April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month and to commemorate it, I’ll be sharing a series of blog posts about emotional overeating, what it is, how to be aware, and why this is so crucial for weight loss success and peace with food.

You’ll notice that it’s not “Just Stop Emotional Overeating Month.” The term awareness is critical when it comes to emotional eating, and yet, it’s a part of the equation that is often overlooked.

Most people who struggle with weight and overeating have an idea what emotional eating is (if you’d like more information you can check out the first post in this series), but often, we get caught up in stress eating, comfort eating, or some other eating related to our feelings without even being aware that this is what is going on. Sometimes it just feels like you can’t stop eating–even though you know you don’t need more food. Becoming aware is the first step to taking control. It’s only when we really know what is causing overeating that we can start to take the steps to change it.

Here are five things anyone who can’t stop eating or who struggles with food needs to know about emotional eating.

1. You can be an emotional eater and not even know it. This is especially true if you’ve learned to use eating as a way to avoid your feelings. If you have learned to associate food with comfort or as a way to get numb or stuff your feelings, your brain can get pretty quick at making this connection. Over time, you may even stop consciously paying attention to the feelings or the situations that trigger your hunger. For instance, you have a bad day at work and you don’t really process the fact that you feel discouraged or trapped or frustrated. You may not identify that you are comfort eating. Instead, you may just feel hungry. Maybe you are someone who is very uncomfortable with conflict. You sense a fight coming up with your spouse and instead of really identifying how ineffective or anxious this makes you feel, you find yourself in the kitchen devouring the leftovers. You know you “shouldn’t,” but you can’t stop eating. This is emotional eating and it can happen even when you don’t know exactly what it is that you are feeling.
2. You don’t have to be overweight to be stuck and unhappy with emotional eating. There are plenty of average, and even below average weight women who use food as a way to cope with feelings. You don’t have to binge eat or eat constantly to be an emotional eater. Most people eat emotionally sometimes. It’s a problem when it takes up time or energy that you would rather spend on other things, when it is affecting your weight, your health, or your happiness, or when you feel dependent on it and feel trapped or at a loss of how you might do things differently.
3. Diets and weight loss surgery don’t address emotional eating. Emotional eating serves a purpose. Whether you are eating for comfort, stress eating, eating to numb your feelings, or using food as a distraction, emotional eating is an attempt to cope. Breaking free from emotional eating requires a new set of tools. You need to know what to do instead of eating if you want to take control of this issue. Diets don’t give you these tools. Weight loss surgery patients struggle with emotional eating and often refer to it as “head hunger.” If you don’t have the tools to address emotional eating, you will continue to have difficulties.
4. Willpower doesn’t fix emotional eating. When you lose a battle with emotional overeating, it doesn’t mean you weren’t strong or determined enough. It means you didn’t have a plan and the approach that you need. Too many weight loss gurus give lip service to emotional eating. They point it out and tell you not to do it. If only it were this easy! Remember, you are overeating for a reason.  The key to success is getting clear on what drives your overeating and developing do-able strategies for what to do instead of turning to food.
5.  Emotional eating is not an issue of intelligence or laziness. How many weight loss plans have you “blown” because you got frustrated or mad at yourself? Emotional eaters tend to be hard on themselves. When the plan doesn’t work out, it’s tempting to say you were just lazy, you didn’t work hard enough, or you didn’t use enough willpower. This is a huge mistake and it’s the place where the smartest, hardest working women sabotage themselves. When you find yourself giving in to emotional eating, when you can’t stop eating even though you aren’t hungry, it’s a clue to pay attention to. It doesn’t mean you failed, it means you need something—something that is not food. Emotional overeating awareness involves learning about what triggers your urges to eat and your feelings of hunger and then taking action to gather new tools, strategies, and support to address these triggers in ways that don’t use food.

You can break free from emotional eating.

