Practical Tips to Overcome Emotional Eating

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Transcript

 Today, we're going to chat about emotional eating, and emotional eating is a common way people cope with stress, sadness, boredom, anxiety, anger, loneliness. So if you're feeling like you might be an emotional eater, you're definitely not alone.

And in today's episode, I'm going to just be sharing some simple strategies to help you understand and address emotional eating in a healthier way.

So emotional eating is eating as a way to satisfy an emotional need rather than physical hunger. And like I said, we often turn to food in response to what we would typically deem “negative” emotions like stress, or anxiety, or boredom.

And of course this just provides temporary relief. And generally, once we eat in response to that emotion, we don't necessarily feel completely better and we might sometimes feel feelings of shame, or embarrassment, or frustration, like, “Why do I do this?” and “Why can't I stop eating?” and “Why can't I change?”

So practice self-compassion while you're working through emotional eating and approach these situations with grace and with curiosity.

So here are some tips that you might find helpful.

Take a moment and just check in to see if you're really hungry or if you're seeking comfort from the food. And it's okay that we use food for comfort sometimes, but having that awareness is key. It's the first step. So even if you do choose to eat the food, at least now, you know, you're aware and that is huge.

It's also helpful to identify some alternatives to food to help fulfill those emotional needs. So find other comforting activities like journaling, lighting a candle, snuggling up with a blanket and a book, going for a walk, calling a friend. Something creative is always really helpful - you can paint, or cross-stitch, or knit, or do pottery, or color a coloring book, um, something else to help you meet those emotional needs. If it's anger, you could try a boxing class, scream into a pillow, do some jumping jacks. Um, something physical is sometimes helpful to release anger.

And then create a self-care routine that can help reduce the stress and prevent emotional eating before it begins. Practice breathing exercises or meditation daily, do some gentle exercises, schedule those phone calls with friends so you're feeling a little bit less lonely or less stressed when you have an outlet. If you think a therapist might help, finding outside help could be a really good option for you too.

And just remember that emotional eating is common. It's an understandable response to emotions and just by becoming aware of those triggers and exploring some other ways to meet those emotional needs, you'll gradually build a healthier relationship with food overall.

So try one of the things that we talked about today and just start that journey of understanding your emotional eating triggers and working toward healing your relationship with food.