How to Overcome Emotional Eating
Are you struggling with intense emotions that result in overeating or binging? I am a licensed therapist specializing in food or eating issues to include emotional eating. In this blog post, I share a few ways to help overcome emotional eating.
Emotional Triggers
The first step before finding your triggers is knowing what you are feeling. There are a number of benefits to knowing the emotions that we are experiencing. We often use good, great, fine, or okay when we talk about how we are feeling. We need to use our emotions words when describing our feels. One might start with a feelings wheel to learn different words to describe your emotions.
After putting names to what we are feeling, the next step is identifying how they impact us. You can begin to identify what your emotional triggers are for food by reflecting on the most recent episodes of emotional eating. What lead up to it? Where were you? Who was around you?
Other ways are to identity the some of the emotions you feel more intensely. These intense emotions can lead us on a path to relapsing. If we are overloaded, we typically choose coping skills that are maladaptive, unhealthy, or put us at risk.
Coping with Triggers
Once you identify your triggers, your next step is to cope with them appropriately. In order to cope with them, you need to know your coping skills. You could start by listing out coping skills that have worked for you in the past. Next you may consider new skills you haven’t used before. We also can never have too many coping skills so finding new ones to try can be exciting and fun.
Here are some examples to help combat your triggers:
Finding healthy alternatives to what you tend to eat when triggered such as nice cream instead of ice cream.
Eating foods that improve your mood (stay tune in the post for more about this one).
Learning a new skill or hobby.
Attend a support group with a therapist or a self-help group.
Accept and Honor
We tend to judge our emotions when we feel them. This adds shame to the mix as well. When we start judging our emotions, we tell ourselves it’s bad for us to feel them. Emotions are neither good nor bad, they just are.
Emotions are on a spectrum. We may have some on the positive side or experience some on the negative side but that does not mean they are good or bad for us. Negative emotions mean they are taking something away or having a negative impact on you (i.e., depression is taking away happiness or anger is increasing physical stress.)
Accepting your emotions is just saying to yourself, “Yes, this is anger I feel.” It does not mean you’re accepting the event that invoked the emotions, just that you are accepting the emotions. Honoring it is allowing you to feel it and for as long as you need to feel it. Honor without judgment.
Cope with a Plan
Earlier I talked about identifying intense emotions you might feel in order to know your triggers. This is also important so you can create a plan to cope with your triggers. A relapse prevention plan or a trigger/warning sign plan will help ensure you have coping skills listed that work so when you are in your intense emotions there’s less thinking you have to do. Think of it as a checklist and you are just checking off the coping skills you are completing.
When we are in our emotions, often our rational brain is overloaded so we are not able to fully think ourselves out of our intense emotions. This changes over time as you learn to cope and accept your emotions. Until this happens, having a plan you can create as a checklist keeps the guess work out of thinking through how to cope in the moment.
Another plan that is helpful is planning for events. Sometimes going to your family’s house for a holiday barbeque can invoke strong intense emotions or there’s a possibility of your family member saying something that might trigger you. If you have a plan for what you will do in the moment before going, you will have a high success of coping with the situation in a healthy manner.
Mindful Eating
Mindfulness is a wonderful skill to help with coping with emotions. Mindful eating is a skill that has you connect to your food. It will also ensure that you do not overeat and that you are full. When you mindfully eat, you are less in your head and emotions. You are focused more on the food you are eating in the moment.
Mindful eating consists of fully focusing on your food as you eat. You describe to yourself what it looks like, what are the colors, or is there a texture. Before you take a bite, you sniff it. Sense of smell does more for your taste than actually tasting your food. When you take a bite, it’s about the texture, the flavors, or sensations in your mouth. Mindful eating allows you to be fully present for your dining experience with savoring your food and enjoying the moment while ensuring you become full faster. I encourage you try mindful eating the next time you have a meal.
Food as Fuel
Hippocrates once stated, “Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” It is important to make sure we are fueling our bodies with the optimum fuel food. There are a number of studies showing the impact of food on our moods. Some food like dark chocolate is known to increase dopamine and serotonin in our brains which help reduce mood swings. Eating the right foods for us, our bodies, and our emotions can make or break our reactions or behaviors when coping with emotions.
Plant based diets have been proven to increase mood while also decreasing other chronic diseases. Research studies conducted show a significant increase in emotional health with a decrease in depression, fatigue, and anxiety issues when people eat a vegan diet. Fruits and veggies are known to have antioxidants and polyphenols that help with depressive symptoms which can be help individuals with more homeopathic choices for treatment over medications. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) provides Food for Life classes that will teach you educational facts and recipes on food that with fuel your body and mood.
What Do If These Tips Aren’t Helping
These are just five tips that might help you to overcome emotional eating. However, emotional eating can be very complex for some folks. Seeking out professional help such as a nutritionist or a therapist to help with more complicated issues might be more beneficial. If you would like more help, please do not hesitate to reach out to me for a free consultation.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a replacement for a therapeutic relationship or substance abuse/mental health services. This is for educational purposes only and should be in used only in conjunction in working with a licensed mental health professional. Reading this blog or responding to it does not constitute a provider-patient relationship. If you are looking for a local mental health professional feel free to use the contact tab to request an appointment or search Mental Health Match, Therapy Den, or Psychology Today for local therapists in your area. If this is a mental health or substance abuse emergency and you need immediate assistance, please call 911, call 988 Crisis Line, go to your local ER, visit your local detox center, or call 211 if you are in Oklahoma.