Do you seek comfort in food when you feel down or otherwise upset? You’re not alone. It’s common for people to turn to food for comfort to cope with big, difficult feelings. When you eat in response to emotions, it’s called emotional eating. Everyone does it sometimes. Our bodies need food to survive. It makes sense that eating lights up the reward system in the brain and makes you feel better.

When emotional eating happens often, and you don’t have other ways to cope, it can be a problem. Although it may feel like a way to cope in those moments, eating doesn’t address the true issue. If you’re feeling stressed, anxious, bored, lonely, sad, or tired, food won’t fix those feelings.

It’s natural to have an emotional connection to food. Emotional eating is often an automatic behaviour. The more that food is used to cope, the more established the habit becomes.

Binge eating disorder is the most common type of eating disorder. People with binge eating disorder often feel out of control and eat a large amount of food at one time (called a binge).

In the short term, stress can shut down appetite. The nervous system sends messages to the adrenal glands atop the kidneys to pump out the hormone epinephrine (also known as adrenaline). Epinephrine helps trigger the body’s fight-or-flight response, a revved-up physiological state that temporarily puts eating on hold.

But if stress persists, it’s a different story. The adrenal glands release another hormone called cortisol, and cortisol increases appetite and may also ramp up motivation in general, including the motivation to eat. Once a stressful episode is over, cortisol levels should fall, but if the stress doesn’t go away — or if a person’s stress response gets stuck in the “on” position — cortisol may stay elevated.