When you get stressed, do you find yourself reaching for a packet of chips or sugary snacks? Everyday life stressors like work, social life and major life events can trigger stress cravings. These can compel you to overeat unhealthy foods high in sugar and sodium;  those that aren’t nutritious. Overeating, constant snacking and binge- eating can cause weight gain, poor digestion and nausea. These ailments can further harm your life and lead to low self-esteem. 

So, is there a solution to manage and reduce hunger cravings? Yes! Once you identify your stressors and emotional eating patterns, you can overcome them for good! 

Looking forward to some remedies to avoid stress-eating? In this article, we have outlined a few methods. You can practice them when stressed to reduce food cravings, leading to a healthier lifestyle.

Understand your Triggers

Triggers or sensors are the emotional situations that cause you to stress-eat. With minute observation, you can understand those triggers and how you react to them by overeating. For example- maintain a food diary and note down the possible triggers or possible situations like office meeting pressure, financial burden, etc., that lead to emotional eating. Keeping track of these triggers will allow you to understand their recurring pattern.

While avoiding emotions is beyond your control, you can control how to respond to them. Furthermore, analyzing your emotional triggers can mentally prepare you before the stress burst occurs.

Practice Yoga for Mindfulness

Practicing yoga poses helps you deal with emotions by releasing blockages in muscle knots and boosts mindfulness by relaxing your body and mind. It helps in reducing stress, anxiety and depression. You can make better decisions when your mind is calm and tension-free. As per research completed in 2020, Yoga Nidra meditation for 30 days helped people reduce their stress levels and improve overall well-being. For stress relief, you can practice yoga poses like the cat-cow pose, child’s pose, corpse pose, etc.

Focus on Mindful Eating

Mindful eating lets you enjoy the meal process by involving all your senses and allowing you to become aware of your food-related feelings and thoughts. Research has shown that mindful eating can help improve physiological health. Eating mindfully thus helps you to identify natural hunger signals and hunger signals resulting from stress. This knowledge empowers you to decide which hunger calls you should respond to.

Mindful eating gives you the ownership of your meal wholly based on natural hunger needs, thereby allowing you to stop feeding your thoughts. Thus, it helps reduce hunger cravings when stressed by not responding to them by overeating. 

Indulge in Another Activity

The activities you enjoy the most usually make you forget your worries. So, try engaging in activities that require your attention, like painting, writing, reading, watching movies, listening to music, etc., that you love doing. It may lead to enjoying the present moment and help you forget your stress, temporarily allowing you to reduce food cravings resulting from stress.

Ask for Help

Often, overeating under stress results in guilt or different negative emotions. However, sharing your feelings or challenges with friends or colleagues eases your process. You can share your triggers and eating habits and receive tips and suggestions from them that can help you overcome stress-eating. 

For better treatment or guidance, you can approach a professional counselor to help you deal with stress-related situations better.

We deal with several emotions every day. Stress-related emotions are inevitable in this busy lifestyle where you need to meet personal and social demands. However, by practicing the steps mentioned above, you can handle these emotions confidently and reduce stress-eating eventually. You cannot expect results overnight, as few habits are challenging to change, but it is not impossible.