Stress & Emotional Eating in Adults: Causes and Coping Strategies
For most of us, stress doesn’t just live in our minds or even stay within our bodies. It comes out in our behaviors as well — specifically our eating habits. Maybe we grab for that handful of chips after a tense meeting or crave sweets after a long day at work. In moments like these, eating becomes less about hunger and more about finding a sense of calm, comfort, and control when life feels overwhelming.
While the occasional stress eating is part of normal human behavior, ongoing emotional eating can be unhealthy. The more we rely on food to manage stress, the more guilt, frustration, or loss of control may follow.
It’s important to recognize these patterns and find ways to manage your emotional eating, so it doesn’t lead to long-term implications on your health and well-being. That’s why this article will explore:
- Understanding emotional eating and its connection to stress.
- Identifying common causes of stress eating.
- Therapy and coping strategies for overcoming emotional eating.
- Answering commonly asked questions about emotional eating in adults.
What Is Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating happens when food becomes our way of dealing with and managing negative emotions like stress, anxiety, sadness, or even boredom. Rather than eating to satisfy hunger, we’re eating (or overeating) as a response to negative emotions.1 In these moments, the eating serves as a temporary form of relief, helping to distract us from discomfort and creating a sense of calm or control when life feels unpredictable.
When this cycle happens repeatedly, emotional eating can become a learned coping mechanism — something that once helped us feel safe or in control. It’s therefore not altogether surprising that emotional eating is very common. Research shows that around 64% of people with perceived stress are also emotional eaters.2
Over time, emotional eating can blur the line between physical and emotional hunger. We may find ourselves eating on autopilot, craving specific comfort foods, or feeling disconnected from fullness cues. While food may offer short-term emotional relief, the feelings that triggered the behavior often return, sometimes accompanied by guilt or shame.
What’s the Connection Between Stress and Emotional Eating?
The connection between stress and emotional eating has to do with how stress influences every system in the body, including how we eat, digest, and regulate hunger. When we feel overwhelmed, the body triggers a cascade of hormonal and emotional shifts that sometimes make food feel like the fastest path to relief.
Here’s how stress and emotional eating are connected:
The Role of Cortisol and “Reward” Eating
Cortisol, a hormone produced by stress, can increase our appetite and also make us more sensitive to rewards.3 Comfort foods also temporarily boost dopamine and serotonin, the same brain chemicals linked to pleasure and emotional relief.4
This creates a feedback loop, meaning that the more stressed or anxious we feel, the stronger the urge to use food as a coping tool becomes. Over time, this “reward eating” can reinforce emotional dependency on food and contribute to emotional exhaustion, guilt, and even body-image distress.
Link Between Mental Health and Overeating
Emotional eating can both stem from and worsen mental health challenges. Chronic stress, depression, and anxiety can increase the likelihood of overeating, while shame or frustration about those behaviors can amplify emotional distress.5 This cycle often leaves individuals feeling stuck, alternating between self-blame and emotional relief.
Emotional and Stress Eating Causes
For many of us, life experiences, emotional patterns, and our biological responses shape stress eating behaviors. What starts as a moment of comfort (reaching for food to ease tension) can gradually become a learned way of managing stress or emotional pain. These are some of the common causes of emotional eating in adults:
Chronic Stress and Burnout
Mental health and nutrition often go hand-in-hand. When stress is constant, our bodies stay in a state of alert. The elevated cortisol levels from the continued stress increase our appetites and can intensify cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods that temporarily calm the nervous system. 6 Over time, this can lead to emotional dependence on food and contribute to cycles of mental health and overeating that further drain our energy and motivation.
Early Life Associations With Food
Many emotional eating patterns begin in childhood. Food may have been used as comfort after difficult experiences, as a reward for good behavior, or as a substitute for emotional support. These early associations can persist into adulthood, teaching our brains to link eating with safety, soothing, or approval.
Trauma and Nervous System Dysregulation
For trauma survivors, food may serve as a grounding tool — a way to self-soothe or regain a sense of control when the body feels unsafe. Traumatic stress can disrupt normal hunger and fullness cues, leading to patterns of anxiety-related eating habits that are more about emotional safety than physical need.7
Hormonal and Physiological Factors
Hormonal changes from PMS, menopause, thyroid issues, or disrupted sleep can affect mood and appetite regulation.8 These biological shifts often amplify stress reactivity, making emotional eating feel even more difficult to manage.9
Stress and emotional eating often mask the need for rest, connection, comfort, or validation. Identifying the root cause behind emotional eating isn’t about willpower; it’s about understanding what your body and mind are asking for beneath the surface.
