How to Overcome Emotional or Binge Eating

​Emotional eating is an issue that has been linked to problems of stress, anxiety, and often sadness. You might find that you want to lose weight, but you are struggling because when you feel one of these emotions, you tend to binge eat. 

This is one of the biggest obstacles that people face when they are trying to lose weight because you develop a reliance on food to be there for you. However, there are ways to overcome this and get your body into the shape you want it to be. So, let’s take a look at what steps you can take to get back control over your life.

Find Your Trigger​

To be able to beat this problem, you need to understand when this happens, what causes it and why. Without this information, there is no way that you can move forward. Something that might help you here is to keep a journal of not only what and how much you are eating at each meal, but also what kind of mood you were on that day or at a particular time of the day.

This will make it easier to identify when your binge eating episode occurs and what feelings may have caused them. You should also keep an eye on whether there are any patterns emerging regarding when you are eating. So, is it at night, is there a certain day of the week that it is worse, maybe even certain days of the month.

Don’t Let It Control You​

If you allow yourself to lose control during these episodes and consume more than you should, you are letting your emotions win. By doing this, you build up a reliance on food, and a psychological dependence will only increase your cravings more. You will believe that you need that food to get over the negative feelings that you are experiencing and more you get into this mindset, it will be more difficult to get out.
 
Research suggest that when you eat high sugar foods, it can have an impact on the part of your brain that manages stress and this will only intensify your reliance on that particular food. You need to be able to control this before it controls you and if you are desperate to eat when you are experiencing one of these emotions, stop before you act, recognise what's happening and try to grab a healthy snack instead.

Find A Healthy Alternative

While for some people going cold turkey can prove to be counter productive, aiming to replace those foods gradually is the best way to slowly but surely get out of the habit.​You need to find something that you can do when you are experiencing one of your episodes that is not going to cause you any more problems. Food is not the way to do this as we have already discussed above. So, what should you be doing instead?

Exercise is one of the healthiest ways of dealing with stress and anxiety. Getting your body active will release endorphins, and this will be able to calm you down so you don't even get to the point where you end up binge eating.
 
Or, if exercise isn’t really your thing, you should try talking to someone about it. When this occurs, you need to think in terms of the future and not just in the moment. What makes you feel better now, could cause you problems along the road. So talk about it, to avoid taking this road to your future.
 
If you need help to set yourself up for an energy boosting exercise plan, feel free to get in touch for a commitment-free consultation.