Why willpower doesn’t work for emotional eating (and what your nervous system really has to do with it)

You probably know the scenario. You have had a long, busy day. You are mentally exhausted, your head is full and you long for some peace. On your way home, you are already thinking about the lovely food waiting for you, so you can curl up on the sofa with a bag of crisps or a bar of chocolate and watch Netflix… Finally, some rest. That intention to eat healthily? That can wait until tomorrow…

Not long after the bag or chocolate bar is empty, that familiar inner voice appears: ‘Why am I doing this again? I was so determined not to. I need to be stronger.’

As both a pharmacist and an integrative therapist, I see this pattern every day. The first thing I want my clients to know is this: it is not a lack of willpower. You are not weak, lazy or undisciplined. What happens in that moment is a completely understandable, unconscious response from an overstimulated nervous system looking for calm and relief.

In this article, I explain from a scientific and physiological perspective why diets and willpower alone usually do not solve this problem—and what can help reduce the urge.

Why eating is so closely linked to relaxation

To understand why the urge to eat can feel so overwhelming, we need to look at the evolution of our autonomic nervous system.

Our nervous system has two important primary states:

• The sympathetic nervous system: the fight-or-flight state. Put simply, more blood flows to your muscles and less to your digestive system. It is activated by tension, stress, busyness or a continuous stream of stimuli.
• The parasympathetic nervous system: the rest-and-digest state. More blood flows to your digestive system and less to your muscles. This is where the body relaxes and recovers, your heart rate slows and your thoughts become calmer.

For our prehistoric ancestors, this physiology was simple: you do not eat while running from a tiger. In danger, the body directs its energy towards the muscles and heart rate. Digestion is temporarily deprioritised because eating requires energy that is needed for survival.

Only once early humans had reached a safe place and the danger had passed did calm return and eating resume.

For our primitive brain, eating is a powerful physiological signal that the immediate danger has passed.

When you have had a busy day and experienced tension, the sympathetic part of your nervous system is active. But the same mechanism can also come into play with boredom. Boredom often feels like ‘doing nothing’, yet physiologically it can be a form of inner restlessness. When the hectic pace stops, your system wants to shift into the parasympathetic rest state. If your body cannot find that state by itself because too much tension remains underneath, your subconscious may steer you towards food to support that transition.

What happens in your body when you eat

When you begin to eat—chewing, swallowing and allowing food to enter your stomach—several neurobiological changes take place:

• Stretch receptors in your stomach send information about fullness to your brainstem through the vagus nerve.
• Reward and mood systems in the brain, involving neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, respond to food.
• Your parasympathetic nervous system becomes active and your body shifts further towards a relaxed state during digestion.

Eating can therefore briefly help the body move physiologically towards a more relaxed state. It is a quick way for your body to seek calm after a period of overstimulation.

Why being stricter often backfires

Many people try to solve emotional eating by becoming stricter and seeking more control. They start a diet, set rigid rules for themselves or try to ‘just say no’.

This often has the opposite effect. Self-control relies partly on the prefrontal cortex: the rational, thinking part of our brain. Stress and mental fatigue can make it more difficult at the end of the day to stick to the choices you intended to make.

Being strict with yourself also creates additional stress and a sense of threat. This can increase sympathetic activity and make the need for calm or safety even stronger. A vicious cycle develops.

Lasting change does not come from fighting harder against food. It comes from exploring the tension underneath and teaching your nervous system that it can also relax without eating.

Three steps towards lasting recovery

1. Become curious about the craving

As soon as you notice a craving, pause for a moment. Do not blame yourself. Instead, ask: ‘What is my body trying to take care of for me right now?’ Is this physical hunger, or am I actually looking for calm or comfort?

2. Give your nervous system time to settle

Try to give your nervous system some rest before you find yourself standing at the kitchen cupboard. You can support parasympathetic activity and your vagus nerve in other ways too:

• Place one hand on your chest or abdomen and breathe in gently for four seconds and out for six. Slow breathing can help lower your heart rate and support the shift towards calm.
• Step away from the busy environment and close your eyes for one minute to consciously interrupt the stream of stimuli.

3. Work with the subconscious pattern

The automatic pattern of reaching for food when you feel tense is stored deeply in your subconscious. Talking about the problem or rationally understanding why you do it is therefore not always enough to change the behaviour.

Hypnotherapy helps us connect with these subconscious patterns. You teach your nervous system, at a deeper level, that it is safe to release tension or suppressed emotions, which may reduce the urge to eat.

Look beyond the food itself

My background as a pharmacist taught me how remarkable and complex our bodies are biochemically. My experience as an integrative therapist has shown me how deeply evolution, the subconscious and our eating behaviour are connected.

Do you keep finding yourself stuck in a cycle of emotional eating, guilt and being strict with yourself? Know that you do not have to solve it through willpower alone.

In my practice, we look beyond the food itself. We combine medical and neurobiological insights with in-depth body-oriented work to help bring your nervous system back into balance.

Would you like to discover what this could mean for you?

Sources

• DiFeliceantonio, A. G., et al. (2018). Supra-Additive Effects of Combining Fat and Carbohydrate on Food Reward. Cell Metabolism, 28(1), 33–44.
• Wurtman, R. J., & Wurtman, J. J. (1995). Brain serotonin, carbohydrate-craving, obesity and depression. Obesity Research, 3(S4), 477S–480S.
• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.