Has Stress kept you from achieving your New Year’s resolutions with food in the past?

What are your New Year’s Resolutions? If they include anything related to eating or sticking to a food plan, then please read on. Below, I’ve outlined a way to help you stay on track so that you don’t get stuck with stress fueled eating, one of the more common issues when it comes to staying on target. Some people call them cravings. If this is your issue, know that you are not alone!

Our food behaviors are so ingrained that they are often the hardest habits to change. Often times our best intentions to eat better or follow a food plan are sidetracked by stress eating. This is not breaking news. We start off well, and then a moment of fatigue, stress or temptation hits and we’re thrown off track. A whole cascade of predictable scenarios follow that don’t need mentioning here.

I’ve outlined some simple tools to help you keep on track. They are targeted to diminish stress related eating, which is often the ‘culprit.’ The first step is about just becoming aware.

How do you know if you’re ‘Stress Eating’ and why is this important?

It’s sometimes hard to distinguish between true hunger and hunger driven by stress (aka a craving). The more specific our desire for a food is, and the more urgent that desire feels, the more likely we’re responding to stress driven hunger. If only a double cheese burger or a chocolate milkshake will do, then this is not usually true hunger, but a craving. True hunger is usually not so specific and unless your blood sugar is plummeting, it doesn’t feel as urgent.

Why is it important to know the difference between stress eating and true hunger? So we can make a choice in the moment to eat or not eat, and feel good about ourselves with whatever we choose. We can stop and see what is going on instead of acting on automatic. Besides sticking to our resolution, there are other reasons why we may want to zap stress or emotion driven eating.

When a craving hits, distraction can work for a while, but for some, the craving comes back with a vengeance. If we do eat, the problem is usually still there, even if it’s a bit in the background. And, we’re usually then stuck with an extra helping of guilt or regret. It’s not always about food, calories and gaining weight when it comes to stress eating. Eating when we don’t really need to can distract us from dealing with things that are bothering us, and it doesn’t do much for our level of stress.

A better way to handle the situation might be to recognize what’s going on in the moment, deal with it the best we ca on the spot and then decide to eat or not eat without the previous urgency. Below are a few ways to tell the difference between stress eating and true hunger, followed by some tips on dealing with it.

What to do about Stress Eating

When you have a desire for something, stop and take a moment to check in, and take a few deep breaths. First, rate your current desire for the food on a scale of 1-10?, with 1 being very low, ‘I could take it or leave it’ and 10 being ‘I’ve got to have it NOW!’

If the number is low, you’re probably safe to go ahead and eat it if you are truly hungry or know you need to eat soon. If it’s a higher number like 8, 9 or 10, take a deep breath, as you have just become aware of a possible stress driven desire. If you go ahead and eat, there is a higher likelihood that you may feel regret later. This is one characteristics of stress driven eating. The next step is to ask yourself the following three questions in the moment:

1-What am I feeling?

2-What do I want or need?

3-What sort of support do I want for myself?

So, let’s break it down. What am I feeling? Are you feeling nervous, tense, tired, irritable, cold, hot, angry, frustrated, fearful, joyful, sad, lonely, hopeless, disappointed, thirsty, etc. We feel so many things as human beings, the list is endless really. Just becoming aware of, naming and acknowledging the feeling or emotion can sometimes stop a craving on the spot!

Step 2 is what do I want or need? Maybe you need to take a walk and get some fresh air. Maybe you need to have a conversation with someone, or you need to sit and be quiet, or go be with friends or family. There is a long list of basic human needs, and becoming familiar with them can help disconnect us from stress eating. Even if the need can not be met in the moment, just the awareness of a need can slow down the craving.

Step 3 What sort of support do I want for myself? This one is about taking your insights a step further and moving towards a solution, even if it’s not a solution in the moment. Perhaps you realize that you’re tired, you’ve been working too much and you need to rest, and cut back your hours. Or, perhaps you haven’t been spending enough time being creative and you make a note to sign up for an art class. It’s about finding the support that you want and sometimes that means asking for support from friends or family.

Try this out, notice how things change for you. Let me know how it goes. This is a great tool for developing awareness, and many people have used it to help with their eating habits with good success. If you try this and find that you keep having to repeat the exercise and you’re ready to be done with it, then read the next article, it explains a little bit about the work I do to eliminate food cravings.