Coping With Stress Eating
Overcoming emotional eating isn’t about eliminating comfort eating altogether. It’s about building awareness, flexibility, and compassion around why it happens in the first place, and to develop healthier ways of responding to stress.
These are some coping strategies to try in order to bring awareness to your eating habits and find healthier ways to cope:
1. Identify Emotional Triggers
Start by observing when emotional eating tends to occur. Is it after stressful workdays, conflict with loved ones, or when feeling lonely or bored? Tracking these patterns in a journal can reveal emotional and situational triggers. This awareness helps you recognize that the urge to eat is often less about hunger and more about needing comfort, rest, or reassurance.
2. Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating strategies reconnect the body and mind by slowing down the process. Take a few breaths before eating, notice what your body truly feels, and savor the textures and flavors of your food. This awareness helps you distinguish between physical hunger and emotional cravings, giving you the opportunity to pause rather than react.10
3. Develop Stress Management Routines
Chronic stress is one of the strongest drivers of emotional eating. Incorporating small, daily stress management and diet practices can calm the nervous system and reduce the need to turn to food for comfort. Some stress relief techniques include:
- Deep breathing or grounding exercises.
- Gentle movement such as walking, yoga, or stretching.
- Scheduling breaks for rest and reflection.
- Reframing perfectionistic or self-critical thoughts that intensify stress.
When these habits become consistent, they strengthen resilience and make emotional regulation easier in the moments that matter most.
4. Create a Supportive Environment
The environment plays a key role in behavior change. Plan balanced, consistent meals to prevent extreme hunger, and keep nourishing foods accessible. Reduce shame-based dieting or “all-or-nothing” rules that can heighten stress and trigger emotional eating. Consider building a support system through therapy or group programs that offer accountability, encouragement, and understanding.
Therapy for Emotional Eating
Because emotional eating is often rooted in stress, emotional regulation, and learned coping habits, therapy can play a central role in creating lasting change. The ultimate goal is to understand the underlying emotions and beliefs that drive them.
Through personalized treatment, therapy helps clients recognize their emotional triggers for overeating, develop healthier coping tools, and rebuild trust in their body’s cues.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is one of the most effective forms of behavioral therapy for emotional eating and eating disorders.11 It focuses on identifying and reframing the negative thoughts that lead to emotional distress and reactive eating.
For example, beliefs like “I’ve already messed up, so it doesn’t matter what I eat” can be replaced with more balanced thoughts that reduce guilt and support mindful choices. Over time, CBT helps you break the cycle of using food to manage stress or numb difficult feelings.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT combines CBT practices with mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation — skills that are particularly helpful for those who eat in response to intense emotions. Through DBT, you’ll learn how to stay present during moments of distress without turning to food as an escape. It also provides tools for self-soothing and resilience-building, promoting healthier emotional regulation and eating patterns.
Mindfulness-Based and Somatic Therapies
Mindfulness-based approaches help us observe cravings and emotions without judgment, while somatic therapies teach awareness of how stress and emotion can manifest within our bodies.
These methods are especially valuable for those whose bodies automatically respond to stress with hunger or cravings. By staying attuned to sensations and breathing through discomfort, clients learn that emotions, like hunger, come and go without needing to be immediately “fixed.”
Trauma-Informed Therapy
For many of us, emotional eating is tied to unresolved trauma, shame, or unmet emotional needs. Trauma-informed therapy recognizes the protective role emotional eating once served and helps us develop safer, more compassionate ways to regulate our nervous system. Integrating approaches like EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), or compassion-based therapy can support emotional healing and resilience.
Therapy empowers us to replace self-judgment with understanding and to meet emotional needs in ways that nourish rather than deplete. As awareness grows, eating becomes less about control and more about connection to body, mind, and emotion.
