3 Ways To Avoid Emotional Eating

7 years ago I had a 6 month old that NEVER slept!

She was such a bad sleeper.

She would sleep when I was holding her or rocking her, but as soon as I put her down she was back awake.

She would fall asleep in the car, but as soon as we hit a stop light she would wake up.

We lived in Brooklyn.

There were a lot of stop lights.

SOoooo, I decided to do the “Cry it Out” method.

This is a controversial method where you let your child cry for a certain amount of time before you go in and comfort them. And eventually they fall asleep on their own. I don’t want to get into an argument about the merits and downfalls of this method – I’m not really sure I would do it again, but at the time I was desperate and sleep deprived.

Every night I would put my daughter down to bed and she’d cry. And I’d go into the kitchen and stuff my face. Then I’d go into her room and comfort her. Then she would cry. And I’d go into the kitchen again. Rinse and repeat. I didn’t even realize at the time, but looking back now, I had an emotional eating problem.

And when I said I had an emotional eating problem, what I should probably say is that I have an emotional eating problem.

Hi, I’m Kay Plo, and I’m an emotional eater.

I am not sure if the “crying” phase was what started my problem, but those are the moments I can clearly see myself as having a problem.

Still when my daughter cries, or I’m having a bad day at work, or my husband is in a pissy mood, I want to head straight to the kitchen and fill myself with food-y goodness.

When I am home at my parents visiting I can’t seem to stop eating. I have an uncontrollable urge to stuff my face.

There is probably some deep psychological stuff going on here. There definitely is, but I feel, recently, that I have gotten a good hold of the situation.

Here are 3 things I did to help get my problem under control:

1. Identify Your Triggers
   • The first step for me was to identify what was setting off my emotional eating binges.  Once I identified the source, I could properly prepare for when they were about to occur.
2. Get Rid of The Junk
   • I do not keep any junk food in my house (to the dismay of my husband and daughter!) If it’s there it, it is too hard to resist it when I feel like I need it. If we want to have dessert we will go out for an ice cream cone or pastry.
3. Replace Eating With an Activity
   • When I am stressed and feel the need to stuff my face, I say to myself “Self, I know you really want to cram your face full of cupcakes right now, but you do not have to do it. It won’t solve your problems. It won’t make you feel better”. I will make a cup of tea instead. Or go for a walk.

Emotional eating is probably something I will battle for a long time, but realizing I have the problem has really helped me get it under control.

And that’s a good thing.

Because my daughter is almost 8…..

And it turns out they never stop crying.