Emotional and Stress-Eating

Planning to ‘start fresh in January’?  It’s a very common mindset. It’s easy to think, “I’ll deal with how I eat after the holidays” and move the job to Future You.

What if you could get ahead of the new year by spending December collecting data on yourself?

I’m not here to ruin your Christmas, steal your cake, or consign you to looking longingly at everyone else’s plate while a single lettuce leaf wilts on yours. I am here to help you get to know yourself so you can help yourself, and Christmas has a load of useful triggers that speed that process up. By January, many of them won’t be as obvious.

What if your job for December was to take notice of what triggers you to eat when you’re not hungry or eat or more than you planned?  Take that knowledge into January when you start looking at your emotional eating further.

Here are some common ones to watch out for:

1. Hunger

Seems basic but you might not actually be feeding yourself well. If your body doesn’t trust that it will get nourished well and regularly, it can decide that you’re in the middle of a famine and start holding onto fat stores.

2. Anger

How much anger do you stuff down because it’s not polite to show how upset you are at something?

3. Loneliness

We’re often not good at talking about loneliness but it’s definitely worth sorting out whether this is one of your triggers.

4. Tiredness

There are different types of tiredness so look out for physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, sensory, and creative. Check out the different types of rest: https://www.calm.com/blog/7-types-of-rest

 
Those are just a few of the triggers your body could be responding too. Other favourites are Anxiety, Avoidance (often of setting boundaries), Tension (can definitely show up in relationships at Christmas), Boredom (there’ll be something under boredom though), Sadness.

If you find yourself on the wrong end of a packet of biscuits or a bowl of chips, ask yourself, “What happened just before I ate this? What triggered me?”

Write them all down on a festive paper serviette and tuck it away for January. You’ll arrive in 2026 ahead of the game.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash