It may feel comforting in the moment, but stress eating can have serious consequences. Not only does stress eating fail to help you resolve your stressors, but it can also cause guilt, shame, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, PCOS and more! If you have trouble controlling your stress related eating habits, here are a few tips to helps you control you stress eating:

1. Write It and Lose It

It’s paramount that you begin to understand when stress eating happens. Keep a journal of how you’re feeling every time anything goes in your mouth. You’ll begin to see a pattern, which will help you identify when you’re emotionally eating. You’ll have new insights into what particular stressful thought is triggering your emotional eating. Is it a relationship? Is it a time constraint or deadline? Is it anxiety? With that information you can create a healthy plan of attack!  The next time that situation presents itself, you’ll be prepared. You will be more inclined to put the food down and put your thinkin cap on so you can resolve the issue instead of eating your feelings.

2. Sleep

If you’re losing sleep you’re most likely gaining weight. Sleep deprivation decreases leptin levels which is the hormone that regulates your appetite. If you can’t accurately know when you’re truly hungry, then you run the risk of wanting to eat when you’re body is already nourished. When you’re well rested you’re also able to be more aware of your actions and more mindful and present with the choices you make.

3. Get to Know Your Hunger

Hunger might be an old friend but how well do you truly know it? Learning how to recognize what you’re truly hungry for will help you avoid eating to fulfill needs beyond what your body truly needs. When you can distinguish between being hungry for nutrients and being hungry for love, happiness, or any other emotion you’ll start creating a happier relationship with food and stop emotional eating. Tap in and if you’re not feeling the physical sensations of hunger (grumbly tummy, weakness, etc.) allow yourself to experience what you are feeling. Sit with that feeling – whether it’s anger, frustration, confusion, hurt or something else – and allow yourself feel and process the situation without food. This gets easier and easier with practice. You’ll become more and more balanced because you’re actually dealing with your emotions instead of burying them with food.

4. How Hungry Are You?

Since you’re getting to know hunger it’s also great to know how to rate how hungry you are. On a scale from 1 to 10, one being starving and ten being full, try to only feed yourself when your hunger is between 1-5.

5. Slow Down Your Busy Life

We’re all busy, and what an excuse it gives us! A true challenge to any healthy lifestyle is how we respond when the going gets tough. If you can excuse unhealthy habits or weight gain with a stressful lifestyle, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. If you can weather a busy time in your life without forgoing healthy choices you’ll empower yourself to overcome whatever comes next without sacrificing your health or emotional wellbeing. Make it a point to always stop and eat a healthy, balanced meal while being fully present, no matter how busy you get. This mini break will work wonders for your stress levels, emotions, and your waistline! Not only that, but a well balanced meal will actually replenish your body and help reduce your overall perception of stress, so its a win-win.

6. Stop, Drop, and Ask

It’s not always easy to make the right choice in the heat of the moment but learning how to stop before you take any sort of action, drop what you’re doing, and ask yourself some questions is a great place to start. Start with, “Is this going to make me feel better or worse right now?” Follow that up with, “Is this going to make me feel better or worse tomorrow?” If you can answer “better” to both questions then chances are good that it will be a healthy strategy. For more tips on how to react logically when emotionally triggered, click here.

 

7. This Too Shall Pass

Do you remember when you were a kid and you scraped your knee and it hurt so you cried and cried? At some point that pain went away and you were out playing again before you knew it with the tears a distant memory. Emotions can be that way too. You can experience an overwhelming emotion of stress or anixety so intense or scary you’ll do anything to distract yourself from it, right? Like eating. Eventually emotions of  stress will subside, sometimes it’s short and sometimes not, but they do subside. If you use food to help escape emotions you’re cheating yourself from discovering how strong you really are. You can endure stressful situations. This too will pass.

Need Help Overcoming Stress Eating?

Many people make the mistake of turning diets to contro their eating habits when it’s really their chronic stress and emotions that are out of control. Learning to manage your stress while balancing your body’s nutritional imbalances will be far more beneficial because then you learn how to eat so you can eat whatever you want. – guilt free. If you need assistance, then my Diets Don’t Work course can help you achieve just that while helping you to reduce the stress in your life. It will not only help you apply these 7 tricks to stress eating into your everyday life, but it will help you build stronger relationships with yourself, and your loved ones while reducing your overall level of stress in the process. For more information about my course, click here. I hope this helps!

In Good Health,
Amber Stew BS,
Holistic Nutritionist
Certified Master Life Coach
ACSM Exercise Physiologist,
CTNC Mental Health Specialist
TBMM Corrective Exercise Specialist