This post will help you find your triggers for overeating and binging.
If you’re reading this, then chances are that you’ve probably begun the process of trying to find out why you are eating so much and why can’t you stop eating. Your overeating or binging habit may have started to affect your health and waistline too.
First I want to acknowledge that you’re taking these first steps to gain control over the habits that have formed over the course of a few years, and for some, a lifetime. Well done you!
So what can you do to get back in control and start eating normally again?
The first step was recognizing that you had an issue, the second will be to learn what triggers your overeating.
Keep A Food and Lifestyle Journal
The most powerful ally that you will have in your search for the reason for your overeating will be your food journal. This is where you will write the details of your eating habits and feelings and emotions around eating each day.
Be sure that you leave space to include the factors and circumstances of each meal and what you ate for each.
As you begin to detail each meal, and your level of hunger and your feelings before and after your meal, as well as lifestyle factors such as how much you slept, your daily activities, your stress level, and relationship issues that day, it’s incredibly likely that a pattern will begin to emerge. This pattern will probably be a cross-section of the moments and influences that trigger emotional overeating.
Here you can download a beautiful Food and Lifestyle Journal that you can use for this exercise. I have included the most important aspects that you need to track. It´s a fillable pdf but you can also print it and fill it in by hand if you prefer. I actually recommend this, as you may not want to switch on your computer/phone every time you eat and later you forget what you wanted to write.
It is a tracker for one day so you need to print/make a copy for each day. I recommend journaling for at least 7 days.
Why It Works
A food journal is the most honest and least biased source of information that you will have at your disposal. There probably won’t be anything as convincing as your own handwriting.
Being able to see what your habits are throughout the week gives you a good idea of how you spend your time and when you eat.
What will you find out?
First, you need to decide whether you feel physical or emotional hunger before you start eating. In this post, I listed the common differences between physical and emotional hunger.
If you find that you are physically hungry before your overeating episodes,
- make sure you drink enough water,
- sleep enough,
- eat slowly and mindfully.
- Do not follow a very restrictive diet,
- eat nutritious foods 80% of the time and your favourite but not-so-nutritious food 20% of the time.
- Read the side effects of your medications.
Check your Food & Lifestyle journal for these indicators.
Uncovering your triggers
However, you will most likely find emotional reasons for overeating too.
What can be a trigger for emotional overeating? Is it stress? Who were you talking to before you ate food? Maybe it’s a time of day, or a situation, or a type of food, or another person (or being alone), or a feeling – or all of these.
These pieces of information could be the key to setting you free from overeating, but it only works if you’re willing to be as honest as possible.
I’ve also created a mini-course to be able to identify your triggers for overeating and emotional eating.
Triggers are very personal. Different things trigger different people, and so a trigger for you may not affect another person at all.
When looking to better respond to your triggers, you need to identify the trigger itself first. The external stimuli may appear to be innocent (because, in a real way, it is!), but it could be a trigger simply because of what it represents to you.
It may have nothing to do with what happened to you and more to do with the links you make in your mind.
Let’s find your triggers so you can step in before you react!
Can you find the triggers for emotional overeating on your own?
Imagine someone, let’s call her Lily, who endured constant teasing and ridicule for being overweight when she was a child. You can easily understand how these painful memories might lead to several emotional triggers in her adult life.
Lily could become super sensitive about her weight, always feeling like people are judging her. Or she might have turned to unhealthy eating habits as a way to cope with those feelings of not measuring up.
She might also have this intense need to exercise for hours every day, or she could still struggle with a really negative body image, seeing herself as much bigger than she really is.
Now, what happens when one of these triggers gets set off? How do you react when you suddenly feel this intense pain?
Well, you might fall back into the habits or defence mechanisms you’ve developed over the years. For some people, that means they physically withdraw from everything, becoming very isolated. For others, it could lead to feeling out of control and overwhelmed.
If you are reading this it’s highly likely that it leads you to turn to food. You eat to comfort and numb yourself or distract yourself from these uncomfortable emotions.
The worst part is, that these reactions can stop you from living your life the way you want to.
That’s why it’s important to be aware of your triggers.
Once you figure out how to spot your emotional triggers, you can take charge of your impulses and stop yourself from reacting without thinking.
When you start recognizing these triggers, you can keep an eye on them and understand that you have the power to step in before you react.
This is the secret to turning things around and working toward a better result in any situation.
What to do next
What can you do once you’ve uncovered your triggers? You have several options.
Read other blog posts
Here are a few examples:
Workbook
How to stop eating your feelings – a workbook to discover what you are really hungry for and break free from emotional and binge eating
If you want to find out what you are really hungry for and discover all the emotional reasons for your overeating habit, learn powerful techniques to break free from binge eating and eating over your feelings, check out my workbook: How to stop eating your feelings
Free training
This free training will show you the steps to stop feeling out of control around food and eliminate emotional eating, stress eating, and binge eating.
1 on 1 coaching
You can work with me privately for 12 weeks if you want a real transformation and weekly support. Check out my End Emotional Eating private coaching program here.
Mindfulness to Food Freedom course
The Mindfulness to Food Freedom self-study course is a good starting course if you don’t want to commit to a 1 on 1 program and you want to end emotional eating on your own. Of course, in this course, there is no support and it covers much less than the private program.
I hope this post helped you answer the question of how to find the triggers for your overeating episodes. If you liked this post please share it 🙂
