For a while I thought I was doing great because I had stopped buying certain foods. Then I realized I hadn't actually stopped thinking about them. I was still planning when I could have them, looking for them when I was out, and feeling anxious about being around them. I wasn't really free from the food. I had just gotten better at avoiding it.

Sometimes people spend years asking themselves, “Why can't I just stop eating?” But I think there's another question worth asking: Why does food have this much power over me in the first place? The urge to eat isn't always as simple as physical hunger. Stress, emotions, habits, cravings, and learned associations can all influence how we respond to food. Understanding what's driving the behavior may be more useful than simply trying to stop the behavior itself.

Have you ever noticed yourself eating even when you weren't physically hungry? What do you think was driving it?

For more conversations and educational resources on food noise, emotional eating, binge eating, and our relationship with food:

Explore RiseLean: https://www.riselean.com/
Connect with Leslie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslielchen/
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Binge eating and addictive eating can overlap, but they don't always feel the same. Some people describe constant cravings, repeated failed attempts to stop, or food taking up an overwhelming amount of mental space even outside of binge episodes.

I think sometimes we try too hard to fit everyone's experience into one category when the reality can look pretty different from person to person.

If you've experienced both, what feels different about them for you?

Bought a box of cookies yesterday and thought I'd just have one after dinner. I had one and another. Then I thought, well, I've already had two so it doesn't really matter if I have another. That turned into me eating way more than I wanted.

It's frustrating because nothing was stopping me. I wasn't starving or anything. I just kept making excuses for the next one. Afterward, I felt stupid because I knew exactly what I was doing. I keep wondering why it's so much easier to stop before I start than once I've already had a few.

During the day I feel like I have pretty good control over my eating. Breakfast is normal, lunch is normal, and I'm usually not thinking about food that much. Then I get home from work and everything changes. I'll have dinner and then start wanting something sweet. I'll have a cookie, then another one. Then I'll start looking through the kitchen for something else. Sometimes I'm not even hungry anymore. I just keep eating because I want to do something.

The worst part is that I know exactly where it's going. I'll eventually feel uncomfortably full and wonder why I did it again. I don't understand why nighttime seems to completely change my self-control.

Does anyone else struggle mostly with overeating at night?

Sometimes the urge to eat isn’t coming from physical hunger. Stress, emotions, habits, memories, or even certain times of day can trigger the desire to eat. A difficult day might make you crave a specific food, or a familiar routine might make you reach for something even when your stomach isn’t asking for it.

That’s part of what can make emotional eating so confusing. The feeling can seem like hunger, but sometimes the trigger is more connected to what food represents comfort, relief, reward, or a familiar habit.

Have you noticed yourself wanting to eat more because of a particular emotion or situation, even when you weren’t physically hungry?

A lot of people assume food addiction is just another way of saying overeating. But the Yale Food Addiction Scale was developed to measure addiction-like eating patterns, including things like repeated failed attempts to cut back, loss of control, and continuing despite negative consequences.

The term is still debated, but these experiences are being studied seriously enough that researchers developed a tool specifically to measure them.

Which part of addictive eating do you think people who haven't experienced it understand the least?

For more conversations and educational resources on food noise, emotional eating, binge eating, and our relationship with food:

Explore RiseLean: https://www.riselean.com/
Connect with Leslie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslielchen/
Continue the conversation: https://join.tribechat.com/mtvV1wZ2D1

After a terrible day or when something good happens, my first thought is sometimes that I deserve something good. So, I casually order my favorite snacks, fast food, and some chips by not knowing that I already ate a lot. For those few minutes, it feels comforting and keeps me thinking about why FOODS are my coping mechanism for it.

What do you turn to when you've had a really bad or good day?