5 tips to help stop emotional eating

Learn to control your emotional eating by understanding your hunger, your emotions and the pleasure you glean from eating.

Hunger can be simply defined as lower levels of glucose in our blood. Low levels of blood sugar signal to the brain that our body needs nourishment, and the brain tells us when to eat. These signals trigger sensations of hunger in our stomach. After eating, this feeling disappears and we feel comfortable and satisfied.

What's happening in your brain when you eat? You feel pleasure, and also get a brief sense of euphoria due to serotonin levels released. Besides feeding your body, it's this feeling that people crave. Food can become like a drug that brings a person up when they experience negative emotions, and makes their emotional highs seem even better.

Emotions can be manifested by physical sensations that can be felt in the abdomen and stomach. So it’s quite normal that emotions could be confused with hunger. However, sometimes the reasons that lead a person to eat aren’t so black and white.

Some people will box a punching bag, others will go running, but for many people, eating becomes their method to vent. When this happens, people tend to stuff themselves with food to suppress the anger.

When this type of negative emotion manifests, often the only thing people seek is a little comfort to cheer them up. Making a beeline for the chocolate is not an uncommon response; it releases a small dose of serotonin which feels very good.

A person can eat because they've already eaten, or because they've been hard on a person they love. They can eat to punish themselves. In these situations, it isn’t the pleasure they seek, but rather the punishment, only seeing the evil in the food they're consuming i.e., the calories, fat, sugar, etc.

The first step to controlling emotional eating is to differentiate between your physical and psychological needs. Identify the emotions that trigger you to eat, and then find alternative coping skills to deal with what’s bothering you. Some alternative solutions could be:

1. Calling someone to talk about what’s bothering you;
2. Finding a physical activity you enjoy to blow off a little steam;
3. Writing down the emotions you feel, identify them, and then trying to tolerate the feeling knowing it will pass (instead of heading for the cookie jar);
4. Celebrating by rewarding yourself with a treat or an activity other than going out to a restaurant;
5. Engaging in breathing and relaxation techniques to calm your emotions.

Be kind to yourself and allow yourself the time it takes to deal with your emotional eating habits. It won’t happen overnight, so just take it one day at a time.