What is emotional eating? Interview with Adrián Quevedo

Psychologist Adrián Quevedo explains what the act of eating and emotional regulation have in common.

Eating encompasses a large part of our quality of life and well-being, and that is why in recent years society has been paying more attention to the need to take care of this aspect of everyday life. However, gaining awareness of the importance of a need does not imply knowing how to take good care of it, and sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease: miracle diets, excessive help, etc.

At the end of the day, nutrition does not only imply introducing food into our organism; it also includes eating habits and the actions we take when we eat. That is why, the concept of emotional eating has emerged to draw attention to the need to eat as the body really needs it.

Interview with Adrián Quevedo: how to understand emotional eating

Adrián Quevedo Rico is a General Health Psychologist based in Madrid and trained in sports psychology and Conscious Eating. In this interview he talks about what is emotional eating from his experience as a professional dedicated to helping people.

How would you define emotional eating?

First of all, I think it is important to emphasize that food and emotions go hand in hand, since food can generate the appearance of emotions and emotions in turn the appearance of hunger, so they are related to each other and often not being aware of it takes away the possibility of choosing whether or not to eat a food.

I understand emotional eating as the way of eating to regulate some kind of emotion, sensation, unpleasant or pleasurable event that the person is experiencing. In the case that it produces relief or avoidance of discomfort, there is a negative reinforcement of this behavior, while, on the other hand, successes or joys with food can also be positively reinforced.

Authors such as Perpiña emphasize the emotional regulation of both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, and in Match's research we found a difference between compulsive and emotional eating. In the compulsive form, it is not so much the type of food but the quantity that matters, while in the emotional form, the type of food also becomes important, especially sweets and high-fat foods.

Now, this hunger or emotional eating has been criticized, judged, rejected and devalued, when apart from its "negative" polarity it has its "positive" or functional polarity. Eating a sweet when we have had a hard day, a piece of chocolate, a hot dish when we feel sad, a dish that comforts us... is also something functional and adaptive if it is done with awareness of it, not letting ourselves be carried away by an automatic behavior.

Occasionally a food can comfort us, and that is fine; the problem appears when that behavior becomes a pattern, it becomes automated and we lose control over it.

The difference between when we are aware of it and when we are not is given by whether we eat automatically and compulsively, or consciously. By being aware of the food we are eating, perceiving its taste and textures, we can do it in a relaxed way, choosing the amount we want to eat.

Therefore, emotional eating is neither negative nor positive per se, it simply fulfills a function. The way in which we develop this process in a conscious and voluntary way will depend on whether it benefits or harms us.

In your opinion, does it have to do with a lack of ability to correctly identify the emotions that are being felt at any given moment?

On the one hand, yes, but not exclusively. It is true that if we look at the scientific literature and clinical practice, we can see that one of the factors that predispose to an ED is a low or deficient emotional intelligence, among many others.

When people feel an emotion, we feel it in the body, and from it derive a series of sensations that our mind interprets and contextualizes. To identify an emotion the first step is to bring our attention to the body and begin to observe and feel the signals it begins to send.

Every emotion is associated with a pattern of response in our body, either by biology or by learning, that is, before experiencing the emotion fully, signals appear in our body, such as tension, sensation of heat, cold, pressure, tension, distension, activation, deactivation, etc.. It is important not to confuse this with value judgments of whether a sensation is pleasant or unpleasant.

These signs are indications of the appearance of an emotion, and to the extent that we know how to identify and interpret them, we can process it in our body, and get to contextualize in our mind what emotion it is, and listen to its message, the need it reflects.

Most of the time this task consists of identifying, digesting that emotion, allowing it to pass through our body, listening to it, accessing the need underneath.... All emotions fulfill a function, and to the extent that we allow them to fulfill it and we do not reject them, they will make room for another new one, while if we reject them they will form a ball until they explode at the least expected moment, or lead us to harmful patterns of emotional management.

How does emotional eating become a habit in our daily life?

Eating is a habit that we perform every day between 2 and 6 times, whose main function is to obtain the necessary nutrients for the proper functioning of our body and mind. Managing our emotions is another habit or process that we perform every day, whose main functions are adaptation to the environment, communication outwards and inwards, and giving us the necessary energy to take action.

