When managing stress, most of us have a few positive ways to cope and a few not-so-positive ways.
And unfortunately, one of the not-so-positive ways is emotional eating.

Healthy eating patterns can be challenging at the best of times. Still, in times of stress and change, it’s not uncommon for healthy eating patterns to go by the wayside, as planning and preparation go out the window, and the temptation to eat quick, tasty food takes over.

So, here’s a 6-step plan for getting healthy eating habits back on track if they have slipped a bit during the current pandemic.

RESOURCES & LINKS:
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Weight Loss During the Intensive Intervention Phase of the Weight-Loss Maintenance Trial: [ Ссылка ]00374-7/fulltext

Emotional eating is associated with weight loss success among adults enrolled in a weight loss program: [ Ссылка ]

The myth of comfort food: [ Ссылка ]

Promoting Self–compassionate Attitudes Toward Eating Among Restrictive And Guilty Eaters: [ Ссылка ]
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For my first step, it’s essential to be aware of the What-The-Hell Effect.
Yes, that’s an actual psychological term. I didn’t just go all potty-mouthed there.

It’s also known as counter-regulatory eating, but that term isn’t nearly as fun. So, you’re probably wondering, what is the What-The-Hell Effect?

This effect can happen when we are following a plan, such as a healthy eating plan, and something interferes with your goal of eating healthy.

And once we get off track with a goal, there is a temptation to say, “What-The-Hell,” the plan is blown, and in comes the junk food and lots of take-out.

So, for the first step, it’s essential to make a conscious decision to put an end to the What-The-Hell Effect, as we all settle into this “new normal” with the COVID-19 virus, and either look to return to former healthy eating patterns, or use this as a time to establish new, healthy eating patterns.

For my second step, I encourage you to have an eating plan for the day.
Winston Churchill once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

And when it comes to eating healthy and avoiding emotional eating, one of the most significant risk factors is not having healthy food ready and available when you’re hungry.
For my third step, and this is essential, find the simplest way possible to record what you eat every day.

Research continues to show that not only does recording what you eat help to reduce emotional eating, but it can also help people to double their weight loss gains.
And the good news is, it doesn’t matter how you record what you eat.

You could use a food diary, a smartphone app, or even just send yourself a quick text or email about what you ate, so it doesn’t have to become complicated or difficult.

For the next step, it’s vital to start recognizing how emotions influence your food choices.

Because let’s be honest, if we are all robots, you’d just program yourself to eat healthy all of the time – problem solved.

But we are emotional beings, and chances are that one of the negative emotions, such as feeling mad, bad, sad, anxious or merely bored, impacts how you eat.

In a recent survey of 1328 registered Psychologists, they were asked what the most common barrier was to weight loss. 92% of them identified emotional eating as the biggest challenge.

And in a 2016 study by Dr. Abby Braden and colleagues, they found that successfully managing emotional eating helped people to double weight loss.

So now that you know what emotions influence how you eat, it’s crucial to identify and manage these thoughts and feelings quickly.

If you are struggling with managing your thoughts and feelings, it probably won’t hurt to remind yourself that emotional eating doesn’t really work when it comes to changing how you feel.

In a 2014 study by Dr. Heather Wagner and colleagues, they found that comfort food doesn’t improve mood, even though at the start of the study, 81% of the study participants predicted that eating comfort food would help to improve their mood.

For my final step, it’s important to be self-compassionate if you don’t follow the plan as well as you’d like.

In a 2007 study by Dr. Claire Adams and Dr. Mark Leary, they found that people were far more likely to stop the pattern of emotional eating if they simply forgive themselves after they’d done it.


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