Boredom Eating

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Related Episodes:

• Mindless Snacking (and How to Stop)
• Stress Eating
• Willpower and Your Thoughts

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Full Episode Transcript:

Boredom Eating

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. I’m looking forward to talking to you today about boredom eating, because it’s something that is done so frequently, but if you’re doing it, you may not be aware.

If you are aware, then you may not necessarily be surprised at how boredom eating can negatively affect your physical health, but you may be surprised at how it can also really have a negative impact on your mental and emotional health. This doesn’t get talked about too often, which is why I really wanted to cover this topic in a podcast episode.

Before I dive in, if you are ready to get the help you need with breaking bad eating habits and want a comprehensive approach with all the support you’ll ever need, then check out my membership program, Food Freedom. It’s launching in the end of September, so doors will be open from September 22^nd – 30^th. It helps you to finally be free from those eating habits that are holding you back from reaching your health and/or body goals.

Your membership includes a private dashboard where you get access to core classes that help you break your bad eating habits, coaching calls where you have the opportunity to get coached face-to-face with me via Zoom, 24/7 anonymous written coaching where you can submit something you need help with and I’ll provide a written response helping you, plus a new monthly course released the beginning of each month, access to bonus courses, a community that helps motivate one another, and more.

To check it out, visit katemjohnston.com/coaching. You can get on the waitlist if you’d like so that you’re made aware of when doors open. You can join for a month, stay for as long as you’d like, or cancel anytime right from your dashboard. That easy.

I just wanted to tell you about it before we dive into today’s episode, because the waitlist is growing, so I know people are excited about it. So, get in on the action if you’d like help breaking your bad eating habits.

Okay, so what is boredom eating exactly? And when and how does it become a habit? I’m also going to give you some examples of boredom eating, including some more subtle ones, so you can have an easier time catching onto yourself, to see if you may be boredom eating in subtle ways, in addition to the more obvious ways.

Boredom eating is just simply eating in response to a feeling of boredom, in an attempt to decrease the feeling, decrease the boredom. It’s a form of emotional eating, it’s just one of the more common emotions that lead to eating.

So what causes boredom eating?

Well, our brains when they first started developing back in the very very early days, developed in a way to have the desire and motivation to survive. Both individually, and as a species of course.

Part of that motivation to survive is avoiding pain or discomfort. Basically, not putting yourself in any danger, escaping from danger, not eating poisonous foods, etc. That’s one part of the reason why we developed the ability to have feelings/emotions, so that they can be indicators of potential danger, or something to avoid. Some of the main ones were fear, anxiety, uneasiness.

Because of that, our brain can sometimes interpret all negative emotions as being harmful and something to avoid. Especially in modern times where there is an abundance of pleasurable things. We essentially start to only want the pleasurable things and strongly want to avoid the unpleasurable things, like negative emotions.

Boredom is a negative emotion for most people. Most of us don’t choose to boredom over a more pleasant or pleasurable emotion. So what happens? Our brain wants to avoid that boredom by counteracting with some instant pleasure.

Food can be a source of instant pleasure. Unfortunately, it’s only temporary and it’s an “external” pleasure, meaning you had to get the pleasure from an external source rather than create it from within, from your own thoughts.

Nonetheless, it’s that quick and easy pleasure that you get from dopamine, which is the “reward hormone” previously known as the “pleasure hormone.” You’ve probably heard me talk about dopamine before.

So what happens with boredom eating is that you feel the negative emotion of boredom and want it to go away quickly, so you eat a pleasurable food. Something sweet, salty or crunchy for example. Especially if it’s nearby and really easy to do.

This causes a quick release of dopamine, providing that pleasure sensation. Your brain goes, “oooh, I like that way better than boredom, let’s do more of that.” This can cause a cycle, which is where a habit is formed.

You get that reward from the food, the reward of a bit of pleasure AND a temporary decrease in the boredom, especially since the act of eating can be more interesting than the boredom itself.

