Exploring Overeating – A Kind Understanding

For so many of us, overeating is a deeply personal and often misunderstood experience.  If you’ve searched for answers about your overeating or wondered why you sometimes turn to food for comfort, you are not alone.

What Is Overeating?

Overeating is not a sign of failure or a lack of willpower—it’s a very normal response to uncomfortable or overwhelming feelings.  In my work, I’ve found that overeating often surfaces when we’re trying to cope with difficult feelings like: sadness, overwhelm or frustration.  Many people can recognise the pattern: eating not because of our physical hunger, but to soothe or distract ourselves from our current emotional discomfort in a way that is so easy to do.

Why Does Overeating Happen?

One of the most important steps in addressing overeating is understanding why it happens in the first place.  Food serves as so much more than just nourishment—it can also represent comfort, safety and predictability.

• Seeking Safety: Eating helps us feel secure.  The routine of eating is a comforting one.  Food is love and food means comfort.  Food will always be there for us, and food will never reject us.
• Avoiding Conflict: Turning inward with food may feel safer than confronting people or situations that feel overwhelming.
• Fear of the Unknown: Often, patterns of overeating have deep roots, sometimes linked to our earlier years and non-understood experiences of trauma that have not been truly resolved.  Recognising this can be the first step in moving towards real change.

Gentle Understandings

The journey of healing is much more than changing what’s on our plate—it’s about changing how we relate to ourselves and ultimately feeding our self-esteem, this one is an inside job and it has its own timeline.

1. Tune Into Your Feelings

Start by getting curious (not critical) about your feelings.  When you notice the urge to overeat, gently ask yourself: “What am I feeling right now?  What do I really need?”  Expanding your emotional vocabulary can open up new ways to express and honour whatever it is that you’re experiencing, without automatically turning to food.

2. Practice Your Own Version of Self-Compassion

Are you able to meet yourself with kindness instead of self-judgment, just for today?  Recognise that in moments of emotional pain, you did your best to soothe yourself.  Are you able to accept that your coping strategies developed for a valid reason?  By allowing yourself grace and dignity, you are creating a supportive inner environment where healing can happen.

3. Explore New Ways to Meet Your Needs

What are the unmet needs behind your overeating?  Is it connection, rest, or a need for creativity and mental stimulation?  Consider alternatives like journaling – just getting all your minds thoughts down on paper so you can have a few brief moments of Peace of Mind, then taking a walk outdoors in Nature.  Anywhere near greenery, or a body of water, maybe the mountains or the bush.  Nature is the greatest healer.  Ideas like these can build new pathways of self-care.

4. Build Emotional Resilience

Learning new ways to build bridges within ourselves with our communication can help us understand feelings like anger, guilt, or shame in a safe and supported way.

We can learn to understand our overeating not as something “wrong” with us, but as a message from our body and mind, inviting us to tune in more deeply and learn more about ourselves.

Hope and Healing Are Possible

Overeating experiences can be challenging, but they don’t have to define us or our sense of self.  It is possible to seek out and embrace a more nurturing and nourishing experience of our relationship with food and still manage to feel 100% good about you.