Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Continued from Part 1
What the peanut butter was really about
There was a night—more than one, really—where I found myself standing in the kitchen, spoon in hand, peanut butter jar cracked open. Not because I was hungry. Not because I had “earned it.” Just… because.
Because my chest was tight. Because something felt off and I didn’t have the words for it. Because silence can scream, and that one bite—the weight of it, the calm it offered—felt like an answer.
It wasn’t about the food. It never is.
It’s about what the food is standing in for—regulation, emotion, coping. That scoop of peanut butter? It wasn’t about hunger. It was about what hurt, what was missing, what I was trying to hold together.
The truth behind the signal
And if you’re a coach, a partner, or someone who loves someone walking through this—it matters that you hear this part. From the outside, emotional eating can look like a lack of willpower. Like backsliding or sabotage. But it’s not.
It’s survival. A coping strategy. A desperate kind of communication—saying, “I need something,” when there are no words or safer tools to say it with.
We have to stop treating emotional eating like a personal failure—like it’s laziness or weakness. It’s none of those things. It’s human. It forms when comfort isn’t offered, when pain goes unnamed, when survival demands a substitute.
Emotional eating is also not a failure of discipline. It’s the body begging for peace in the only language it was ever taught.
Why the light never came on
Let me lay this out in the only way I know how—because if you can understand this, you can understand the entire heart of emotional eating.
You walk into a room and flip the light switch, expecting the room to fill with light. But nothing happens. The room stays dark.
So what do you do? You check the bulb. That’s the obvious fix, right? Maybe it burned out. You replace it. Still nothing so you try another one. Then another. Different brands, different wattages, hoping something finally clicks. But no matter what bulb you screw in, the room stays dark. Every single time.
You get frustrated, question the bulbs, question yourself. Maybe you’re doing something wrong? Maybe you just can’t get it together; the light just doesn’t work for you.
The real issue was never the bulb— It was the wire inside the wall. There’s damage to the wire.
That wire? That’s your emotional regulation system. That’s the part of you that takes in a feeling and knows what to do with it. That says, “I’m overwhelmed” and reaches for connection (or quiet, stillness or breath).
But when that wire is frayed—damaged by trauma, neglect, chaos, or years of survival-mode coping—it stops working. The emotion still comes, but the regulation doesn’t. The signal misfires. The light never turns on.
And food? Food becomes the bulb. It’s what we keep screwing in, over and over, hoping it’ll bring relief. Not because we believe it’s the solution—but because it’s the only thing that’s ever worked. Even if it’s temporary. Even if the light flickers and goes dark again.
This is what emotional eating really is—a frayed wire that’s misfiring. The part of you that learned, probably long ago, that food was the safest, fastest, most predictable way to feel okay. And over time, that pathway became automatic.
The signal fires off: I’m not okay. And food steps in. Every time.
Not because it’s perfect. Not because it fixes anything. But because it’s the only thing that’s ever picked up the call.
What looks like eating is often just a broken wire trying to send a signal. And when no one ever taught you how to name the need or sit with the pain—you do what works.
You don’t fix a frayed wire by yelling at the bulb. You don’t fix it with shame. Or macros. Or motivation.
You fix it by opening up the wall, find what’s frayed and trace the sparks back to where it all went dark.
This was never about hunger
This is where most people get it wrong. They think emotional eating is about indulgence—like we just love cookies a little too much. But it’s not about hunger. It’s about getting through the moment when your system is drowning and everything feels like too much. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, food becomes the fastest, most familiar way to downshift. To find a pause. To feel something else—or nothing at all.
Sometimes, I’ve eaten not to feel full but to feel safe—because when the wire is frayed, and regulation isn’t coming from the places it should, you reach for anything that quiets the noise. Food became the fastest way to shut down the noise, to intercept the chaos before it consumed me. A way to steady the system when the light just wouldn’t come on. A spoonful of peanut butter to slow my breathing. A second serving of dinner not because I was still hungry, but because the first one didn’t touch the ache I was carrying.
For some of us, food was the first form of comfort we ever had—it became the blanket long before we had words. So we return to it. Not because it’s delicious, but because it’s dependable. It’s about staying functional when you’re emotionally flooded.
It’s not just grief—it’s everything
I think some people have this picture of emotional eating: someone curled up on the couch, crushing Chinese takeout at midnight, tears in their eyes. And sure, sometimes it looks like that. But more often? It doesn’t.
