Introduction Special Holiday Issue 2006, Vol 5, Issue 4, Topic: Emotional Eating
We take a break from our series on eating disorder comorbidity with this special holiday issue focusing on emotional eating.
We are offering information on emotional eating at this time because emotional eating becomes even more common and distressing during the holidays. People who eat emotionally through-out the year are confronted with heightened accessibility to foods that they have come to view as “forbidden” and “bad”. Those who experience holiday-related sadness due to past life events are also more apt than usual to engage in emotional eating behaviors to soothe difficult feelings. Even people who are functioning emotionally and psychologically without much distress may eat for emotional reasons at this time of year, because hurriedness and stress increase and naturally lead people to eat without thinking, merely because food is present.
Emotional eating is an emerging concept in the field of eating disorders. Its definition is evolving as clinicians learn to treat people with emotional eating problems and researchers begin to examine this domain. In this issue of The Remuda Review, we offer a preliminary definition of emotional eating. We lean primarily on the literature about binge-eating disorder—the most extreme form of emotional eating—to understand the antecedents and treatments most appropriate for those who eat emotionally.
We hope you will find this issue timely during the holiday season and throughout the year as you work with clients who may struggle with emotional eating.
In our next issue, we will resume our ongoing exploration of eating disorders’ most significant co-occurring concerns.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
Colossians 2:8
