Beyond Nutrition: Healing the Emotional Body Through Food
In 2018, the high-stress, fast-paced, "boys club" of the banking world finally broke me. It wasn't a sudden crash; it was a slow, terrifying fade. I was a casualty of a productivity culture that demanded everything and gave nothing back but a hollow, frantic shell of a person. My body was screaming: my period had vanished (hypothalamic amenorrhea), I suffered chronic injuries from being undernourished and over-exercised, and an autoimmune flare turned every meal into an enemy.
I was a walking medical mystery, yet no one seemed to care. I had macrocytic anemia, a gut overrun by candida, and a crippling restrictive eating pattern that not only impacted the quality of my physical, mental, and emotional health but also my relationships and ability to enjoy life. What made the descent even crueler was the staggering amount of nutritional misinformation I'd swallowed whole. When I finally sought help, I hit a brick wall. I wasn't "sick enough"—never hospitalized, never technically "starving"—so treatment was out of reach. The doctors who were my last hope had a maximum of 20 minutes to spare. They looked at their clipboards, not me. They dismissed my panic as a fuss, avoided my eyes in their discomfort, and essentially told me, with clinical coldness, that "everything was fine."
Everything was not fine. I was depressed, anxious, and standing on the precipice of a complete life upheaval, feeling utterly alone and truly crazy.
Eventually, a flicker of defiance sparked. I made a solemn pact with myself: I would dedicate a year to nothing but healing—to getting my life, my health, and my period back. This commitment was an all-out effort, and the first, most brutal battlefield was my emotional relationship with food. I was passionate about nutrition and well-being, yet I was the opposite of nourished or well. If I wanted to help people heal, I had to choose to make changes myself.
Now, I talk to people every day about their nutrition. I start almost every conversation with a simple, open question: “Is there anything you want to tell me about your nutrition journey?” Sometimes, I get silence. But most of the time? The floodgates open.
Nutrition is profoundly personal and intensely emotional. It touches our deepest insecurities, our need for control, and our most vulnerable coping mechanisms. Because this was such a monumental part of my own healing—a struggle I see mirrored in so many others—I need to address it here.
This is about provoking thought and inspiring the courage to grow.
Emotional eating is not just consuming food when you're stressed, but is defined as consuming or restricting food in response to feelings, not hunger (Schnepper et al., 2023). It’s a sophisticated, often subconscious coping mechanism for managing feelings like stress, anxiety, or sadness—a temporary balm for deep discomfort.
Emotional distress manifests in two primary, opposing ways with food:
Restriction as Emotional Avoidance: For individuals struggling with high anxiety or emotional dysregulation, restricting food offers a fleeting sense of control or perfectionism. It’s a way to dampen or suppress overwhelming feelings. Limiting intake functions to numb emotional arousal or escape negative self-judgment (Jurek & Maruda, 2024). It feels like power when everything else feels chaotic.
Consumption as Emotional Soothing: Conversely, over-consuming food can serve to temporarily quiet emotional pain. The feeling of fullness itself stimulates the vagus nerve, providing a direct physiological sense of comfort. But emotional eating often overrides our sophisticated internal satiety signals (like glucagon-like peptide-1 and peptide YY), leading us to consume well past any physiological need (Frayn et al., 2018).
At the heart of this disruption is cortisol, the stress hormone. Released during any perceived stress, cortisol significantly warps our hunger signals and metabolism. Chronic stress keeps cortisol elevated, which increases ghrelin (the "hunger-stimulating" hormone) and decreases the effectiveness of leptin (the "satiety" hormone). This hormonal hijacking promotes relentless hunger and intense cravings for dense, palatable "comfort" foods. Further, when we are not eating a balanced diet with adequate protein, healthy fat, and fiber, these hormonal imbalances become exacerbated, perpetuating a vicious cycle of craving and consumption (Goens et al., 2023).
Cortisol actively opposes the action of insulin, leading to insulin resistance. This means the brain fails to properly register the signal to stop eating after a meal, perpetuating a cycle of increased food intake (Ono, 2019). It also means we are on a blood sugar roller coaster, which exacerbates feelings of sadness, fatigue, anxiety, stress, and overwhelm.
Restrictive eating also jacks up cortisol levels. Calorie deprivation is interpreted by the body as a physiological stressor, activating the HPA axis and flooding the system with cortisol (Schorr et al., 2015). This hormonal chaos makes restrictive diets incredibly difficult to maintain, leading to anxiety, sleep issues, and a higher risk of binge eating as the body desperately tries to regain balance.
Leptin and ghrelin are key appetite-regulating hormones. Leptin, produced by adipose tissue, signals satiety and energy balance to the brain, while ghrelin, primarily secreted by the stomach, stimulates hunger and food intake (Sominsky & Spencer, 2014). Both are significantly influenced by chronic stress and dietary imbalances, with elevated cortisol levels disrupting their delicate balance and promoting increased caloric intake (Chao et al., 2017; Jurek & Maruda, 2024).
