Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• You’re having a rough day at work and finally find a few minutes to step away from your desk. Once you get to the break room, you struggle to resist the temptation of all the snacks sitting out on the counter. You grab a few fun-sized chocolate bars and half a donut.
• You didn’t get an expected promotion at work, so that night you tell yourself you deserve to treat yourself to half a pizza and a pint of ice cream (or an entire bottle of wine).
• It’s 10:30 at night, and you’re watching a boring episode of your partner’s favorite tv show. You mindlessly reach for some chips and before you know it, the entire bag is gone.

Emotional eating is insidious. It comes in many forms and usually happens without our conscious knowledge or consent. Frequent emotional eating episodes can derail your efforts to lose weight or build healthier habits, even if you do everything else well.

I have personally struggled with emotional eating and binge eating for many years. Through a combination of mindfulness, slowing down, learning more about myself, and going to therapy, I’ve made great strides in combatting this challenging problem.

Many of our struggles around food aren’t actually about food at all. If you need some help managing your emotions, or if you suspect you may be suffering from an eating disorder, I strongly encourage you to seek professional help and speak with a therapist. 

If you just want to cultivate more awareness and learn some strategies to stop emotional eating, read on for the tools that are most helpful for me and my clients.

Notice, name, and respond to emotions.

Cravings are often triggered by emotions that have nothing to do with hunger. Some of the most common culprits are boredom, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Many of us learned to use food to cope with these uncomfortable emotions at a young age, which makes emotional eating a difficult habit to unlearn.

First, you must learn to accurately identify your emotions. The next time you feel a craving, stop and ask yourself “what’s really going on here?” Precision Nutrition calls this practice “notice and name”. Practice labeling different emotions based on how they feel in your body or brain. Write them down if necessary (more on this below). 

Next, determine how you can respond to this emotion in a way that doesn’t involve food. Many of the best responses are physically active, mentally stimulating, or promote relaxation or connection. Engaging in a fun activity, calling a friend, tackling an important work task, going for a walk, or meditating are all possible options to address boredom, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. These actions not only prevent emotional eating, they can also help you become a happier person.

Distinguish between true hunger and cravings

There is a difference between craving a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and being genuinely hungry for dinner. In order to combat your emotional eating habits, you need to learn the difference between these two sensations.

One of the best ways to identify true hunger is to set a timer for 20 minutes when you notice a craving. During this time, if possible, remove yourself from food and find something else to do. Oftentimes, once you get back to work or start doing something fun the craving will pass completely and you will realize that you aren’t actually hungry. If after the timer rings you are still hungry (or even hungrier than before), then you can decide whether to satisfy the craving, grab a healthy snack, or eat a full meal.

Another useful mind trick is to consider what types of food you are craving. If a plate of chicken and broccoli (or one of your go-to healthy meals) sounds appetizing, you are probably actually hungry. If you are only hungry for sweets or a greasy burger, you are probably experiencing a craving.

Keep a journal.

Keeping a food journal is a great way to get more in touch with your natural hunger cues. I don’t mean logging your caloric intake, although that can be helpful. This kind of food journal tracks hunger and craving levels throughout the day and around meals.

Rate your hunger and cravings levels on a scale of 1-10 (10 = totally stuffed/not at all hungry or no cravings, 1 = extremely hungry and craving everything in sight). Record these numbers when you wake up, before and after meals, and before you go to bed. For most people, allowing yourself to get to peak hunger between meals is a recipe for overeating. Aim to keep your hunger levels between 3-6 before meals and no more than 8 after meals.

Those of you who struggle to get in touch with your emotions may benefit from keeping a different kind of journal. At the end of every day, write down a short account of your day. Describe the various emotions you felt, how they affected you, and how well you handled them. Practice giving names to these emotions and, where applicable, make special note of how they affected your hunger and craving levels.

Journaling is also useful to help you figure out what went wrong after you binge or succumb to emotional eating. Think back to the sequence of events leading up to the binge and try to identify as many triggers are you can. These could be anything from being extremely hungry, to walking by a particular restaurant, to getting in a fight with your partner. Write as many details as you can remember so you can try to handle the situation better next time it comes up. When we commit to writing these things down, we start to see unhelpful patterns in our thoughts and behaviors.

Change your environment so it supports your goals.

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath explain that when trying to make changes, what seems like a people problem is often a situation problem. People are highly susceptible to certain behaviors based on environmental triggers. Therefore, you can work to tweak your environment so emotional eating is more difficult.

If you are prone to emotional eating, stress eating, or binge eating, you should not keep any junk food in your house. It doesn’t matter if the food is yours or belongs to your partner or kids: if it is in the house, you are at risk for eating it at any time. Sometimes trigger foods are not overtly junky. Things like peanut butter, protein bars, dried fruit, and nuts are common “healthy” foods many people still overeat. If you have a problem with a particular food, healthy or not, remove it from your house or workspace and don’t buy it again.

Slow, mindful eating is an incredibly powerful tool to increase your enjoyment of meals and help you combat emotional eating. Make a habit of devoting your full attention to meals. This means when it’s time for dinner, you set the table, eat a full meal, and avoid electronic distractions. When the meal is over you “close” your kitchen and nobody gets to grab anymore food for the rest of the night. This is especially helpful if you have a bad habit of mindlessly snacking in front of the tv after work or late at night. Train yourself to eat only at meals and spend the rest of your day working, playing, or relaxing without constant snacking.

Finally, whenever possible avoid situations that trigger overeating. If you know you are prone to binging when you allow yourself to go too long between meals, keep a healthy snack with you at all times. When you have to face your triggers, come armed with a plan to help you deal with the situation. A journaling practice can help you better understand emotions or situations that trigger unwanted eating.

Practice self-compassion.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my fitness journey is to be nicer to myself when I mess up and succumb to emotional or binge eating.

Although it is useful to analyze your behavior to find ways to better handle difficult situations in the future, it is not helpful to wallow in guilt or punish yourself with negative self-talk and over restriction.

Precision Nutrition has a practice called the “clean slate”: when you have a bad day of eating, you start fresh the next day without any baggage or guilt about your actions. Building a healthy lifestyle is a process with many ups and downs. Learn from your mistakes, treat yourself with love and respect, and continue taking steps towards a happier and healthier future.

If you want help taking charge of your eating habits, please fill out the application for my online coaching program.