Emotional Eating at Work

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• Food Craving vs. True Hunger
• My Emotional Eating Habit
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Full Episode Transcript:

Emotional Eating at Work

 

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. I thought I would cover emotional eating at work today, especially because I have an emotional eating workshop coming up on August 17th. It’s virtual and it’s free and you are welcome to share it with others so that they can join you. Because everything’s always better with a friend, right?

So, in this emotional eating workshop, I’m teaching you a creative tool to use to help you break your emotional eating habit. And if it’s not quite a habit yet, but you notice that you do emotionally eat and want to stop, this tool will greatly help you. It’s fun to use, so that’s part of the reason why I wanted to teach you it.

This workshop will be a little bit different than workshops that I have done in the past because I will be teaching a little bit in the beginning, but then for most of it, we will be using the creative tool together. Don’t worry because you won’t be on video. But I am going to have you use the tool along with me.

So, bring a writing utensil as well as some paper, also bring some coloring utensils, such as markers, crayons, colored pencils, even if it’s highlighter markers. Bring anything that you have lying around. And you don’t need to be an artist, so don’t worry about that either.

Again, the workshop is free, and it is virtual, I’m streaming it via YouTube on a private stream, so I will e-mail you that link once you sign up. You can sign up for the free workshop right on my website https://katemjohnston.com, or you’ll see the link on the episode page on my website, or in the episode description if you’re listening from a podcast listening app such as Apple or Spotify.

Alright, so emotional eating at work period this was something that I realized I was doing many years ago when I was working as a PA, and I broke this habit, luckily.

So, I’m going to teach you how to recognize if you’re emotionally eating at work, explain why you may be doing so, so that you have a clear idea and you can see that there is nothing wrong with you. I’m also going to give you a few tips to help you get control of this.

First, I want to start with the very basic reason why we as humans struggle with emotional eating. You may have heard me explain this before, but oftentimes it takes multiple explanations in different ways for it to really be clear and sink in. I’m going to explain it again.

So, we as humans were designed to seek out pleasure, avoid pain, danger and discomfort, and conserve energy. These things helped us to survive. So, our brains were sort of programmed in a sense to help us do these.

Our human brains see uncomfortable emotions such as anger, irritation, sadness, as something that it needs to avoid. Our brains also recognize that food can be pleasurable. So, when you’re feeling an uncomfortable emotion and you already know that food can provide a little bit of pleasure, of course you’re going to be inclined to eat in response to the uncomfortable emotion. Because our brain thinks that that uncomfortable emotion needs to go away.

Our brain thinks that food is the answer to the uncomfortable emotion. Even if you know because you’re intelligent that it’s not, it’s just the way that our brains were programmed from way back.

Our job is to retrain it or recondition it to see that emotions are not dangerous. To see that those emotions, even if they’re uncomfortable, we can deal with them in different ways besides food. And to break that link between feeling and emotion and automatically eating in response.

This is one of the things that I help my clients with, until that link is broken and they’re comfortable enough in the skill that they’ve developed, that the emotional eating habit stays broken. It’s no longer a habit.

Now why is emotional eating at work so common? Because we experience a lot of negative emotions at work period a lot of uncomfortable emotions at work. We can also experience these at home as well, but a majority of your day can be spent at work, right? So of course, you’re going to experience some uncomfortable emotions while at work.

Now this doesn’t have to necessarily be strong emotions like anger or high-level stress. It can be emotions like boredom, worry or even just uneasiness.

When I was working as a Physician Assistant, I was in surgery often, so there’s always this baseline low-level stress and worry that was just there constantly for me. Sometimes throughout the day it would increase and be bothersome, and that’s when I tended to seek out food to make me feel a little bit better.

You may not even realize that you’re experiencing some of these uncomfortable emotions, because you’re so focused on your day and getting things done. If you do find yourself eating throughout the day and you’re not really sure why, because you don’t exactly feel hungry or you feel like you’re eating way too frequently, this can be a really big clue that you are feeling an uncomfortable emotion or two.

That’s one of the ways that you can tell if you are emotionally eating at work. So, think about your day, and how many times you might go to the break room, or dig out a snack from your desk draw. Are you really hungry all of those times, or is it more of you’re feeling an uncomfortable emotion and all of a sudden you have a desire to eat?

A way to tell, is if the hunger comes on suddenly. True hunger comes on a little bit more gradually. You’ll feel those hunger signals in your stomach and then you’ll think “oh I’m feeling hungry I should probably eat something.”

Whereas emotional eating at work can show up as you having a thought that you want to eat something, and then you’re like instantly hungry. Those hunger signals do not come on gradually. They come on very quickly, and it’s usually because you’re thinking that you want something to eat in that moment.

True hunger is more gradual and starts more with those hunger signals that then signal to the brain that you’re hungry and should maybe eat something. When you’re seeking out food in response to an uncomfortable emotion, you have the idea to eat something first or those hunger signals come on very very quickly, and just two minutes before you are not experiencing the hunger signals.

