Help any tips to overcome stress eating?

You need to stop using your kids as excuses.

You are their father. If you need 30 minutes to do your work out, you set boundaries that they are to entertain themselves and not bother you while you have your time.

If you get up early and the kids get up too, take them for a bike ride, to the park and play soccer or tag with them.

Treats do not have to be food. If you feel you 'deserve' a reward for a tough day, you could reward yourself and your wife with mutual massages, a little grown up play time, a hot bath.... so many options.

This is a tough love response but... the fact that you sat down after working on your house and thought something like "I deserve this" means that this is a choice that you are electively choosing. It's not a compulsion, it's not even necessarily an emotional need... heck, that scenario, you don't even sound stressed out at the time.

When I think of stress eating, I think of eating when you are on deadline to keep yourself awake... Allowing yourself to have a bag of M&Ms while working on a huge project... Having a horrible day at work and pulling into the first DQ you see and eating the Blizzard before you get home, not out of shame but because the dopamine rush from the eating calms you down.

This sounds like a habit. Habits can be broken. You have kids, it's a given. It's time to acclimate. As long as you consider that stress worthy of eating things that will put you over your calories or whatever, you will struggle to succeed. There is zero reason to get up, leave the house, and get a milkshake. If you had time to do all that, which probably took at least 15 minutes if not more, you had enough time to do some exercise. Therefore, you have time enough to choose an option that will make you happier.

Choose to motivate yourself, and not allow yourself to leave the house for sweets once you're home for the night. I incorporated a reward system for myself at one point to help change the habit... for every day I didn't purchase junk, I would put money that would have been spent on junk into a jar to save for a special thing later.

For the record though, I love milkshakes.. and when I was working out 2-3 hours a day, they were a rather daily thing. I would get one during my recovery hour after water aerobics, as they have decent protein, calcium, calories to supply for the eating back exercise calories, etc. If you're going to fast food joints, look up the calories on the sizes... Some of them aren't so bad, as long as you're working for them. That being said, practically no one needs a large shake, unless they've had oral surgery or something, so scale it back. You CAN work them into your routine, you just have to be honest, and if you didn't do the work today, you don't get to have a milkshake. The work indicated by the "earned calories."

Good luck.

Thanks for your response but to tell me that I am not stressed isn't right. You really have no idea what my life is like you are on the other side of a computer screen. Now that I am finally admitting to my self I am stressed and I have to much on my plate right now really who are you to tell me I'm not stressed. I have talked to my wife about this who has her masters in psychology and just because you make a conscious decision to do something does not mean it isn't compulsive. When people compulsively do something it doesn't mean they are on auto pilot all the time. It means they have developed unhealthy coping mechanisms and that is what I am trying to figure out how to fix. My wife suggested the self talking but sometimes I cant talk myself out of it.

Thanks for your input but I disagree. As far as acclimating to having kids you sound like someone who doesn't have kids. I knew everything about parenting before I had kids too. I know it is going to get easier as they grow and I love every moment with them but right now it is tough! I am just trying to figure out how to fix things I need to fix.

I never said you weren't stressed. I said in that moment, you didn't sound like you were having a stress crisis.

I have been diagnosed with compulsive eating disorder, and am very familiar with the urges to have certain foods even when I don't need them. It does come down to a decision though. It's something a person has to accept in order to move past using food as a coping mechanism. You choose to put food in your mouth if you're not on "auto-pilot" Frankly, if you were on auto-pilot, I would have suggested seeing a psychiatrist. The word compulsive means "against one's conscious urges" so in that sense, it is not compulsive if you are actively choosing and planning to leave your house to take care of it. My compulsive eating problems had to do with pantry raids and eating everything in the house, whether it was a treat or not. There is a big difference between compulsive eating and food addiction.

I can't help but notice that you were perfectly accepting of someone saying don't use your kids as an excuse. That's essentially what I'm saying. This isn't a stress that's going to go away, but one that will be there 24/7. If you allow the stress of having a family to be an excuse, it's not going to get better, because that stress isn't going to go away.

You've been happy to accept others saying you need to replace the habit of food with something else, and that's all I really said. Even in your responses, you've given recognition to many things that show that it may be more from a lack of motivation than a true compulsive problem.

If you're going to discredit someone's input because "they don't know you" and are on a computer, I don't see the point in asking for help here. I'm an honest and well-intentioned person, with personal experience and my own degree in psychology. I focused on ED and abnormal psychology, myself. Ultimately though, we have to move past making excuses, make active choices, and implement change. If you feel it's truly out of your control, it is time to see a professional that isn't related to you.