How keeping a food diary helps emotional eaters

Emotional eaters understand the struggle behind feeling stressed, turning to food to feel comfortable, and then punishing themselves for consuming too many empty calories. It is a vicious cycle and many feel that they do not know how to control it.

Stress eating is a common condition among people of all ages and is done to relieve emotional needs and problems rather than actual hunger. Those who identify as emotional eaters may see food as a kind of comforting friend they can turn to when life becomes too overwhelming.

As they eat they feel safe and calm, but the underlying problems are still there. Since so much of this food is emotionally driven, you may have a hard time determining what exactly sent it to the fridge or pantry in the first place.

a food diary

Keeping a food diary is one way to help you better understand your behaviors and the emotional triggers that trigger them. By keeping a food diary, you can identify important connections between when you eat, how much you eat, and why you eat when you’re not physically hungry.

A food diary is simply a diary used strictly to chronicle what you eat, when you eat, and how much you’ve eaten. Those who keep such a journal include details such as:

• meal times
• serving sizes
• Feelings before, during and after eating
• Nutritional value of food
• Thoughts about the process.

When kept for an extended period of time and then studied, you may be able to find certain patterns and connections around your eating habits.

For example, an emotional eater may find that immediately after a fight with a loved one, they eat. You could see that before the meal their emotions were running high and afterward, they felt comforted and calm. By simply keeping track of these events, what really fuels your eating habits can suddenly become clear.

How do you know if you are an emotional eater?

We’ve all had those days where we eat when we’re bored, go out for ice cream after a bad breakup, or even visit the pizzeria to celebrate a win, but does that make you an emotional eater?

The truth is that emotional eating goes much deeper than a snack or an outing after a significant event. It is often continuous and is accompanied by a strong influx or fall of emotions.

The following questions can help you determine if your eating patterns are normal or driven by emotional ups and downs:

• You eat when you feel stressed
• You eat despite not feeling hungry or even feeling full
• You see food as a reward.
• You eat until you’re full no matter what
• Eat to feel calm and comfortable (usually when feeling sad, angry, anxious, bored, or agitated)
• You feel like you have no power over food and how much you eat
• You immediately feel confident when you eat.

If most of these indicators apply to you, you are most likely an emotional eater. Keeping a food diary can help outline in plain language your emotional and physical habits when it comes to stress and stress management.

When any patterns or connections become clear, you can move forward by changing some of your coping skills to stop eating when you’re not initially hungry.

Emotional eaters do not have to suffer with the physical problems that this condition can bring. Instead, they can get back on track through focused mindfulness and proactive steps, such as therapy, exercise, and other healthy coping practices.