I sometimes see people get bummed out and judgmental toward themselves over emotional eating, but eating for comfort is not inherently a bad thing. When we experience difficult emotions, there are many valid ways of coping, and if you make a choice to enjoy your favorite cheesy pasta or some warm-from-the-oven banana bread, you might legitimately feel better and there is nothing wrong with this. If, though, you have a shaky relationship with food and you experience guilt with eating things you enjoy, eating for comfort might make you feel worse.
This highlights the importance of 1) working toward a balanced relationship with food and 2) having multiple stress-relieving tools in your toolbox to choose from when difficult emotions strike. Choice is a key concept here: If you’re in the midst of a difficult situation, food probably isn’t going to solve your problem. You might find comfort, though, in doing something enjoyable, and food can be very enjoyable! If you rely on food as your only (or only significant) means of coping, though, you might feel like you don’t have a choice to eat or not eat – food is the only answer. Developing other coping tools can help give you choice in how you handle hard things. Sometimes you might still decide to eat to deal with stress, but sometimes you might decide you need something else in that moment – a talk with a friend, spending time outdoors in fresh air, or just sitting and distracting with a book or TV show.
For the days when warm-from-the-oven banana bread is your coping skill of choice, this one is worth trying. 
Bananas sometimes get a bad reputation for being a higher-sugar fruit, but they’re great sources of potassium, fiber, and fructooligosaccharide, a non-digestible carbohydrate that acts as a prebiotic, feeding the good bacteria in your gut. Possibly the biggest beauty of bananas is that they are harvested year-round, so they are never out of season. Yay!
Whole wheat flax banana bread
Adapted from Desserted Planet
Makes 1 loaf
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flax meal
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 overripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/3 cup)
1 egg + 1 egg white
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
3/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon vanilla
- Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9×5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.
- In a medium bowl, mix together the whole wheat flour, flax meal, oats, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and walnuts.
- In a large bowl, mix together the mashed bananas, egg, egg white, Greek yogurt, honey, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and sprinkle the top of the dough with an additional handful of oats.
- Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire cooling rack and cool completely before slicing.