So for you, thinking about when you are eating throughout the day, try to be a detective and figure out if you are eating because you’re truly hungry versus if you’re trying to make yourself feel a little bit better.

Okay so let’s move through the workday from the start of your work day through the end of your work day as far as emotional eating at work.

Now usually in the beginning of your workday you might have some meetings or emails you’re responding to or a project that you’re working on that you may be feeling some sort of uncomfortable emotion about it career women will typically find themselves going to the break room for a mid-morning snack.

If you find yourself doing this, it may be because you’re truly hungry, but it also may be because you are feeling that uncomfortable emotion and your brain is just trying to seek out a little bit of pleasure or a little bit of comfort by seeking out food to eat. So the doughnuts that your colleague brought in seemed like a really good idea after that irritating work meeting.

So, take a look at your mid-morning snack and Just get a little bit curious about it. No judgment, just curiosity.

Now let’s take a look at lunchtime. Now I just want to mention you don’t have to eat a traditional lunch at lunchtime if you’re not hungry. Sometimes people feel like because it’s lunch they must eat a lunch. Sometimes it may be seen as a break from the stressful day, and that can be tricky because that can be borderline emotional eating, right?

So again, look at those hunger signals. Are you truly hungry at lunchtime? Most likely you probably are. But if you just had a massive mid-morning snack, maybe you’re not truly hungry. Maybe it’s just because of the thought that it’s lunchtime and you should eat lunch period maybe it’s because of feeling like you do need some food to break up your day, and that is more of the emotional eating side of it.

And I know it can be a little bit tricky telling the difference on your own. If you’re unsure and need help with this, I can definitely give you some clarity with a free consult. You can sign up for a free 60-minute consult right on my website.

Think of that as like going to the doctor’s office for a diagnosis and treatment plan as a new patient. I’ll have you tell me what you’re struggling with, what you’ve tried already, and then I will give you clarity and tell you how exactly I would help you with those things to get you to your goals. And then it’s up to you whether or not you want to proceed.

Okay, so next we’re going to look at the afternoon snacking. This is where I usually got in trouble when I was emotionally eating at work. You get to this point of your day and if it’s been a tough day you really just are looking at getting through your day and getting home.

I liken it to running a road race. So, I just raced a half marathon this past Saturday and the first 9 miles were effortful, but I was fairly comfortable even though I was starting to get tired. After a whole bunch more hills between miles 9 and 10, I started to get pretty uncomfortable. And then miles 10 through the finish, were very uncomfortable.

At that point I was trying anything just to get through them. I tried focusing my attention on an object far in the distance, to keep my attention off my body and how uncomfortable I was. I tried thinking about a couple of my friends and also my brother, because the song that was stuck in my head reminded me of him. I tried to use those as distractions.

I also tried changing my stride a little bit to see if that was more comfortable. Basically, I tried to do anything I could possibly do to decrease that intense discomfort, especially with that last mile to go. Just another really good example of how our human brains try really hard to avoid discomfort.

So, at the end of your work day, if it was a pretty difficult one especially, you might find yourself actively seeking out anything possible to get yourself through the last couple of hours. And food is usually a very quick and easy thing to help. But it doesn’t really help. It’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a fractured leg. You think you’re doing something, but you’re really not.

Now just to recap how to tell if emotional eating at work is something that is going on with you, is to take a look at how often you’re eating throughout the workday. Also look at what you’re eating. We tend to gravitate towards sweet foods, also salty, crunchy, savory foods to bring a bit of pleasure.

Take a look at those hunger signals and just question each time you’re eating if those came on gradually, or if maybe you felt a desire to eat based on an uncomfortable emotion. You can also let that be a helpful clue to you that there may be some uncomfortable emotions going on during your workday that you were unaware of.

And for you for after you’ve gotten some of that awareness, because that’s the first most important part to breaking an emotional eating habit at work, when you do notice that you are seeking out food and you believe that it’s from an uncomfortable emotion, identify that emotion.

Try as hard as you can to name it. Pay attention to how it feels in your body, so that you can identify it as accurately as you can. And you can even look at a list of emotions because there are hundreds of emotions.

After you identify the emotion, let’s just say it’s inadequacy. That’s a good one right? That’s a pretty uncomfortable one. So after you’ve identified that hypothetical motion of inadequacy, just say it to yourself “I’m feeling inadequate right now. It’s just discomfort, but I can totally do discomfort.” I almost forgot that this is one of the things that I tell myself during races. I tell myself that I’m feeling discomfort and I can totally do discomfort. It helps so much. Something so simple, I’m telling you.

So, give that a try, sign up for a free consult if you are tired of your emotional eating habit, and grab your spot for the free emotional eating workshop. The link is in the episode description and also on the episode page on my website. Take care and I’ll talk with you soon.