While it’s true that emotional eating brings temporary stress relief, the cost is high. how to stop emotional eating? By frequently overeating, the emotional eater is having to endure their own guilt and shame for what was done at the moment. They’re also reaping the health issues that go along with the consistent eating of nutritionally devoid, often processed foods.

How to Stop Emotional Eating?

If you desire to put an end to emotional eating, follow these tips:

Change Your Environment – The emotional eater is usually triggered by the stressors in his home or workspace. His mind often remembers the stressor and where it occurred, and his body responds by sending a message that he needs to eat something to get rid of the stressor.

When a person engages in occasional emotional eating, it means that their mind is attempting to cope with the stress that they’re facing. It’s a pretty common response.

However, even though it’s common, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do something to quell your emotional eating. If not kept in check, emotional eating is something that can quickly get out of hand and be detrimental to your health.

Finding other ways to handle stressors, for example, reading a book, or walking away; changing your environment, can distract your mind enough that it forgets about eating comfort foods. If the temptation hits at the office and you can’t leave, try to find another activity you can do that will distract you from reaching for the comfort food.

Study and Apply Relaxation Techniques – Instead of indulging in comfort foods, employ different relaxation techniques as a way to combat stress.

Progressive relaxation and deep breathing exercises will relax you and help you get control over your appetite. Conscious relaxation is another tool you can use to help cut down your desire to eat.

Remind yourself of the Effects – When a person is in a stressed or emotional state, they need a good reminder of why they shouldn’t indulge in emotional eating. Sometimes that reminder is all that’s required to snap them out of their stressed state and back to normal.

Another great method is to put an overweight picture of yourself somewhere where you can see it. When you are tempted to give in to emotional eating, let the picture remind you not to indulge.

Breakfast Matters – Medical doctors have been telling us for years about the benefits of eating breakfast. It is indeed the most important meal of the day.

What is the importance of breakfast?

Breakfast – it’s all scientific. When you have breakfast, it breaks your fast from after dinner the night before. Consider that your body has gone without the intake of calories for roughly 12 hours or more. Breakfast, the first meal of the day, supplies your bodies with the calories it needs to work efficiently.

You may opt to skip breakfast in favor of eating a big lunch, and that’s okay. The science is still the same. Your first meal of the day – whenever that meal occurs – is always after your body has fasted for 12 hours or more.

Eat Slowly – When you consume a meal, it takes time for the food to reach your stomach and for your stomach to send the message to your brain that you’re full. When you eat quickly, you don’t give your body time to process what you’ve already eaten, you get the “full” signal much later, and as a result, you eat much more than you probably needed. When our body has to digest the food it’s just eaten, especially when it’s a lot of food, it sends a large portion of blood to make sure that the food is digested properly.

If you make overeating a habit, you will regularly feel lethargic and fatigued because your body is still processing the large volume of food that you ate. Your brain cannot determine whether or not you are full until after about 20 to 30 minutes.

How to get a handle on emotional eating before it adversely affects your health?

Chronic stress is most prevalent in our modern society and it’s evidenced by emotional eating

When a person suffers from emotional eating, it is indeed suffering. It is a never-ending cycle of overeating, and sharp on the heels of an overeating bout, embarrassment or shame. Emotional eating is present as a response to something. It could be a response to stress or it could be the result of a more serious and deeper medical condition.

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If you overeat, your health is suffering because you overeat, and you frequently gravitate to comfort foods, you should consult with your doctor. These tendencies could be the result of an underlying medical issue or, if the problem is not physical, it is your way of coping with stress.