How To Ease Social Eating When You Have Food Anxiety
What is food anxiety?
Food plays a crucial role in day to day life, and eating a healthful diet is incredibly important. However, when thoughts about food and eating become intrusive, this is known as food anxiety.
Food anxiety is the urgent feeling you get when surrounded by food or when you get a strong craving for food. A person can experience fleeting food anxiety without having an underlying diagnosis, and some people may even use food as a way of coping with anxiety that’s already there.
Food anxiety typically arises due to individual and cultural factors, such as negative self-talk, negative messages from the media about eating and appearance, and even early experience with food anxiety. Food anxiety can often interfere with everything and anything in a person’s life, from eating normally to engaging socially or attending public functions.
What can cause food anxiety?
There’s this energy of urgency that companies food anxiety, and it has some physical sensations that are associated with it like a pounding headache or an increased heartbeat. Most feel this energy moving them forward, making them feel as if they have to do something to relieve this energy of urgency they feel.
This energy of urgency that many with food anxiety feel, can actually be due to a number of different things in their life. The following are just a few examples of what could be the root cause of any feelings of food anxiety:
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Past relationship to food
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An anxiety that is present around your environment
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Limiting beliefs or other feelings that you have inside.
Ultimately though, at the end of the day, that feeling of urgent energy that stems from food anxiety is really just a messenger.
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Why food anxiety can make it challenging to eat in social settings
There are a few common reasons why food anxiety being present in social eating settings feels more challenging to navigate, and becoming aware of them will support you in learning how to feel more at ease with food in social situations.
The environment is different from your regular routine
When you’re in social situations, whether that’s at a friend’s home for a girl’s night, at a family BBQ, or at a wedding, the physical environment is set up quite differently than your space at home and this can have a large influence on your food choices without you even realizing it.
In many of these situations, there is often food that’s put out on display for grazing, such as bowls of chips or a charcuterie board. This could simply cause you to want certain foods that you normally wouldn’t say were the most satisfying to you. Additionally, you’re also engaging and interacting with more people in these situations, whereas maybe at home it’s just you alone, with your partner, or with your family.
When you’re at a social event, there are often many more people you’re chatting with and maybe even different activities happening. This can make it more challenging for you to remember to check in with your hunger and fullness levels or to truly experience what you’re eating.
You don’t have control of the food options
One of the most common reasons why many with food anxiety feel social situations are challenging to navigate is that they don’t have control over the food that’s going to be there. Between not knowing what may be served, seeing so many enjoyment foods that they want, and lacking nourishing options, it’s easy to feel frustrated and that it’s impossible to maintain balance.
You feel peer pressure from those you’re eating out with
You’ve likely experienced this before. You’ve chosen what you’d like to eat or not eat on a particular day and someone makes a comment about it. “You’re eating a salad, common, live a little.” Or maybe, “You’re going to eat that sugary cake? I’m Keto and would never eat that.”
Peer pressure is so common at social events and many feel the need to eat in the same way as others or feel pressured by family and friends who are commenting on what they are or are not eating. Unfortunately, you’re likely to experience this at some point in your journey.
Food anxiety tips that can help you find balance
Navigating food anxiety in a social eating setting doesn’t have to be as challenging as it may currently feel. With a few simple tips that you can keep top of mind, it will feel much easier for you to practice balance with your food choices.
1.Acknowledge it’s anxiety
The first step is about acknowledging that it’s anxiety that’s making you feel the way you’re feeling. Once you are able to name anxiety, it can really help to alleviate some of that uncertainty or disorganized feelings and emotions you might have.
2.Ground yourself with breathwork
Next, you need to find an anchor for yourself once you’ve named that it’s anxiety. This anchor can be your breath, or even just feeling your feet on the floor, and then you’re going to want to name the physical sensations of anxiety. Sometimes this can be knots in your stomach, or your heart beating really fast, other times it can be a headache or a pounding in the jaw. But there are physical sensations of anxiety, and once you connect to them you’ll be able to really see yourself.
3.Accept and allow that the sensations you’re experiencing are there
Subconsciously our brains are so smart, that we often avoid feeling any kind of physical discomfort. Our brains do this so quickly that you instantly move into suppressing it and covering it up with something else. Moreover, that’s actually what emotional eating is, a misguided attempt to help you not feel bad. So accepting these sensations and acknowledging that they’re connected to emotional eating is a huge part of this step.
And now that you have this new, zoomed out approach to your physical sensations, and you realize they’re just messengers. These messenger physical sensations are telling you there’s something you need to atone to. And you can then tell the part of your brain that wants to take care of you, and wants to make you feel safe, that it’s not so bad.
You can tell that part of your brain that you trust yourself to be with the uncomfortable sensations.
