Emotional Eating Triggers to Avoid

Reducing your emotional eating responses is not easy and you may already know a few issues causing it such as stress While you may know that stress can trigger emotional eating responses, you may not know is that there are several common triggers. Here are a few of them, what you should know about reducing each one, and how you can avoid them in the future to help reduce emotional eating.

Toxic People

We all have that person in our lives, a co-worker, family member, or even friend, that causes ongoing stress. Regardless of how they do it they bring a toxic environment to our lives with the constant emotional stress they cause. While we want to remove these people from our lives it may not always be possible. If removing them from our lives are possible then we must acknowledge they are a toxic person in our lives. After acknowledging this we can begin to remove our emotions and not give them the power to hurt us anymore. Taking that power away from them removes them as a trigger.

Overloaded Schedule

This is one of my emotional eating triggers. I tend to overload my schedule and then stress out when I can’t achieve getting it all done. That leads to eating and then it is all a viscous cycle. Two things I have trouble with when it comes to my schedule, saying no and not trying to get everything done in a short period of time.

I am getting better about setting my schedule with realistic goals. In fact, one thing that has helped me is to schedule and plan for fewer things. If I schedule less I have found I get more done. On the days I get my schedule completed early enough I can tackle some other things from later in the week. I only do that if there is time. I stick to my schedule rigidly whenever possible. Some days things come up that blow up my schedule.

Thoughts and Emotions

This is another one for me because I suffer from depression. That can lead to all sorts of negative thoughts. For most people, you deal with negative emotions by simply letting them run through your mind and thinking they will not affect your eating. A few minutes to a few hours later, you are in the middle of an emotional eating binge. For me the binge eating starts right away. However, instead of letting the thoughts run through your hard, start writing them down.

Don’t worry you don’t have to journal about them. Simply write them down, dictate them into your phone, or make note of them. Go back to them and listen to or read what you noted. Now, look for what triggered those thoughts. Once you recognize the thoughts and emotions, then trace them to the trigger, you can remove the thoughts and replace them with something positive.

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The key point to remember is to focus on you first. Even if you are a mother, father, or caregiver you should make sure you are taking care of yourself first. Do what is best for you, so you can be the best for others. To do this, start with avoiding these common triggers and redirecting them out of your life or to more positive directions.

DO YOU STRUGGLE WITH EMOTIONAL EATING? WHAT ARE YOUR TRIGGERS? PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH US INTHE COMMENTS.