You may have heard me talk about emotional eating several times. Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better, to fill emotional needs, rather than your stomach. I find it’s often what lies behind yo-yo dieting, you can try every diet in the world but if you don’t uncover and deal with the emotional reasons behind your eating habits, they won’t work.
Food and choice are abundant for most of us, and it’s normal for us to eat to satisfy more than our hunger occasionally. We eat to feel good, as a social activity and to celebrate or reward ourselves.
Food plays a central role in everyday life. Snacks, baked goods, and sweet treats are everywhere and our desires are further fuelled by advertising, TV shows, and increasingly social media.
The problem with emotional eating is it can be so automatic and ingrained we rarely notice that we’re doing it. This is why emotional eating can be challenging to break; it’s linked to our feelings rather than our physical hunger. It often starts in childhood and if we’ve been eating this way for decades, it can be hard to identify.
However, I believe everyone can break those habits and cycles that keep you trapped in a vicious cycle of eating, feeling bad and eating again. One of the tools that can help uncover what’s going on for you is maintaining an emotional eating journal. By noting down what you’re eating and why, you can gain insights into what triggers your food cravings and learn how to manage them effectively. This blog will guide you through setting up and using an emotional eating journal.
What is an Emotional Eating Journal?
An emotional eating journal is a tool that helps you record what you eat and why you eat. It differs from a typical food diary because it requires you to note your emotional state (feelings), and the circumstances surrounding your eating episodes. By consistently noting down your food and feelings or circumstances at the time, you can begin to see patterns in your emotional eating habits. When you know what’s going on, you can then make changes.
Setting Up Your Emotional Eating Journal
Choose a comfortable medium- a physical notebook, a digital app, or a simple document on your computer. Your journal should have enough space to record the following for each entry:
- The date and time of your meal or snack.
- What you ate (including portion sizes).
- Your hunger level before eating (on a scale of 1-10).
- Your emotions before, during, and after eating.
- The context or environment you were in (e.g., alone, at a party, watching TV).
- Any thoughts going through your mind at the time.
Recording Entries: Tips and Best Practices
Be honest and detailed
How effective this process is depends on your honesty and the detail you include. Even if it feels uncomfortable, note everything you eat and every bit of emotion you feel. This is private, just for you unless you choose to share the results and insights with anyone, so write what you need to.
Identify your emotional triggers
As you journal, look for patterns in your emotional state. You may start to see that you eat when stressed, bored, happy, or sad. Noticing the patterns and understanding these triggers is the first step in managing them.
Rate your hunger
Before you eat, ask yourself how hungry you are. This will help you differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger.
Note the context
Context can influence eating habits significantly. Recording where you are, what you’re doing, and who you’re with, can help identify environmental triggers and therefore remove them. Don’t forget to note the date and weather, different weather and seasons can affect us emotionally too.
Reflect regularly
Set aside time each week to go over your journal. Look for patterns and repeated behaviours. This reflection can help you make connections you might otherwise miss.
Analysing Your Emotional Eating Journal
After a few weeks of consistently using your journal, you can analyse your eating habits:
- Identify common emotions: Which emotions most often lead to eating? Are there positive emotions involved or mostly negative?
- Assess the foods: What types of foods do you gravitate towards emotionally? Comfort foods like sweets or carbohydrates might be a clue.
- Evaluate the situations: Are there specific times, places, people or social settings that trigger your emotional eating?
Taking Action Based on Your Discoveries
Once you have a better understanding of your triggers, you can begin to work on strategies to address them. Sometimes it’s useful to get professional help to take this work deeper.
Develop coping strategies
Find healthier ways to deal with your emotions, such as exercising, talking to a friend, or practising relaxation techniques.
Plan ahead for triggers
If certain situations trigger emotional eating, plan ahead to deal with them differently. For instance, if you eat when stressed, and you know you have a stressful week ahead, prepare and plan stress-reduction techniques in advance. If you tend to snack whilst bored, plan some enriching activities.
Maintaining Your Journaling Habit
Keeping an emotional eating journal is not just about identifying what triggers your eating habits but also about developing a deeper understanding of your relationship with food. Continually updating and reflecting on your journal can keep you mindful of your eating habits and help you maintain control.
By maintaining an emotional eating journal, you not only become more aware of your eating patterns but also empower yourself to make healthier choices. It’s not just about dieting; it’s about understanding and managing the emotions that influence your eating behaviour.
As a health coach specialising in emotional eating, I work closely with women to help them understand and manage their relationship with food. The emotional eating journal is just one of the tools I recommend to build awareness and change.
If you find yourself struggling with emotional eating, know that you’re not alone, and there are effective strategies that can help. Together, we can explore your eating habits, identify your triggers, and develop a personalised plan to lead you towards a healthier, more balanced life.
Get in touch to find out more about how I can support you in overcoming emotional eating.