Controlling Emotional Eating!!! - Anyone have any good tips?

I assume if you're here, then you're already getting into the habit of logging everything you eat. But I think if you're trying to kick an emotional eating habit, you also have to log how you're feeling when you eat it. (I wish MFP had a comments column for this in our individual food logs). It seems like sort of a tedious exercise to track emotions in addition to food, but it will help you learn to identify the connections between the two, and sometimes even whole patterns.

If you eat in response to stress, in particular, maybe track your stress level on a 1-10 scale and log it when you log your food. But if, like me, you eat in response to stress, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, anger, etc... then it's better to take more elaborate notes. So before you eat a snack or a meal, ask yourself: "Am I hungry?" and "How am I feeling right now?".

Also, when you're feeling strong emotions that make you want to eat, it's useful to have a list of alternatives to eating. My list includes stretching, squeezing an ice cube, taking a walk, crying, calling my sister or, if I'm at work or out in public or something, ducking into a bathroom for an internal dialog to talk myself through what I'm feeling and why.

One matra I find useful is "If hunger is not the problem, then food is not the answer."

Good luck!

I can tell you that the only thing that will work is addressing the cause, not the symptoms. Try to figure out why you're doing this and address that. The eating will fix itself once you fix what is causing the distress in the first place.

I'm also an emotional eater. When I started this journey in November, it was hard. REALLY hard to break myself of eating when I was bored or stressed or upset. Then I realized that food doesn't love me like I love food. It doesn't care if I'm upset, stressed, or bored. It has zero emotional investment in my body and I have a huge emotional investment in my body. And despite everything, what it came down to was that I had gained weight because I had willingly put food into my mouth. That means, I can willingly NOT put food into my mouth.

I started paying attention to myself a bit more and began to recognize when I was hungry because I needed fuel and when I was looking for a snack because I was bored. Working out made me hungry; sitting around made me bored. So I decided to make a list of things to do when I was bored. Vacuum, laundry, clean bird cages-anything to move my butt and forget the snack. I starting drinking a glass of water when I felt snacky. I cut up cucumbers and made little baggies of that or frozen grapes to grab if I couldn't resist the urge.

Then something crazy happened. I was bored one day and didn't want anything to snack on. I wanted to work out, I wanted to clean windows, but a snack never occurred to me.

So my advice is to break up with food and find something you really enjoy to take its place. Use food for fuel to keep you strong enough to do the fun thing you've started doing. Take a class, write a book, learn to swim--anything you have ever wanted to do.

You can do this!

Thank you for posting this topic, and thanks to everyone for your suggestions!

I have come to realize this year, that I am a "stuffer". I don't like dealing with emotions like anger, jealousy, etc. So, instead of verbalizing what I feel, I eat. I put in my mouth what I won't let come out verbally....

My emotional eating often used to, and sometimes still does, happen through fast food. If I was having a bad day, feeling down in the dumps, or just feeling too exhausted to go home and cook, I would hit the drive-thru. My advice, and something that I'm working on myself, is to make better choices if you do have to get take-out or fast food. At Wendy's, for example, I order a grilled chicken sandwich with a plain baked potato or salad as the side. If it helps, if you know you are going to pick food up, check the nutritional information first - know exactly what you plan to order ahead of time and stick to the plan. This has helped me on days where I lack motivation to cook or do anything really.

This is hard. I have struggled myself for years. I have found something that helps me is to chew gum if I want to eat out of boredom or emotional issues. I also second having healthy snacks and keeping treats out of the house.

I AGREE! Trident is my savior!

Celery. Celery is GREAT for emotional eating because it's crunchy like a snack and quite low in calories. A whole bag in the UK is about 50 calories - apparently it takes more calories to digest celery than to eat it (That doesn't mean you shouldn't log it!).

So yeah - what I sometimes do is have it around so I can have a light snack. With hummus it's even nicer! Beetroot hummus since it's also low in calories.

I also had to identify my trigger food - for me it is Peanut Butter. I was eating it for all the wrong reasons and absolutely not for any nutritional value. So, I don't eat it anymore. At all. In its place, I' started breathing exercises with deep breathing. I count as high as I need to (using slow/controlled breathing) until the urge to eat passes.

Not gonna lie - when I first started this I could count REALLY high. I removed my trigger food on 12/1/2013 and almost three months later I barely give it a second thought.

This is hard. I have struggled myself for years. I have found something that helps me is to chew gum if I want to eat out of boredom or emotional issues. I also second having healthy snacks and keeping treats out of the house.

This is what I just heard of trying instead and so far (this week haha) it has been helping. When i feel like i want to grab something I shouldn't out of emotion I pop gum. I love trident but am trying out some of the Dessert flavors of Extra so I get that "dessert" taste without eating it.

Loving everyones suggestions too, so many of us suffer with this.