Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
When food becomes a feeling: writing through the weight of it
I’ve wrestled with emotional eating for as long as I can remember. And trying to explain it? It feels like translating a language only your body speaks. Because emotional eating isn’t just one story—it’s a thousand little ones: the late-night cereal after a long cry, the cookie that celebrates something small, the meal you didn’t want but said yes to anyway. It’s the ache in your chest that shows up in your hands, reaching for something—anything—to help you feel less alone.
I spent almost eight years in therapy, and the last seven years of my journey trying to unlearn everything I had learned—every emotional cue tied to food, every pattern etched into my nervous system. And here’s the thing: it still shows up. Just because you’ve done the work doesn’t mean the work is done. I’ve gotten better at spotting it. Most of the time, I can catch it early, interrupt it, and make a different choice. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone. I still navigate it; sometimes quietly, sometimes clumsily, even after all this time.
And that’s something we don’t talk about enough. Healing isn’t linear. Growth doesn’t mean immunity. Some wounds don’t disappear; they just soften. They hum in the background instead of screaming in your face.
It’s not a straight line. It’s messy. Winding. Full of quiet patterns and hidden grief. And writing this? It meant reopening old wounds. Sitting with memories I’d rather forget. But that’s the truth of emotional eating—you can’t explain it unless you’re willing to feel your way through it. This is also the most likely reason I put it off for so long. The risk was that I might eat my way through it. But hey, so far so good.
Shared struggles, shared stories
I won’t pretend to speak for every experience. I can’t. But after years of working closely with larger-bodied athletes and hearing from hundreds through the Working with Larger Bodies Seminar, I’ve come to understand just how common this struggle is. The stories may differ, but the patterns? The emotions? The need to soothe, feel seen, and find relief in something tangible? That part feels nearly universal.
Those of us who live with this, we know. Sometimes, it’s a quiet nod to someone across the room. A hug that lingers. A look that says, “Yeah. Me too.”
For the ones who don’t understand (yet)
But this next part? It’s for the rest of you; for the coach who’s frustrated that your client keeps backsliding. For the family member who just can’t understand why your loved one can’t “get it together.” I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to bring you in. To help you see what’s been hiding in plain sight. Because maybe—just maybe—if you understand it, someone you love won’t have to carry it alone anymore.
This is about survival. Emotional wiring. Comfort in the absence of connection. If you’ve never felt that, it’s hard to grasp. But if you’re willing to lean in and look deeper, I promise you’ll start to see things differently.
That’s why this matters.
The bigger picture of addressing obesity
So now that we’ve peeled back the emotional layer, let’s zoom out and talk about the bigger picture because this isn’t just a personal struggle. It’s a systemic one. If we take on the enormous task of addressing obesity, we need to do more than count calories and prescribe macros. We need to walk into the mess with people. We need to stop pretending that food exists in a vacuum, untouched by grief, trauma, joy, boredom, and everything else that makes us human.
Because the truth is, no amount of meal prep or step tracking can fully heal what’s actually hurting. Real change doesn’t happen in isolation; it happens when we start looking at the whole picture of every human: the sleep-deprived parent hiding in the pantry, the trauma survivor trying to stay afloat, the person who grew up believing food was love, or reward, or safety. Those stories matter. And they’re everywhere.
One of the most overlooked, misunderstood pieces of this picture? Emotional eating. According to the National Institutes of Health, somewhere between 60–70% of individuals living with obesity are also living with emotional eating patterns. That’s not a tiny footnote; that’s a huge, flashing sign that says: “Hey, there’s more going on here.”
Emotional eating is an invisible thread that can hold people back
Emotion eating doesn’t just coexist with obesity. It complicates it. It makes weight loss harder, more emotionally charged, and often more discouraging. Because it’s not just about “willpower” or discipline, it’s about unlearning years, sometimes decades, of using food to manage feelings. Telling someone to just cut back, or just eat 800 grams every day, or push through is like handing them a map without acknowledging the terrain. That terrain might be depression, anxiety, trauma, or just a lifetime of unmet needs. Emotional eating is often the invisible thread pulling them back whenever they try to move forward.
Why coaches, family, and friends matter
And if we really want to help people, not just fix their habits but transform their lives, we must be willing to look deeper. We have to be able to speak to it, hold space for it, and help them navigate it.
So if you’re a coach, a trainer, a friend, a partner—or someone trying to support a loved one, this is where your understanding can make all the difference. Your compassion, willingness to learn, asking better questions, and staying curious are the bridge.
Because you can’t heal what you refuse to see. And emotional eating? It deserves to be named; not as weakness, not as failure, but as a signal. A story. A survival strategy. One that can be unlearned, yes, but only when we’re ready to understand why it showed up in the first place.
Coming up next: It was never about the food
In Part 2, we’re going to break it wide open. We’ll start by answering the big question: What the hell is emotional eating, really? Because people have a hard time believing it was never about the food; because, well, food feels like the most obvious piece. But emotional eating so often has far less to do with hunger and far more to do with regulation, emotion, and survival.
It’s not the scoop of peanut butter, it’s what the peanut butter is standing in for. That’s the part we need to learn to see. And that’s precisely where we’re going next.
