Using these tips and tricks can help you control your emotional eating and help you stay on your diet and lose weight.

Know if you’re really hungry – Do you know the difference between being physically hungry and just eating out of emotion? If you’ve been an emotional eater your whole life you might not recognize the difference.

When you are really hungry your stomach will growl and you will feel a little weak and tired. That’s your body’s way of saying that it needs fuel. Try letting yourself get really hungry before a meal just so that you can feel what it feels like when your body is hungry.

Recognize your emotional eating triggers – Keep a little notebook and a pen with you and write down when you feel like eating and what you want to eat. Soon you’ll start to notice a pattern emerging. Do you always crave fried food after a meeting with your boss? Do you want cake the minute you walk in the door after the evening commute?

Do you need a double cheeseburger at lunch just to get through the afternoon? Starting to identify the situations and the times of the day that make you crave certain foods is the key to stopping emotional eating.

If you know that you will crave something sweet when you get home to dull the stress of your commute, you can find another way to handle that stress that doesn’t involve food.

Maybe you need to listen to music for 15 minutes after you get home, or have a cup of tea and read the newspaper. Or maybe a hot shower will help.

Find another way to alleviate the stress that makes you want to eat something sweet. Dealing with that stress in a healthier way will help you lose weight and manage your stress more effectively.

Don’t use food as comfort – If you reach for the ice cream when you’re depressed or lonely, find other ways to comfort yourself. Call a friend, take a hot bubble bath, treat yourself to a manicure and pedicure, take the dog for a walk, go for a bike ride, write in a journal to try and discover what is making you sad or lonely, meditate, or take an exercise class. There are hundreds of things that you can do to comfort yourself besides reaching for food. Learn to use other things to get you through a tough day.

Don’t Buy Comfort Food – If it’s not in the house, you won’t eat it. It’s just that simple. When you are feeling blue and you want something sweet or something fried as a comfort, if it’s not in the house are you really going to take the time to drive to the store and buy some comfort food or go to the fast food restaurant to get something? Most people won’t. Most of the time, if you’re craving something and you don’t have it in the house you’ll look for a substitute rather than going out to buy whatever it is you’re craving. So don’t keep any junk food or comfort food in the house.

Keep Healthy Food in the House – If you have healthy snacks in the house you can use those as a substitute for comfort food when a craving hits. Instead of candy bars, keep granola bars in the cupboard. Instead of chips, keep popcorn or sliced veggies around. If you simply must have something sweet, try a fruit salad or some Jello. Making healthy substitutions for the foods you crave is a very practical way to deal with emotional eating.

After all, cravings happen. It would be nice if you could just wave a wand and not have anymore unhealthy food cravings but that’s not realistic. Eating healthy snacks in place of the high fat, high calorie comfort food is a practical and responsible way to deal with food cravings when they happen. And if you replace healthy food for those high carb and high sugar foods, you will have fewer cravings.

Wait 30 minutes – When a craving does hit, wait it out. Set a timer; look at your watch, whatever you need to do. But wait a full 30 minutes before acting on that craving. If you still are craving that food after 30 minutes, allow yourself to have a half portion of it, but you’ll find that usually after 30 minutes that craving will disappear.

Get exercise – Exercise isn’t just good for burning calories. When you exercise, your brain releases serotonin and endorphins, which make you feel good and make you happy. 20 minutes or more of exercise can trigger the same feeling of peace and happiness and well-being that you get from food.

So the next time you reach for a pizza to feel better, instead, grab your sneakers and a coat and go for a walk, or a bike ride, or a run. Even just a quick mile walk can really change your mood. When you get back you’ll feel as good as or better than you would feel if you had just eaten 4 slices of pizza.

Emotional eating isn’t responsible for your entire weight gain, but it can be a factor in why it’s hard for you to lose weight. Using those tips and tricks to control your emotional eating might be the way for you to start losing weight.



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