Welcome back to the show. My name is Michelle Yates. I'm a registered dietitian, and I love having conversations about how to have a healthy relationship with food and feel at peace in your body. So if you're new to the show, this is where we talk about things like that and how to ultimately break up with a toxic relationship with food so that you can live your life nourished and free instead. Today, I'm excited to dig into the difference between emotional eating and binge eating. A lot of times I talk to women who are struggling to tell the difference between the two. And to be fair, there's actually quite a lot of overlap there. So we're going to talk about that today and get into if the chocolate and ice cream therapy has gone too far and we've entered binge territory or not. So let's dig into it. And before we do, I want to remind you that if you are loving this show, please let me know by leaving me a rating or review. I am a sucker for affirmation, so I will take your rating and review gladly.
And if you don't want to do a review on Apple Podcast, you can just do a rating. You can also do a rating on Spotify as well as for the other platforms. I'm not really familiar with how that works there, but in terms of Spotify and Apple just tap those stars, it's honestly kind of fun. So thank you so much for your support. If you are a faithful listener, I really do appreciate you and I hope that you enjoy today's episode. So let's talk about the difference between emotional eating and binge eating. So first off, I want to define what emotional eating even is to begin with. And emotional eating is when we use food to cope with hard emotions like sadness or stress or anger, maybe anxiety or depression. You could totally make a case to that. It's emotional eating when somebody is using food as like a reward or like in a celebratory way, right? Like if somebody is having cake at their birthday or something. But I feel like that's just a little bit too technical, that that's kind of just annoying, to be honest.
We don't need to say that somebody is emotional eating if they're having cake on their birthday, even though it involves emotions. So what I mean by emotional eating, and I mean I had to come up with my own definition because this isn't like a specific diagnosis, you know? So I'm giving you my best definition based on the context of what we're usually talking about with emotional eating. And that is when we're using food to cope with hard emotions that we don't really want to deal with or that are, that are just difficult to deal with. Right. So we turn to food to help maybe alleviate some of the feelings that we have. So I want to be clear about something. Emotional eating gets a bad rep. It's not inherently bad. A lot of times people say like, oh, I'm an emotional eater. And they immediately assume that that's really bad and something that they should be ashamed of, or that they need to find a way to fix right away. But I don't necessarily encourage them to fix it right away unless I know more about the context.
Like, hey, how often is this actually happening? And is it really harming your health or not? Because to be honest, emotional eating in some situations and to some degree is quite normal, right? Like if you want to have some chocolate at the end of the day, because he kind of had a stressful day, I'm not going to stop you. And if you want to have some ice cream because you're feeling sad or because you're sick, I mean, there's room for that. There's absolutely room for that. And that's the beauty of when you kind of break past all of the diet, culture, health and wellness industry, fitness industry, B. S and all of this scare tactics around food and nutrition. And you realize that, hey, there's actually a room to have ice cream on a day where I'm feeling extra sad. I'm not going to die. I'm not going to keel over and die from one bowl of ice cream. So yes, emotional eating in some sense is is totally normal and it's not going to hurt you.
With that being said, it can turn into emotional overeating where it's just happening maybe more frequently than it should be, or the quantity of food that you're consuming is more than is really healthy for you. So with that being said, if that is happening, if we're having emotional overeating, then there is some risk there, right? Like if we're eating beyond what we need to be frequently and often, then there's always going to be a risk for health issues. Along with that. And I'll also add to the layer that there could be risk for your psychological health. Because if we're always using food as our coping mechanism and as our tool in the toolbox, I guess of dealing with emotions, then you might not actually deal with the emotions the way that you needed to. And so they can kind of just fester and get worse. So physically they can it can be harmful to engage in emotional overeating, but mentally and. Psychologically, it can also be harmful in a way, too. If you're just continuing to pacify those emotions instead of really dealing with them.
