People eat for various reasons. In order for you to stop emotional eating, you need to know what triggers it. Know what situations, emotions or places trigger emotional hunger. Emotional eating is triggered primarily by negative feelings and sometimes by positive emotions, such as rewarding yourself for an achievement.
Causes of emotional eating
• Stress: Most people tend to eat when stressed and there is a good reason for it. When stress is chronic, high levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, are released. Cortisol causes you to crave salty, sugary, and fatty foods—foods that will raise your energy and pleasure levels.
• Boredom: This happens when you are inactive and have nothing to do. You can eat to overcome boredom. You feel empty and dissatisfied, so you eat to kill boredom and get that feeling of satisfaction.
• Childhood habits: You can recall childhood memories about food. Some parents use snacks to reward children for doing good things, maybe your parents rewarded you with chocolate every time you got good grades. You can pick up the habit from childhood.
• Social influences – Dining with friends is a great way to socialize and have fun, but it can sometimes lead to overeating. It will be easy for you to overeat when your friends overeat too or you will overeat to calm your nerves. If family members or friends encourage you to overeat, it’s easy to do so.
• Fill emotions: Eating can be a way to silence negative emotions you may have, such as anger, shame, loneliness, sadness, etc. By concentrating on eating, you can temporarily forget those emotions.
How to stop emotional eating
An easy way to do this is to keep a food diary and a mood diary. Every time you realize you’ve eaten unhealthy foods, write it down. Later, look back on what emotions made you eat. Over time you will be able to identify habits or emotions that make you overeat. Once you know what triggers your emotional eating, you can start working on how to stop it and find healthier ways to eat.
1. Find other ways to feed your feelings
If you can’t find another way to deal with your emotions without involving food, it will be almost impossible to break this habit. One of the reasons diets fail is because they offer logical nutrition advice on the assumption that the only thing stopping you from eating well is a lack of knowledge. This type of advice only works if you can control your eating habits. Identifying your triggers and understanding your cycle isn’t enough to curb emotional eating — you need to find other ways to deal with your emotions. When you are stressed or lonely, you can call or go out with a friend who makes you feel better, visit places you like, read an interesting book, watch a comedy show or play with your pet.
two. Take a break when cravings strike
This may not be as easy as it sounds because when the urge to eat strikes, it’s all you can think about. You feel the need to eat right there. Give yourself at least 5 minutes before you give in to the craving, this gives you time to think about the bad decision you are about to make. Within that period you can change your mind and make a better choice. If 5 minutes is too much for you, start with 2 minutes and increase the time as you improve.
3. Learn to accept the good and the bad feelings.
Emotional eating comes from not being able to deal with your feelings in your head. Find a friend or a professional with whom you can talk about the issues and problems you are having. Being able to accept the bad and the good feelings without involving food will help you progress.
Four. Adopt healthy lifestyle habits
Exercise, rest, and adequate sleep will make it easier for you to deal with any problems you may encounter, be they emotional or physical. Create time for a 30-minute exercise at least 5 days a week, relax, and get 7-8 hours of sleep every day. It is also important to surround yourself with positive people who will encourage you and help you deal with your problems.
