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Stop Emotional Eating
Release 'Negative' Thoughts
You can begin today to take emotions out of eating: Emotional eating, or stress eating, reflects unpleasant, or "negative" emotions that lead to comfort eating. Excessive "comfort food" can lead to unwanted weight gain which is the downside to emotional eating.
If 'negative' emotions trigger emotional eating, where do they come from? This idea may surprise you: Negative thoughts lead to negative emotions which lead to emotional eating. For example, it's difficult to feel angry without a preceding angry thought, or to feel sad without having a sad thought.
Negative thought patterns can often trigger emotional upsets and emotional eating
Thought precedes feeling. This is good news because you change negative thought patterns. Therefore, you can change negative emotional responses and ultimately block emotional eating.
Discovering unrealistic and distorted thoughts paves the way to overcoming emotional eating.
The most common negative thought patterns that provoke emotional eating:
 Automatic thoughts |
 Red Flag words |
 Over-generalizations |
 Expectations |
- Automatic thoughts can trigger emotional eating. They are habitual thought patterns triggered by emotional "hot buttons."
- Over-generalizations can stimulate emotional overeating because they take a specific circumstance and expand it unrealistically.
- Red Flag words [always, never, should, ought, must] present extremes, often imply judgments can provoke emotional eating.
- Unrealistic expectations often imply judgments of future outcomes and these can boomerang to stress and emotional eating.
Let's see how Susan's morning leads her ultimately to emotional eating
As she leaves for work, Susan is preoccupied with an important meeting.
“I hope Robert won’t be there. I know he will criticize my presentation. He’s such a jerk!” [Automatic Thoughts]
"I never do enough work on my Power Point slides? “I always forget something!” [Red Flag Words]
“What if they don’t like my talk? They probably won’t like me!” [Over-generalizations]
“My boss should have given me a heads-up that I would have to give this presentation.” [Expectations]
Feeling tense, Susan steps into her car and heads for work. As she approaches the office, she is caught in a traffic jam.“Oh! No! I’m going to be late!
“If I don’t get there on time, my boss is going to be furious! There goes my job!”
The end result of this accumulated stress? Emotional eating! Susan reaches across the passenger seat to tear open a bag of cookies and nibbles the contents as minutes tick by. Her thoughts created stress and eating her favorite snack foods helped calm her.
Let’s replay Susan's morning when she understands how to counter negative thoughts to stop emotional eating.
While Susan prepares breakfast, she stays aware of concerns for her forthcoming meeting. She decides to counter thoughts leading to fear and frustration and her old pattern of emotional eating. Susan takes several, slow, deep breaths to counter the physiologic stress response.
Susan in a traffic jam: Her automatic thought is, I’m going to be late! Susan realizes she has slipped into a habitual response. She tells herself “Stop!” [if she were with people close by, she could imagine a Stop Sign]. Susan breathes deeply and calmly asks herself three questions to challenge self-criticism:
- What is actually true in this situation? [I may be late, or maybe not. What’s really important is that I prepared a dynamite presentation.]
- Can I do anything to change this situation? [Not now!]
- Years later will I ever remember it happened? [No way!]
As traffic worsened, Susan begins to doubt her choices and she feels herself becoming tense. She remembers that “should” statements make her feel pressured. She decides to speak gently to herself. "It’s not my fault there’s a traffic jam.”
Susan catches herself thinking, "If I don't get there in time, there goes my job." Rather than indulging in a pattern of self-defeat and criticism, Susan substitutes a new thought: "If I don't get to the office on time, that doesn't change who I am - confident and self-aware. She manages stress, and defeats the need for emotional eating. The bag of cookies stay unopened. Susan arrives on time for her presentation without yielding to emotional eating.
A Quick Checklist to Stop Emotional Eating
The next time you face a stressful or emotion-laden situation that could stimulate emotional eating ask yourself:
- Are these negative thoughts automatic responses?
- Do I use red flag words - should, must, ought, never, always?
- Do I over-generalize a situation?
- Am I attached to unrealistic expectations of others?
Congratulate yourself the next time you change unrealistic thoughts and overcome emotional eating!
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Stop Emotional Eating
