Emotional eating has been a bad habit of mine, but today I want to share what I’ve done to overcome this difficulty.
If you feel like you have a never-ending battle with the scale, emotional eating might be the problem.
Emotional eating is when people use food as a way to deal with feelings. It can be tied to major life events, like a death or divorce, or just something that has come up in your life and you use food to mask the emotions that you are experiencing.
Some people use food as a coping strategy when stress is present. It provides comfort, but that comfort is only temporary.
It can sabotage your weight-loss goals, and negatively affect your health.
It can be a battle, but today, I want to share with you the steps I’ve used to overcome emotional eating for good.
Let’s dive right in…
1. Find out your triggers.
Many times, emotional eating is simply triggered by an event, thought, or feeling.
If you can figure out your triggers, it becomes easier to take control of them, and to not allow your emotions to dictate what goes into your mouth.
Stress and negative emotions are usually the culprit. Maybe you’ve had a fight with your partner, a difficult day at work, issues with friends or coworkers.
Grab a journal and write down some thoughts when you find yourself facing these triggers, to vent on paper versus raiding the pantry.
Therapy might also be of great help for you to identify your triggers, and come up with an action plan to stop this process for good. It can help you understand why you do this, and you can also learn different coping skills as you face stressors in life.
2. Eat only when you are hungry.
Teaching our bodies to only eat when we are hungry can be hard for some people, but retraining your brain to view food as fuel vs. comfort is an important step.
It will take time to retrain your brain, but you can take small steps to make these dietary changes to improve your health.
Learn to listen to your body, pay attention to the signals, drink a glass of water instead of chowing down, and watch for true hunger pangs, which begin in the throat.
You can even keep a food diary to write down what you eat, how much you ate, and how you are feeling when you ate it, then rate yourself on your hunger level.
3. Plan ahead to prevent it.
If you know you raid the pantry or fridge after a difficult meeting at work, or a fight with someone you love, plan ahead to prevent it.
Substitute a more positive action that will bring you comfort or reduce your stress, like meditation, journaling, or even having a dance party to break the tension.
Doing this will allow you to set yourself up for success to break this emotional eating habit.
4. Surround yourself with people who care about you.
This is so important, even for people without a problem such as emotional eating.
Having a support system with people who have your back helps you not to feel alone and isolated.
Reach out to family, friends, coworkers, or others and ask for help. Ask them if you can call them when you are facing the temptation, so they can help detour your mind. If they know what you’re facing, they can help you get back on track.
You can also be a support for them as well, because everyone is facing something.
Bottom line is, emotional eating does not have to control your life. You can fight it and overcome the negative effects that emotional eating does to your health and well-being with these simple strategies.
If you happen to give in to emotional eating, don’t beat yourself up, forgive yourself and start fresh the next day. Give yourself some kudos for making changes to have better health, even if they’re not going as fast as you would like.
Are you someone who faces emotional eating? What are some positive techniques you do to push through and not give in? I’d love for you to share below with what you do, and help someone else in their journey too!