Women do learn to create peace with food. It’s a longer process than a seven day fast, but the results are better, you don’t tend to go hungry, and when you get to the root cause of your hunger, you will find much more satisfying ways to feed those cravings.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Stress, overwhelm and overload are a perfect recipe for emotional eating and overeating.

This is one reason that so many high achieving women overeat. One of the trickiest things about feeling time-crunched and rushed is that it usually seems like you can’t afford to take any extra time or energy to step back, get a handle on the situation, or figure out how to do it differently.

“I’ll just get through this and start fresh on Monday,” is a typical approach, and in the meantime, the stress eating and other emotional overeating continues to be an ineffective bandaid or coping strategy that usually contributes its own additional stress to the situation (because you don’t feel good about what you are doing).

When you are stressed and overwhelmed, you don’t have a lot of time, so here are some quick tips that I use to feel better, stay focused, and avoid overeating and emotional eating. These are not tips for the long haul—no one can operate with too much to do forever, but using these tips can help you get through a stressful time with minimal overeating and stress eating damage.

How not to overeat when you have too much to do:

1. Plan what you are going to eat. It’s basic, but we tend to overlook it don’t we? Working through lunch and being starving at three o’clock when you are under deadline doesn’t cut it (and leads to overeating). Make sure you have meals to eat that are balanced and have protein to help even out your energy.
2. Don’t keep everything in your brain. Make sure you have a document somewhere that lists everything you have to do and remember. Dump it there. You’ll be amazed how much energy and stress this saves you.
3. Break your to-do list into small items and cross them off as you work through them. You want to create a breadcrumb trail so you can see movement, so you can see where you are going, and so you can see that you are being effective.
4.  Set mini goals. Sometimes we have to live fifteen minutes at a time. Know what your focus is for this fifteen minutes of your life. Set a timer and give it your all. If you feel tempted to stress eat, try delaying for fifteen minutes. Set the timer and choose a task to focus on–or take a break.
5. If you can’t figure out where to focus or if you can’t maintain a focus either pick any one thing on your priority list or take a fifteen minute break. By the way, a break doesn’t mean skimming your email or mindless eating. A break means walking away and clearing your mind. I go for a run or go make a cup of tea. You might go outside and breathe, take a short walk, go fold a load of laundry or even do some dishes. Don’t spend your break worrying—remember, it’s a reboot.
6. Speaking of walking away, don’t eliminate physical activity when you are stressed. It not only lowers stress and reduces overeating, it gets you out of your head and helps you refocus.
7. Have a stopping point each day. Do not let work and emails saturate all the areas of your life. Do not charge your phone in your bedroom if you can help it.
8. Don’t sacrifice sleep if there is any way around it. Getting consistent good sleep curbs overeating and emotional eating and will give you energy, focus, and creativity to be more productive with less time.
9. Sprinkle in lovely rewards, treats, and indulgences that are not food. Put on music, wear a color that you love, light a candle, use the great lotion that you’ve been saving. Put flowers on your desk and call a friend at the end of the day. Something as simple as savoring your coffee in a comfortable chair instead of drinking it while you are hunched over your computer screen can shift your mood, replenish you, and keep you going.
10. Say it out loud and make a commitment. Acknowledge, at least to yourself, “I’m stressed and overwhelmed, but it’s not going to always be this way. I’m going to do my best as I get through this, and that includes taking the best care I can of me.”
11. Rinse and repeat these tips until this episode passes, but remember, they aren’t a recommendation for how to live your life long term. Life’s too short to live on a hamster wheel of surviving and not thriving, so if you don’t see an end to this episode, get the help you need to move forward differently in the big picture.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Stop “not thinking about it.”

How often do you end up shoving your plans and priorities or even your thoughts and feelings to the back burner because there are so many other things you feel responsible for?

Guess what? “Not thinking about it” doesn’t work. It’s also a way of not taking yourself seriously.

I hear it all the time from clients:

“I don’t want to feel angry.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it so I eat.”

