Hello love,
Let’s talk about emotional eating and the inner child—because understanding this connection is key if you’re trying to heal your relationship with food.
Through my own journey and working with clients, I’ve seen time and time again that emotional eating is a pattern deeply rooted in childhood.
Emotional eating is a coping mechanism. It’s a way we learn to soothe ourselves in the face of discomfort, distress, or overwhelming emotions—especially when we didn’t have caregivers who could help us process those feelings and guide us through them.
As children, without the support to navigate these hard emotions, we found our own ways to feel okay. And for many of us, food became the quickest, most accessible source of comfort. Biochemically, eating releases dopamine in the brain, giving us a short-lived boost. But that relief is temporary—it doesn’t meet our deeper emotional needs.
Over time, this becomes a patterned response.
So what’s really happening when you emotionally eat? If you trace it back, you’ll often find a younger part of you—your inner child—who developed this habit to survive emotionally. And this part of you keeps showing up, especially when you’re triggered or stressed.
When those familiar feelings of discomfort arise, the inner child kicks in with the only tool it knows: food.
Let dive in here:
- 1:58 – The inner child created emotional eating to cope: Why it’s been so hard to shift this pattern
- 4:04 – How to stop turning to food to fill the void
- 4:45 – What’s really holding you back from healing this
- 6:45 – Why emotional regulation alone isn’t the full answer
- 8:40 – Meeting your deeper needs on a body level to shift the pattern
- 9:45 – Why emotions aren’t “bad” and how this mindset shift helps
- 10:50 – The embodied shift that happens when you do the deeper work
- 11:50 – Free resources and next steps
Next Steps
1. If you are ready to start your journey to resolving your Emotional Eating you can download my free guide “What Are You Truly Hungry For?” to start discerning true from emotional hunger and catching your triggers HERE.
2. If you are ready to transform your emotional eating so that you can get to ease, peace and confidence around food and in your body with a step by step process and guidance then find out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program HERE.
To resolution,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
