What If Your Eating Isn’t Emotional After All?

Two Forms of Eating that Feel Out-of-Control

Most people assume that when their eating feels chaotic, it must be emotional — stress, boredom, sadness, comfort. Or they assume it’s caused by the “wrong” foods. But in almost every case, what looks like emotional eating is actually deprivation-driven eating.

When I first started doing intuitive eating work, I would have sworn that 90% of my clients were overeating because of emotions. They believed it too. But over time, looking closely at their patterns, something very different emerged: truly 90% were struggling with deprivation, not emotion.

You can be living in deprivation without ever feeling “restricted.” Diet culture teaches us to normalize it — to under-eat, to wait, to ignore signals, to second-guess hunger, to call it “healthy discipline.” So people rarely recognize deprivation as the engine driving their overeating. They just see the aftermath and blame themselves.

But once you understand the two types of deprivation — psychological and physical — it becomes clear why eating can feel so mysteriously out of control, even when you’re trying so hard.

Psychological Deprivation-Driven Eating

“I can’t, I won’t, I shouldn’t. I will today but not tomorrow.”

Psychological deprivation is the mental version of putting food behind glass — always visible, never fully allowed.

It shows up as rules, moral judgments, and promises to “do better tomorrow.” Thoughts like:

• “I won’t eat that again.”

• “It’s bad. I shouldn’t want it.”

• “I’ll eat this now and cut back later.”

• “That’s poison. Why do I even crave it?”

Even if you’re eating enough physically, these thoughts create a sense of scarcity. Your body hears threat: Food might be restricted later. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

And when something feels scarce, your drive for it intensifies.

Psychological deprivation often comes from a lifetime of being told to eat “right,” to have smaller portions, to avoid certain foods, to lose weight, to be “good.” Even subtle comments can accumulate into an internalized belief that you must negotiate or justify every bite.

When you finally eat the food you’ve been mentally wrestling with, the eating can feel urgent or rebellious — not because you’re emotional, but because your brain has been living in a state of tension and threat around food.

This isn’t lack of discipline.
This is deprivation doing what deprivation does.

Most calorie recommendations from programs such as MyFitnessPal, are so inaccurate, horribly underestimating a person’s needs. Please do not use them as a guideline.

Physical Deprivation-Driven Eating:

When the body simply hasn’t gotten enough fuel.

Physical deprivation is much more straightforward, and much more common than people realize.

If you under-eat — even by 100 or 200 calories, even by “just” skimping at lunch, even because you were busy last Tuesday — your body will eventually try to correct the deficit. At first, the signals are gentle:

“I’m hungry… what sounds good?”

But if those cues are ignored (because you’re dieting, trying to “be good,” or simply not used to trusting hunger), the body ramps up the urgency:

“I need energy. Now. Anything high in sugar or fat will do — go find it.”

This moment is often misinterpreted as “emotional eating.”
It isn’t.
It’s physiology doing exactly what it was designed to do.

And here’s what surprises many people:

If you’ve manipulated your food intake for years, your body becomes exquisitely sensitive to slight under-fueling. A seemingly minor deficit can trigger powerful drive. It feels like a craving, or like your emotions have suddenly taken over, but the underlying cause is deprivation.

If you’re trying to “fix” emotional eating when the real issue is slight under-eating, you’ll spend years working on the wrong problem.

Seeking More Nutrition Advice

Deprivation-driven eaters will eagerly soak up nutrition advice in the hope to avoid overeating, seeking nutrition guidelines that will get them back on track. Perhaps they eliminate carbs, or once again try to follow a “reasonable, healthy diet…nothing drastic.”

But, sooner or later, they feel compelled to eat those “bad” foods — foods not allowed, or allowed only with discretion. They do so with abandon, and then feel like a failure. Guilt seeps in.

The usual advice is to get “back on the program.” You think, “Well, I’ve done it before, I can do it again.”

However, until the deprivation-driven eating is healed, no amount of nutritional cheerleading will result in an end to overeating, or an end to struggling to manage your food.

If you don't realize your eating is actually deprivation driven, you will blame yourself or your food and will miss the opportunity to gain control over your food intake and heal this overeating.

Until deprivation is healed, overeating cannot settle.

But Isn’t This Emotional Eating?

It certainly feels emotional. The frustration, guilt, or shame that appear afterward also make it easy to assume emotion caused the eating. But emotions that arise after eating are reactions — not triggers.

Yes, true emotional eating exists. And when it’s present, it deserves gentle, honest exploration.

But you cannot accurately discern emotional eating while deprivation is still in the driver’s seat. The signals get too tangled.

Once physical and psychological deprivation are addressed — once the body trusts that it will be fed and the mind trusts that it won’t be punished for wanting, and once you can safely negotiate the wanting — the urgency softens. Eating feels less dramatic. And then, if emotions do sometimes reach for food, you have the clarity and capacity to work with that compassionately.

Healing deprivation is critical.

As long as deprivation is in the way, it blocks your view of everything else.

Clear that roadblock, and what’s left — if anything — is the actual emotional piece. Only then will you have the clarity to heal any emotional eating.

About Eating Wisdom and Drs Karin and Hannah

We are two PhD level Registered and Licensed Nutritionists whose passion is to help others escape diet culture and to learn to use their natural, innate Eating Wisdom to, finally, find peace with food, eating and weight.

Check out our course, Intuitive Eating: How to Escape Diet Culture and Become an Empowered Eater,. plus we have lots of info and handouts (including the original Hunger Fullness Scale) at our website, www.EatingWisdom.com. We also offer 1:1 nutrition therapy. Take advantage of our combined 40+ years of experience and reach out today!

© 2018 Karin Kratina, PhD, RD, LDN. Adapted from the work of Amy Tuttle RD, LCSW and Karin Kratina.