Emotional Eating Triggers: How to Spot and Interrupt Them

Nikkiey: In this video today, I want to talk about three ways to help you overcome emotional or impulse eating. Before we dive into it, I want to let you know that I can resonate with what you may be facing right now along your journey.

When I first started my journey, I had an obsession with sugar. I think every single one of my meals throughout the day consisted of me eating sugar. For example, I would put tons of sugar in my coffee, with the saying, do you want coffee with your sugar? Lunch, I didn't really eat that much, so lunch would consist of having some type of sweet afterwards. And then when I worked in the hospital, I would have milkshakes and candy to keep me going. And then at night, I would always want ice cream or something afterwards. And not just a little bowl of ice cream. I would eat pints of ice cream.

So if there's anything that you take away from this video, know that I've been in your shoes and that you can overcome it. What has helped me overcome it the most is that I have more control over my impulse, rather than the impulse controlling me. I've developed tons of mental discipline to put the strategies that I'm going to share with you today into action when I do feel like I want to emotionally eat or impulse eat or all of those things. So let's get into it.

The first thing that I want to say is, when you feel that you're triggered to want to emotionally eat, try your best to identify the trigger that you may be experiencing. For example, let's say at the end of the day, after you've just worked nine to five or eight hours, you're tired, you're stressed out, you come home, kids are running around, your husband doesn't have any food made. You rally some together for dinner, but you're not satiated because maybe you didn't eat enough food during the day that you would feel satiated at the end of the day. So then after you're done eating your dinner, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm still hungry. So you're experiencing a bunch of triggers there, right? You're stressed, you're tired, you're hungry. So it's trying to identify those triggers as you are experiencing them.

For example, too, maybe at the end of the night you're sitting down after the meal and you're like, I'm still hungry, and you're watching Netflix and you become bored because you're unwinding for the night. All of those things. So it's like, okay, now you're identifying what the triggers are. Maybe you're bored, stressed, hungry, tired, all of the things. And so it's identifying which one you may be experiencing and then trying to manage that with something different.

For example, identify the trigger and then maybe try to put a different activity in place of fulfilling on the trigger, right? In place of fulfilling on eating. Maybe at the end of the day you want sweets or you want carbs or you want something that's going to taste yummy. Instead, why don't you give your body some protein? Because protein is going to make you feel more satiated, okay? So that's really the first thing that I would say: identify your triggers and try to manage them by doing something different.

Once you can identify it, this is where I move into the second thing, which is to practice some mindfulness. What I mean by that is to become consciously aware in the situation. A lot of the time when you're emotionally eating or impulse eating, you are acting unconsciously in the moment.

For example, maybe at the end of the day you're watching Netflix or you're watching a movie with your family, or even on the weekend, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the kitchen and you're about to go get a snack. If you can consciously interrupt yourself in that moment and practice some mindfulness, and almost ask yourself, whoa, what am I doing here? Why am I here right now? And really keep asking yourself these questions, you will consciously become aware that you are in an act in which you're about to snack on foods.

Because think about it: at the end of the day, or you watch the movie, you grab some popcorn. Sometimes you don't know that you're doing these things, or you're like, oh, this sounds good in the moment. But realistically, if you're doing those things and you're snacking and you're overeating and you're fulfilling on what would taste good in the moment, you've got to think long term about your goals. How is this moment going to serve me tomorrow, and a week from now, or two weeks from now? Right.

So it's about consciously bringing yourself to it: I'm in the kitchen. I'm about to open the cabinet. Whoa, hold on. Interrupt. What am I doing here right now? I'm about to grab sweets and ice cream. And you're like, actually, no. And you interrupt the moment.

Now, number three is something that has actually served me the most along my journey, and that is to plan all of your meals and snacks ahead of time, because if you do that, you're already setting yourself up for success. For example, I would have my breakfast in the morning. But then if I was going into work, I would have my meals packed. I would have my snacks packed. I would have my lunch packed.

And that removes the situation of your coworkers being like, oh, hey, do you want to go grab lunch? Or you're walking down the hallway and all of a sudden you see this jar of M&Ms, and you're like, oh, Harry has some M&Ms. I'm going to find my way down to Harry's cubicle and I'm going to eat some M&Ms.

If you already have your meals planned ahead of time, you literally have a choice right in front of you. One is, I'm going to go out to lunch with my friends, and basically you're saying no to your goals. The other choice is, I've already planned my meals ahead of time and I need to stick to the plan. I need to stick to my routine. So I'm going to eat these meals right here. You literally have the choice. And hopefully for you, it's an easy choice of, here are the meals that I have, I'm going to eat this meal, rather than going out to lunch and not knowing what I'm going to be eating, or walking down the hallway.

It's literally, again, a conscious interrupt. They kind of all blend together, the three of them. It's literally a conscious interrupt. Since I've worked on this for the last nine years of my life, like I said at the beginning, I now have more control over my impulses, because I have the mental discipline to know, okay, this isn't helping me in the moment. I'm consciously aware of what I'm eating. And at the end of the day, I have the choice to make: do I want to have this meal that I know is going to make me feel a little bit sluggish after I eat it? Or do I want to have this meal that's going to make me feel better and healthier and more energized to get through the rest of my day?

So I hope that helped. Try to implement one, if not all three of those. But what I would recommend is one at a time. And if you do need some help, if you need one-on-one accountability to support you along your journey, check out warriorbabe.com in the description below. You can work with one of our amazing coaches and they will guide you along your journey.