The reward helps encourage your brain to do the behavior of eating in response to boredom again. So, you can probably see how this ends up forming that habit cycle. Especially if you’re bored often.

Why boredom eating isn’t great for your health physically is of course, because you’ll tend to choose foods that provide lots of pleasure, usually desserts, candy, chips, things like that.

When you’re in the habit of eating these things, that typically means it’s pretty frequent, because behaviors need to be repeated frequently in order for them to become a habit. So frequently eating the foods that tend to be higher in sugar, salt, fat, etc, and lower in nutrition, can lead to weight gain and health issues.

The more you keep up with the eating habit of boredom eating, the stronger the habit becomes, and oftentimes the more frequent. You can see how this would go no place good.

Why boredom eating isn’t great for your mental and emotional health, is because you’re trying to “treat” the negative emotion of boredom with boredom eating, you’re decreasing your ability to tolerate negative emotion.

You’re also tamping it down with the temporary pleasure from the food. That just means it’s going to pop up again later, oftentimes stronger, especially the more you keep tamping it down with the food or even other temporary pleasures like TV, social media, or alcohol even.

Then, when it does come up for you again later, and it’s stronger. Plus, you’re losing your ability to tolerate it, so it’s going to feel so much worse to you, right?

If as soon as you feel bored, you instantly go and grab something to eat, you’re not ever sitting with that emotion and you’re also not finding other, healthier ways to decrease your boredom, like doing an activity you enjoy, or organizing the closet you’ve been wanting to organize.

When you just sit with boredom for a few minutes, and are okay with it being there, it will pass. It’s just a feeling. Just an emotion. It’s not harmful at all. It can be quite nice sometimes too, right? It sure beats anger or irritation. It also beats anxiety or guilt, right? Those negative emotions can feel much worse to us than boredom.

The other thing about sitting with that feeling of boredom until it passes, and not acting on it with boredom eating, is that you’ll probably eventually think of something you want to do and will get up and do it. Or, you’ll just start thinking or reflecting on something that can be really useful too.  

Now, when you do experience boredom, in the moment you might think, “oh who cares, I’m just going to eat the chips anyway.” But when you keep doing that, and you then develop a boredom eating habit that has cause weight gain or health issues, you will care. Over time, you’ll also feel those mental/emotional effects too.

So that more primitive part of your brain, the part that makes those in-the-moment decisions to increase pleasure and avoid pain or discomfort is going to be a bad influence when it comes to boredom eating. That desire or motivation for it to decrease or avoid pain or discomfort, is going to feel stronger than the desire to do what you know is best for your eating habits. For your physical, mental, and emotional health in the future.

The brain is really just so fascinating, but luckily there are ways to make it easier to break these bad eating habits. Especially once you know how the brain works when it comes to eating habits, and all the tricks and tools you can use to essentially “unbreak” those habit cycles, which is what Food Freedom will help you do.

Now I just want to give you a few examples of boredom eating, so you can see how it can range from being fairly obvious to pretty subtle. Seeing how subtle in can be can really help you to get some awareness of if you may be boredom eating and didn’t even realize it.

So a more obvious example of boredom eating is if you’re waiting someplace for awhile, maybe a hospital for example, and get a snack or two from the vending machines nearby to help kill the time.

You certainly may be hungry, but you’re more likely to have stronger hunger signals if you’d been feeling bored from waiting. That boredom is going to trigger you to want to eat, making it more likely for you to get a snack from the vending machine.

Also, eating is an action of course, so it provides you with an activity of sorts, plus help to push away that discomfort of feeling bored.

Another more obvious example would be if you had to watch a boring work training via video and you decide to get a snack before or while watching, to make it more tolerable.

In this case, you are having a thought like, “This is going to be boring, I’m going to get a snack.” Or, “I’m so bored, I’m going to get a snack.”

So the act of eating itself can help with the boredom and of course the bit of pleasure from the food can help to tamp down that discomfort from the feeling of boredom.