“I’m trying not to focus on it.”

Denying your thoughts and feelings is a major source of stress, a major cause of emotional eating, insomnia, procrastination, misplaced irritability and problems focusing.

Here’s another important piece of information (especially for all you high-achievers and perfectionists!):

Taking your thoughts and feelings seriously doesn’t mean you have to know what to “do about them.”

Too many of you are prolonging your stress and creating problems for yourself because you’ve decided—“It’s pointless to think about this because I can’t do anything about it.”

Important feelings and thoughts don’t go away just because you ignore them. Too often they build up, get tangled up around other issues, and trigger self-sabotaging behaviors like stress eating, comfort eating, avoidance, lack of motivation in other areas . . . you get the picture.

Here’s your bite-sized challenge for today. I want you to separate the process of acknowledging and respecting your feelings from the task of problem solving.

Today—right now if you can—start a list of everything that you are currently tolerating. Everything you can think of that is sub-optimal, isn’t working for you, is driving you crazy, causing you stress, distress, sadness, or just bugs you a teensy tiny bit.

Put it on a list. Nothing is too small or too outrageous. If it helps to compartmentalize, make separate lists. I have one for work and one for my personal life.  Start the list and add to it as things occur to you. Then watch what happens.

I’m going to predict at least two results.  Once you start noting things like this—actually writing them down—you are automatically paying more attention to your feelings or needs. This is the opposite of the head-in-the-sand approach. Take note of where it leads you. Most people find that noting what they are tolerating causes them to be more aware of what they want and what they don’t want. You’re also likely to find that simply putting some of these items on your list seems to lead to easy resolution. The truth is, sometimes the act of saying, “this doesn’t work for me.” Is enough to create change.

Make your list and see what happens. Leave a comment and share your experience.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

When life gets busy and you get stressed, it’s natural to look for ways to be more efficient and add more ease. The tendency is to look for things you can eliminate. Unfortunately, sometimes this doesn’t work out so well. One way to have less stress and overwhelm is to be clear on the activities and routines that are essential to preserve.

Here are eight things you don’t want to do when you are stressed out and short on time—and some tips on how to make them happen.

1. Cut back on sleep. As tempting as it may be, sleep is not the place to try to save time. Seven and a half hours seem to be the magic number. If you are getting less than this on a regular basis, you aren’t going to be as effective or creative, you are likely to be hungrier, and have a lower tolerance for stress. NOT what you want when life is demanding.
    
2. Cross yourself out of your schedule. When you are looking at an over-full calendar, it’s tempting to see your own stuff as expendable and put yourself last. Too often it’s the stuff that keeps you functioning (sleep, exercise, healthy meals, stress relieving activities) that are the first things crossed off your schedule. You know better. Instead of eliminating the good stuff, consider cutting back if you have to. Shorter workouts, simple fast meals, quick phone calls to friends, and less aiming for perfection in areas that don’t really matter.
    
3. Multitask like crazy. Multitasking requires your brain to work in more than one direction at once. Guess what—it can’t do that. So instead of being “efficient,” you end up asking your brain to switch back and forth between tasks. Neither gets the attention it deserves. Is it okay to clean the sink while you’re on hold with your cell phone provider? Of course, but multitask with care.
    
4. Eating on the go. This is a form of multitasking. You should know that women who eat while they are doing something else tend to eat more and feel less satisfied with what they have eaten. Make the shift to viewing your mealtime as an opportunity to get grounded and be present with yourself. That’s the kind of multitasking that works. Savor your food and allow yourself to enjoy the calories. Pay attention to how you are feeling, whether you are hungry or full, tense, relaxed, anxious, or bored. Practice asking yourself what you need that is not food. It only takes a few minutes and it can make all the difference in the rest of your day (as well as with your eating and your weight).
   