Emotional eating isn’t just about sadness or grief. It’s about the moments that overwhelm us—good or bad. It’s about trying to stretch a joy that feels fleeting, or soften an ache that doesn’t have words. It’s about celebration, nostalgia, stress, loneliness, boredom, pride, guilt, love, or loss. Sometimes it’s a craving for connection. Other times, it’s a desire to escape.
It’s the champagne toast after the win. The ice cream after a long week. The Thanksgiving plate that tastes like belonging. It’s the silent snack after everyone’s gone to bed because the quiet is too loud to sit with.
I’ve found myself overeating after moments I should’ve been proud of. Not because I was punishing myself—but because I didn’t know how else to hold the weight of something good.
Emotional eating doesn’t only show up in the wreckage. It shows up in the quiet. In the in-between. All of it.
How it can start…
We are all born with the capacity to regulate—wires designed to connect emotion to comfort, overwhelm to relief. In a nurturing environment, those wires are reinforced. We cry, and someone comes. We fall apart, and someone holds us. That’s how the system learns. But for some of us, something interrupts that process. Abuse. Neglect. Absence. Instead of comfort, we find confusion. Instead of regulation, we get chaos. And the wire—once full of potential—frays before it ever fully forms.
And it can start really early. For some of us, food was the first form of comfort we ever had—it became the blanket long before we had words. But a blanket isn’t a repair—it’s a workaround. And the more we wrapped ourselves in food, the less we learned how to regulate on our own. Over time, that comfort dulled the signal. Food didn’t fix the wire. It covered it up. So we return to it.
The fray in the wire
For me, emotional eating started before I even knew my ABC’s. I was forced to stand naked on a bathroom scale at five years old while someone decided if my body was acceptable, screamed at, beaten, and punished for gaining an ounce. I learned to associate my size with shame and food with danger and at the same time was the only thing that gave me comfort when it did. That’s a brutal contradiction for five year old to live inside.
There were days when I was starved, punished, humiliated—and then days when I was force-fed bowls of salad and soup, told I couldn’t leave the table until every bite was gone, even after I had vomited into the bowl. The rules changed daily. I never knew what was going to happen to me.
Food became complicated. It wasn’t just something I needed—it was something I feared, fantasized about, and sometimes stole. I’d sneak slices of bread into my nightgown and eat them in the dark like they were treasure. I once found an entire frozen loaf of chocolate zucchini bread and hid it in a mound of grass clippings. That loaf felt like a miracle.
But food wasn’t the only thing tangled up in that wire. I was seven years old the first time I felt blood run down my legs and didn’t understand why. I didn’t have the words for what was happening to me. No one came to explain it. No one came to help. There was no comfort. No safety. Just pain, and silence and a lot of bruises my clothes hid well.
Childhood is supposed to be where we learn how to regulate. Where we’re held. Where we’re taught how to name feelings and move through them. I had none of that. My father was absent, and so was my mother. The only constant in my life was my stepmother—my abuser. I wasn’t allowed to have friends or play sports. Even crying came with consequences. The things most children rely on to feel safe, connected, and seen? I never had them.
So I found safety where I could—tucked into stolen moments, smuggled slices of frozen bread, into the dark corners where no one could reach me. In secret—where no one could take it from me. In food, I found a way to disappear.
And yet, every bite came with consequences. Weight gain meant beatings. Sneaking food meant “prison sentences.” I was punished with rubbing alcohol, locked in rooms, forced to urinate out my window because there was a lock on my door, made to sit in silence while others ate.
The hunger never left. Not just in my stomach—but in my heart. In my bones. In my nervous system. When a child doesn’t get comfort, they improvise. When safety isn’t offered, they build their own.
That’s how the wire frayed. The signal went out, it hit that weak spot: I’m not okay. And food answered. Over and over.
And that’s the part people need to understand. The wire didn’t just fray—it solidified. A permanent scaring. Day after day. Year after year. It became the new path my brain followed before I could think. Before I could pause. Before I could ask for anything else.
That new frayed path stayed with me. It shaped how I coped. How I disappeared. How I survived. And it stayed until the day I walked into therapy—three decades later—finally ready to trace that wire back to the place where that fray happened. That spot is what needs to heal. Right there.
