How to Stop Stress Eating

Most people find that keto diets help to reduce or eliminate sugar cravings and control appetite. This is great for people whose eating is guided solely by physical hunger. But what about those of us who eat for other reasons, like boredom, loneliness, anger, or stress? Stress eating can stand in the way of us achieving the goals we have, be that weight loss, reversing type 2 diabetes or PCOS, managing a mental health condition, or anything else keto diets are proven to help. So, how can you stop stress eating?

Stress eating is normal

The first thing you need to know is that stress eating is normal. It’s a very human behavior! Food is an easily accessible way to soothe difficult emotions. It’s understandable that it’s a go-to remedy when you’re feeling stressed. Give yourself grace.

Remember that the comfort and relief you get from eating are temporary. The causes of your stress will still be waiting for you after you eat. And you might feel even worse after eating for having eaten something “bad.” (Pro tip: there are no good or bad foods, and you are not good or bad for having eaten or not eaten something. Keep moral judgments out of your diet, please!)

Habit change takes time

Okay, great. Just stop? Thanks so much for that helpful advice! Can’t believe I’ve never thought of it before. I’ll stop immediately and be on my way to unprecedented keto success!

Back here on planet Earth, we need actionable advice to start making a dent in the unhelpful habit of stress eating. It isn’t something that’s going to disappear overnight. (If it were easy to stop, you already would have, right?) Even when you’re equipped with concrete, effective tactics, you won’t completely eliminate stress eating right away. In fact, you might never eliminate it fully, but you can reduce it. You can learn, over time, to replace food with something more constructive as your go-to for navigating stress most of the time.

When you start working on reducing stress eating, understand that it’s a long-term process, not a one-and-done switch flip. This will help you recognize the progress you’re making each time you deal with stress without eating, rather than beating yourself up and feeling like a failure on the occasions when you do still reach for food.

When you feel discouraged, remind yourself that it really is just a habit – and habits can be broken. You’ve probably already stopped lots of habits you practiced regularly for years, so you have evidence that you are capable of change. For example, if you’re following a keto diet – even if you’re not ultra-strict all the time – your breakfast probably looks much different now compared to before keto. Maybe now it’s bacon and eggs rather than cereal and toast. Pre-keto you might have ordered a burger with fries or a pasta entrée at your favorite restaurant for dinner, and now it’s steak with green vegetables. You’ve changed habits in the past, and you can do it again now.

Strategies to stop stress eating

Once you’ve shifted your mindset and you understand and accept that it will take time to reduce your stress eating and that you don’t need to nail it every time, you need concrete strategies to start tackling this pattern.

Start with interrupting the pattern. Take a pause. Ask yourself some questions.

What’s causing you to feel stressed?

Are you getting enough sleep?

Are you a caregiver?

Is it work deadlines? Are you unemployed and worrying about finances?

Are you experiencing relationship strain? Going through a divorce? Grieving the loss of a loved one?

If you’re eating to cope with stress, then identify the cause of the stress and tackle it head-on if you can. If food isn’t the problem, then food isn’t the solution, so unless you’re stressed out because you’re deficient in potato chips or chocolate cake, then potato chips and chocolate cake aren’t the answer.

If you can’t eliminate the stress, can you find a more constructive way to handle it than reaching for food? If you’re tired, can you prioritize getting more sleep or better quality sleep? If not, can you make time in the day to grab a quick nap? If you’re overwhelmed at work, can you talk to your boss about lightening the load? If you’re spread too thin at home or with social obligations, are there things you can simply delete from your to-do list with no negative consequences? Can you start saying no to unnecessary commitments or delegate certain tasks to other people? (Nobody gets an award for doing everything themselves or for sacrificing their physical and mental health in order to keep all the plates spinning. “People pleasing” doesn’t make you a hero; it makes you a martyr.) 

Short term versus long term

When you practice pausing to ask questions, think about what you really, truly want and what the best way is to make that happen. In the present moment, food will always sound good! It’s convenient and it will make you feel better…for a few minutes. You’ll feel better in the moment but feel worse not long afterward. Remind yourself that food will feel better right now, but what about tomorrow, or next week, or next month? Will you be happy with the weight you’ve been losing, or how your blood sugar is coming down, or how your skin is clearing up? Or will you feel like that very fleeting moment of distraction with food has actually set you back?

Ask yourself: How can I meet my needs in a way that serves me best? What will help me meet my needs right now and in the future?

The delay tactic

A helpful strategy for stress eating is to delay reaching for food. When you feel an urge to eat to distract yourself from stress, tell yourself to wait five minutes. Literally set a timer! When those five minutes are up, ask yourself how you feel. Set the timer for another five or ten minutes if you want, but if you decide you do still want to eat, do it! 

I learned this tactic from Dr. Vera Tarman, who specializes in sugar and food addiction. When her patients are scared by the thought of giving up sugar or their favorite starchy foods forever, she gently tells them that they don’t have to do it forever, but can they do it for the next five minutes? Something that feels impossible to do for the long term might be no problem for only a few minutes. String together five-minute increments over and over, and before you know it, you’ve gone a few hours, then a whole day and maybe an entire week. It’s okay to start slowly!

What if you can’t stop stress eating?

You know now that you might not stop stress eating altogether. But what if you have trouble even just reducing it? If you feel like you absolutely, positively have to reach for food, is there a way to lessen the adverse consequences of stress eating?

Yes!

Let’s face it: when we feel stressed out, steak and broccoli aren’t the foods we reach for. Roasted chicken and grilled vegetables are comforting, but they’re not what springs to mind first when we think of “comfort foods.” Stress makes us reach for carbs! Candy, cookies, ice cream, french fries, chips, mac and cheese.

So if you feel compelled to eat when you’re dealing with stress, a great way to level-up is to change the kind of food you reach for. When working with a patient who tells him, “But I’m an emotional eater,” keto diet authority Dr. Eric Westman counters with, “Well, can you not emotionally eat carbs?”

The concept of harm reduction is used widely in medicine. Doctors prescribe less powerful drugs to help patients transition away from harder elicit drugs. People quitting smoking might use nicotine patches or gum to help them lessen dependence. When you can’t immediately stop a harmful habit, making it less harmful is a good first step.

If you can’t stop or reduce stress eating, can you reach for lower carb foods? If you can’t overcome the compulsion to eat when you’re not actually hungry, eat meat! Eat non-starchy vegetables. With regard to metabolic health, if you’re not able to eliminate stress eating altogether, you’re better off eating foods that are low in carbs. Reach for foods that are less likely to lead to large and prolonged rises in blood sugar and insulin. (Pro tip: this means having a lot of these foods prepared ahead of time so there’s always something you can grab in a pinch. Here are my best tips for how to do this easily. Alternatively, decide on some places where you can grab low-carb foods, like a nearby gas station or convenience store where you can get hard-boiled eggs, cheese sticks, sugar-free jerky, pork rinds, nuts, or other low-carb foods. Stock your desk at work with non-perishable low-carb foods or keep a stash in your purse or backpack so you always have something handy.)

While this is harm reduction (not harm elimination), I stand by the principle that you’re better off eating very low-carb foods compared to reaching for sugar or starch. Just don’t expect excess body fat to melt off as quickly and easily if you’re regularly eating when you’re not genuinely hungry.

Summing up

Stress eating is a deeply engrained, longstanding pattern for some people. It’s a common and very understandable habit, but it really is just a habit, and habits can be changed. If you want to reach your goals with a keto diet, eliminate sources of stress that can be addressed directly, and for the ones that can’t be eliminated, experiment with tactics that can shift you away from food and toward more constructive ways to navigate difficult moments.