How to Break an Emotional Eating Habit

How to Break an Emotional Eating Habit

With stress levels and anxiety as well as depression on the rise, emotional eating is also on the rise.

Also, because we are now overstimulated with tech, busy schedules, people demanding our attention, any downtime we experience results in boredom. Boredom is also another common cause of emotional eating.

Emotional eating is also commonly referred to as buffering. Meaning you are using food to buffer or decrease the discomfort from a negative emotion.

Also, positive emotions can be uncomfortable for some people if they don’t typically experience positive emotions, and that can lead to emotional eating as well.

You can also use other things besides food to buffer the discomfort from a negative emotion, including alcohol, social media, TV and many others.

Because I’m an Eating Habit Coach though, I’m going to focus on buffering with food, which is emotional eating.

More specifically, how to break an emotional eating habit.

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#1 Just Pause

The first step to break an emotional eating habit is going to sound too simple, but it’s necessary. Every time you eat, just pause. Making a habit of doing this, just pausing every time you eat will help to get you a little bit more in the moment and more mindful.

If you are more in the moment and more mindful, it’s going to be much easier to do the next step.

So first start with every single time you eat, pause. If you have to put a post it note as a reminder in the location where you’re typically eating, or actually all of the locations that you’re typically eating, then do so.

It’s going to be super helpful to just get in that simple habit of pausing as the first step. Doing this is something that is very easy, and easy means that your brain is going to be less resistant to doing it. So start with that.

Then, once this feels easy and you feel confident that you are able to just pause every time you eat, you’ll move onto the next step.

• RELATED: Are You Using Food as an Escape? (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: Stress Eating (Podcast Episode)

#2 Get Curious

Once you’ve mastered just pausing every time you eat, and that even means a small snack, you’re going to get curious. By getting curious, I just mean asking yourself what you’re feeling in that moment.

I don’t mean what you’re thinking in the moment, but what you’re actually feeling in your body. Physically feeling. What you’re feeling in your body is the emotion.

Anything going on in your head is the thought that caused the emotion. But we’re not there just yet. Don’t worry, I will get to that.

So, every time you eat, pause, and then get curious. Get into your body and ask yourself what you’re feeling in your body. Be as descriptive as possible.

You’ll even notice that just by doing this, you will have distracted your brain from the behavior of eating more food. Get used to doing these first two steps before moving on to the next step.

Creating that baseline habit of pausing and getting curious makes it even easier to do the next step, which is the one that WILL break any emotional eating habit.

• RELATED: Boredom Eating (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: Weight Loss and Your Emotions (Podcast Episode)

#3 Name the Emotion

Once you’ve gotten into the habit of pausing every time you eat, getting curious and discovering how you feel in your body, you’re going to name the emotion that you’re feeling in your body.

By naming it, I mean identifying the emotion. You can also go one step further and name that emotion with a human name or a pet name, which helps to make that emotion feel less harmful. I actually recommend Both identifying the emotion and giving it a human or pet name to my clients who emotionally eat.

The benefit of identifying the emotion Is now you know the direct cause of your emotional eating, but we will take it one step further and find the thought that caused the emotion.

That would be more of the TRUE underlying cause of the emotional eating.

The benefit of naming the emotion a human or pet name is again because it makes the emotion feel less harmful and when it feels less harmful.

You’re not going to want it to go away as badly. that means, you’ll tend to allow it to hang around for a little bit, knowing it is not going to truly harm you.

If you allow it to hang around for a little bit and don’t try to buffer it with food, you’ll show your brain that you don’t need it to go away. You’ll show your brain that it doesn’t need to immediately seek out and eat food.

You can sit with that emotion and it’s not going to harm you physically or put your life in danger. (Unless of course you are in a situation where you are truly in danger, but this is almost never the case with emotional eating.)

When you practice these steps and get used to experiencing the emotion without reacting to it by eating, without buffering with food, you will overcome emotional eating. It really is that simple, as far as the steps you need to take.

If you still end up eating, that’s fine. I even expect that might happen the first few times. What your intention is though, is to get more practice with experiencing the emotion so you’re training your brain little by little, not to react.

You’ll start being able to experience the emotion longer before reacting by eating, until eventually you DON’T react by eating.

• RELATED: Emotional Eating: Is It Even a Problem? (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: Stress and Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)

Bonus Step: Find the Thought

Once you’re feeling comfortable with the other steps, you can now take yourself from your body and into your brain and discover the thought that may have led to the feeling in your body. Basically, when you’re feeling that emotion in your body, what are you thinking in the moment or a moment ago?

That thought or a collection of thoughts created the emotion in your body which then led to the emotional eating. So, the thought is the underlying indirect cause of the emotional eating.

Do you need to do this bonus step to overcome emotional eating? No, you don’t need to. You can break an emotional eating habit just with the first three steps.

So, what is the benefit of finding the thought? To discover how your emotions are only caused by a thought in your brain. A thought in your brain is something you have control over. This is great news, because that also means you have control over your emotions since your own thoughts cause your emotions.

This realization alone changed my life. I was an emotional eater when I was a Physician Assistant and I was also an “anxious person.” Once I discovered all this, I broke my emotional eating habit AND am no longer an anxious person.

Because this changed my life so drastically, I now help other career women break bad eating habits, lose weight and all the things required to do so.

Such as become more aware of how their thoughts cause their feelings. Then, I help them decide if they want to keep those thoughts and feelings or learn to think differently in different situations.

I help them grow their self-love by improving their inner dialogue with themselves and help them build their confidence. All of which are necessary to have success with breaking bad eating habits and losing weight.

ANY bad eating habit and ANY amount of weight. Never relying on willpower again.

• RELATED: Why Willpower Fails (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: Thought Habits and Your Results (Podcast Episode)

Final Notes

Since you’re serious about breaking your emotional eating habit, I recommend printing this blog post out and keeping it in a place that will serve as a reminder to follow the simple steps.

If you haven’t grabbed my free class + worksheets yet, do that too. They teach you How to Break Bad Eating Habits Without Willpower.

You can get the class + worksheets here: FREE CLASS + WORKSHEETS