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Ways to Treat and Stop Emotional Eating

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The human brain is hugely complex, allowing us to experience a range of emotions that animals cannot. Unfortunately for us, sometimes expressing those emotions is difficult, leaving us with coping methods that are less than helpful. One of the most common coping mechanisms for stress, unhappiness and other emotions is over eating or 'emotional eating'.

While emotional eating is a far less harmful side effect of our emotions than, say, drug addiction or an anger problem, it can cause deep unhappiness in the individual. This is usually because they put on too much weight, make themselves feel unwell or feel very guilty after an episode of emotional eating. What needs to be done in this situation is the person needs to find a better way of coping with their emotions. In doing so they no longer feel the need to over eat and sever the mental connection that they have created between food and comfort.

It's important to first distinguish between celebratory or sorrowful eating and emotional eating. Emotional eating is when you eat when you are not hungry, only to make yourself feel better. If you get yourself a takeaway because you've had a long and stressful day this isn't necessarily emotional eating, because you are simply eating a meal. Once you have established that you do take part in emotional eating it's time to determine that you really want to stop. You may want to seek counseling or cognitive behavioral therapy as an aid to your progress; having a professional there to give you advice but also personal support is immensely helpful, especially when friends and family around you find it hard to understand why you eat emotionally.

The next thing you should work towards is finding out exactly why you emotionally eat. Your therapist will help you find this out, but you might want to take a diary of when you take part in the behavior and try to find patterns. It might be when you get home from work and feel stressed, or only at the weekends when you have to spend more time with your step kids whom you don't get on with. This gives you the perfect platform from which to learn a new way of coping with the emotion. If something upsets you and you eat emotionally then what else would make you happy? Have you lost contact with your best friend for no reason and used to enjoy going out with them? Get back in contact or form a new social group so you can have fun without needing to eat. If you're unhappy with your body and punish yourself, but reward yourself at the same time with food then do the opposite and start exercise or dance classes.

Learning a new way to cope is the key to overcoming emotional eating, but first we must acknowledge our problem and what has caused it. If you can, try to find support in a friend, family member or counselor who can at least listen, if not provide advice. Most importantly, have faith in yourself because you are well capable of putting your emotional energy into coping rather than eating.