How to stop comfort/emotional eating?

cymro81

Hi All,

I am looking for some advice and support on comfort and emotional eating. I find that any stressful or upsetting situation, even just an argument with a loved one, sends me hunting through the cupboards for the naughtiest thing in the house or straight to the vending machine in work. I have tried to get rid of everything naughty in the house so very often it ends up being weetbix with a heap of sugar. Or in work, I try not to keep change for the machine but then will go for a walk to the shop just to buy the goods.

What tactics and techniques do other people use to combat this? At the time I do this I genuinely don't care so thinking to myself about the benfits of staying strong or whether I am undoing my good work doesn't work at all and taking a walk is not always viable when it is late at night or when it's the weekend and I am home with the kids (it can be more stressful trying to get everyone out of the house to take a walk!!lol).

Looking forward to finding some new tactics!

angiechimpanzee

First, realize the food is not the issue. The fact that sugary/fatty food is in your midst is not what's making you comfort eat. It's the fact that you don't know how to deal with your feelings/emotions in a way that doesn't involve food, that's making you comfort eat.

Getting rid of the food itself isn't going to solve the problem long term. What you need to do is learn better coping mechanisms. First, learn how to feel your emotions and just sit in them, instead of immediately searching for a way to stuff them down. When you feel yourself getting stressed or angry, try and identify with it first. Sit silently with yourself and just observe, "Wow, I'm really stressed because I have all of this work to do. What am I going to do about this?" At that point it's no longer an uncontrollable impulse, instead you now have a CHOICE to make. You can either go to your default coping mechanism, eating, which has additional consequences of its own, or you can choose to do something different that helps soothe your emotion.

Finding this "something different" can be tricky because it takes time to automatically respond to an emotion by doing something different than what you're used to doing in that situation (eating). But I think what helps the most is to think of something you actually ENJOY doing, something that actually brings you pleasure and that you can realistically do in most situations. I can't tell you what that is because I'm not you. But once you find that thing, practice doing it regularly and recognizing how good you feel when you do it, so that when the time comes and you feel stressed or whatever, you can remember "Hey, I don't have to eat to deal with this feeling. I can do [other soothing activity] instead!". And realize that, contrary to what most sources of advice would tell you, the goal here is not to "distract yourself from eating". The goal is to learn to deal with your feelings in much less destructive ways so that eating is no longer the go-to solution.