   
5. Skip the pre-game planning. When life is crazy, it’s tempting to just jump in and start moving. The problem is, we all know how easy it is to spend a day working hard and still not really feel like we’ve accomplished much. Investing ten minutes on the front end of your day to get clear on your priorities, adjust your mindset for success, and address any potential hurdles will be worth its weight in gold–and it will probably save you stress and time in the long run.
    
6. Underestimate the power of ten. Have you noticed that many of the things I’m reminding you not to skip can be done in small ways? If you are telling yourself, “I don’t have time,” ask yourself whether you can think smaller. Don’t get caught in the high-achiever head trap of all-or-nothing-thinking. Just because you don’t have time for an hour-long cardio workout doesn’t mean you can’t go for a ten minute walk. Five minutes of journaling might untangle your brain. A ten minute email might get you the help or the answer you need to save hours. Taking ten minutes to transition after work might save you a pre-dinner pig-out session with the holiday cookies. When you’re stressed and overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to allow yourself a little breathing space.
    
7. Go it alone. “It’s quicker for me to do it myself” is the phrase that leads to a lot of unnecessary stress. It may seem like it in the moment, but trying to do everything will set you up for vicious cycles of overload and overwhelm. Ask for help. Be specific. If you can’t be specific, tell someone you trust, “Is there a way that you could help with this?” You may just be amazed at the results you get.
    
8. Skip meals. “I didn’t have time for lunch” often leads to an evening of eating that feels out of control. If you manage to control your eating, you’re likely to feel tired, edgy, headachey, and no fun. Remember the ten minute rule. If you have a list of quick, healthy options, eating doesn’t take a lot of time. If you don’t have a list, make one now. Five to ten things you can grab that will keep you fueled and on track. Keep it simple—tuna, Greek yogurt, almonds, cheese sticks. Stuff that will stay with you and won’t lead to a blood sugar slump in the afternoon or evening.

What must-dos keep you on track when life threatens to pull you off course? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Stress eating is one of the most common types of emotional eating and stress is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain—especially for busy women. Knowing that you want to eat healthier or stick with reasonable portions is one thing. Figuring out how NOT to overeat when you’re overloaded, overwhelmed, and just-plain-stressed-out is another. “White knuckling it” only goes so far (that’s when you hold on tight and try to rely on pure willpower). When you are trying not to stress eat, you’re eventually going to need something to do instead of turning to food.

Melissa McCreery

If you are an emotional eater or someone prone to overeating, you know well that it’s one thing to decide to change your eating habits—to cut back your portions, stop snacking in the evening, or to stop turning to food at the end of a long day. It’s another thing entirely to act on your intentions and not overeat when you find yourself in the situation where that’s all you want to do.

• Take a bath
• Soak your feet (really—this feels great)
• Blow bubbles
  
• Brew a cup of tea
•  Listen to music
• Watch a movie
• Sit outside (or if it’s cold, by a fire)
•  If you have a cat who will let you, pet him/her and be one with the purr
  
• Curl up with a good book
• Update your Netflix list or put some new books on hold at the library
• Buy yourself some new music for your mp3 player
•  Call a friend
• Play Scrabble or chess or even solitaire online. Better yet, get your family to play a game—live and in person
• Catch up on magazines
•  Do a crossword puzzle
• Work on your birthday wish list (no matter how far away your birthday is)
  
•  Listen to a relaxation CD

Melissa McCreery

My guess is that emotional eating haunts most women who are struggling with weight loss. It’s a major cause of diet failure (although we all know diets don’t really work anyway) and a huge contributor to weight gain.

Most women who struggle with emotional eating also feel frustrated with themselves about it. Emotional eating erodes self esteem. Many women feel shame or guilt. They blast themselves with the belief that overeating is “an easy way out” and call themselves lazy or stupid or losers. They retaliate by “starting over” and telling themselves that this time they will push harder, be stricter, and find success.

Melissa McCreery

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point–Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.