So as I said, there's no like official emotional eater diagnosis. If there was, that would honestly maybe make this episode a little bit easier to explain to you the differences. But there isn't. There isn't a diagnosis, and it does overlap quite a bit with binge eating. So I'm going to do my best to kind of like weed out the differences and also share to what the similarities are there. I do want to be clear, though, that because it's not a diagnosis, I also want to be clear that it's not an eating disorder. Emotional eating just because you're an emotional eater doesn't mean that you have an eating disorder. With that being said, if it's really closely tied to binge eating or if the binge eating is emotional, then you might be cued up for a binge eating disorder diagnosis. So if you haven't listened to my last episode about the difference between binge eating and overeating, I definitely recommend that because I do a deep dive into binge eating disorder. What that looks like, signs and symptoms, warning signs, all that good stuff.
And that should help to give you a good idea of if you may or may not be struggling with binge eating disorder or not. So all that to say, emotional eating if it's turning into binging and then that binging is frequent and meeting criteria for binge eating disorder, then maybe your emotional eating is going to lead you to an eating disorder. But emotional eating in and of itself is is not a disorder. So I'm just going to give you some peace of mind about that right now. So I mentioned earlier that binging can be emotional. And what I mean by that is that typically binging is due to two different kind of umbrellas of reasons. The first umbrella is that there's something psychological going on. The second umbrella is that there's something physical going on. They can certainly coexist to. It might be both, but I kind of want to tease out some of those differences there. So with psychological reasons, there can certainly be emotions involved there. There might be a lot of sadness that somebody is trying to escape from or loneliness that they're trying to like, pacify, or if somebody is even just like feeling a lot of rage or anger, they might take it out on food.
Michelle (00:07:21) - They might even have anger towards themselves. So they're punishing themselves with food. So there can definitely be a huge emotional component to binging, which makes it a form of emotional eating. But I also think there's like there's other pieces of that psychological cause for binge eating that might not be best described as emotional eating. Like if we have a lot of food rules or we have a lot of inaccurate beliefs around nutrition and it's like too much to keep up with. And so we just kind of have that all or nothing mentality. I mean, in some sense, you could argue that that's emotion related. But I'm trying to talk about emotional eating in terms of coping with hard emotions through food like that direct connection there. So I wouldn't really say that that's emotional eating if that's how we're we're viewing emotional eating. And then, of course, the physical aspect of why we might binge is more like if we just have unmet nutrition needs or we've been on a diet for months and we're just over it, so we binge.
I wouldn't necessarily say that's emotional eating either in the way that we're defining emotional eating. So something that I forgot to mention just now that I think I should, is that binge eating can also be a result of somebody who's experienced trauma or somebody who's been a victim of assault, and maybe they're a survivor of a really serious incident. And so binge eating can absolutely be an emotional response as an attempt to try and cope with what's going on with the trauma that has happened in their life. So hopefully by now you can you can see that there's some differences here between when binging is emotional and when it's not. And some binges are, simply put, they're just kind of emotional eating kicked into overdrive. Now, in case you didn't listen to my last episode and you don't really know what a binge is, and you're still like, I don't know how this is any different than emotional eating because I don't get what the differences. Binge eating is different than just having some ice cream after a stressful day, or grabbing a piece of pizza because you want to feel happiness in your life.
Clinical binge eating is feeling a loss of control, while eating, an amount that is definitely larger than anybody else would eat. In that same circumstance, typically within about a two hour period or less. So there has to be that loss of control. It has to be definitely a larger amount than anybody else would eat in that circumstance, and it has to be in about two hours or less roughly. If you listen to my last episode, you'll know that this isn't the most cut and dry explanation.
And I still think it's kind of subjective. What you define as definitely larger than anybody else would eat in that same circumstance might be different than how I define it. And that short period of time. I mean, if it's like if it took two hours and five minutes for the binge to totally finish, are we not counting it as a binge anymore or, you know, it's just I think that you have to use your discretion there. And it's also important to know that subclinical binge eating can occur.
So maybe we're not meeting that criteria perfectly, but we can subjectively say that was off. There was something off with that and that didn't feel right. I didn't feel like I was fully in control or I'm not really sure what happens there. That was way more than I should be eating. And so if you're experiencing that subclinical binge eating, that might be what your emotional eating looks like. I don't know. Everybody's different in every circumstance is different. So to tease out the similarities and the differences between the two, a little bit more emotional eating is typically brought on by those feelings of sadness, stress, anger, anxiety. It's an attempt to cope with feelings through food, whether it's conscious or not. And then binge eating can be that same exact thing. It can be an attempt to cope with feelings, but it can also not be. It can be a result of physical restriction, or it can even be a result of. There's some interesting research about how the reward center in the brain. The differences, though, is that emotional eating is not a binge.
