How to stop eating your emotions

What is emotional eating - and is it a problem?

Emotional eating is when someone uses food to soothe, distract or avoid negative emotions like boredom, uncertainty, sadness and loneliness 😢

Occasionally using food as a pick-me-up or release isn't necessarily a bad thing - I'm sure we've all done it before and will do again! 🙋‍♂️

But, if eating is your main coping mechanism and part of what's stopping you from achieving your goal weight, then we need to dig deeper and see what's going on 👀

HOW TO STOP: Identify your emotional eating patterns

The first step to taking control over your emotional eating is to get a super clear understanding of your emotional eating patterns ⏰

If you can identify HOW OFTEN, WHERE and WHY you emotionally eat, you can start to come up with healthier, non-food, related ways of dealing with your emotions 🧘‍♂️

HOW OFTEN do you emotionally eat?

• Is it a regular occurrence? 🍫🍫🍫

• Every now and again, e.g. an incredibly busy time at work? 🤯

• Triggered by major events in your life, e.g. a break-up, bereavement or living through a global pandemic? 😳

WHERE do you do it?

• Are you by yourself or with others?

• Are you at home, work, a friend's place or a restaurant? 🏠

• Is it in the morning, afternoon or evening? ⏰

WHY do you do it?

• Are you bored and eating gives you something to do? 🥱

• Do you feel sad or upset? 😢

• Is there another reason why eating helps you feel better?

ACTION: Take a couple of minutes to answer the above questions and get a clear understanding of your emotional eating patterns.

Once you've done that, check out these tips to help you take back control of your eating 👇

1. Stop avoiding your emotions

If you're using food as a coping mechanism for dealing with negative emotions, an obvious first strategy is to 'nip it in the bud' by dealing with the feeling itself 🥊

Practical ways to do this include:

• Keeping a journal 📝

• Calling a friend 📞 or

• Going for a walk to think it through 🚶‍♂️

These will all help you understand what's driving you to eat and offer support that can help reduce your anxiety 😌

Even better, try to identify a positive action you can take to resolve whatever's troubling you 💪

2. Find another way to 'scratch the itch'

There are loads of non-food related activities you can use to distract yourself from negative emotions 🙈

Examples include:

• Working 👨‍💻

• Reading 📚

• Playing computer games 🎮

• Exercising 🏋️‍♀️ and

• Even tidying up! 🧹

The key is to find an activity that puts you in what scientists call a 'flow state', which happens when you're entirely focused on the task at hand, rather than on whatever was stressing you out before.

3. Realise that it's JUST FOOD

Food is AWESOME at fuelling your body, but it's a terrible therapist 👎

Eating may allow you to feel good in the moment, but it will do nothing to resolve the feelings that triggered you to eat in the first place ❌

In fact, it can ADD to your problems if overeating causes you to gain weight! 🤯

Emotional eating expert, John Anger, recommends saying 'it's just food' out loud to yourself several times when you feel cravings starting to kick-in 🍫🍪🍔

The idea is that when you hear yourself say this out loud it will help you to realise how irrational you're being in thinking that food will help solve your problems 🤦‍♂️

4. Fat-proof your food environment

Empty your house of ALL snack foods that you struggle to eat in moderation - you can't snack if there's nothing to snack on! 🏠

As we all have our own trigger foods what you remove will be specific to you.

For example, I can keep nut butter in my kitchen and never snack on it, but for other people, it's a ticking time bomb! 💣

Personally, I struggle if there is a multi-box of protein bars in my cupboard. I avoid this by buying individual bars one at a time from the local shop instead - they're more expensive, but that's my 'snack tax' 💵

As well as emptying your cupboards you can do what I do and keep plenty of low-calorie snacks on hand for times when you want to eat even though you’re not physically hungry.

Comfort eating your way through a tub of Ben and Jerry's will set you back 1,000 calories but good luck overeating on foods like watermelon, apples, carrots, sugar snap peas and sugar-free jelly! 🍉🍎🥕

An important note on binge eating

Emotional eating and binge eating are similar but different in that binge eating is a clinically recognised eating disorder.

You can read more about binge eating and where to get help here.