Food when stressed? When sad? How to manage emotional eating

Sometimes we eat because we are anxious, upset, happy or bored.

Eating because of a feeling and not physical hunger is called emotional eating. To make matters worse, we tend to overeat and choose high-calorie, sweet and/or fatty foods during these moments.

Tough and stressful times are guaranteed to happen throughout life. Using food to suppress emotions does not work. The feelings always come back, and you may be left with additional feelings of guilt due to poor food choices. Learning to deal with these emotions effectively is crucial to reaching your goal weight if you’re trying to slim down — and maintaining a healthy weight once you get there.

Five ways to prevent emotional eating

1. Be aware of your feelings. “Check in” emotionally when you start craving food to decide if you are really hungry or just feeding a feeling.

2. Write down what you eat and your feelings at the time. Research has shown that people who keep track of their food intake in writing lose more weight than those who don’t take this step. Record your feelings and your degree of hunger as well as what you ate.

3. Limit temptations. Keep unhealthy foods out of the house as much as possible. If you do keep unhealthy food in the house, be sure it’s packaged in single-serving bags to prevent mindless overeating. If you typically crave sweet foods when strong emotions strike, consider these strategies for slaying a sugar addiction.

4. Set a timer for 10 minutes and walk away. When the timer sounds, if you’re still craving the food — and you’re actually hungry — eat a healthy snack.

5. If you’re not actually hungry but are craving something unhealthy due to your moods, find something else to do until the craving subsides.

What to do besides emotional eating?

• Take a walk.
• Write a thank-you note.
• Read a book.
• Clean, vacuum, dust.
• Call a friend.
• Clean out a junk drawer.
• Play cards.
• Plan a get-together with friends.
• Brew some tea.
• Do laundry.
• Run errands.