If somebody never loses control, eating more than anybody else would in that same circumstance. So yeah, the biggest difference there is, like if we haven't crossed over into feeling that loss of control and eating more than somebody else would in the same situation, then it's not a binge. But at the same time, I want to caution you against thinking that, oh, if I'm not binge eating that, I'm fine. Like I said in the beginning, there can still be emotional overeating that needs to be addressed. So again, if it is happening so frequent and the amount of food, maybe it's not a binge exactly, but it's still more than you feel like you should be eating and you feel overstuffed, or it's making you feel sluggish, or you're noticing weight gain that you know isn't healthy for your body, then maybe this is something that you should address. I once had a colleague of mine say that emotional eating is just another tool in the toolbox, and it's okay to use that tool if you really feel like it's the right thing and it really will help you feel better.
But if we always use that same tool in the toolbox, it can become a problem, and we need to start exploring those other tools to learn other ways of coping. So in other words, it's important to not let food be the only way that you deal with emotions. And then this probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. If you find yourself binge eating frequently as a result of trying to escape from or cope with feelings, then you may be struggling with the eating disorder known as binge eating disorder. Again, I recommend the last episode that I did if you haven't checked it out yet, hopefully that will give you a little bit more clarity. So I'm going to say what I said in the last episode, which is that I want you to hear today that you don't need to wait until this is bad enough to get help. I think we're so good at justifying how we're doing and just kind of maybe dissociating a little bit and pretending like it's not an issue. At least I was.
I was really good at convincing myself that everything was fine and dandy and I didn't have any issues. But we all have issues. Let's be honest. And if your issue is with food, I want you to know that it's okay to reach out and get help. I mean, especially if somebody is trained in eating disorders. Nobody's going to judge you. We just want to help, and we want to see you feel really confident about the choices you have with food, and feel really confident in yourself and get your quality of life back. Because the thing is, with emotional overeating, if it's happening a lot or it's happening too much and binge eating is, it can really affect your quality of life. And I mean, we don't need to we don't need to play games with that, especially not with our health. I think we can all agree with that, that our health is really important and at some point this may affect your health. It might be already actually. So don't wait until it's bad enough.
Even if you don't meet like some sort of criteria or diagnosis or whatever. If you feel like food is a source of stress for you, or the aftermath of food is a source of stress for you, then it's probably time to reach out and at least get some recommendations on what to do. Going for. Already. You don't necessarily need to commit to like a whole process or a whole treatment plan or anything like that, but just get some eyes on your situation from a professional and see if if it's time to do something about it. If you find that emotional overeating is a really big challenge for you, or binge eating is a big part of your life and you don't want it to be a part of your life, then I would love to invite you to apply for Nourished and Free my signature program. This is the way that you can work with me, and what we do inside of Nourished and Free is we get really deep into the weeds of what's going on with your brain, what's going on with your emotions, if applicable, like what's the situation here? Why is this happening? And we help you to rewire the processes that are going on in your brain so that you can really have success once and for all.
And then I'm also going to be helping you with making sure your nutrition makes sense for your health goals. And then the nice thing about this process is that it is a group program. So you have a community of women who are there to support you when you're having those bad days, or when you're feeling an extra amount of shame or guilt, and you've got not only a group of women to support you, but you've got me and my team to support you. You've got professionals on your side helping you get through all of these things and learn from every single thing that's happening, so that by the end of our four months working together, you're in a completely different place and you're going to be blown away. So definitely apply for my program. It's a no pressure application process. I'll just chat with you a little bit. I don't do calls either. It'll be just like over email or Instagram or whatever, whatever you put on your application. And yeah, we'll chat a little bit. I'll get to know you and kind of get more info on your situation.
And if it makes sense for us to work together, then I'll invite you to join us. But if it doesn't, I'll still give you recommendations on what to do instead, because I don't want to leave you high and dry. So I hope you found this episode enjoyable. And if you have a friend that you think would enjoy it, please share it with them and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Nourish and Free podcast.
.png)
.png)