Episode 46: 5 Proven Ways to Overcome Stress Eating
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Summary
We all are under inordinate amounts of stress lately. And being stuck in the house with extra time on your hands, can quickly lead to fridge raids, and mindless binges if you don't have a plan and tools in place to prevent it.
So today we're talking about 6 proven ways to keep you from stress-eating your way to the quarantine 15.
- Create as many barriers as possible between you and your 'red light' foods. If it isn't in the house, it's much harder to eat it. This is a much smarter strategy than hoping your willpower will be strong enough to carry you through the next 2 months.
- You have to replace the activity with another activity that actually helps reduce your stress (as opposed to reducing it for 20 minutes and then leaving you more stressed and sending you down a shame spiral).
- Make a Stress Out Plan. Understand, a craving only will last around an hour, max. So write down a list of 5 activities that will help you process the stress instead of masking it, while also passing the time until the desire to stress eat lessens.
- Stop turning to alcohol for comfort right now. If you're drinking a few glasses per week, fine. But if you're drinking a glass or 2 every night as a way to cope, you're setting yourself up for a habit that will last far longer than the quarantine.
- Put an ice pack on your forehead, neck, or eyelids. This tip comes from Molly Carmel, author of Breaking up with Sugar. Basically it signals the dive response which sends blood to your brain and heart, and it makes your heart rate slow down shifting you out of a sympathetic nervous system response (fight or flight) and into a parasympathetic nervous system response (rest and digest).
Notes:
*If you try the above tools and tactics, but you're finding your cravings and emotions so intense that you legitimately can't bare them. It doesn't mean you're broken or weak, it probably means there is a past trauma that's being triggered. In which case, you've got to find a therapist that specializes in trauma counseling, and maybe even try something like EMDR.
*Don't wait until your cravings hit to put these tools into practice. It's like lifting weights. You don't want to wait for something bad to happen where you HAVE to lift something heavy (like pulling a fallen bookshelf off of your kid) and hope that you're strong enough to do it. You condition yourself so that if and when something happens, you'll have the strength to handle it.
*If you want a deeper understanding of these tools and more examples of how to put them into practice, listen to the full episode (I think you'll find it a lot more entertaining than reading these basic tips anyways 😉).
Now while these may be 5 great tips to start with, we brought up a whole lot more in the full episode!! Take a listen if you want the strongest arsenal possible against the stress eating monster within!
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