Funny, though. There are professionals—clinicians, experts, commentators—still out here trying to explain obesity as a math problem. Still reducing it to sugar and the like. Let them check the bulbs. We’ll be over here, working on the wire.
When survival becomes second nature
Eventually, emotional eating becomes habitual. Unconscious. It slips beneath the radar.
If the fray forms in childhood, it often becomes all you know. That broken connection between emotion and food—between feeling and soothing—gets rehearsed so many times that it doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. It just is.
And even if it starts later in life—maybe during a period of grief, or stress, or survival—it can still solidify the same way. You repeat it enough times and it becomes instinct. Not something you’re deciding. Not something you’re even processing.
Sometimes you catch yourself with the food already in hand, no idea how you got there. You’re not just vacuuming food. You’re just responding. Regulating. Soothing.
And over time, the pattern deepens. The trigger becomes invisible. It’s not always a big emotional blow. Sometimes, it’s just a hard moment. An edge. An emptiness you can’t quite name. And the reflex kicks in: feel something, eat something.
That’s what makes it so hard to interrupt. Because by the time you notice it, it’s already in motion.
The foods that found us
And the foods we reach for? They’re not always random.
Sometimes we gravitate toward the same things we once escaped to—what we had access to, what we stole in secret, what brought even a moment of comfort. The bread, the frosting, the frozen loaf hidden in the grass. For others, the draw is different—less about memory, more about sensation. The crunch that cuts through anxiety. The creaminess that smooths out something jagged inside. The sweetness that momentarily drowns out the sting.
It’s not always about indulgence. Sometimes it’s about familiarity. And more often than not—it’s simply about what’s available. What doesn’t require thinking. What’s within arm’s reach when everything else feels out of control.
And it doesn’t have to be “junk food.” It can be clean, macro-friendly, even praised. A serving of chicken breast. A bag of grapes. A protein bar you didn’t even taste.
They told you it’s cake and cookies. Don’t believe it. Emotional eating is junk feelings, not junk food. Sometimes it’s just you and a fistful of almonds.
Not your face buried in a Costco sheet cake. Just a “heart-healthy,” Whole30-approved, nutritionist-nodded fistful of nuts. And still—still—people have the nerve to act like emotional eating only counts when it comes wrapped in frosting.
Let me say this louder for the macros-obsessed crowd in the back:
Sometimes it looks squeaky clean. Organic, even. Sometimes it hides in that smug little ziplock bag labeled snack-sized, and you’ll keep refilling it until the ache in your chest quiets down.
And for the folks out there breaking out spreadsheets like they’re gonna solve someone’s trauma with a calculator—let’s play:
– One “healthy” handful of almonds = 1 oz = 160-170 calories
– But you’re emotional, you’re mindless, you’re trying to cope—so you grab a damn fistful
– That’s easily 3 oz, maybe 4
– You just inhaled 500–600+ calories
– And it was vegan. And gluten-free.
But sure… go ahead and tell people it’s about larger bodied people and junk food. No, really—please do. So I can personally hand you a permission slip to sit down.
Until we stop treating the symptom like the sin, people will keep hurting in silence… one guilt-riddled handful at a time.
Stop judging. start listening.
And if you’re someone watching this happen—maybe you’re a coach, or a friend, or family—this is your moment to pause, too. Not to fix. Not to problem-solve. But to get curious. To ask better questions. To trade judgment for compassion.
Because emotional eating is wiring. And the more you understand what’s underneath, the more trust you can build with the person trying to untangle it.
So now what?
We stop asking, “Why can’t you just stop?” “Why are you so fat?” “Why can’t you stop eating?” “Why do you eat all the time?” “Why can’t you track your food?” “Why can’t you get your fucking shit together?”
And we start asking, “What are you needing?” “What’s happening underneath this moment?” “How can I support you—really, truly—right now?”
Healing doesn’t start with cutting out the food. It starts with listening to the feeling beneath it. Create space for safety and support.
In Part 3, we’re going to talk about that frayed wire. For those of you who are coaches, family, or friends, we’ll explore what this looks like in real life. How it sounds. How it shows up in the athletes you coach, the people you love, the clients who say they’re fine but they’re not logging meals or vacuuming food in silence. You’ll see the signs, the sparks, and maybe for the first time, understand what they actually mean. We’ll also explore what it looks like when healing begins, and how it can show up even years later.
