EMOTIONAL EATING DURING STRESSFUL TIMES: A GUIDE TO HELP YOU OVERCOME IT IN PERIMENOPAUSE

As the end-of-year rush approaches, life can feel like a whirlwind of to-do lists, family obligations, and social gatherings. For many women, this isn’t just the season of giving - it’s also the season of stress, busyness, and being over-scheduled! And with all of that often comes emotional eating.

If you’ve ever found yourself halfway through a tub of ice cream after a long day or reaching for the wine after a tense conversation, emotional eating might feel all too familiar. But why does it happen, and why does perimenopause or menopause, and the festive season often make it worse?

In this blog, we’ll explore the roots of emotional eating, why it’s so common during stressful times, and how the hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause may play a role. Most importantly, you’ll learn the next step to take toward addressing it - not with restriction, but with awareness, kindness, and support.

WHAT IS EMOTIONAL EATING?

Emotional eating is when we use food or drink to cope with emotions - to help us stop feeling them - rather than satisfying physical hunger. It’s not about the wine, chocolate, or chips themselves - it’s about how they temporarily mask feelings of stress, sadness, frustration, or boredom.

At its core, emotional eating serves as self-comfort and provides a momentary escape, some short-term relief from the feelings and stress. For many women, it’s a pattern tied to stressful situations, particularly during the holidays when emotions run high.

WHY IS EMOTIONAL EATING SO COMMON DURING STRESSFUL TIMES?

The holidays can magnify stress and heighten emotions, making emotional eating more likely. Here’s why:

1. THE BRAIN’S QUICK FIX

When you’re stressed, or experiencing an unpleasant or ‘negative’ emotion, your primal brain (I like to call it the “monkey mind”) goes into overdrive trying to make it stop. Its primary goal is to make you feel safe and happy as quickly as possible, and food or drink becomes an easy solution. Foods and drinks that have made you feel happy before, especially those that are high sugar (or high carb) and high fat, light up the brain’s reward centre with hits of dopamine - the “feel-good” hormone. For a moment, you feel better, but the underlying emotion hasn’t gone anywhere.

Over time, the brain’s reward centre adapts to the dopamine hit that these foods or drinks give. Additional dopamine receptors are created in the reward centre, meaning you’ll need even more of the comforting food or drink to get the same feeling. This is how emotional eating (and cravings) can escalate during prolonged periods of stress.

This process is similar to how other dopamine-driven behaviors, like social media scrolling or gaming, work. The more your brain gets accustomed to a dopamine hit, the more it craves to sustain the same level of relief or pleasure.

2. THE FESTIVE SEASON AMPLIFIES TRIGGERS

The end-of-year rush brings late nights, disrupted routines, and a constant stream of sugary treats - impacting our hormones like cortisol, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin. But it’s not just the busyness that makes emotional eating more likely - it’s also the people you see and your interactions with them.

Family gatherings often reunite us with people who have unintentionally (or intentionally) hurt us in the past. Maybe it’s a comment about your weight from years ago, an unresolved argument, or subtle dynamics that leave you feeling judged or unseen. These moments can trigger deep emotional responses, tied to what we’ve made those interactions mean about ourselves.

Emotional eating often becomes a way to buffer or avoid those feelings, allowing us to momentarily distract ourselves from discomfort.

HOW PERIMENOPAUSE CONTRIBUTES TO EMOTIONAL EATING

I probably don’t need to tell you that the hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause don’t just affect your body! You’re probably well aware that they also shape how you respond to stress and emotions - and this is usually one of the first early signs of perimenopause. Changes in estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone directly impact neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which regulate mood.

This can lead to:

• Less stress resilience: Declining levels of progesterone, your calming, peace, and people-pleasing hormone, can make you more reactive to stress.
• Disrupted sleep: the hormone changes often mess with your sleep, which reduces your stress resilience, increases your stress hormones, and reduces your ability to make choices that are in keeping with your health goals. Less sleep impacts your neurotransmitters, and lower serotonin drives carb cravings like nothing else! Just one night of less than 6 hours sleep can drive carb cravings.
• Emotional changes: Fluctuating hormones amplify mood swings and your emotional response in situations - even if they’re not highly charged ones!

