Emotional eating

Fitnesstracker2234
Fitnesstracker2234 Posts: 17
in Motivation and Support
Anyone with tips on how to stop emotional eating? I keep getting to my goal weight and then ending up back where I started within a few weeks when I get stressed out or upset. Really frustrating going back and forth so much.

Replies

  • tgmichelleee
    tgmichelleee Posts: 144 Member
    Can completely relate, I struggle with an binge eating, and honestly my best advice is to take it one day at a time.
    Aim to do your best for that one day; don't focus on what happened yesterday, just focus on doing your best today.
    It's definitely hard and more a mental thing than anything in my opinion. You have to change a habit which takes time, it's equivalent to say a smoker quitting smoking. Though you can't quite quit food, you can kick the bad eating habits (like emotional eating in your case).

    What I do is drinking lots of water and I got new healthy favorite foods I can grab whenever. My fav healthy food is microwaved potato and tangerines (yummm). If I ever feel the urge to binge it's what I start with and usually catch myself from having more once I eat that (and usually end up full anyways).
    I also have two mason jars and marbles. I have one mason jar labeled "The Binge" and another labled "Me". Every day I have a good day and I don't binge I put it in the me jar. If I ended up binging I put it in the binge jar. This way it's like a challenge to constantly have more in my jar than the binge jar :)
  • ally_land
    ally_land Posts: 28 Member
    Hi,

    I overcame years of emotional eating by:

    1. Learn to differentiate between physical hunger and emotional hunger.

    2. Choose to eat only for physical hunger. Eat anything you truly desire, as long as you are physically hungry. Stop eating when you are no longer physically hungry. In time, you will develop a trusting relationship with your body and food. You will no longer binge because you will know that you can eat anything you want if you are hungry. Once food has become safe with you, then you can focus on which foods make you feel healthy and energetic and which foods make you feel sick and lethargic. Choose the ones that make you feel healthy if that is what you desire.

    3. Learn to fill emotional hungers apart from food. When you want to eat when you are not physically hungry, what you are truly craving is love or joy. Find ways to fill your heart and life with a loving or joyful action.

    If you master these steps, binge eating will be a thing of the past. The bonus is that the extra stored energy (what others refer to as 'fat') will start to fall away on its own as you become more in tune with your body's physical hungers and emotional hungers.....without even having to focus on "losing weight."

    It is a joyful and loving process and I guarantee it overcomes binge eating. Best wishes!!

    XoXo!
    Ally
  • hopeflu
    hopeflu Posts: 6 Member
    I totally understand! I eat really well and then a bad day comes along and I just can't help myself eating badly to comfort eat.

    Ally: I find it very hard to just choose physical hunger. After most of my life I can remember comfort eating, it is almost impossible to just say 'oh, it's emotional hunger so I am not going to comfort eat'. It's like walking into a wall.... BUT, I am taking baby steps.

    I guess as long as we take baby steps forward and not back, we can be free of emotional eating,I hope.

    I try not beat myself up if I comfort it. I put it away and start a new and now I find I comfort eat less as I don't comfort eat when I feel bad about comfort eating.
  • Fitnesstracker2234
    Fitnesstracker2234 Posts: 17
    Thanks everyone!
  • Fitnesstracker2234
    Fitnesstracker2234 Posts: 17
    The jar sounds like a really good idea!

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