Mission Connection: Professional Support for Stress and Emotional Eating
Stress and emotional eating can create cycles of guilt, exhaustion, and self-criticism that feel difficult to escape. At Mission Connection, we understand that these behaviors are rarely about food itself — they’re about coping with stress, anxiety, or emotional pain in the best way your mind and body have learned so far.
Using evidence-based approaches like CBT, DBT, and IFS, our approach to adult eating disorder support focuses on compassion, not control. We aim to help you uncover the deeper patterns that drive eating and replace them with healthier ways to manage stress and uncomfortable emotions.
If stress or emotional eating affects your daily life, you don’t have to face it alone. Contact Mission Connection today to learn how our compassionate therapists can help you develop healthier coping tools, strengthen emotional balance, and find peace in your relationship with food.
FAQs About Stress and Emotional Eating in Adults
1. Is Emotional Eating a Mental Health Disorder?
No, emotional eating itself isn’t considered a mental health disorder. But it often exists alongside conditions like anxiety, depression, or trauma. When food becomes the main way to manage emotions, it can create cycles that impact both mental and physical well-being.
2. What’s the Difference Between Emotional Eating and an Eating Disorder?
Emotional eating is typically an occasional response to stress or emotions, like reaching for comfort food after a hard day. An eating disorder, such as binge eating disorder or bulimia, involves more frequent, distressing patterns with food, body image, or control. The main difference is the impact. Emotional eating may bring temporary relief, while eating disorders cause ongoing emotional or physical harm and often require professional treatment.
3. How Can I Tell the Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger?
Physical hunger develops gradually and tends to go away once we’ve eaten. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, appears suddenly. It often involves cravings for specific foods and is linked to feelings rather than physical need. You might also notice that emotional hunger might lead to guilt, frustration, or regret afterward.
4. What Programs and Approaches Does Mission Connection Offer to Help With Emotional Eating?
We offer a range of therapeutic programs that can address the roots of stress-related eating. Whether it’s anxiety, depression, or an eating disorder, our focus is to help you understand your emotional patterns, build coping skills, and strengthen self-compassion. In addition to individual therapy, we also provide integrative programs that focus on emotional regulation and eating, stress management, and overall wellness.
References
- Reichenberger, J., Schnepper, R., Arend, A., & Blechert, J. (2020). Emotional eating in healthy individuals and patients with an eating disorder: evidence from psychometric, experimental and naturalistic studies. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 79(3), 290–299. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0029665120007004
- Carpio-Arias, T. V., Manzano, A. M. S., Sandoval, V., Vinueza-Veloz, A. F., Betancourt, A. R., Ortíz, S. L. B., & Vinueza-Veloz, M. F. (2022). Relationship between perceived stress and emotional eating. A cross sectional study. Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, 49, 314–318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnesp.2022.03.030
- Baik, J. (2020). Stress and the dopaminergic reward system. Experimental & Molecular Medicine, 52(12), 1879–1890. https://doi.org/10.1038/s12276-020-00532-4
- Singh, M. (2014). Mood, food, and obesity. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00925
- Mills, J. G., Thomas, S. J., Larkin, T. A., & Deng, C. (2020). Overeating and food addiction in Major Depressive Disorder: Links to peripheral dopamine. Appetite, 148, 104586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.104586
- Harvard Health. (2021, February 15). Why stress causes people to overeat. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-stress-causes-people-to-overeat
- Roer, G. E., Solbakken, H. H., Abebe, D. S., Aaseth, J. O., Bolstad, I., & Lien, L. (2021). Inpatients experiences about the impact of traumatic stress on eating behaviors: an exploratory focus group study. Journal of Eating Disorders, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00480-y
- Amin, A., Dhillo, W. S., & Murphy, K. G. (2011). The central effects of thyroid hormones on appetite. Journal of Thyroid Research, 2011, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4061/2011/306510
- Kuck, M. J., & Hogervorst, E. (2024). Stress, depression, and anxiety: psychological complaints across menopausal stages. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1323743
- Nelson, J. B. (2017). Mindful Eating: the art of presence while you eat. Diabetes Spectrum, 30(3), 171–174. https://doi.org/10.2337/ds17-0015
- Murphy, R., Straebler, S., Cooper, Z., & Fairburn, C. G. (2010). Cognitive Behavioral therapy for eating disorders. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 33(3), 611–627. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2010.04.004