Emotional eating is when we use food as a way to deal with our feelings, rather than to satisfy physical hunger. This might look like reaching for comfort food when you're feeling down, stressed, or even bored. The food becomes a way to fill a void, to soothe, or to distract from uncomfortable emotions.

I'm going to break it down for you as well as share my own experiences of both emotional eating and binge eating. I'll admit I knew about my tendencies to emotionally eat in the past but it wasn't untill I began writing my program and book that I remembered that I also had a binge eating episode; but more on that later.

As you can see from above, emotional eating isn’t just a psychological issue; biological mechanisms also play a significant role. When we eat, our brains releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is associated with pleasure and reward. This reinforces the connection between eating and emotional relief, making it harder to break the cycle.

A 2023 study published in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that emotional eating can alter brain pathways over time, making individuals more reliant on food to regulate their mood . These changes make emotional eating a difficult pattern to break and may contribute to the development of eating disorders such as binge eating disorder.