Sharing is caring!

Hey, friends. Today I want to talk about how to stop emotional eating. You know, eating your feelings?

Maybe you’ve been there. You come home after a long day of work. You’re feeling…all kinds of feelings that you don’t want to feel. So, you eat so much food (most likely junk), until you don’t feel anything anymore. Then you can finally relax!

This is emotional eating.

6 Steps to Stop Emotional Eating

And if you’re anything like me, you were also trying to lose weight. That means that after eating so much, you’d swear you’d stop forever and go to the gym to burn it all off.

All of this is mixed with a lot of shame, some self-hatred and despair.

Yes, I did my own share of hardcore emotional eating for years.

I used to go to my beloved Trader Joe’s next door to my old apartment and buy two paper grocery bags filled with delicious treats. Cupcakes, moon pies, cookies, ice cream, chips – anything that caught my eye.

I would then take these treats home and eat a bit of everything until I was stuffed. Of course, I would then beat myself up for doing this.

This was followed by creating elaborate, insane and very unattainable plans to workout, eat only vegetables and lose 10 pounds in the next month. I would set myself up for failure, then feel bad that I couldn’t reach these impossible expectations.

Then I would repeat the cycle. Buy bags of amazing treats. Eat it all. Hate myself. Set unrealistic goals. Repeat. 

While I was at a weight a lot of people would consider healthy, I didn’t love how my body looked. I wanted to tone up and feel good about myself, proud to be me and know I was taking good care of my body.

Fast forward a few years and I’ve since learned how to stop emotional eating. So, I wanted to share the steps I took so that you can help yourself stop, too.

Step One: Notice That You’re Doing It

The first step is to notice and acknowledge that you’re emotionally eating.

After my 90^th time binge eating my Trader Joe’s treats, I stopped myself. I was literally crying as I was eating a cupcake when I realized this was a pattern. It was something I was repeatedly doing that I could finally see wasn’t actually helping me feel any better.

I also discovered in that moment that I probably had some deeper issues that were bothering me. That maybe there was something more I needed than another treat.

So, try to notice if you have your own habit, such as eating a tub of ice cream by yourself every night in front of the TV. Even if you don’t stop yourself from doing it, all you have to do is become aware of it.

Once you do, make sure to congratulate yourself! Even the fact of noticing it is a huge step, the first step to making change. So, you’re a bad b*tch, good job!

Step Two: Ditch the Shame

While you might think that being hard on yourself helps you get back on track, it actually doesn’t.

Shame is not your friend. As you start noticing that you’ve got the habit of emotional eating, try not to shame yourself.

Because guess what? You’ve probably got a great reason for eating your feelings.

Feelings can be scary. And a part of you feels safer hiding your emotions rather than dealing with them. Your subconscious is trying to help you steer away from that pain.

Emotional eating is just misguided self-love. So, don’t be ashamed.

Instead, thank that part of your subconscious that’s trying to help you.

On top of that, shame is actually something that serves to keep you stuck in the binge/restrict cycle. When you’re shaming yourself, you’re not focused on creating constructive solutions to help yourself through the issue. All you’re doing is being hard on yourself. While this might be a temporary fix to get you to put the cupcake down, shame isn’t a long-term solution.

I’m going to let you in on the real deal here. Shame is really just a distraction technique that pulls you backwards, away from making progress. And this isn’t just with binge eating – it’s with everything. As long as you’re shaming yourself, you’re just distracting yourself from taking accountability for your choices.

This was a huge game changer for me when I realized that shame is an unhelpful distractor. Unlocking this knowledge helped me break out of shaming myself. Now, when I notice that I’m shaming myself in my mind, I can observe the thought, give it zero energy and easily move onto other more productive thoughts.

If you tend to shame yourself, call yourself out on it. Redirect your energy to solutions that will actually help you forward. Then move on.

Step Three: Start Trying to Replace the Emotional Eating

Thirdly, try to start making different choices when you catch yourself in the moment of emotional eating.

Instead of eating another bite from that tub of ice cream, consider doing something else.

There are a lot of other things you can do instead. You could take a little walk around the block, call a friend, talk to your dog, write it all down in your journal or just sit there and breathe.

After legit crying into my cupcake, I stopped myself and went to sit on my bed. Then I took some deep breaths.

This was a big step for me. In that moment, I realized there was something bothering me. And I decided I was ready to figure out what that was.

Another thing you can do it to start taking note of how you’re feeling when you have the urge to emotionally eat. Whether you write it down or say it out loud to yourself, just acknowledge how you’re feeling in the moment.

The goal here is to find ways to comfort yourself on a deeper level. You don’t have to necessarily put the cookie down or try to stop completely. But what you DO want to do is start questioning what would actually make you feel better. Not just for the moment of snacking, but reaching those deeper emotional needs that will support you long-term. If you’re not sure how to go about doing this, I describe in detail how to do that in this workbook.

Whether that’s doing that giant laundry pile that’s been stressing you out, re-evaluating that relationship that’s dragging you down or following through with booking the trip you keep saying you need to take – start looking for the things that will bring you deeper relief.

Step Four: Talk to Someone

The third thing to do is to find someone to talk to. Whether it’s a professional or not, you need to tell someone you have this issue.

