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- Think simple and do-able. You don’t need to eliminate a craving or an urge completely, but you do want to get through it.
- Consider both strategies that help you actively address the emotions you are feeling (stress, anxiety, loneliness, etc.), and, what I call “warm blanket strategies.” These are the strategies you can use when you can’t actively change the situation (maybe you are stress eating at work because you have little control of the demands there) and you simply need some comfort to wrap up in (like a warm blanket). Comfort that is not food. For example, if you are eating because you are lonely, active strategies would attack the loneliness. You might reach out to a friend or spend some time chatting online. A warm blanket strategy would be something kind that you could do for yourself out of compassion for how you are feeling—maybe taking time to read a favorite book or a nonfood indulgence like a warm bath or some new tunes for your mp3 player.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. To kick the emotional eating habit, you need to get out of the rut of doing things a certain way (turning to food). Consider any way that you can change things up—moving to a different room or location, changing the order of your routine, creating reminders of the new strategies that you want to try. Notice the things that help and keep building on them.
How Identifying Your Cravings Can Help You Not Eat
March 5th, 2011
Taking control of emotional eating and overeating is usually a process. Figuring out what to do instead of emotional eating can be tricky, in part because food is so darn easy to turn to and it is so widely available.
If you want to make lasting changes with your eating habits or your weight, it’s important to have two sets of strategies — quick, practical strategies that get you through difficult times, and tools and strategies that help you address the root causes of your emotional eating — so it doesn’t keep coming back and taking control of your life.
In this post I’ll share why it’s crucial to identify and address the root cause of your emotional eating. Stress eating, anxious eating, eating because you are bored or lonely, eating because you are angry or tense or overeating after a hard day are all types of emotional eating.
It’s all too easy to turn to food to try to comfort or to distract or to numb. Food is quick, easy to “apply,” and almost always present. Food often makes you feel good — for a few moments. The problem is, the salve doesn’t last, and, the food doesn’t do anything about really addressing the problem that triggered your eating.
If you are an emotional eater, one of the most empowering things that you can do is stop berating yourself and calling yourself names when you overeat and turn to food. Start by respecting that you do it for a reason. If you can face your desire to eat with respect, you can start to examine what I call the “real cravings” that underlie or trigger your desire for food.
What are you really hungry for? Whether it’s love or respect or stress relief; excitement or comfort, compassion, or something different, identifying your real craving puts you in the driver’s seat. When you identify and begin to address the root cause of your food attraction, food loses a lot of its power and its hold on you (you might be amazed).
Once you are clear that it isn’t really about the chocolate doughnut (or whatever you are craving), your mind won’t be so persistently focused on it. There’s a huge bonus payoff as well. When you identify the root cause of your emotional eating and start feeding that true craving, not only does emotional eating get better — so does your life. Truly taking charge of emotional eating guides you to address important concerns so that your life works better for you. Creating peace with food really does mean creating a better life.
Dr. Melissa McCreery is a Psychologist, Coach, and Emotional Eating and Overwhelm Eliminator for smart busy women. She is the author of the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program http:/emotionaleatingtoolbox.com. Are you struggling with emotional eating, overeating, and balancing work and life? Claim your easy-to-use audio series: “Five Simple Steps to Move Beyond Overwhelm with Food and Life” at http://TooMuchOnHerPlate.com.
Emotional Eating Help: Finding Things to do INSTEAD of Eating
February 17th, 2011If you struggle with emotional eating: stress eating, boredom eating, comfort eating, frustration eating, or any type of eating designed to help you cope with or avoid your feelings, you know that it can be a difficult habit to break. It’s one thing to identify that you struggle with emotional eating, but even after you have identified the feelings and situations that trigger you, it may be difficult to figure out what to do instead of eating when these situations arise.
Of course, you will be more likely to successfully make lasting changes if you have a ready-made list of strategies that you can use when the urge to eat, snack, graze, or binge arises. Unfortunately, when asked to create such a list, it’s pretty common to draw a blank. What to do instead of something that comes so automatically? That can be a tough one.
Don’t let that dissuade you.
If you are trying to kick the emotional eating habit, sit down right now and make a list of ten things you can do instead when the feeling hits. Think about the different situations you might be in — what you can do instead of overeating at work is probably different than what you can turn to to avoid emotional eating in the evening.
How do you make such a list? It’s really about trial and error. Without experimenting, you won’t uncover the unique combination of strategies that work for you.
My tips for creating a list of what to do instead of emotional eating:
My bet is that you are looking for a solution that lasts — what I often call, peace with food. That’s different from a crash diet that starts with lots of motivation and then, well, crashes. The more you practice looking for what works for you instead of eating, the more you will start to identify solutions. It’s definitely a process, but one that pays off big time.
Dr. Melissa McCreery is a Psychologist, Coach, and Emotional Eating and Overwhelm Eliminator for smart busy women. She is the author of the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program http:/emotionaleatingtoolbox.com. Are you struggling with emotional eating, overeating, and balancing work and life? Claim your easy-to-use audio series: “Five Simple Steps to Move Beyond Overwhelm with Food and Life” at http://TooMuchOnHerPlate.com.
