Why you eat when you're bored (and how to stop)
If this piece of writing was really dry and boring, your mind would already be wandering towards your to-do list, rumination list or just engaged in something more exciting than the words on this page.
You might start scrolling through the choices you have for dinner tonight
You might attempt to work through a difficult conversation you need to have later.
You will have read these words but also have to go back 3 more times to comprehend and/or remember what you just read.
What comes up for you physically when your brain is bored or you are doing something boring or you when you have all this time and literally don’t have anything to do or any ideas on how to spend it?
For me - I can become antsy.
My mind races and scrolls through a million activities I COULD be doing.
I begin to feel frustrated, and maybe even a little anxious or depressed. I become resentful that I have to say, do the dishes rather than watching a show or doing something meaningful with a friend.
My body can feel hollow or tight….full of energy or lacking any at all.
I may lose sight of what I’m feeling at all. That directly affects my sense of safety and agency over my behaviors.
While being bored or perceiving boredom can feel like a privilege and a petty reason to want to eat, being bored is a form of emotional eating that isn’t addressed enough in the realm of eating issues.
We are all familiar with eating as a form of activity. How many events and/or parties have you attended where there is NOT food and eating/drinking as part of the festivities?
Eating is and will always be a fun activity that is pleasurable and distracts us from actual or perceived boredom and ennui.
But when we eat when we’re bored, we tend to criticize ourselves.
Only boring people get bored is the message I internalized early on in life.
If I’m experiencing boredom it must mean I lack something: creativity, drive, industriousness, motivation, etc. In actuality, feeling bored can actually just be that you’re avoiding a task that feels boring, your mind or body feels stuck, overwhelmed or your body is tired and there is no internal drive or energy to find something engaging to do.
Eating while bored then makes perfect sense…right?
Why you Eat when you’re bored
It gives you an activity
An activity that is pleasurable
An activity that can also perhaps create energy (at least we hope it will)
It’s an activity that can also delay a more necessary but dreaded activity.
Hence, boredom eating can also be a form of procrastinating or procrastinEATING.
We boredom eat to prevent or to numb out an uncomfortable feeling or state of being or to put off an uncomfortable task.
So, what can we do about it?
Strategies to Stop Boredom Eating
If you recognize that eating while bored is a coping mechanism for avoiding something perceived as negative you can use strategies and tools that you would use for emotional eating.
Here are 5 Strategies to end Boredom Eating
Focus on deep breathing and elongating the out breath to calm the sympathetic nervous system.
Use the time to eat, but eat slowly and mindfully. Use the experience to learn more about your hunger and satiety cues and to build up your mind/body connection muscles
Use the surf the urge technique to confront your feelings of discomfort
Journal about the boredom you’re experiencing.
Just leave the house - go on a walk and change the environment for at least 10 minutes. Being in nature, walking and changing the environment can help activate the parasympathetic nervous system which can help you access your resources, tools and creative problem solving skills.
Being bored is a normal part of being human.
In our scroll-on-by Tik-tok culture, even a moment of boredom, distraction or disinterest can create a cascade of maladaptive behaviors that lead to numbing out, lack of agency, feelings of frustration, anxiety or worry.
Mindfulness in and of itself is a remedy to boredom.
Paying attention, on purpose to mundane things around you and inside you helps create neurons and a muscle memory that allows for greater tolerance of what is going on right now, good or bad, rather than your brain’s perception of what “should be.”
Next time you find yourself grazing out of boredom or procrastination - stop what you’re doing and pay attention to what you actually need at that moment. Maybe it is food and that is fine. But you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to stop and understand what it is that you are needing on a deeper level in those moments AND just maybe create the space and wherewithal to make a different choice.
Do you eat when you’re bored?
What foods do you tend to go for when you feel you have nothing to do or are putting off something?