The real reason you eat when you’re not hungry

As the conversation around appetite and weight changes, what is it about certain foods that makes us reach for them when we need comfort?

The rise of GLP-1 medications has put appetite and weight firmly in the spotlight. But while some people are choosing medication to help manage their weight and appetite, others may simply want to understand their own eating habits better – particularly the tendency to reach for food when we’re stressed, bored, sad or overwhelmed.

Why, after all, can we crave certain foods when we’re not actually hungry?

A major factor is the effect of pleasurable foods on the brain.

“During lockdown, we were all searching for ways to feel good. Sugar has a strong effect on the brain; it stimulates the reward system,” explains psychologist Cinzia Pezzolesi. “When we eat, say, an ice cream, we produce a hit of dopamine, the feel-good brain chemical.”

There is a good evolutionary reason for this response. “Humans evolved this mechanism because we needed to remember we found food that was not poisonous,” says Pezzolesi.

The problem is that our brains haven’t caught up with the modern food environment. We now have easy access to foods designed to be highly pleasurable, and the brain learns to remember what makes us feel good.

“On a day when you feel sad or even just a bit flat, you reach for the comfort food because you crave those chemicals,” says Pezzolesi. “But what happens as time passes is that the brain generalizes that feeling. So one day you feel sad, and the brain remembers that eating something delicious makes you feel better.”

This can become a cycle. “Over time you don’t even need to feel low to crave the food,” she says. “All you need to see is the item, and it’s linked to the memory of feeling good. You see it, and you want to eat it.”

That may explain why someone can walk past a favourite patisserie and suddenly want a cake, even when they aren’t hungry.

When stress drives eating

Stress can strengthen the pattern. “Stress destabilizes our sense of safety,” says Pezzolesi. “When we don’t feel safe or well, we are conditioned to believe that food will help us, and we end up stress eating.”

Food can also provide an escape when we’re overwhelmed.

“Another reason we eat when we feel overwhelmed is that it’s a form of procrastination,” she says. “If you’re facing a difficult task you don’t want to do, food provides an escape.”

Instead of tackling the difficult task, eating gives us something immediate and pleasurable to focus on. “You can’t face the task, but by eating you are still doing something rather than nothing,” says Pezzolesi.

This doesn’t mean that eating for emotional reasons is necessarily a problem. Food is, after all, a source of pleasure as well as nourishment, and eating something comforting after a difficult day is hardly unusual.

The more useful question may be what role food is playing for us.

Nutritionist Laura Thomas suggests asking: “What need do you think your habit is meeting?”

“Food might be offering you something valuable, comfort, pleasure, joy, safety, or a sense of connection,” she says.

That is an important distinction. If food is providing comfort or helping us cope, simply telling ourselves to stop eating it doesn’t address the reason we’re reaching for it in the first place.

What’s in your toolkit?

Thomas points out that our coping “toolkit” may already contain foods we turn to when life gets difficult.

“If you haven’t developed alternative tools or skills to get through life’s difficulties, and someone tells you that you must remove those foods. What are you left with?”

Rather than treating comfort eating as something that must be eliminated, she suggests recognising what it is doing for us.

“A more useful response is to develop new non-food-based coping strategies alongside comfort food. It’s about broadening the range of options available to you.”

In other words, the aim doesn’t have to be giving up the foods that comfort us. It can be having more ways to find comfort.

“Ask yourself what other tools could you add: going for a walk, phoning a friend, meditation or therapy if appropriate,” says Thomas. “And integrate food as one of several resources.”

Perhaps that is a more useful way to think about comfort eating. Rather than seeing a craving as a failure of willpower, we can see it as a clue.

“Comfort eating is a useful response,” says Thomas. “It’s communicating that you have an emotional need that requires soothing.”

And, she adds: “There is nothing to feel guilt and shame about.”

Words: Lucy Rawlinson, Images: Shutterstock