1. Getting too hungry

Do you stick to your plan through breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples’ hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it’s not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.

The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don’t arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in protein can make all the difference.

2. Evening eating

3. Snacking on treats at work

Melissa McCreery

“I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don’t know where to start.”

• Eating breakfast in the morning
• Checking in with yourself midafternoon and and asking yourself what you need
• Making a list of five things you can do when you feel stressed (that are not food)

Melissa McCreery

Few things can be as frustrating as trying to change overeating habits and a busy lifestyle, multitasking, and being distracted can really get in the way. Food is always available and it’s so easy to reach for food or to overeat without even really knowing why. Every dieter knows how easy it is to start the day with good intentions about portion sizes and food choices only to find yourself having eaten more than you wanted, binged on junk food, or picked away at a plate of cookies that someone brought into the office.

Emotional eating–eating when you are stressed or overtired or even bored can be an automatic response that happens before you are even fully aware that you are doing it. Before you add unhelpful guilt to your list of triggers for overeating or ditching your weight loss plan, know that there is a much more enjoyable alternative. This is part 2 in this series about ways to stop stressing, stop doing too much, and create some inner peace.

Today’s tip for creating less stress and breaking old patterns with food and overeating: eat a mindful meal. It amazes me how many people multitask when they eat. When is the last time that you were fully present with the meal that you were eating? Fully present means that the TV wasn’t on and you didn’t have a book or a computer in front of you. You weren’t working or making lists of things to do. You weren’t driving somewhere or talking on your cell phone. When is the last time that you were fully aware—with all your senses—of each bite that you put into your mouth? When you truly savored every last morsel? When you were one hundred percent aware of what you were feeling and what you were experiencing while you ate?

For many reading this, I know it’s been a long time. Guess what? Mindful eating can be the key to breaking old habits with food and creating new ones. And you can get started almost instantly—as soon as you sit down to your next meal.

How to eat a mindful meal

Take a deep breath or two and allow yourself to really be in your body. Notice how your mind and your body are feeling. Really notice. You may have gone hours without paying attention. What’s on your mind? What emotions are you experiencing? How does your body feel? Are you tense or relaxed? How hungry are you? Where do you feel it in your body?

Put your food on a plate and sit down somewhere where you can enjoy your food without being distracted. Take a few more deep breaths before you do anything.

The goal of mindful eating is to fully experience every molecule of this meal. Savor it. Use all your senses. Slow down. Notice your food before you put it into your mouth. Smell it. Think about the experience you anticipate before your taste buds encounter what you are eating. Take a small bite. Feel it in your mouth. Really taste it. Stop and consider what you taste. Move the food around in your mouth.

How does it feel? Appreciate the flavor, the texture, the smell. Chew it well or let it melt in your mouth. Take your time.

Another goal of mindful eating is to fully experience yourself eating this meal. This might be a very new experience.

Be aware of how it feels to slow down and savor. You might be surprised at emotions that come up. Some women learn that they’ve developed a pattern of eating mindlessly so they won’t be aware of their thoughts and feelings or so they can overeat without really thinking about it. Obviously, that’s not helpful. As you eat, after each bite, ask yourself if you’d like another. Notice how your hunger changes. Notice when you stop savoring. Notice if you start to feel impatient with mindful eating.

As you practice mindful eating, you are likely to notice things about your eating and your relationship with food that aren’t really about the food at all. You may also find that you need some new tools or strategies to replace overeating so that you can be successful in the long term. It’s not necessary to practice mindful eating every single time you eat (although it can be helpful), but it can be very worthwhile to practice eating mindfully at least once a day. Some clients find it very helpful to identify the periods of eating that are the least mindful for them and use mindful eating techniques specifically during those times.

If you would like more help taking control of emotional eating or overeating or focusing on mindful eating tools and strategies, the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program can be a very helpful resource.

Take good care,

Photo credited to Flikr.com/SimonGötz

Melissa McCreery