Trying to finally stop emotionally eating? Keep reading to learn 4 easy suggestions you may implement today.
Emotions and food are so intertwined. Our feelings impact what we would like to eat, what we don’t need to eat, in addition to how much we eat. To a certain degree, this is totally normal and completely harmless. But sometimes, emotional eating can get a bit out of hand.
In the event you’re unable to regulate yourself once you’re emotional and around food, there are some quick suggestions you may implement that can significantly reduce these instances. It’s all about awareness, mindfulness, and intentional motion. Let’s get into it!
What’s Emotional Eating?
With a purpose to stop emotionally eating, now we have to get to know what it really means to emotionally eat. At its core, emotional eating happens when food is used to address emotions, versus getting used to satisfy hunger. This implies you’re using food as a type of comfort, even once you’re not hungry or in need of more energy. It’s often a type of mindless eating. Over time, this may create an imbalanced, confusing relationship with food.
What we’re not talking about here is when emotions have a slight impact in your food selections. Perhaps you’ve got a certain comfort food you enjoy having once you’re sad, or certain foods you wish to enjoy once you’re excited. These scenarios don’t call for any intervention, so long as they’re done mindfully, intentionally, and usually within the presence of physical hunger.
Our goal isn’t to completely separate food from emotion, that’s no fun in any respect! But as a substitute, ensure your emotions are only impacting your eating habits in a positive, balanced way. By learning the right way to create this relationship, you may learn to stop emotionally eating.
4 Tricks to Stop Emotionally Eating
Listed below are my top 4 tricks to stop emotionally eating. Start with the primary one, then slowly but surely make your way through to implement all of them!
Address Emotions Head On
That is crucial tip. Emotional eating often takes place when emotions and stressors are left unaddressed. With a purpose to stop emotionally eating, we want to deal with our emotions as they arise.
Sometimes that is fairly easy. Perhaps you’re feeling slightly overwhelmed by this week’s workload and also you’re finding yourself turning to food for comfort. On this scenario, you actually only have to learn the right way to address the temporary stress of labor and implement some systems to assist you achieve this.
Other times, it takes a bit more work. Some emotions are deep-rooted, and might not be easily addressed on your individual. On this case, therapy and counseling can work wonders. Working with someone to assist address emotions can have a major positive impact in your relationship with food when emotional eating is going down.
In the event you address difficult emotions as they arise, and work through deep-rooted emotions out of your past, you’ll give yourself the chance to stop emotionally eating.
Implement Intentional Emotion Check-ins
With a purpose to be proactive about addressing your emotions, it may be really helpful to implement intentional emotional check-ins. It might sound silly, but this sort of proactive motion makes it much easier to stay mindful on a each day basis.
In the event you struggle to discover emotions on the regular, try setting a selected time of day where you are taking a moment to pause and reflect. Ask yourself questions like, “How do I feel at once?”, “How have I felt today?”, and “What can I do to address these emotions?”. Simply bringing awareness to your emotions could make a world of a difference. That way you’re less prone to reach for food mindlessly and unintentionally. Over time, you’ll then have the opportunity to stop emotionally eating.
Reacquaint Yourself with Hunger and Satiety
Emotional eating also takes place once we don’t fully know the right way to decipher or interpret our hunger and satiety cues. These are the cues our body uses to inform us once we’re hungry and once we’re full. If we don’t understand them, it’s much easier to emotionally eat within the absence of hunger.
To reacquaint yourself together with your hunger and satiety, start by reflecting on it before and after meals. As you’re sitting right down to a meal, how do you’re feeling? Do you physically feel hunger? What does it feel like? If not, what does satiety feel like? How do you recognize that you just’re probably not hungry?
That way, the subsequent time you’re reaching for food within the absence of hunger in response to an emotion, you may conduct a fast check-in. That quick check-in will soon develop into a habit, and also you’ll have the opportunity to stop emotionally eating.
Get to Know Your Triggers
While it is feasible to have all heightened emotions cause emotional eating, in my experience, this often isn’t the case. Individuals normally have certain emotional triggers that cause them to emotionally eat. Whether it’s a certain person who makes them feel a certain way, or a selected situation or feeling.
Take a while to reflect on the instances once you found yourself emotionally eating. Try to think through the common denomenators. What form of emotion were you experiencing? Are there any common environments or people involved in these scenarios?
When you’ve identified your possible triggers, you may start to arrange yourself. The following time you end up feeling said emotion, you’ll be that far more aware of it and may work to mindfully stop emotionally eating.
The Takeaway
Learning to stop emotional eating takes time, reflection, and mindfulness. Don’t forget to be compassionate with yourself as you’re attempting to stop emotionally eating! Keep in mind that you’re only human and alter doesn’t happen overnight.
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