Learning to stop emotional eating is among the most challenging steps for weight management. The reason is that many of us don’t even realize that we’re responding to stress in this way. Moreover, even fewer of us realize that we may eat in certain ways as a result of both good and bad stresses.

After all, the body responds to stress in the same way regardless of whether it’s from good or bad sources. For example, you just got that amazing dream job, and it’s your first day. That’s stressful, but for a great reason. On the other hand, the stress from having lost a dream job is equally stressful but certainly not in a positive way.

In both cases, your body responds with increased cortisol hormone, adrenaline, raised heart rate, and many other symptoms. Among them is a craving for certain foods that likely aren’t great for your health or waistline. Therefore, it’s up to you to become aware of these habits and know how to stop emotional eating from stress for good.

Tips to Stop Emotional Eating

The main way to stop emotional eating as a result of stress is to learn some incredible coping skills. When you’re better able to deal with the stress in your life, you’re less likely to become its victim.

Here are some great tips to get you started with controlling stress to stop emotional eating:

• Recognize your stress – Become aware of how it feels when you’re stressed. When you’re waiting for a reply to that text or email and the other person just isn’t talking. When you have a tight deadline, and you don’t know how you’ll meet it. You feel distracted, your body is tense, and you may even have a pain between your eyes. Notice these symptoms and acknowledge that you are feeling stress. This way, you can act to fix it and choose to stop emotional eating.

• Breathe – Once you know you’re being affected by stress, stop to breathe. Ten seconds won’t make or break your deadline. Just pause, breathe in slowly, hold it for a couple of seconds, then exhale and wait a couple of seconds. Repeat this at least once or twice. It won’t fix everything, but you’ll feel better and will cope more effectively.

Get up and move – If your stress is high enough, take control of that excess energy and burn it. Stand up and run on the spot as fast as you can for thirty seconds. Break into jumping jacks. Do something intensely active even if it’s for a short time. It will help to boost your endorphins, burn off energy built up in your muscles and will help you to stop emotional eating in response to the discomfort from your symptoms.