Break Your Emotional Eating Habit with Less Energy

Many career women struggle with emotional eating, turning to food for comfort in both work and home situations. The human brain was designed to avoid discomfort for survival purposes back in the day. So, no wonder it continues to do so.

In modern day, instead of experiencing fear from a wild animal that may kill us, it’s stress from a work deadline, loneliness, boredom, etc. We’re finding ourselves not wanting to feel these emotions, so food is used to “escape” from them or to “numb” them.

But contrary to what you may think, the solution isn’t resisting cravings or never buying chips again. It’s actually something that requires less energy.

So I’m sharing what the emotional eating cycle is (necessary to understand), and then how to break your emotional eating habit with less energy.

The Emotional Eating Cycle – Sound Familiar?

Emotional eating starts with an emotional trigger. It could be stress after a long day at work or loneliness after a disagreement with a loved one.

Commonly among my career women clients, it’s boredom at night, because they’re so used to being busy and productive all day, that the boredom feels uncomfortable.

(For me, it was mainly anxiety, but also stress after a long day in the OR or office as a Physician Assistant.)

• LISTEN OR READ: My Emotional Eating Habit (Podcast Episode)

In response to the trigger, there is a sudden craving for specific comfort foods.

These foods are often high in sugar, flour, fat, or salt. This is because those are the ones that provide the largest dopamine spike (pleasure!) or were the most desirable back in the day because they were high in calories.

You may find yourself trying to fight the craving (sometimes successful, oftentimes not). Or, just giving into the craving right away and eating in response to the emotion. Sometimes bingeing.

That’s when the guilt and shame sets in. Sometimes a feeling of weakness. None of which feel good, and often leads to more eating because of those additional uncomfortable emotions.

All of it just consuming your thoughts, sucking the energy right out of you.

The cycle continues, and a habit soon forms. Leading to even more uncomfortable feelings.

• LISTEN OR READ: Emotional Eating at Work (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: 3 Thoughts to Overcome Emotional Eating (Podcast Episode)

Breaking the Emotional Eating Habit with Less Energy (& Strategically!)

Breaking free from emotional eating requires breaking the link between uncomfortable emotions and food. This requires less energy than you may think.

Notice the Emotions

Simply getting awareness of your uncomfortable emotions as they come up is the first step. Noticing them helps prevent the immediate need to “numb” them with food.

Just noticing the emotions doesn’t feel badly, so it should be relatively easy for you to do.

• LISTEN OR READ: The 2 Biggest Emotional Eating Mistakes (Podcast Episode)

Notice the Urge to Eat

Also getting awareness of when you feel an urge, craving, or desire to eat is crucial. Urge, craving, and desire are also emotions and often come up after those uncomfortable emotions like stress, boredom, sadness.

Just noticing these urges helps keep you present and in the moment, which is going to help prevent that automatic, unconscious reaction of eating in response.

• LISTEN OR READ: 5 Myths About Food Cravings (Podcast Episode)

Don’t Resist the Emotions or the Urges

When you resist, the urges and emotions just stay around for longer, increasing the likelihood you respond by eating. This takes SO MUCH mental energy when you resist those urges and emotions. Mental energy that could be better used elsewhere in your life.

Instead, I teach my clients a skill to process emotions, which includes urges. We never want to resist our emotions or urges, because when we do that, we’re teaching our brains that we shouldn’t be feeling that way.

That in turn makes our brain want to escape those emotions with food, and sometimes even alcohol or other things like online shopping.

Instead, we want to teach your brain to be able to allow emotions and urges, instead of avoiding them. When you master this skill, it’s like a breath of fresh air, because you feel lighter, more free, and you’re not constantly battling the eating habit any longer.

Celebrate Wins

Every time you feel an uncomfortable emotion or an urge and don’t eat in response, celebrate that win right away with a small reward.

Knowing what that reward will be ahead of time helps provide something to look forward to. This makes it more likely you’ll choose NOT eating in response to eating in response.

Sometimes the most powerful rewards are just those positive feelings of accomplishment, pride, capability, etc. One of my clients decided from the start that she would feel proud of herself, and has found that this works extremely well for her as a reward.

• LISTEN OR READ: Rewarding Yourself (Podcast Episode)

A Bonus to Breaking the Emotional Eating Habit

These steps will help you build a better and more balanced relationship with food and emotions. You’ll not only break the emotional eating habit and create better physical health for yourself, but also MUCH better emotional health.

Because you’ll learn how to notice and then process your emotions and urges without acting on them, you’ll be able to apply this skill to any emotion in life.

You’ll also gain confidence in anything you do, because the worst thing that can happen is an uncomfortable emotion. And if you can totally handle those uncomfortable emotions, you’ll be able to go after and achieve so much more in your career and your personal life.

And if you’re interested in learning more about how eating habit and weight loss coaching can help you for your specific challenges and goals, I invite you to book a free consultation with me.

I’ll learn about you, your struggles and goals, and then I’ll be able to share with you the exact solutions. Book your free consult here.