How to stop mindless eating

See also my post on How to stop eating when you’re not hungry

Whenever you eat mindlessly or when you are not hungry, the root cause is simple: you are responding to your mind’s needs rather than your physical needs. This might be emotional eating, or habit eating, or whatever. The fact remains, it’s not what your body needs. But maybe eating is the right thing to do even if you’re not hungry.

You are in charge of what you put into your body and into your mind. You choose the balance you will make between the two. You have to balance them, because if you don’t nurture your emotional side, it will rebound on you and give you a whopper of a binge (not advertising hamburgers here, although they do make a good binge food).

What I’ve noticed recently is that I will turn off my brain and eat when I am not hungry in the following situations:

• When I don’t want to stop doing something, like watching TV or playing computer games or surfing the internet
• When I go too long without drinking something
• When I’m standing right next to the food at an event
• When I don’t feel like I’ve balanced emotional and physical sides
• When I haven’t done something I think I should have done

Now I’m doing ok on drinking water, and generally if I find that I’m eating something and I recognize that I am not really hungry, it’s easy to check if I’m on track for my daily 2+ liters of water.

For the rest, the key to stopping is to connect the emotional and the physical sides. The next time you find yourself eating, and you believe you’re not hungry, use the following process:

1. Check in with your normal hunger signals. If you’re are actually hungry, go eat whatever you want to eat. If no, continue.
2. Have I had water lately? Drink some if you need some.
3. Ask, “Why do I want to keep eating?” Be honest – you don’t have to tell anyone.
4. If you identify the reason, take action if you can.
5. If you can’t identify the reason, or can’t take action, choose one of the following things to do:
   1. Take a few deep breaths and remind yourself of your goals
   2. Go ahead and eat, but put half or more away
   3. Choose something else to eat, maybe even something healthy
   4. Put it all away for 5 minutes. Get it out again if you need to.
   5. Go to another place and do a stress-relieving activity, like pounding a pillow or giving your best primal scream. (Hint: your second-best primal scream is probably better when you’re at work)

Always always always remember, you can eat the whole damn thing any time you want to. Just make sure that eating the whole damn thing is really what you want, compared to your other goals.