How to Stop Eating Your Feelings

People use emotional eating to suppress or soothe negative emotions like sadness, boredom, anger or stress, according to the Mayo Clinic. Common triggers of emotional eating are work issues, health problems, financial pressure, unemployment, bad weather and relationship issues. Emotional eating is also rooted in a loss of control and trying to regain control of yourself or a situation. Eating through your problems is not an effective or healthy way to restore balance in your life. Learning to deal with negative emotions with effective measures will help you to gradually find fulfillment and happiness without the crutch of food.

Instructions

• 1

  Record your eating habits in relation to your emotions. This will allow you to clearly see the pattern between your emotions and food. Write down exactly what you eat, how much you eat and the level of your hunger on a scale of one to 10. When you meet your emotional eating with awareness and understanding, you will start to eat conscientiously and not impulsively.

• 2

  Prepare all of your meals in the morning. You can make six small meals to eat throughout the day, or maintain the traditional three full course meals. Regardless of the number of meals, do not eat anything outside of these meals. This is an effective measure to gauge your hunger and refrain from emotional eating.

• 3

  Engage in your favorite hobby or activity when you feel the urge to eat. Watching a movie, taking a walk, surfing the Internet, reading or listening to music are all effective ways to distract you from your emotions and hunger.

• 4

  Stop purchasing comfort foods. Comfort foods are quick and easy to grab when you want to eat impulsively. If you do not have them in your home, you are less prone to eat them. If you are physically hungry, you won't mind making a meal to allay your hunger.

• 5

  Get at least eight hours of sleep each night. If you are up throughout the night with nothing to do, it is likely that you are going to eat to entertain yourself. You also need to be rested throughout the day. If you are not well rested, you might confuse your lethargy with the need to eat for a energy boost.