Weight loss: Gain control of emotional eating

By Mayo Clinic Staff

You may feel the strongest food cravings hit when you're at your weakest point emotionally. You may turn to food for comfort when facing a difficult problem, feeling stressed or even feeling bored.

Emotional eating can hurt your weight-loss efforts. It often leads to eating too much, especially high-calorie, sweet and fatty foods. The good news is that you can take steps to better manage your eating habits and get back on track with your weight-loss goals.

How the mood-food-weight loss cycle works

Emotional eating is eating to feel better when you're upset, such as when you're stressed, angry, scared, bored or lonely. Major life events or, more commonly, everyday hassles can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt your weight-loss efforts. These triggers might include:

• Relationship conflicts.
• Work or other stressors.
• Fatigue.
• Money issues.
• Health concerns.

Some people also overeat in response to positive emotions.

While some people eat less in the face of strong emotions, if you're having a hard time emotionally, you might turn to impulsive or binge eating. You might quickly consume whatever's nearby without enjoyment.

In fact, your feelings can become so tied to your eating habits that you automatically reach for a treat whenever you're angry or stressed. You may do this without thinking about it.

Food also serves as a distraction. If you're worried about an upcoming event or struggling with a relationship, you may focus on eating comfort food instead of dealing with the painful situation.

Whatever emotions drive you to overeat, the end result is often the same. The effect of emotional eating is short-term. The emotions return and you likely feel guilty about setting back your weight-loss goal. This can lead to an unhealthy cycle where your emotions trigger you to overeat, you beat yourself up for getting off your weight-loss track, you feel bad and you overeat again.

How to get back on track?

When negative feelings threaten to trigger emotional eating, you can take steps to manage cravings. To help stop emotional eating, try these tips:

• Keep a food diary. Write down what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, how you're feeling when you eat and how hungry you are. Over time, you might see patterns that show the connection between mood and food.
• Tame your stress. If stress plays a part in your emotional eating, find a way to manage that stress. Try yoga, meditation or deep breathing.
• Have a hunger reality check. Is your hunger physical or emotional? If you ate just a few hours ago and don't have a rumbling stomach, you're probably not hungry. Give the craving time to pass.
• Get support. You're more likely to give in to emotional eating if you lack a good support network. Lean on family and friends or consider joining a support group.
• Fight boredom. Instead of snacking when you're not hungry, distract yourself and substitute a healthier behavior. Take a walk, play with a pet, listen to music, read, surf the internet or call a friend.
• Take away temptation. Don't keep tempting comfort foods in your home. And if you feel angry or sad, hold off your trip to the grocery store until you are better managing your emotions.
• Don't deprive yourself. When trying to lose weight, you might limit calories too much, eat the same foods over and over, and remove all treats from your house. This may just increase your food cravings, especially in response to emotions. Eat satisfying amounts of healthier foods, enjoy an occasional treat and get plenty of variety to help control cravings.
• Snack healthy. If you feel the urge to eat between meals, choose a healthy snack, such as fresh fruit, vegetables with low-fat dip, nuts or popcorn without butter. Or try lower calorie versions of your favorite foods to see if they satisfy your craving.
• Learn from setbacks. If you have an episode of emotional eating, forgive yourself and start fresh the next day. Learn from the experience and make a plan for how you can prevent it in the future. Focus on the positive changes you're making in your eating habits and give yourself credit for making changes that'll lead to better health.

When to seek professional help

If you can't control emotional eating on your own, consider seeking help with a mental health professional. Therapy can help you understand why you eat emotionally and teach you ways to cope. Therapy also can help you discover whether you have an eating disorder, which can be connected to emotional eating.