Emotional eating tips?

When you start feeling emotional, grab a friend.. go.for a walk or a run. No food in site, and talking will keep your mind of it

*meant

Tell yourself, "The only thing to eat in the kitchen is [insert a rather ho-hum food of choice that you'd only eat if you absolutely 100% hungry, like carrot sticks or apple slices]." If you are honestly able to tell yourself, "Yes, [carrot sticks] would hit the spot right now," then you're hungry and you should eat. However, if you cringe at the thought of eating something "healthy" to satisfy your supposed hunger, you may just realize at that moment you're feeling bored/happy/scared/sad/etc. and not actually hungry.

That's not to say that sometimes our bodies are intuitively telling us to eat something richer. For example, if you're low on a mineral/vitamin, maybe carrot sticks aren't the answer. Maybe your body is trying to tell you, "Eat something with iron in it." When that happens, you'll usually know that it's still not emotionally-based eating, because you're bound to feel agitated and have a very strong craving for a specific food. But, that goes back to, once again, becoming more aware of why you're wanting to eat something.

Now if your habits of eating due to emotion are that ingrained, and you still feel like saying, "I don't care that I'm not physically hungry-- I just want to eat an entire chocolate cake to myself," then that's when you should do what previous posters have suggested, and have a coping strategy in place to take your mind off of food until the urge passes. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes for something like that to pass, so if you can find something to occupy your time that lasts that long, and then reassess your feelings of "hunger" afterwards, you'll most likely find that you feel better and no longer care about eating just to be eating something.

Counseling.