Emotional Overeating

First, I want to stress something that a lot of people who struggle with emotional eating don’t realize.

Emotional eating is a completely normal human behaviour that everyone does.

Where emotional eating can get some people into problems is when it leads to overeating, it’s happening more frequently than they would like, or when they don’t feel confident in having an array of other tools besides eating to help them manage certain emotions.

Today, I’m going to share a frame work to help you learn skills to better manage emotional eating.

“All or Nothing Works for Me”

Many people will always tell me “all or nothing works for me.”

It’s true in the sense that an all or nothing approach “works” to give a predictable.

Unfortunately, the result is bouncing back and forth from one end of the spectrum to the other and never actually making any real progress.

Instead, what if you took an approach where you accepted that emotional eating is normal and going to be part of your experience?   

What if you developed other skills to help you manage your emotions and decrease how frequently you’re pulled into emotional eating.

The good news, when we have clients actually take this approach they are blown away at how free they feel around food.  

How much their stress levels decrease as a whole because they’re not stressing about food nearly as much.

What’s the Trigger?

Think of emotional eating like a set of train tracks with several different train stations along the track.  

Most people focus almost all of their attention on the perceived last station on the track the “emotional eating” station.

Typically, most clients I work with have spent years trying to use will power to make sure their train doesn’t make a stop at the emotional eating station.

Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t.

Instead, an approach that works well for most of our clients is to start to increase their awareness of the other stations on their train track.

Generally speaking most of the time there is an order to the stations on the track that leads to emotional eating.

1.  Event, situation or other trigger
2. Thought(s)
3. Emotions
4. Emotional Eating

The earlier you become aware of what station you’re currently at on the emotional eating railway the easier it is to use some of the tools I’ll be sharing.

However, I’m going to walk you through a 4 step process once you’ve hit a point where you’re pulling up to the 4th station and you’re being pulled to emotionally eat.

Step #1 Identify

First, identify stations 1-3 on your train track.

1) What was the event or trigger that started it the train in motion?

2) What are you thinking? 

3) What are you feeling emotionally?

Sometimes it can be helpful to work backwards through these questions.

You can use this form where you can either type in the form or print it out and write by hand.  

Take your time with

 this step and try to peel the layers and go deeper into your thoughts and feelings about the situation or trigger.

Step #2 Give Yourself Permission to Emotionally Eat

This is often a step that clients find counterintuitive, but in my experience makes the biggest difference for them.

Many people have a lot of guilt or shame wrapped up around eating certain types of foods.  

Unfortunately, a lot of people have their self worth decrease as a result of emotional eating.

The goal with this step is to try and normalize and accept that emotional eating will happen.  It’s part of being a human being.

If you go through these steps and decide to emotionally eat it’s okay.  

Most people are very busy fighting with themselves in a battle of willpower that they wind up focusing all their mental energy on this fight.

Instead, we want to free up some mental energy for going through this process.

Step #3 Explore Alternatives to Eating

Alright, at this point you’ve got a clear picture of what you’re experiencing, thinking, and feeling.

You’ve given yourself permission to overeat if you would like to at the end of these four steps.

Now, you simply want to explore other potential options to helping you manage your emotions.  

There are endless different options, however, I’ll go through the ones that I have seen clients have the most success with.

But, you will have to play around and learn what does and does not work for you.

Also, use the information from step #1 to help you pick out an option that is best for you with your current situation.

• Journal and write about your feelings to give yourself a platform to externalize the emotions and take time to really feel the negative emotions you’re experiencing.
• Talk to a friend or family member, again helping to externalize and feel the emotions you’re feeling
• Drawing, crafts or other forms of art.  These can often having a relaxing effect.
• Go for a walk or another form of exercise.  They can get you mentally present as well as help release positive chemicals to help manage the emotions you’re feeling.
• Have a warm beverage.  There’s something about tea, coffee, or other warm beverages that help to relax some people.
• Meditate or perform relaxation exercises.
• Play an instrument, sing, dance or listen to music.  Again, this can help to get your brain focused on something else and get a release of positive chemicals in your brain.

Step #4 Decide

At this point you’ve taken time to become aware of what you’re thinking, feeling and experiencing.  

You’ve given yourself permission to emotionally eat .

Finally, you’ve explored other options to help manage those feelings that don’t involve eating.

Next, you decide what will serve you best in this moment.

Sometimes you’ll decide to use food to help manage emotions and that’s okay.  Again, everybody uses food at points to help manage emotions.

Also, important to note that sometimes you may try one of the strategies instead of food and then decide after that that you still want to emotionally eat.  Again, that’s okay.

Once you’ve made your decision embrace the fact that you took time to go through this process and decide what would best serve you.

How to Reduce Emotional Overeating

If you decide to emotionally eat there are further steps you can take to help reduce how much overeating occurs.

#1 Slow down and really take time to enjoy your food.  Most people inhale their food when they’re emotionally eating.  Take your time.  If you’ve decide to eat, really try to enjoy your food.

#2 Make sure you’re eating something you truly enjoy.  Often, people will eat foods that they kind of enjoy.  Instead, get something you really love.

#3 Try to use self compassion and avoid feeling guilt or shame after emotionally eating.  Remind yourself that everyone emotionally eats sometimes.  

Most people get themselves into more trouble after initially overeating they feel guilty which triggers more emotional overeating. 

Once you’ve overeaten if you use an approach involving self-compassion you’re highly likely to decrease the degree that you overeat.

#3 Learn more about your triggers.  The clients I’ve seen make the most success long-term really focus on learning what they’re triggers are and how to better manage those triggers.

If you’re using the form above start to pay attention to your triggers.  Often, you’ll find a common pattern.  A specific environment, person, event, situation, or type of trigger.

Long-term one of the most effective ways clients reduce their overeating is through eliminating triggers, changing their perspective with those triggers, and learning new skills to mange the emotions created by those triggers.

Emotional Overeating Wrap Up

Figuring out how to manage emotional eating is a journey for everyone. 

It’s a learning process and it can start improving very quickly in my experience when someone finally leaves behind willpower as the main tool to manage emotional overeating.

Moving away from using negative forms of accountability such as beating themselves up and negative self-talk.  Then replacing that with self-compassionate accountability.

Want More Information on Overeating?

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Click here for our guide to overeating related to food cravings.

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Click here for our guide to overeating related to habitual overeating.

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