The Psychology of Eating

“We are what we eat”

We’ve all heard that phrase before, and most of us realise that there is a strong relationship between the food that we eat and our physical health and well-being. People, however, are often quite surprised when they realise that there is just as strong a connection between our eating habits and our mental well-being (i.e. our psychological state). This connection typically goes both ways; when we put better quality food into our bodies, we tend to have the energy, vitality, and nutrients that our bodies need in order to better deal with our emotions and manage the various stressors in our lives.

It makes sense then that the more optimal our mental well-being and ability to manage stress, the better our eating habits tend to be. You can see how this can create a positive spiral in our lives, or conversely a vicious cycle when things are not going well with our eating and our management of stress and other feelings.

People often eat when they are not physically hungry, and this tends to be more of an issue for people who are overweight. We refer to this generally unhelpful habit as over-eating, and it is useful to discuss these habits in order to help individuals better understand the triggers and the context that encourage this unhelpful eating behaviour to occur. In other words, an individual’s understanding of their own eating cues or over-eating triggers can be very useful to help break unhelpful cycles to do with unnecessary eating.

In addition to the more sensory and habitual over-eating triggers such as the smell and taste of food, the time of the day, and various activities that eating can often coincide with, our thoughts and feelings can play a huge role in encouraging us to eat when we are not actually hungry. We can often use food as a way to manage thoughts that lead us to experience unpleasant feelings, such as sadness, boredom, tiredness, worry, or anger.

Thoughts generally represent our own subjective self-talk that try to make sense of the experiences that we are going through in our lives, or self-talk in relation to how we see ourselves. A number of unhelpful thought patterns exist that lead to more unpleasant feelings than is necessary. In these instances food is often a behavioural response to our internal experiences, and is used as a distraction from the discomfort of what we are thinking or feeling.

Food can also be used at times when we experience positive feelings and perceive that we deserve a reward after a long day or in relation to something that we have accomplished. However, often it is the long-term pattern of over-eating in order to continually avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings that can be quite disruptive in people’s lives.  If necessary, keep a food diary for a day or two to record the times you eat, what you eat and why you eat so that you have a good overview of your own individual patterns and can see, on paper, where changes can be made.

If you feel that at times you use food as a way to manage difficult thoughts and feelings, speak to the clinic psychologist to gain strategies to help with this and learn different ways to respond to such experiences.