If 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:
- 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.
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.
The harder part, for me, is not what to do instead of emotionally eating, but to catch myself BEFORE I eat emotionally. Usually it happens, then I realize what I did, then I spin out of control because I’m so upset that I did it in the first place!
These are good tips, though, and I need to sit down and really think on them… thank you.
Excellent, excellent point, Kai. Yes – once we get in the “what the hell” spin cycle (this is what that looks like for me: if I’ve fallen off the wagon, I might as well enjoy myself while I’m down here!) – it’s hard to get back on track.
Did you read this article here? http://www.firstourselves.org/2011/what-to-do-when-youre-stuck/
Also, I’ll be publishing a post this week that gets to this very issue – one woman’s unique way of stopping a binge before it happens.
Neuroscientists say that the window of opportunity – where we have the capacity to choose, “Am I going to follow my impulse, or temper it?” – is measured in *seconds.*
I’ll be writing lots of posts over the next few weeks about how we can extend and lengthen that window – thank goodness that we can!
And the fact that impulse control is hard for us is not our fault. The work of Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate have shown me that having poor impulse control is *NOT* a character flaw or spiritual flaw, but a result of childhood brain development.
We weren’t given the support, nurturing or conditions we needed to learn how to temper our impulses. This is what I mean when I say temper our impulses: it’s being able to say, “On the one hand, I want to eat the ice cream; on the other hand, I don’t want to hurt my body with this food.” To add to our impulses with our virtues – patience, love, wisdom, care, temperance, discipline, etc., so that we can live out our intentions.
So it’s not about trying to control/not have impulses or “fight” against them – I tried that solution for years and it only created perfectionism, rigidity, tightness, and control/obsession. Not fun for me, or for those around me.
In my experience, we find peace when we temper our impulses so that when they arise – which they will, over and over again, because we’re human, and it’s our natural response to want to seek after pleasure and avoid pain – we can *respond* rather than react.
Tempering is a skill, thankfully, we can develop as adults. Thank God the brain is malleable and plastic (to me, this is grace at work!)
One practice that has *greatly* helped me with learning temperance – insight meditation.
In love, Karly
Hi Kai, I’m sorry to be so late in responding, I somehow missed your comment. I know–emotional eating is so often a REACTION and doesn’t happen from a place of deliberate choice. Often though, much of the overeating that results isn’t really that auto-pilot reaction–it’s a result of the shame, frustration, and guilt that often comes up when women realize they’ve done what they didn’t want to do. It is so empowering to take a stand for yourself at whatever part of the cycle you “get conscious.” If it’s after or in the midst of an eating episode, that’s okay. Taking a deep breath and giving yourself permission to have compassion and make a deliberate positive choice in THAT moment does help break that autopilot cycle in the long run. Really. Take good care
Melissa,
Thank you for this helpful post. I love how you took something that seems overwhelming and offered practical how tos. I resonated with your idea of changing things up – just doing one thing differently is so powerful!
Thank you for these great tips.
XO, Karly
Karly,
I’m thrilled to be able to contribute to the great content on your blog! Yep–change it up–do something–anything–differently. And NEVER underestimate what a small step can do. It’s really true that sometimes one small tweak can start to change everything.
Melissa