Whether you're restricting yourself to feel controlled or overeating to feel comforted, or both, you are often trapped in a high-cortisol stress loop. This disruption of the body's natural balance—where hormones like leptin and ghrelin are thrown into chaos (Casanova et al., 2019)—is the engine of maladaptive eating patterns. It's the cycle of stress, craving, eating, and metabolic dysfunction that is so incredibly hard to break (Adam & Epel, 2007).
To heal is to dedicate ourselves to a more compassionate relationship with our bodies and emotions, understanding that the fight isn't just about food; it’s about reclaiming emotional sovereignty.
Stop listening to nutrition social media. Instead, find a therapist and a qualified nutritionist. This team will help you not only address the emotional roots of your behavior but also learn what your body truly needs from a professional, evidence-based standpoint. You don't have to carry this burden alone. Join a support group and make a conscious choice to talk about it with trusted people. Vulnerability is a cornerstone of recovery.
Tips for starting your healing journey:
Incorporate activities like yoga, which means "to yoke" or "to unite." It syncs your mind, body, and breath, assisting the shift into a parasympathetic state.
Get outside every day. Walking reduces insulin resistance, regulates blood sugars, and is a powerful way to process feelings and thoughts, interrupting the negative feedback loop of stress.
Incorporate mindfulness-based activities such as meditation and breath work to anchor yourself in the present moment and tolerate discomfort without reaching for food.
Journal for five minutes daily simply to mind dump. Get the chaotic thoughts and overwhelming emotions out of your head and onto the page.
Ask the Deeper Questions: If you are using restrictive food or overindulgence to cope, investigate the root cause:
Who is hungry? Is it your stomach, or your emotions?
What benefits do your eating behaviors have? (e.g., control, comfort, distraction).
How do you keep yourself restricted or over-indulged in other areas of your life? (e.g., relationships, career, boundaries).
What other ways can you relax, nourish, or find pleasure without food?
Do you trust yourself or keep the promises you make to yourself?
How do you feel when you nourish your body, and what does avoiding nourishment prevent you from experiencing?
Practice nutrition behaviors that you are uncomfortable with. This could be eating a fear food, finishing a meal you would normally purge, or eating a full portion when you would normally restrict.
Every time you step out of your comfort zone, you are creating a new neural pathway—a moment of corrective experience that demonstrates to your brain that you are safe to break these habits. This is how you build true self-trust and enduring recovery. Even now, years later, I don’t consider myself “healed.” I consider myself healing. Every day, I still have to notice the old patterns—the urge to restrict when I feel out of control, the temptation to earn rest, the subtle ways perfectionism creeps into wellness. But the difference is that now, I notice. I have the tools to pause, to breathe, to ask what I really need instead of what I can control.
Healing hasn’t made me invincible; it’s made me honest. This journey is not about perfection. It’s about awareness, grace, and the daily decision to keep showing up for yourself, again and again. Because healing, like nourishment, is something you choose—one meal, one thought, one compassionate moment at a time.
Work With Me:
If this resonates with you—if you’re tired of feeling trapped between control and chaos around food—I want you to know there’s another way.
I help individuals and organizations reconnect to the why behind their health.
Through my 1:1 nutrition coaching, I guide clients to restore balance, repair metabolism, and rebuild trust with their bodies using functional medicine principles and emotional awareness.
And through my corporate wellness workshops, I help teams rethink productivity, stress, and nourishment—creating cultures that value well-being as much as performance. If you’re ready to begin this work for yourself, your team, or your organization, reach out here → Contact. Let’s start a conversation about what healing can look like for you.
Written by: Kristen Carlson, LDN, CNS. MS, NBC-HWC
References:
Adam, T. C., & Epel, E. S. (2007). Stress, eating and the reward system. Physiology & Behavior, 91(4), 449–458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2007.04.011
Casanova, F., Biondi, A., & Cignarella, A. (2019). Potential regulatory role of appetite-regulating hormones and exercise associated with emotional eating: A narrative review. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 74(Suppl. 3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1159/000504478
Frayn, M., Hinchcliffe, V., & Jones, H. (2018). The effects of a mindful-eating programme to reduce depressive symptoms and emotional eating: A randomized controlled trial. BMJ Open, 9(11), e031327. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031327
Goens, D., Virzi, N. E., Jung, S. E., Rutledge, T. R., & Zarrinpar, A. (2023). Obesity, chronic stress, and stress reduction. Gastroenterology Clinics of North America, 52(2), 347–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gtc.2023.03.009
Jurek, A., & Maruda, D. (2024). The mechanisms of emotional dysregulation in anorexia nervosa. Current Psychiatry Reports, 26(6), 461–469. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-024-01429-1
Ono, H. (2019). Molecular mechanisms of hypothalamic insulin resistance. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 20(6), 1317. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20061317
Schnepper, K., Binkert, M. E., & Scharfen, M. (2023). Emotional eating: Elusive or evident? Integrating laboratory, psychometric and daily life measures. Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity, 28(1), 74. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-022-01460-1
Schorr, M., Lawson, E. A., Dichtel, L. E., Klibanski, A., & Miller, K. K. (2015). Cortisol measures across the weight spectrum. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 100(9), 3313–3321. https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2015-1702
Sominsky, L. & Spencer, S. J. (2014). Eating behaviour and stress: a pathway to obesity. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 434. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00434
