A lot of emotional eating strategy addresses things we do to escape feeling bad, but what about the things we do simply because we want to feel more? More excited, more stimulated, more alive. We live in a world that makes it incredibly easy to create little emotional highs whenever ordinary life isn't quite hitting the spot. We scroll, shop, pour a glass of wine, plan the next holiday. We chase achievements, excitement, attention, social plans and sometimes even a little drama. None of these things are inherently bad, but we can become accustomed to constantly having something to anticipate, consume or experience. Instead of peaceful, the quieter moments of life can begin to feel a little boring and strangely uncomfortable as we get a bit restless. Instead of content we feel flat and before long, we're searching for the next little thing that will lift us again.

The trouble with constantly chasing the highs is that we inadvertently make ourselves more vulnerable to the lows as the contrast becomes greater. When we're used to being stimulated, ordinary life can feel like something is missing. The holiday ends, the package arrives, the weekend is over…the excitement wears off. The thing we were looking forward to has been and gone…and suddenly we're back in everyday life, inadvertently searching for the next thing to make us feel good. We can become so accustomed that simply feeling okay no longer feels like enough. And so, often without even realising it, we begin manufacturing our own little highs throughout the day.

Now this is where food can quietly enter the picture, we often assume emotional eating happens because we're sad, stressed, angry or overwhelmed. But sometimes we're not trying to escape a difficult emotion at all, sometimes we eat because we don't feel enough of anything. Food gives us stimulation, pleasure, anticipation. A boring evening suddenly has a highlight, a tedious afternoon gets broken up by a treat, a flat mood gets a temporary lift. And because food is quick, accessible and incredibly effective at creating pleasure, it can become one of the easiest ways to turn an ordinary moment into something that feels just a little bit better.

Freedom from emotional eating isn't only about learning how to cope when life feels hard, sometimes it's about learning how to achieve emotional balance and be at peace when life feels wonderfully, uneventfully ordinary. It's learning that boredom doesn't need fixing, that every evening doesn't need a highlight and that you don't always need something to look forward to in order to enjoy where you are. We can still delight in beautiful food, holidays, celebrations, achievements and all the wonderful highs life has to offer — the difference is that we no longer need them to rescue us from the space in between. Because perhaps one of the greatest freedoms we can give ourselves is learning that life doesn't always have to feel exciting to still feel good, there is power in discovering that ordinary doesn’t have to mean empty.