Tips on how to stop binge and emotional eating

Inna Merkin
Mar 5, 2019
2 min read

Do you pride yourself on eating healthy during the day but comfort eat when you get home in the evening?

Do you eat healthily during the week but indulge and overeat on the weekend?

Those are just a few examples of emotional and binge eating that I myself used to do. I learned that you can’t just adopt more willpower to stop emotional or binge eating.

Here are some of my favourite tips to stop emotional and binge eating.

1. Give yourself permission to eat the foods you want to eat.

When you don’t give yourself permission to eat certain foods, you crave that food constantly and eventually eat that food anyway but in excess and as quickly as possible in case you never eat it again.

When your body learn to trust that you aren’t depriving it, you will stop emotional eating and no longer feel the need to binge on this food.

2. Stop referring to food as 'good' or 'bad'.

As soon as you label a food as either bad or good you are setting yourself up to fail. It is just food and feeling guilty or getting angry with yourself for overeating will only cause you to overeat and binge more.

3. Do not eat in front of the TV.

When you eat in front of the TV, you create a habit of eating when you sit down to watch television. Therefore as soon as you sit down to watch TV, you will think you are hungry and begin to eat.

Never eat in front of the TV or any screen, and just eat. Give yourself permission to eat – and watch TV, but not at the same time.

4. Stop focusing on weight loss.

Shift your focus from trying to lose weight to just living a healthy life and having a good relationship with food. Funnily enough, when you change your focus from losing weight to having a healthy relationship with food you will stop emotional and binge eating and your body will naturally find its healthiest weight.

5. Get extra support to stop emotional eating

It’s tough to stop emotional and binge eating without support.

It is not a matter of trying harder but maybe trying something different. My approach in Innamehealth is to guide you and teach you in lots of detail and support on how stop emotional and binge eating for good.