Emotional Eating

If you can't lose weight, there may be an emotional cause. See how different emotional barriers may prevent you from losing weight. Then learn how to get around those barriers.

Emotional eating can be a real challenge when you are trying to lose weight. It is particularly difficult for those of us who eat in response to stress, but with a few coping skills and strategies to stop it before it starts, you can learn how to prevent and cope with emotional eating.

Getting a handle on your tendency to eat in response to emotions can be one of the most important factors in achieving long-term weight loss success.

Emotional eating means your emotions -- not your body -- dictate when and/or how much you eat.

Some of the common emotional eating cues are these emtions.

Learn why we give in to emotional eating.

The first step to handling emotional eating is to identify your emotional eating triggers.

An important step in dealing with emotional eating is to get to know your body's hunger signals.

Stress leading to higher numbers on the scale may not be due solely to what we eat.

Food cravings -- and our response to them -- can easily make or break our weight loss efforts.

When you want to lose a significant amount of weight, it's easy to fall into all-or-nothing thinking.

This food diary print-out is an easy way to track your food intake.

Keeping a food diary to record when and why you eat can be an great first step in dealing with emotional eating.

These questions will help you to learn more about your emotional eating triggers and plan alternative behaviors.