You might notice:

1. Anxiety and irritation: You may snap at loved ones or feel an underlying frustration that’s hard to shake.
2. Impatience and rage: Hormonal shifts can heighten these emotions, making small challenges feel overwhelming.
3. Shame and self-recrimination: After reacting strongly or lashing out, guilt often follows. Emotional eating becomes a way to avoid processing these feelings.

LIVING LIFE ON AUTOPILOT

Much of emotional eating happens because we’re living in autopilot mode. Without conscious thought, our monkey mind runs the show, repeating familiar behaviours to conserve energy.

Part of this comes from the sheer volume of information our brains process daily. To manage it all, the brain filters incoming stimuli based on past experiences, thoughts, beliefs, and conditioning - many of which were formed in childhood. These subconscious patterns often go unchecked, influencing how we feel and act without our conscious awareness.

When stress strikes, your brain defaults to what it knows will bring relief - grabbing the chocolate, pouring the wine, or reaching for that comforting snack. It’s fast, familiar, and requires no extra effort, with the added bonus of making the negative emotion or unpleasant feeling stop.

But there’s more at play here. When you repeatedly turn to food or drink for comfort, your brain strengthens those pathways, making them your go-to response. Add in the dopamine adaptation (where your brain creates more receptors to handle those pleasure hits), and over time, you’ll find yourself needing larger quantities to feel the same level of comfort.

To step out of autopilot mode, you need to intentionally pause, reflect, and interrupt these patterns. And yes, it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant to do this at first!

AWARENESS: THE FIRST STEP IN OVERCOMING EMOTIONAL EATING

Addressing emotional eating requires curiousity and reflection about the thoughts driving the feelings and resulting behaviours or actions. Feelings (or emotions - same thing!) stem from either a physical symptom (eg pain) or your thoughts, though these thoughts may not be conscious. Sometimes, they aren’t even ours but inherited from childhood through the people who raised us.

When you feel the urge to eat emotionally, pause and ask yourself:

• When: Is there a pattern? Are there specific times, events, or relationships that trigger you?
• What: What are you drawn to eat, and why? Does it remind you of comfort or safety?
• Why: What emotions are surfacing? Are they linked to a thought or belief?
• How: How are you talking to yourself about these feelings? Are you judgmental, or are you approaching them with curiosity and compassion?

Bringing awareness to the thoughts driving emotional eating helps you interrupt the pattern and explore healthier ways to address your feelings.

THE NEXT STEP TO BREAK FREE

Breaking free from emotional eating starts with self-compassion. Forgive yourself for past behaviors, just as you would a dear friend or child. Recognise that emotional eating is not a moral failing but a signal to address unmet needs with kindness and curiosity.

Often, we choose self-comfort or buffering over feeling because we lack the time, support, or capacity to process what’s really going on. This holiday season, give yourself the gift of time and space to reflect on your thoughts and feelings instead of pushing them down.

If you’d like to get deeper into this area of self-care, revisit my blogs and podcasts on self-coaching, setting boundaries without guilt, and avoiding burnout this holiday season. These tools are powerful starting points to help you uncover and address what’s beneath the surface.

As I always tell my clients, knowing what food to eat is the easy part. The hard part is working with your monkey mind and stepping out of autopilot mode. It’s about learning to reflect, interrupt the patterns, and give yourself permission to feel what’s there.

READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP?

My PerimenoGO program has an entire module dedicated to cravings and emotional eating. It’s designed to help you gently uncover what’s driving your patterns and learn sustainable tools for lasting change.

This season, let’s make space for more than just festive treats. Let’s create the time and support you need to feel in control and empowered in your relationship with food - and with yourself.