4.Ask yourself what it is you’re unwilling to feel
From allowing and accepting these physical sensations, you then need to ask your self what it is you’re unwilling to feel. You know you have anxiety, you know there’s physical sensations that you’re not running away from them. You’re staying steady and recognizing that it’s uncomfortable, but you’re staying with this feeling because once you do, there’s a certain exhale and relief. And now that you have this space for you to say ‘what am i unwilling to feel’.
Theres almost always an emotion underneath anxiety, and for most people it could be fear, anger, doubt, or even just uncertainty. For some it can be related to a direct experience, an environment you’re in, or it could even be existential. But it’s important to note that the why isn’t as important as getting in touch with whatever underlying feeling it is you could be feeling. That learning to create a conversation between the emotion and what it feels like in your body, is what’s most important.
5. What does that feeling need most to feel safe and taken care of
This is truly the best part because at the end of the day, what we really want is to be able to trust ourselves. So when you ask yourself, what does this anger or fear or doubt most need, it’s usually that it needs to know that it’s okay to be there and for you to trust that it will be okay anyway. It can be there and you will take your adult self, and you will create strategies and tools and anchors that ground you.
These will help you to achieve, acquire and reach your goals, and allow you to live your life without actually having to abandon yourself in any way. You can be with the discomfort and the unknown, and anxiety energy, which is that suppressed urgency. And now that energy can now be redirected towards things that help you achieve your aspirations.
6. Resource that feeling for yourself through gratitude, love and kindness
Now that you’ve unleashed that energy into your body, instead of obsessing over and managing your food, you can now take that energy and redirect. It can be redirected towards being productive, your relationship, or being a student and learning. But this is how you can alchemise anxiety and help to eliminate, or at least reduce, your emotional eating or your dependence on food to help soothe yourself.
And you don’t even have to get rid of that urgent energy that is underneath the feeling of wanting to eat because that energy is good. You just need to redirect it towards actions that are more in service of what your heart and purpose really is in life.
Lifestyles more susceptible to food anxiety
While anyone can be susceptible to food anxiety, there are certain lifestyles that are more likely to attract it. Once you recognize that you fall within one of these lifestyles, you will be one step closer to moving towards a healthier and happier lifestyle. However if you don’t relate with one of these lifestyles, and still find yourself suffering from food anxiety related tendencies, it does not mean that you still can’t take control.
Food dependent
Those who are extremely dependent on food, whether as a coping or soothing mechanism, are more likely to become susceptible to experiencing food anxiety. Becoming dependent on food, whatever that dependency may be, often becomes used as a means of that person making themselves feel better. And the problem with this is that they never learn to properly cope with whatever it may be, and their dependency on food becomes this life long struggle.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Try to remember that there are other ways of coping and soothing other than food. Keep step 6 in mind, and try to channel that dependency energy into a resource that will make you feel good about yourself. This could be redirecting the energy onto a relationship or learning something new. Either way, redirect it towards actions that are more in service of what your heart really wants out of life.
Shut out emotions
Those who typically shut out their emotions, and don’t allow themselves to feel what they are feeling, may be more susceptible to experiencing food anxiety. Shutting out your emotions and refusing to feel your most inner feelings are used as a way to cope with these feelings without actually having to feel them. The only problem is though, that shutting them out often turns into using food as a way to cope with these unfelt feelings.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Remember that it’s okay, and a good thing to feel your feelings, and apply steps 4 and 5 to your behaviors. Ask yourself what it is that you’re so unwilling to feel, and then find out what it is that feeling needs in order to feel safe. Once you recognize these two steps and start applying them to your everyday life, you’ll find that feeling your feelings is a whole lot easier than shutting them out.
Anxiety prone
Those who have struggled with anxiety prior to the onset of food anxiety, might have a history of using food as a means of managing their anxiety. Poor eating behaviors are often inadvertently used to cope with stress and anxiety, and one example of this could be restricting your calorie intake. This can worsen feelings of anxiety related to food and body image issues, perpetuating a dangerous anxiety ridden cycle.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
This first thing you need to do, is acknowledge that it’s anxiety that you’re feeling. Those who have a long history with anxiety tend to just get used to it, and therefore often tend to ignore it more. But by remembering step 1, and applying step 2 of grounding yourself with breathwork, you will be able to release some of that pent up anxiety you’ve had for so long.
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As with anything, learning how to feel at ease with food during social eating situations takes time and practice. It’s unlikely that you’ll feel confident overnight. Keep these tips in mind and reflect on how you feel after social events to understand what you’d like to repeat or do differently at the next one. You’ll be able to slowly but surely turn your food anxiety into confidence.
Extra tips for eliminating food anxiety
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In addition to breathwork, you can also practice mindful eating.
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Eat toward nourishing ongoing physical vitality as your primary goal.
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Give yourself over to the sensory experience of what you are putting in your body.
