How to Stop Comfort Eating
Comfort eating is a type of emotional eating, or using food to cope with emotions, that can quickly sabotage your surgical weight loss efforts. Comfort eating involves eating foods when you need to be soothed (or comforted), and it can be a difficult habit to break. Find out how to create new comforting strategies that work without adding excess calories to your diet.
How to Stop Comfort Eating
- Plan ahead: The hardest time to come up with alternate comfort strategies is when you need to be comforted. If you're feeling stressed, sad, tired, or lonely, you're much more likely to fall back on easy decisions you've made dozens of times in the past. Instead of waiting until you need new comfort strategies, create a list of new ways to comfort yourself ahead of time. You may find it helpful to write these new ideas down and keep them in a place you can refer to quickly when you need them.
- Choose comforting strategies that actually comfort: In a perfect world, we would replace all of our bad habits with healthy, productive habits. Instead of overeating, we would clean our bathrooms or do laundry. But in the real world, there are times when we need to be comforted, and housework may not do the trick. Create a list of comforting strategies that will actually make you feel better. Give yourself permission to indulge in a reality-TV marathon or romance novel if the need arises.
- Choose comforting strategies that are easy to use: Be realistic about how easily you'll be able to implement your new comforting strategies. If it's too much work, you're more likely to revert to old habits of comfort eating. For example, getting a massage might be very comforting, but you may not be able to secure an appointment with no notice at the end of a stressful work day. It may be more practical for you to take a long bath with the lights off and soothing music playing in the background.
Remember that comfort eating is a habit, and your ultimate goal is to create new habits. Be realistic and patient with yourself, and understand that replacing an old habit will take time and repetition.