I recently asked my Facebook Community Group a question “I comfort eat because…“
Almost half of the respondents comfort eat either out of boredom or fatigue, or to mask certain emotions, making their answers truly fascinating.
Why People comfort eat
How people answered aligns with what I have observed in my clients. People engage in comfort eating for a multitude of reasons, ranging from the mundane to the profound. They experience boredom, fear, anxiety, loneliness, depression, stress, or undergo traumatic situations, and cover this with food.
Society perceives comfort eating as a readily available and innocuous method to alleviate stress and tension. Yet it also has a darker flip side, where it is portrayed as a shameful behaviour and something to be done in secret.
This very mixed message sets us up for needless guilt and shame, as well as embedding that food is a “treat” that we must somehow either earn with “good behaviour” or to use if someone else’s behaviour has been “bad”.
What is it about food that is so comforting?
We cannot disregard the undeniable physical sensation of eating, which we are instinctively wired to derive pleasure from.
As humans, we have evolved to find comfort while being held and nourished by our mother’s breast. This comforting experience stems from the safety we feel during feeding, as well as the soothing effect of the combination of sugars and fats present in breast milk, which greatly alleviate an infant’s distress.
Food as comfort could also be said to go back to our earliest days and “Feast times” – when we gathered as a tribe around a fire to celebrate a successful hunt after a few days of not eating at all and take comfort in the fact we were all safe and fed for another day.
Beyond that, we are then taught that we are rewarded with sweet things when we are “good” and that a “bowl of comfort” is things like stew and dumping, porridge, mashed potato and bowls of spaghetti.
What your personal definition of comfort food is will very much be passed down from your parents, and what they were given. They will comfort you in the way they were comforted by their parents. Your idea of comfort will be very different to someone from a different culture to you.
The learned nature of “comfort food” means that idea can be transformed!
I know for me, my comfort food used to be ice-cream. Back in my twenties, I would plan for the times when I knew that things would cause me to feel over emotional.
Family gatherings in particular were difficult for me, as back then I didn’t understand my mum at all, and she took my lack of understanding as rejection, causing her to guilt trip me about her not feeling like she was a good enough mother.
When that happened, (and at Xmas, it was guaranteed to happen!) I would head to the freezer, pull the pint of Pralines and Cream I had waiting for me, and dive right in.
I usually didn’t stop until I hit the paper at the bottom of the carton.
Thankfully, my coaching training gave me a way better relationship with my mum, and also the ability to retrain what I see as comfort food.
Because yes, our less-than-helpful behaviours lurk in our minds, waiting for us…
Yet we can change the way we react to them with the proper support.
I know I still have comfort eating episodes, and now they are filled with steak, broccoli and a mushroom, red wine and peppercorn cream sauce instead of that tub of ice cream!
Not having this type of reprogramming built into the system is where most “diet plans” fail us – we are given a bunch of “yes and no” semi-starvation food plans, and no other support as to how to change our behaviours when our bodies are crying out for food and we eat food that comforts us and makes us feel better short term.
A large amount of comfort is also community. As one of my group members said “And whilst I don’t post much on here I do check daily at the posts, the recipes, the discussions, and I think it’s this page that’s been a big factor in my success and determination to staying in the straight and narrow 👍😁”
A big part of my community group is about instilling the support of my system, which is purposefully constructed with no noes – it’s all a person’s choice as to what to eat, based on the effect that food will have on your body There’s also no judgement when you do choose something non optimal. It was what it was.
And when you know you have a group of people that have your back? Well, that’s comforting in itself.
