset is hard work! It takes time. You might even have to do some soul-searching to find your direction. That’s totally fine!

While you’re working on making these changes, try some distraction techniques to stop emotional eating. My favorite distraction coping tools include:

• Going for a walk
• Taking a hot bath
• Working on a hobby
• Helping others
• Anything that helps you release that energy

How to Stop Emotional Eating Step 4: Accept Grace for How you Cope

Listen, we are all at different stages in our journeys. Changes do NOT come overnight. Your main coping tool may be food right now, and there is grace for that!

You may have many days when you choose to face the issues at hand and work through them. Weeks may go by when you choose to pray, process emotions, and release energy through a good worship-and-walk session.

And then you have a day. One of those days.

A day when you choose to avoid the stress you’re feeling and take the few minutes of relief a bowl of ice cream offers. That is okay!!!!!

We can not lead perfect lives with perfect behavior. Girl, that is why we need JESUS! Do not believe the lies of the enemy that you are a bad person for coping with food.

Do not hide from God and let the shame and condemnation build. When we do this, the enemy has us right where he wants us: the cycle of shame, self-imposed deprivation, and binge.

Shame no longer holds its power when we fully embrace an Intuitive Eating lifestyle. We learn how to handle our emotions in a healthy way, and we don’t need to beat ourselves up when we use food to mend a wound. When we embrace who we are as daughters of the One True King, we freely receive love, grace, and acceptance.

We turn to God to meet our every need. Not food.