I would be lying if I said I have never been a victim of binge eating.

This simply means eating unusually large amounts of food at a go.

And afterwards, getting that feeling that you’re eating behavior is way out of
control.

In most cases, this is brought by emotions.

I remember one time when I was a little child, I paid a visit to grandma and she had prepared her favorite blueberry pizza and to be honest I ended up overeating.

When it comes to emotional overeating, it’s not really about eating more than we need.

Most people use food as an escape from feelings or conditions they can’t deal with.

Giving a typical example, I have had friends who eat lots of food after they suffer a heartbreak.

As much as this sounds like a solution, it always ended up making them feel ashamed of their eating habits.

As a diet professional, the following seven tips will help you run away from binge eating and emotional eating.

1. Discover mindfulness

This is really helpful to those people who have emotional overeating issues.

When something happens, the most important thing would be to accept and awakening to that moment without having to judge it.

This is a really simple thing to do and in fact, it requires no practice.

It’s very clear that most of us live our lives without even paying kindness to the moment we are living in.

When you get the ability to discover and live each moment, you also get more brilliant ideas of how to handle whatever you’re feeling.

With this, you get to really know whether you need to eat or deal with the emotions rather.

Try running into busy activities such as yoga.

2. Have Self- compassion.

It’s always a rule number one to love yourself.

The same applies when it comes to compassion.

When we overeat, we usually don’t like the feeling of shame that it brings but instead of stopping the eating, we chose to continue to eat!

This would not be the case if we were self-compassionate because if we were, we would strive to change this behavior.

This simply means that you should always treat yourself exactly the way you would treat your loved ones.

When you make a mistake, understand yourself rather than being all angry.

This will help you drift from emotional eating.

3. Know what makes you want to eat.

In the shorter term, we could call these things “triggers”.

Those times you really want to overeat.

Is it because you have seen someone?

Is it because you’ve heard someone talk?

Maybe you’ve come across your ex?

What I’m trying to put across is that you should always know all your triggers.

No one knows you better than you do and therefore you should be able to know each and every single thing that makes you want to overeat.

Knowing these triggers keeps you a step away from binge eating and emotional eating as you can always know what to avoid and most importantly you can always know how to react.

4. Find better ways to deal with difficult feelings

Life is full of different feelings and to be honest, a lot of them are quite difficult to deal with.

We have people battling loneliness, sadness, depression, rejection, anxiety, fears and a lot more.

This may seem lame to say but they actually amount the top causes of emotional eating.

Instead of killing yourself with mountains of food when undergoing a difficult feeling (which is very unhealthy anyway), you can find a healthier activity to engage in.

When that feeling of overeating comes, you can always try writing down what you have always had in mind.

You’ll be even more surprised by how a good writer you are and to add to that, you’ll have beaten emotional eating.

5. Always ask yourself why you should eat.

We can break this down into four words which are; hungry, lonely, tired or angry.

This is just a general pick and the words I have picked can always be replaced with other emotions.

So now, let’s assume you were held in traffic for two hours and you get home really late.

On getting home you jump into eating.

You may have not been hungry but because of that traffic frustration, you end up overeating.

Its therefore very important to think about it really deep down, whether you really want to eat or not.

This and the other above tips will keep you a step ahead of binge eating and emotional eating.

6. Don’t punish yourself

When most people overeat, they end up getting some serious restrictions on themselves such as exercising or dieting.

This looks like a solution to the problem but to be honest it’s a catalyst to this cycle.

When you try this, you end up playing games on yourself between eating and restricting.

Instead, you can train yourself to have regular meals and train your body to eat only when you feel really hungry.

7. Choose the right foods.

As much as overeating sounds like some lame behavior, it ends up being a very important source of nutrients our bodies don’t have.

If you notice you’re craving for foods that contain a lot of salts, your body is trying to cry for calcium and sodium nutrients.

I, therefore, recommend that you take the necessary foods.

Avoid so many fatty foods.

Overeating fats might even lead to more serious problems like obesity.

Make sure that your diet consists of a lot of fibers, just enough fats and proteins and other important nutrients that the body really needs.

In conclusion, the above are just a mere 7 ways to stop binge eating and emotional eating.

There are hundreds of ways you can get over this habit.

The most important of all is to discover what your triggers are so as to control them.

This can be a challenging journey and it would be an added advantage to you, if you can have a nutritionist or any other professional that can be of relevance to this field, helping you.

Remember it’s not always as hard as it sounds!