How to stop emotional eating

Emotional eating is something we’ve all done at some point in our lives.

Whether you’re reaching for the cookie jar at work stressed on deadline, polishing off a block of chocolate after a break up, or diving into a tub of popcorn when the final episode of Pretty Little Liars just gets too intense - you’re not alone.

Using food as the occasional reward or pick me up isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when eating becomes your primary coping mechanism – that’s where the real issues start.

Emotional eating (or stress eating) is basically using food to make yourself feel better – so you’re eating to satisfy emotional needs, rather than to satisfy physical hunger.

And what you don’t want to happen is to get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real problem is never getting addressed.

“Food is all about immediate gratification; it doesn’t help in the long term,” human behavioural expert Dr John Demartini tells Be.

According to Dr Demartini every individual lives by a set of priorities and if you are not fulfilling them you seek to satisfy that hole with something else – like food.

“Every individual has things that are most to least important in life, and whenever they’re doing things that are in line with their highest values, it calms and moderates the addictive centre if the brain,” he explains.

“In that area you eat to live, you don’t live to eat.”

Sometimes it isn’t easy to succeed in every area of your life though – quite often life can actually be pretty crap.

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“It’s when we’re not doing things we love, we’re not fulfilled doing our job duties, or we’re in a relationship that’s uninspiring, when we’re surrounded by people that we’re comparing our lives to, and we’re feeling flat,” Dr Demartini tells us.

Apparently, according to Dr Demartini, the solution is simple – be on top of things.

“That’s why it’s so important to fill your life with high priority actions that are meaningful,” he says. “We all have incredible discipline when we’re on top of things.”

Like it’s that easy!

Of course if everything in your life rocks there will be no out-of-control emotions to deal with the majority of the time.

So because it’s impossible to fix everything in your life at once, we have found one – slightly simpler – concept you can start right now.

It’s called mindful eating.

Emotional eating tends to be automatic and virtually mindless. Before you even realise what you’re doing, you’ve polished off half a tub of ice cream.

But if you can take a moment to pause and reflect when you’re hit with a craving, you give yourself the opportunity to make a different decision.

Take control slowly, then the rest might fall into place.

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