Comfort Eating

I prefer to use the term comfort eating as I think that there are various levels to the process from the mild to the extreme. Distress comes because of the need to self soothe by using food. Some of the signs are listed below along with having a preoccupation with body weight, getting on scales each morning, and experiencing mood swings and depression. Eating to excess, which causes one to be overweight, can come under the heading of compulsive eating, and yet it does not necessarily go alongside purging and binge eating. However there may be issues of this to a greater or lesser degree at various stages in life.

As a young woman, Sarah would use laxatives on a regular basis in the vain hope that it would keep her weight down. In truth, she was never hugely overweight, but her self image indicated that she was. Sarah had never really considered what she was doing to be self harming and a very damaging process to her digestive system. She told me that it gave her a sense of wellbeing to purge herself and had never considered it to be destructive. She would also take diuretics losing weight for a day or two only to regain it within hours.

Some of the signs of comfort eating are below...

• Mindless Eating
• Grazing throughout the day
• Eating whilst preparing meals for others
• Eating snacks after a large meal
• Eating to soothe feelings of boredom or loneliness
• Skipping meals to save on calories
• Starvation days
• Yo-yo dieting

Think about how you might describe your own process of comfort eating?