Now, the feeding process also fulfills a hedonic or pleasure function, that is, eating something for the pleasure or reward we feel when we eat it, even if it is not particularly nutritious. So it no longer has that value exclusively for survival.

Habits give structure to people, they fulfill a function, a purpose, and in this case, turning emotional eating into a habit is nothing more than an attempt to establish a structure and feel contained and sustained in our lives, within the discomfort we are experiencing.

The point is that as habits become established in the neural highways of our brain, the more we repeat them, the more they tend to be activated in our lives automatically. Hence the feeling of not being in control of what happens to us.

That is why, when it comes to changing habits, it is important that we do not limit ourselves to just changing and that's it, but to develop a new perspective or a different way of relating to food.

Is it common for people to discover that they have a significant problem with this psychological phenomenon? Do they tend to go to therapy to solve it?

Nowadays many people believe that they binge or eat emotionally at all times, due to lack of adequate information, over-information on this subject, or because of what they have heard from other people who do not know what they are talking about. This generates guilt and negative judgments that go straight to our self-esteem.

If we look back 15 years, this is the time when nutrition becomes a trend or a fad. Miracle diets appear, it becomes fashionable to lose weight and that seems, in my opinion, to neurotize some sectors of our population, totally identifying with those values that they transmit and letting themselves be carried away by that current. They become obsessed with watching everything they eat, how this affects their image, measuring what they eat, prohibiting food, believing that weight (up to a certain limit) are the only indicators of health... obsessive checks in front of the mirror, importance of the image on how people are, etc.

Yes, there are more and more people who observe or feel some discomfort with their relationship with their food, take the step and go for consultation. There are people who realize before and get down to work to see what happens and others do it through reaching some limit of suffering and that's when they seek help. In addition, nowadays, with the work of psychonutrition between psychologist and nutritionist, all these types of eating processes and TCA can be approached from a broader and multidisciplinary perspective.

Are there marketing strategies that favor the generalization of emotional eating?

Yes, marketing, advertising and the food industry have it well studied. First of all, we must separate food advertising to young children and adults.

Children are human beings with a higher degree of vulnerability than adults, and if we observe the strategies used by food marketing, we can unravel their influence on our relationship with food. Very bright colors, large and striking letters, close and funny dolls, eye-catching packaging, we even see some social idol, athlete or reference figure for the little ones also promoting it, even though we know that they would not eat it even remotely.

On the part of adults, the audience is appealed to through different arguments, from the fact that it is healthier because it is reduced in the percentage of fat or has 0 added sugars (that, to understand, means that it has no more sugar than the food itself has, not that it has no sugar), slogans like "adult pleasure", "now with more chocolate/cream", "ask for your extra for 1 euro more", "uncover happiness", indications like "100% wholemeal" (and then we look at the ingredients and put "wholemeal flour 20%"), offers in 2x1 or laughable prices in food with nutrients and empty calories. (and then we look at the ingredients and put 20% wholemeal flour), 2x1 offers or ridiculous prices on food with nutrients and empty calories.

All this added to the food trends and fashions that we talked about before, gives rise to an obesogenic environment that favors this type of behavior.

From your point of view as a professional, how do you intervene in therapy to help patients suffering from emotional eating?

As we have been seeing, eating is a complex process, which is related to emotions, pleasure, rewards, avoidance of discomfort, social, physiological, and goes beyond the simple fact of putting food in our mouths. The first thing to do would be to make an assessment of the person's life and its relationship with food, in order to put it in context and have a starting point.

Generally, many people come with a great burden of guilt to the consultation, so it is essential to contextualize and work with them, to see that these behaviors are forms, ways or attempts to manage a situation that no longer serve them, and prefer to choose another more effective way to manage.

Once we know in which situation we are, it will be important to work and explore different aspects that may be influencing this process: the management of thoughts, emotional management, the perception of our image, the management of the environment and the obesogenic environment, the stimuli that may promote or activate this behavior, the relationship with food, the learning of that person, strategies, etc...

Each person is a world, so it will be essential to work specifically on what that person brings to the consultation; we should not generalize when working with people, since each one has a very different reality.