Emotional Eating in Intuitive Eating: How To Build A Self Care Toolbox — Registered Dietitian Columbia SC

Struggling with emotional eating? It’s one of the most common challenges I hear from my clients. When you’re working through intuitive eating, the process teaches you how to cope with your emotions with other tools. That said, food can be ONE tool to cope with emotions! This post teaches you how to build a self care toolbox, one of my favorite strategies for dealing with emotional eating in intuitive eating.

Since the pandemic started, and the whole world progressed from dumpster fire to forest fire, emotional eating has been a topic that’s come up again and again in my practice, so I wanted to updated this post on emotional eating in intuitive eating, and how to build a self care toolbox - a strategy I love to teach to my clients who are feeling unhappy with the role food is playing in dealing with uncomfortable emotions.

Emotional eating gets demonized by not just diet culture, but also wellness culture, and even by some of the earlier or less nuanced messages about intuitive eating. There’s this belief that emotional eating is BAD, which creates a lot of shame whenever we inevitably emotionally eat. And inevitable it is, as we humans are emotional beings, and it’s highly likely that at the very least, the need for food will cross paths with an intense emotion. Still other times, we may choose to cope with an uncomfortable emotion with food. It’s normal human behavior, and yet it can feel like this dirty, shameful secret for those who identify as emotional eaters.

Emotional Eating isn’t Bad

That’s right, in intuitive eating, emotional eating isn’t wrong or bad. It is one way of coping with emotions that feel particularly uncomfortable and challenging to sit with. In intuitive eating, we can cope with emotions with or without food, and there’s a lot food can do to help you feel better. It can soothe, comfort, distract, and even provide a bit of joy.

That said, food rarely fixes what’s wrong, and sometimes emotional eating can make you feel worse (especially when it triggers a shame spiral). Because of that, we want think of food as ONE way of coping with emotions. When food is being used in a way where it doesn’t leave space for other forms of coping, that’s when emotional eating becomes problematic.

How to Build a Self Care Toolbox for Emotional Eating

A helpful way of reframing emotional eating in intuitive eating is looking at it as one tool of many to cope with emotions. It’s not wrong, we just want to give you other options. And when you do choose food, how can you emotionally eat in a way that actually helps you feel a little better, instead of making it a shameful thing.

One exercise I like to do with clients around emotional eating is building a self care toolbox. Think of food as one of many tools you can utilize to cope with emotions. Just like an actual toolbox you keep in your home, you have a whole array of tools, which may be more or less useful in different situations - everything from duct tape to a screwdriver to wrenches. I kind of like to think of food as the duct tape of self care tools - it’s pretty handy, easily accessible and works in a wide array of situations, making it a toolbox essential. But do you really want to fix everything in your house with duct tape? Probably not!

In building your self care toolbox, feel free to break out a piece of paper, or keep a list of these on the notes function of your phone. Think of it like creating a menu! Some of my craftier clients have decorated a shoebox to store some of their tools inside, which I love!

Here’s some examples of what to put in your self care toolbox, plus some examples of what I’ve put in mine:

Soothing/calming tools:

What are some things that help you self soothe or feel more grounded when you are feeling anxious?

Deep breathing exercises
Guided meditation - I love Insight Timer, which is a free app
Snuggling with a pet or stuffed animal - or blankey, which yes, I still have!
Put a cold washcloth on your face
Lay in a restorative yoga position for a few seconds (or a few minutes!) - I like child’s pose
Baking something you love - my personal fave is chocolate chip cookies, like my tahini chocolate chip cookies
Use essential oils - I use Sebastian Harper’s Calm the F**k Down essential oil roller (order it and support a Black female owned local business!)

Connection tools:

What are some ways you can connect with other people? Socially distanced, of course!

Socially distanced outdoor gathering with a friend - we have outdoor chairs set up outside that are more than six feet apart, did a neighborhood outdoor block party (with masks), and did an outdoor pilates class in our front yard with neighbors as well.
Do something fun with your partner or a family member - normally that would be a date night at a restaurant for me and the hubs, but with quarantine, we have been doing things like floating down the river or hanging out in our super cool 10 ft Intex pool, streaming a movie, and cooking together
Set up a Zoom happy hour - we’ve really enjoyed “hanging out” with friends who live in other states that we don’t really get to spend time with
Text with a friend - thank goodness for my best friend, and a couple other group chats I’m in!

Laughter/joy tools:

Watch an episode of a funny TV show - current favorite is Schit’s Creek
Listen to a funny podcast - current fave is You’re Wrong About
Dance like no one is watching to a fun song - I highly recommend Lizzo for this
Set up a zoom game night
Play outside with your dog

This smoosh face always makes me giggle.

Energizing tools:

Go for a brisk jog or walk outside
Brew a cup of coffee or tea
Eat a favorite snack food that leaves you feeling energized - fancy cheese and crackers or a sliced apple is a favorite of mine
Listen to a favorite pump you up spotify playlist - I have a #GirlPower playlist filled with Cardi B, Missy Elliot, Kesha, and old school No Doubt and it is FANTASTIC
Take a 10 minute power nap

Processing tools:

Throw tools into your toolbox that help your emotions, and the situation that is triggering them.

Journal out what’s going on
Call a friend or loved one to talk through what’s going on
Make an appointment with your therapist
Practice a deep breathing exercise or meditation to help you sit with your emotions and feel them
Cry or scream into a pillow

Food tools:

What are ways you can emotionally eat in a way that actually makes you feel better?

Prepare a family favorite recipe
Give yourself permission to relax in front of the TV with a bag of snack food - it’s OK to disconnect with food!
Pick up a favorite fun baked good and latte
Instead of eating leftovers for lunch, enjoy a solo lunch at a favorite cafe
If your too tired to cook, enjoy a takeout dinner - I love to pick up pho from Pho Viet or japchae from 929.

Two things to know about using the self care toolbox for emotional eating…

The self care toolbox is an awesome tool to use for intuitive eating, but there’s one situation that it won’t work - when you’re hungry! Hunger, especially intense hunger, can cause uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, anger (aka hanger), difficulty concentrating, and fatigue. No amount of yoga or meditation or walks outside will make that go away - only a snack will! If it’s been a few hours since you last ate, you probably just need to eat.

Also, as you use the self care toolbox, you’ll begin to learn what tools are most effective for your. At first, you might pick the wrong tool for the job. It’s OK if something isn’t working, to come back to food as a tool, and it’s also OK if you’ve started emotionally eating, to stop when you realize something else might be more effective.

Struggling with emotional eating? We work with clients virtually and out of our Columbia, SC office helping them foster a healthier relationship with food and feed themselves with confidence. Learn more about our practice philosophy and reach out if you’d like to work together.

Would love to hear from you! What tools would you put in your self care toolbox?

If this blog post on how to build a self care toolbox for emotional eating was helpful, follow my intuitive eating Pinterest board for more support.

This post on building a self care toolbox for emotional eating was originally published March 2017. It has been updated to give you the best possible content.

You might also like these posts on emotional eating in intuitive eating: