6 Things to Do if You’re Stress Eating

Stress eating is just simply eating in response to stress, in order to counteract the discomfort of the stress with a bit of pleasure from food.

Usually that food is some sort of comfort food, meaning salty, savory, or fatty. It’s also very common for it to be something sweet like candy, cookies, or ice cream.

As you can imagine, when you develop a habit of stress eating every time you feel the discomfort of stress, you can have some negative health effects. These can include (but are not limited to) weight gain, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and even difficulty managing your blood sugar possibly leading to type 2 diabetes.

Unfortunately, the pleasure from you get the food is only very temporary. It’s just caused by a quick release, or increase, of dopamine (the “reward” hormone, also commonly referred to as the “pleasure” hormone). As quickly as you have that dopamine spike or “hit,” it also quickly goes away, leaving the stress unmanaged.

The good news is, there are things you can do to help you manage your stress, so that you don’t end up stress eating. Here are 6 things to do if you’re stress eating, so you can break this bad eating habit, or stop it before it even forms.

#1 Simply Just be Aware

Being aware of the physical sensations you experience while stressed is really beneficial in that once you become familiar, you can catch yourself before you eat in response to the stress.

You may have physical sensations like tension in your muscles, a headache, a feeling of heat in your cheeks, tingling, etc.

Having the awareness that your body is feeling those stress sensations or symptoms, can stop you in your tracks by making you conscious of the stress, rather than just going from stress to eating.

This gives you a little pause, so that you can decide if it’s really worth stress eating next.

• Related: Stress Eating (podcast episode)
• Related: How to Eat Mindfully, for Busy Women (blog post)

#2 Acknowledge the Stress

Having that awareness that you’re feeling stressed means you can then think to yourself, “Oh, this is stress,” or “Oh, there’s that stress again.”

You’re acknowledging it.

But not only that, you can have a thought of acknowledgement that is on the lighter side like the ones above, which will make that stress seem less of a problem.

Although stress may seem like a major problem, in most cases it isn’t, it’s more so the physical sensations that feel like a problem, because they’re uncomfortable.

So lighten the mood a little bit and just acknowledge that some stress sensations or symptoms might be there, but the symptoms themselves aren’t harmful.

• Related: How to Stop Stress Eating (blog post)
• Related: Should You Break Your Habit of Snacking at Night? (blog post)

#3 Take 5 Slow, Deep Breaths

When stress occurs, your sympathetic nervous system activates. That’s that fight, flight, freeze or fawn system you’ve probably heard of.

(Fawn is a newer term coined by therapist, Pete Walker, which suggests that we try to appease or pacify whatever it is that we feel is threatening us, usually not entirely consciously.)

A lot occurs in your body, producing those uncomfortable stress sensations/symptoms when the sympathetic nervous system is activated.

To help with this discomfort, you can activate your parasympathetic nervous system. You can think of this as the system that slows things down and brings you to more of a state of calm.

To do this, you can take a few slow, deep breaths (as long as you don’t have a health condition that your healthcare provider advised you not to do this).

You’ll more than likely immediately feel some of that stress melt away. It really works well. I use this myself and find it to be more effective when I close my eyes, which brings me to the next on the list of things to try instead of stress eating.

#5 Close Your Eyes

As long as you aren’t driving or doing anything else that requires you to be paying attention at the moment, try closing your eyes for 30-60 seconds or so.

This helps to separate yourself from that stressful circumstance for a moment, so that you can give yourself that chance to relax.

You can sort of take a tiny “vacation” for a bit and imagine you’re in a peaceful setting like on a beach, in the forest, or in a field of beautiful vibrant flowers blowing in the breeze.

If you have more than 60 seconds, then try doing this for a few minutes if you can. This will make it far less likely for you to stress eat.

#6 Let the Urge to Eat Pass

If you find yourself still being drawn to the food despite trying any of the above things, then what I recommend is to let the urge to eat in response to the stress pass by.

Don’t try to fight it with “willpower.” Just recognize that it’s an urge and urges are temporary. I’ll repeat that, urges are temporary. The feeling of an urge or craving will pass. If you try to fight it, it’ll keep that feeling around for longer, making it more likely to give in. So just say “bye bye” to it and let it pass.

• Related: Willpower and Your Thoughts (podcast episode)
• Related: How To Conquer Your Eating And Drinking Urges (blog post)

*For some specific tools to help with urges (a.k.a. cravings), to help break your bad eating habits, watch the free 20-minute video class. You can get it below.

Final Notes

Stress eating is just a normal human response, so don’t feel badly if you stress eat.

Our human brains see stress as a problem that needs to go away, and food is that quick easy way for it to “go away,” but in reality it’s only very temporary.

That’s actually half the battle, just being really clear on the fact that the food is only temporary relief from the stress.

Of course long-term stress management is going to be key, however practicing these 6 things to do if you’re stress eating is really helpful in the moment.

Even just using one or two of these tactics can make all the difference.

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