Emotional eating is a common challenge that many of us struggle with, or have at some point in our life. Whether you’re experiencing high levels of stress or even extreme happiness or excitement, it can be natural to turn to food to cope or celebrate. Just think about it… if you’ve had a bad day at work, you might turn to a pint of ice cream to ease your stress. On the flip side, if you’ve had an amazing day and gotten a promotion at work, you might celebrate with a bottle of champagne and your favorite meal and dessert. Either way, you’re turning to food as your emotional sidekick and sense of comfort.

While small doses of emotional eating isn't necessarily physically dangerous, it can quickly become a habit that can lead to weight gain and bad habits, and those can be hard to break. Emotional eating is particularly problematic when it is the primary way you calm and soothe yourself. Read on to learn my favorite scientifically proven ways to reduce emotional eating and food cravings so you can stay in control of your eating.

How Can You Tell If You’re An Emotional Eater?

For someone who struggles with food cravings, it may be difficult to realize when you are emotionally eating.

The 3 telltale signs of emotional eating are:

You eat when you are not physically hungry.
Your food cravings are triggered by stress or an emotion such as anger, anxiety, boredom, or even happiness or excitement.
You eat mindlessly. You may not enjoy or taste the food because you are eating it mechanically, as if in a trance. Imagine sitting in front of the TV mindlessly popping chips into your mouth. That is mindless eating.

Why Do We Turn To Food For Comfort?

Now that you have a better idea of if you’re an emotional eater or not, you may wonder why it is that you turn to food for comfort in the first place.

There are 3 main reasons why food is seductive when our emotions are high:

Biology. When you are stressed out or experiencing high levels of emotions, your body is flooded with the stress hormone cortisol, which makes your food cravings high. You tend to crave carbohydrates, sugar, and fatty foods. Food soothes these chemical changes in the body. Chocolate is an excellent example of this, as it boosts the "feel good" neurotransmitters and chemicals in your body that make you more alert and excited.
Eating can be a distraction. If something is bothering you and you don’t want to face it, food can be a distraction that takes your attention away from your reality and what is bothering you emotionally.
Emotional eating may be linked to your childhood. Perhaps freshly baked cookies or macaroni and cheese automatically trigger positive or comforting memories from the past. As an adult, seeing these foods can transport you back to that time and trigger your food cravings.

How To Stop Emotional Eating

There’s no doubt that emotional eating can be a tricky thing to overcome. However, you can break the habit of emotional eating and overcome your food cravings with intention. This takes practice and finding creative, new ways to calm and successfully soothe yourself and your emotions. The goal is to rewire your brain to identify non-eating behaviors as comforting.

Step One: Be Aware.

Emotional eating is oftentimes unconscious. It happens automatically or below your awareness. Before you jump into changing this behavior, keep a journal and write down when and where you emotionally eat. Where are you? When does it happen? What triggers it? Are there any patterns you notice? Every time you eat, ask yourself how physically hungry you are on a scale from 1-10. If you are a 6-10, it's likely that you are physically hungry. If you are a 3, for example, this would signify that you are emotionally eating.

Step Two: Replace.

If you begin to eliminate emotional eating from your routine, you have to replace it with something healthier and more productive. Write down a concrete list of all the healthy, non-food related activities that give you a quick pick-me-up on a tough day. Then, aim to do one of these activities in place of emotional eating.

Here a few simple examples:

Sip black tea. A study in the journal of Psychopharmacology found that subjects who drank black tea experienced a 47% drop in their cortisol levels, the stress hormone that makes your food cravings skyrocket.
Self-message. It can be as simple as sitting down, taking off your shoe, and placing your foot over a tennis ball. Rub your feet, one at a time, over the top of the ball until they feel relaxed and soothed. According to a study in the International Journal of Neuroscience, self-massage slows your heart rate and lowers your level of cortisol.
Try a quick breathing exercise. Slowing down your breathing can trick your body into thinking that you are going to sleep, which in turn, relaxes your body. Close your eyes, stare at the blackness of your eyelids, and slowly breathe in and out. Count each time you inhale and exhale. Continue this practice until you get to 10.
Change your scenery. Sometimes, all it takes to overcome your food cravings and stop yourself from emotionally eating is changing up your scenery. Go outside, take a walk in nature, or drive to the nearest park. This gets your mind off of food, and the fresh air never hurts!

Step Three: Practice!

There are many ways to calm yourself without consuming calories, such as journaling, meditation techniques, connecting with others, self-message, distraction, guided imagery, and ways to pamper your senses. Try out these techniques when you aren't craving food so you get them down pat before you really need them! You wouldn't want to learn how to swim in rough water, nor do you want to learn the art of soothing yourself without food on a very stressful day. With practice and intention, you can end emotional eating and overcome food cravings successfully!

If you’re looking for support, guidance, and accountability to stay on track with your health goals and steer clear of emotional eating and food cravings, join us in the Total Body Transformation program, where I’ll be there every step of the way to guide you, as well as our amazing community of like minded people alongside you! You’ll get live trainings, meditations, healthy recipes, workout ideas, and more!

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I’d love to know, what is one way that you cope without emotional eating? Tell me in the comments below!

Are You An Emotional Eater? | How to Overcome Food Cravings