Emotional eating

Lugrunk

Hi, I feel myself eating more when I am stressful, sad, happy and whenever I want to escape from these emotional ups and downs. Do you have any advice on this - I mean how to deal with this?

sollyn23l2

You're going to have to find other ways te cope with your emotions. Exercise, playing with your dog, reading, etc. And, nobody likes hearing this, but it's also really helpful long term to force yourself to sit with those emotions and just feel them identify and name them, then get comfortable with them. We've grown to believe we need to make our emotions go away. And this leads to all kinds of problematic coping mechanisms. It's ok to feel all the emotions.

RuatyShackelford

I agree with sollyn23l2: you could highly benefit from finding other ways, more healthy ways, to cope. Emotions give life a rich texture, and that's wonderful. Emotional overeating is all about chasing that dopamine fix.

Practicing mindfulness, acceptance, and maybe even therapy are options.

Kiwi2mfp

I would suggest you find a good counselor or therapist to help you work through why you eat your emotions. You can try to work through this on your own but you will likely be able to work this out quicker with some one on one guidance. Weightloss is hard enough as it is but having an issue that makes it even harder and trying to go it alone really can feel overwhelming. Something happened in your life that has not allowed you to learn other ways to regulate your emotions without food. Finding out what that is will likely give you so much more control (and, at the same time, freedom) over your life! Hang in there!