emotional eating

One of the primary ways we handle painful emotions is to literally “eat ourselves numb,” with dense, hard-to-digest foods, the so-called “comfort foods.” This is effective because of the nature of our nervous systems. Our bodies have a finite amount of nerve energy at any given time. The digestion of food and the conduction of emotions each demand so much energy that they cannot be performed simultaneously.

A classic example to demonstrate this property of our nervous system is a funeral, where some people are grieving so intensely they cannot eat at all, while others cannot stop eating.

The 80/10/10 Diet – Dr. Douglas N. Graham