This is why we often get it wrong when trying to stop stressful eating.

Stressful and emotional eating can leave us feeling physically and emotionally drained. Perhaps it's the fear of unhealthy eating, the discomfort of being over-full or the shame of feeling out-of-control toward food. It can feel absolutely rubbish.

But stressful emotional eating is surprisingly common. As is unhelpful advice to stop emotional eating. Many common tips can actually make emotional eating worse. 

So let’s explore what you need to break out of the stressful eating cycle for good.

What are diet rules to stop emotional eating?

Most of the tips we hear to deal with emotional eating focus on controlling the food itself to stop emotional eating. We might follow reasonable sounding advice such as:

• Allow sweets but in portion controlled ways
• Keep trigger foods out of the house
• Go for a walk instead of eating
• Eat a piece of fruit instead of chocolate if you want something sweet

This type of advice focuses on creating rules around food (just like a diet does). It puts us into a restriction mindset. It might work for a short time, but in the long run it's more likely to backfire.

If you have tried all of this and find yourself swinging between "being good" and “emotional eating”, it’s likely because this restriction mindset is increasing your drive toward food.

A focus on trying to stop emotional eating with diet rules...

1. Does not take into account why you are feeling emotional drives toward food. So whatever the underlying trigger, it will still be there and will pop up again.
2. Creates blame and shame around food. The messages reinforce that eating this way is bad and you are bad if you can't simply eat better. It can reinforce a harmful relationship with food and yourself.
3. Promotes food restriction which triggers our brain to focus even more on the foods that are restricted, disconnect from our natural hunger cues around these foods and eat them in larger amounts than feels comfortable.

If it was so easy to just stop emotional eating, we wouldn't do it in the first place, right?

The reason we eat emotionally is because it does work to reduce our body’s stress response. In the moment at least. And it is a valid tool for difficult emotions from time to time. In itself, it’s not a problem. In fact it’s just a normal part of being human.

The problem can come if:

• you are using food regularly in place of other ways to cope with long term difficult emotion (you deserve to cope in ways that help you feel good long term).
• You feel an out-of-control drive toward food in an emotional moment, like you can’t stop eating even if you want to.
• The eating experiences themselves are making you feel stressed and leading to a difficult relationship with food and yourself.

So what can we do instead of using diet rules?

If emotional eating feels like a problem that needs some attention, you will be better off longer term taking some time to understand your emotional eating physiologically and psychologically.

The important steps to stop out-of-control and stressful emotional eating are:

1. Understand the really normal human reasons we eat for emotional reasons and specifically why you eat for emotional reasons.
2.  Improve body connection so you can be better attuned to your body's self care needs, hunger/ fullness and emotional states.
3. Using this knowledge, make some small adjustments to better support your body throughout the day.
4. Find grounding and coping tools in an emotional moment so you can feel more connected and in control of your decisions before acting on your emotional drive.
5. Solidify a positive relationship with food and your body so you can feel at peace around food and your emotions years from now.

If this speaks to you, I have a free training on emotional eating made just for those of us who are struggling with stressful emotional eating to learn how to feel in control and relaxed around food.

It's tempting to try simply cutting out your trigger foods or going on another diet, but there's a reason that never works long term. Putting in some time and deeper work now will leave you at peace and in control of your eating and emotions for years to come.

You deserve to heal deep from the inside, without the diet rules.

P.S. If you want to learn a new approach to reduce stressful and out-of-control emotional eating, grab your 20-minute free training here and start feeling good around food.