Emotional Eating – Dealing With Emotions in a Biblical Way

Emotional eating is an issue many of us struggle with.

A healthy habit, that we address in the PathWay 2 Wholeness Bible Study, related to this topic would be ‘Eat Nutritious Foods.’ Three related spiritual exercises would be – ‘Receive God’s Love in Your Heart,’ ‘Trust God,’ and ‘Let Go of Anger, Bitterness and Resentment.’

It’s pretty hard to eat really well and nutritious foods if our heart is not right with others, ourself or God. The tendency that many of us have is to turn to comfort foods, or salty and sweet foods to soothe our souls if our emotions are a wreck!

Anxiety (fear) and anger are two emotions that may drive us towards unhealthy – emotional – eating or to some other unhealthy or sinful activity like excessive internet use, pornography, alcohol, etc.

And the best and biblical way to handle these ‘toxic’ emotions is to turn them over to God… to lay them at the feet of Jesus. To ask Him to help you work through the uncomfortable emotions and the situations that have led to any such emotions. We need God’s help and grace and love to work in us to handle such emotions in a healthy and appropriate way. That’s His design for us.

Being aware of emotional eating is the first step. The second is to be fully aware of the emotion(s) that are at the root of the behavior. Then God would want us to go to Him in confession and prayer asking Him to help us address the emotions that are at the root of the unhealthy behavior – emotional eating in this case.

God wants us to open our hearts wide and invite Him to pour His truth and love into us so that these will replace the toxic emotions and the resulting emotional eating.