Stress and emotional eating

Look for alternatives to help with emotions. Emotional eating is a very temporary salve and leads to further emotions as guilt, self disgust, disappointment etc set in.

When feeling stressed for instance have a soak in bath, go for a walk or do some meditation.

When sad talk it out with a close friend or family member.

Have some interests/hobbies on the go for when bored or go for a walk, go the gym, volunteer somewhere.

When angry do a boxing class or spin class or something else that will help use up some of the angry energy.

I emotional eat too. It's my biggest downfall. I'm trying really hard to substitute a healthy active movement instead, like 25 push ups against the counter. It helps me to remember that I am working hard to get fit and that a few minutes of poor eating can undue a whole day, or worse!

I emotional eat like craazy but the main thing for me is to give it another outlet, and really think about the decision. Is this going to be worth it once I've eaten this? Will it be worth the calories? Will it be worth ruining my goals? You have to kind of hype yourself up, even if you're down - and having good supportive friends/family can help you too, but in the end it's all about building up good habits, a positive mindset, a good backbone of support in your life, and finding the mental strength to fight the urges.

For me a lot of it is mindfulness in accepting emotions. I find that when I can accept my sadness/anger/whatever, accept the reasoning for it, but choose not to act on it, it gives you so much power and control. It's all about respecting yourself and allowing yourself to look into why you're feeling a certain way and let the thoughts flow and let yourself feel without taking any sort of action. I'm not a therapist or anything but I feel like so many problems in society, whether it's binge eating or using other vices e.g. drinking come from our lack of willingness to truly experience emotions. Obviously if you end up eating you have to try to stop the guilt - like zherra said it's more about understanding your patterns and instead of feeling bad, realising your downfall, the moment you decided to eat, and what you can do in future to avoid it. Combining that with affirmations and positive actions really help. You can even tie new good habits to existing habits, even if it means you go for a walk while eating a chocolate bar or something like that, until you eventually can cut out the chocolate entirely and appreciate how good the walk on its own makes you feel.

For my outlets I either watch a show I love, youtubers I love, go downstairs and cuddle my dog, listen to some good music, go on a walk, browse the internet, talk to friends, or sometimes I even just go to bed if it's late enough. Sleeping usually resets my emotions and I forget what I was even upset about! Also, I will drink water when I'm craving certain foods e.g. chocolate, sweets, fatty foods and then I feel a lot less hungry. I also make sure I'm not in a position where I could buy junk food. Luckily I'm not the one in my house who does the weekly shop, but I try to avoid shops and if I go into them, I go straight to what I need, like the fruit and water, and sort of tunnel vision my way through without putting myself in the position where I'll be looking at chocolate and junk. If I'm with friends I'll let them know about my diet and that I'll be waiting for them outside/at the checkout when I'm done getting what I need. If they don't accept and understand something so small and simple, then they're not good for me in the long run. I also tend not to eat out or get takeaway with people because I end up eating wayyy more calories than I should, cause I go all out with takeaways knowing how I don't get them very often. With my gluten free diet I usually don't eat out with people anyways though.

Hope this helps at all!