Let’s start off this blog post with a question from a fellow Voice Finder:
“Learning the different types of hungers has been helpful yet I struggle most with eating when I am not hungry. Like I KNOW I am not hungry yet I eat the food anyway. Especially really tasty food. Or sometimes it isn’t even that great and I am just watching TV after work then notice I have gone through a bag of chips. I don’t remember tasting them!”
My favorite thing to wear while writing the *FYFV book has been my Legalize Emotional Eating sweatshirt from Nicole Groman’s shop [Found here: https://www.nicolegroman.com/product-page/legalize-emotional-eating-sweatshirt.]. I get more nods, soft smiles, and whispered “thank you’s” from strangers when I wear it. We all need a daily reminder for permission to eat especially emotionally.
Finding your Food Voice includes discerning the why behind eating without judgment. I want you to practice that same permission to emotional hunger.
Let me be clear 🩻
Emotional eating is:
⭐️ Normal
⭐️ Healthy
⭐️ Important
⭐️ A strength
⭐️ An effective coping mechanism
Our food thoughts form a superhighway in our brain. Over time, these thoughts have been conditioned to feel shame from eating outside of hunger.
❓Why do we fear our normal response to feelings?
This conditioning comes from cultural fear of weight gain tied to racism. If this is the first time you heard this connection, I encourage you to read two books: Fearing the Black Body by Dr. Sabrina Strings and Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun Harrison.
🛑 This shame from emotionally cued eating also acts like bumpers blocking you from understanding what needs are being met when emotionally eating.
Can we pluck out the shame when noticing yearning to eat outside of hunger?
I wish a set of tweezers was all we needed to repair this part of accessing your Food Voice.
I encourage you to practice
💫 calling out the shame,
💫 normalizing it,
💫 and eating in response to the emotions if you want.
💫 Practice giving yourself compassion when you do.
What about health you ask? I can hear some naysayers arguing against emotionally cued eating.
My rebuttal remains:
across the globe and over time, people have always emotionally eaten. Even more, people always will.
Food has always contained a mechanism for coping with anxiety, fear, happiness, and any other triggering emotion. It works with just one bite. Ignoring it or shaming yourself from using such a convenient legal tool will only block you from your Food Voice.
Connecting with the symbolism behind emotionally cued eating will only help you better understand your body’s physical and emotional needs. I find my clients experience less depression and improved health markers (like lower insulin, blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure) as they rewrite their rules around emotional eating.
Keep this in mind too: you don’t owe physical health to anyone. Even if eating in response to emotions did not improve health markers, I am still rooting for you to heal however you can or want to.
It’s your body so your rules.
Let’s sum things up:
I encourage you to practice nonjudgmental curiosity. Instead of saying, “I shouldn’t have eaten that I wasn’t even hungry!” try saying “I wonder what unspoken need eating is helping me meet.” Using should to describe your eating pattern is maladaptive…meaning it won’t get you anywhere but in a funk and dead end. Call out that should and step back to consider a bigger picture. Try to stop shoulding on yourself.
Thank you for hanging out with me in my blog. I am grateful we are connected. 
Warmly,
Julie
*The FYFV book (Hachette) will be out March 2025. Cover reveal soon!