You can also call one of the numbers here to talk to someone about it anonymously.

This is a burden you don’t want to carry by yourself. In fact, you really shouldn’t try to deal with this alone. If you can get support, it’ll be easier to work through. I promise. 

And while I’m not a doctor, you might need professional support to get to the root of your emotional eating.

There were two people I talked to. One was my friend Beth.

I was at her house one day and broke down crying. I told her how frustrated I was that I couldn’t lose weight or stop eating so much junk food all the time. But I also told her how horrible I felt about myself.

Telling her was such a relief because I no longer felt alone. Also, it helped me feel less ashamed of myself when I admitted it to another person.

Luckily, she’s an amazing friend. She gave me a huge hug and told me how amazing I am and that everything would be ok.

The second person I talked to was my alternative healer. I couldn’t afford traditional therapy and honestly preferred working with an energy healer. Together, we worked through a lot of my issues that were causing me to eat my emotions.   

Even if you don’t feel like your emotional eating is a dirty secret like how I did, reaching out to share your struggles is important. If you never reach out then people won’t know that you need them.

Remember, you’re not a burden and most people actually appreciate when you’re vulnerable enough to trust them with your feelings. So, go get support for yourself in whatever way that might be.

Step Five: Make Your Life Sweeter

The fifth step is to get very real with yourself. You’re not emotionally eating because you love your life 100%. There are things you need to change, so it’s time to acknowledge that.

And maybe you love most of your life and there’s only one area that needs your attention. But perhaps you don’t love any of it and you’re not sure where to start.

This can be really scary, I know. It’s scary to admit to yourself that you need to end that relationship, or start your business or have that big conversation… But you deserve to be happy! So, whatever that thing is that you need to do or change, you’re worth it. I promise. You can do it.

One of my favorite ways to get in touch with myself is to journal. I spill my brain onto the paper to get out my excess thoughts. This helps me to see things more clearly to know what changes I need to make.

However you want to go about it, you need to get real with yourself about what you actually want. Make your life sweeter to replace all that sugar you find yourself eating.

And the magical part of this? Once you start making steps toward what you really want, your emotional eating will probably improve. That’s what happened for me.

When I acknowledged that I wasn’t happy at my job, that I didn’t feel I was on track toward living a life filled with purpose and when I actually started doing things to change my situation – my need to emotional eat drastically decreased. By going after the things I really wanted, I showed myself I was worth the work it took to make those changes.

And these were no small changes I wanted. I wanted to move to France, become fluent in French and earn a Master’s degree at a top French university (the Sorbonne). So, what did I do? I packed up my car, moved across the country back in with my parents, got three jobs, took French lessons 6 days a week and applied to the school I wanted to go to.

Guess what? I got in.

And I achieved a conversational level of French in 3 months.

I busted my booty making this stuff happen for myself. Was it easy? Definitely not. If I wasn’t at one of my three jobs, I was studying French online.

However, life had a different plan for me. A little over a year of working to save up for school and become fluent in French, France came to me.

While swiping through Tinder, I saw a cutie who also happened to be from France. Long story short, we’ve been married for 5 years now. We live in Montreal where I get to speak French every day and I’m currently in progress to get my French citizenship.

And my emotional eating habit? It’s pretty much non-existent. There are still times I’ll go to town on some chocolate, but it’s always within my control and rarely connected to my emotions. I honestly enjoy my life a lot and that supports me in not really needing to eat my feelings.

Creating a life that tastes oh-so-sweet to you might not be as drastic as what I wanted for myself. But maybe it is! The point is that you’ve only got this one lifetime and you should make it exactly how you want it to, no matter how hard you have to work for it. You’re worth it.

So get clear on what would be the juiciest, sweetest most delicious life you could imagine yourself dreaming. Then, start creating it one step at a time. If you’re not sure how to go about doing this, I describe in detail how to do that in this workbook.

Step Six: Give It Time and Keep Trying!

Breaking the emotional eating habit takes time. It could take months or years for you to stop shoving your emotions away with food like it did for me.

You might even notice over time that you start emotionally eating with healthier foods, like apples or grapes. This is a step in the right direction! But remember to take note and check in with yourself whenever you get the urge to binge eat.

What emotions are you feeling? Is there something bothering you? Why are you emotionally eating?

For me, it’s been 12 years since I started working on emotional eating. Maybe once a year, I still have to ask myself these questions. In fact, as I’m writing this blog I’ve just passed through two weeks where I really felt like eating my feelings. There were a few times I allowed myself to indulge and see where it took me, while knowing that there was something deeper I needed.

Eventually, I realized I had some grief that I needed to release. So, I got in touch with my emotions, poured my heart out to my husband, talked it through with him, wrote a lot in my journal and was able to move through the inner burden I had been carrying. Now, I’m not feeling desperate to go eat all the cookies in a 3 mile radius and my emotional peace is restored.

Just remember that you’re not perfect. You’re just a human, and all of us love eating delicious treats. So, remember to enjoy them when you have them.

No matter how long it takes you, you can stop emotional eating. As long as you have the will to stop, and you’re patient and persistent, you’ll succeed.

And if you’d like deeper support in navigating emotional eating, my workbook How to Stop Emotional Eating will guide you through.

Love,
Holly

If what you read was helpful, pin it!