A more subtle example of boredom eating might be if you’re watching TV, scrolling through Pinterest or social media and you are snacking while you’re doing any of those.

Why this is often, not always, but often considered boredom eating is because you’re not really being that stimulated by what you’re doing, so you “spice” it up a bit by adding in food. You’re sort of mindlessly doing the activity and mindlessly snacking as well.

So you may not think you’re bored because you’re doing something you find enjoyable, it’s not something that is stimulating necessarily, so there can be some boredom there, even if you’re not completely bored, right?

I know I’ve been guilty of this. After being stimulated all day, I tend to be much less stimulated and almost bored at night while winding down whether I’m reading a book or while watching a movie with my husband, Paul. I’ll find myself having the desire to snack even when I’m not that hungry.

Another more subtle example is if it’s toward the end of your workday and you’re trying to stay stimulated and get through that last hour or two with something to eat. You’re using the food to help with that bit of boredom that starts setting in, even while you’re working. You’ve just had enough of that activity of working at this point, so start feeling boredom with the work itself. That snack helps to make it a little more interesting, so you can get through those remaining tasks.

Have you done that before? If so, you’re not alone. It’s a very common use of boredom eating in career women and can be difficult to catch onto, which is why I wanted to give that specific example so you can catch onto yourself if you’re boredom eating and weren’t aware.

So what are some steps you can take to stop boredom eating?

Well, first decide if it’s something you feel is a habit for you. If so, is it one you’d prefer to get control over? I’m thinking yes, if you’re listening to this episode. The reason why I want you to think about that though, is because just because you have a certain eating habit, doesn’t necessarily mean you want to break that habit.

I like to teach that you really should only change an eating habit if you feel like it’s one that has net negative effects. Whether that means it’s affecting your health negatively, whether that be physical, mental, or emotional.

So, for boredom eating, if you just do it on occasion and have control over it, that means it’s not a habit, so you may not want to change it.

If boredom eating is something that you’re aware you’re doing frequently and don’t feel in control, then it’s most likely a habit. That’s when you may want to consider breaking the habit.

And like I said, especially if you find that it’s having negative effects.

So the goal for boredom eating is to teach your brain that you can handle the discomfort from feeling bored and that you don’t need to escape the boredom by eating. This makes it so that when boredom comes up in the future for you, your brain doesn’t look for food to decrease the discomfort. It is already trained to allow the boredom without feeling the need to eat.

So first, look for all instances where you may be eating in response to a feeling of boredom. Look for the more obvious situations and the more subtle ones.

To help with this, think about every time you snack, and think of the situation in which you were eating the snack. Was it a situation where you were feeling bored? Maybe a little bored. Maybe very bored. Remember, the boredom level can range.

I would then start out with tackling the more obvious situations first, since those will be easier to catch yourself in the act, right?

What you’ll do is, first, recognize that you’re feeling bored. This means you’re aware of the feeling or emotion of boredom.

Second, you’re going to tell yourself, “This is boredom. I can do boredom.” By thinking this thought, you’re taking control of the boredom and recognizing that boredom isn’t a big deal.

It’s not something to be feared. It’s not an emotion that is harmful. It’s not something that needs to be avoided for survival, right?

Then, after you tell yourself, “This is boredom. I can do boredom,” you’re going to sit with it. This is the third step. You’re just going to experience it without acting upon it. You’re not going to do an activity, get up and go for a walk, or think about something else. You’re going to just experience boredom.

If you have a difficult time with this at first, which may happen, then just experience it for 30 seconds. Then next time, for a minute, then 2 minutes.

What you’re doing is conditioning your brain to tolerate boredom and deconditioning it from acting upon the boredom.

You’ll find it gets easier over time. It will take practice and it will take some time, but time is going to pass anyway and the results are well worth it. Because you’ll be “treating” the boredom eating, so that you break that habit cycle.

You can absolutely break your boredom eating habit just with the 3 steps I taught in today’s lesson. So give it a try. Take it a little bit at a time and just make sure to increase as you go.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’ll talk with you soon.