How to Stop Stress Eating (3 Strategies)

October 23, 2022

All of us have plenty of stress in our lives.

In the modern world, it’s almost a given.

If you find yourself responding by “stress eating,” know that you are not alone.

One of the top issues faced by clients in our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program is emotional or stress eating. It actually seems to increase in occurrence year over year.

Today, we’re going to show you exactly how we address emotional eating with our clients, including when it’s – GASP – actually okay to stress eat.

Here’s what we’ll cover in today’s guide:

Let’s jump right in.

What Is Stress Eating? (A Video from NF Kitchen)

The above video from Coach Justin comes from the Nerd Fitness Prime “Mindset” video series.

Justin covers three important lessons I want to highlight, but before we do that, we should ask ourselves a question:

“What exactly is stress eating?”

Stress eating is consuming food in response to negative emotions like fear, anger, or sadness.

When we stress eat, food is being used to solve a problem. Now, unless we’re actually hungry, it’s likely a problem that food itself isn’t meant to solve.

That’s stress or emotional eating.

Here’s what compounds the whole problem: stress eating itself can make us feel guilty. We often feel terrible once our spoon hits the bottom of the pint of ice cream.

This can drive more negative emotions, which can trigger even MORE stress eating.

And the pattern continues.

We’ll talk about ways to break this cycle in a moment, but before we do, we need to create some tools to identify it in the first place.

What Causes Stress Eating? (Lesson #1: Playing Detective)

You may have been surprised in our video above when Coach Justin gives permission to stress eat.

Counterintuitive and seemingly counterproductive, I know. But this is going to be important for two reasons.

How to Approach Stress Eating:

Step #1: we need to curb the guilty feelings about stress or emotional eating.

I started this guide off by highlighting the frequency of stress eating amongst our Online Coaching clients.

You are not the only one struggling with this.

Most humans do.

And robots with human-like emotions and taste buds

We’ll come back to this idea again, because ending the shame of emotional eating will be critical for moving forward.

Step #2: allowing ourselves to stress eat will help us learn why we do it.

We’re going to be playing detective here, to see if we can piece apart your actions and routines.

At the end of the day, our lives are a cumulation of habits. Stress eating is one such habit.

So let’s learn about it!

To do so, we’re gonna record some Emotional Eating Notes.

During an episode of stress eating, it’s important to ask:

Also, gauging these at different times can be helpful too.

How is your stress looking:

The purpose of these Emotional Eating Notes?

Look for patterns!

Perhaps you’ll notice some of the following:

We’re looking for patterns to help us understand what drives our stress eating.

The most important thing about this process: withholding judgment.

We’re looking at our notes for clues into our psyche. Whatever we captured is okay.

If you order pizza every Thursday after talking with your overbearing mom (of course, she means well), step one is to recognize it.

Oftentimes, this awareness step alone can help shift behavior. “Oh, I’m reaching for a beer like I normally do after ending my workday. Typical Me.”

After creating some notes on what spurs our emotional eating, it’s time to think about some alternatives for coping with stress.

How Do I Stop Mindless Eating? (Lesson #2: The Stress Response Menu)

After documenting what sets off our stress eating, we need to formulate a plan on what to do when our anxiety rises.

That means it’s time to build…a Stress Response Menu!

Our Stress Response Menu will be a list of actions or activities you can do to de-stress outside of eating.

Ideally, you’ll do them before an eating episode, but they can be done during or after the fact too.

In other words, if you only realized you were stress eating when your hand reaches the bottom of the Doritos bag, no problem, you can do your stress response activity right then.

The purpose of the Stress Response Menu is to reward yourself with a small moment of self-love, whenever your anxiety levels are too much.

Examples for a Stress Response Menu:

The more the activity from your Stress Response Menu can match your personal goals, the better.

In other words, if you’re trying to build muscle, some push-ups might be the perfect de-stressor.

Just make sure it’s something you won’t dread doing.

A combination of a “de-stressor” and a “reward.”

This is important, as Coach Justin mentions that many of his clients only reward themselves with food. The self-love they practice only takes place in the kitchen.

Our menu above will help us develop some more options, not solely based on food.

To make the most of your Stress Response Menu:

#1) Make the activities short and easy.

You should feel confident that you can do every item on your list. So avoid activities that will take longer than 10 minutes to complete.

Also, set yourself up for success by hacking your Batcave:

Don’t set yourself up for failure by picking overly complicated or burdensome activities.

#2) Place your Stress Response Menu somewhere visible.

Once you make your list, print it out and place it in your kitchen or pantry (or wherever you typically stress eat).

You could also write out a couple of your favorite activities and attach them to your refrigerator.

If it’s right in front of you, it’ll be harder to ignore (however, it’s okay to ignore it from time to time, as we aren’t striving for perfection).

Just please don’t write it and then stick the list in the junk drawer that opens to another dimension.

You never can find anything in that drawer.

#3)Track your usage of the Stress Response Menu.

This will help us in two ways:

For the first point, Coach Justin has his clients keep a “Jar of Awesome.”

Every time they have a small win in the day, like taking five deep breaths instead of chugging soda, they place a marble or small token in a jar. After a while, the jar will have a decent amount of marbles or “small wins” in it.

This will then stand as a visual reminder of all the progress being made, proof of their ongoing wins.

How Common Is Stress Eating? (Lesson #3: Learning Self-Compassion)

The American Psychological Association has found that about a third of Americans respond to stress with food.^[1]

This research was done BEFORE the global pandemic.

If you find yourself binging in response to stress, know that you are not alone here.

Heck, both clients and NF Coaches turn to food and alcohol for comfort every now and again.

Personally, somewhat recently I mindlessly devoured an entire tub of Animal Crackers after a stressful week. It was only when the bag was gone did I understand what just happened.

So yep, many of us (even fitness “experts”) are prone to stress eating.

Now, don’t take this as a free pass to stress eat.

If the behavior goes against your goals, it’s something we want to work towards improving.

But there’s a reason they call it “comfort food.” Food can often be used to make us happier.

At the end of the day, we’re all emotional bags of meat on this floating hunk of space rock, and we’re doing the best we can.

Give yourself a bit of a break, my friend.

You’re here, you’re reading, and you’re trying. That’s great!

This will bring me to my last point with our handy guide:

Is It Okay to Stress Eat? (Next Steps)

There are times when food is the perfect response to stress.

It’s something Coach Justin mentions in his video.

“Stress eating” might be appropriate if:

After a long workday, a glass of wine with cheese helps you unwind.
To celebrate the coming of the weekend, you have an ice cream party on Friday night.
The week already seems long, and it just started, “Taco Tuesday” might help you survive until Friday.

The important thing here?

“We are making a choice.”

We are choosing to deal with stress or anxiety with food. By making it an intentional activity, we can remove the guilt around emotional eating.

Food can be fine as a reward, as long as it’s us controlling the behavior, and not the food itself.

In addition, if we can recognize the action (or plan for it), we can then adjust our calories before and after and not go off the rails.

(You can calculate your recommended total daily calorie intake here, by the way!)

If it seems like you aren’t quite there yet, start with your Emotional Eating Notes and your Stress Response Menu.

Even just the process of taking notes on specific episodes of stress eating may be enough to slow down the behavior.

Remember, no matter what happens:

You are not a bad person (unless you’re a Death Eater, but come on, you know what side you’re on).