Anyone else have a love-hate relationship with food? No? Just me… cool! ???? Learning to how to stop emotional eating is something that no one really thinks to learn. I really didn’t think about it in my life until recently. The fact is, sometimes we get bad news and reach for cupcakes! We get stressed at work and it’s french fries on the car ride home. Everyone does it sometimes unless you are superhuman. In that case, this blog ain’t for you lady. #loveyameanit ????

The answer to my hard emotions is often to eat a little bit and think over the issue while giving myself an indulgence to get through. The problem comes when I am finished and realize I overate… Like a whole container of Oreos by myself. ????

One trick I love to use, in order to help myself stop emotional eating, is using something you might already have on hand, a bullet journal. Here’s how bullet journaling can actually help you stop emotional eating for good.

Bullet Journaling Slows Down Eating

Even if you only start bullet journaling when your emotional eating starts, it can help slow the eating process down. While you eat, you can write, which will cause you to pause and think about what you are writing. This will allow the food time to settle and let you actually feel when you are full rather than binge eating. Bullet Journaling also makes you think about why you are emotionally eating, feeling the way you feel, and helps you focus on the moment instead of hiding from your emotions. This is incredibly powerful!

Bullet Journaling Helps You Focus on the Real Issue

When you are going through the emotional eating process, you are focusing on feeling better. If you are thinking about what triggered you, you are likely not thinking about the root cause of the issue. When you journal, you can work out the issues and get your emotions out. Once those emotions of hurt, anger, or stress are out then you will find yourself writing about the real issues. This is a big key if you truly want to stop emotional eating! It’s actually remarkable how much better this makes me feel. The trick is to put the journal away and go back to it a few hours or a day later. Read through what you wrote and work out what the real issue was. You may think that the trigger was a stressful day at work, when in fact the real, and deeper, cause of the trigger was something someone said or something that occurred in the workplace.

????Check out my blog with 3 common triggers to avoid that will help you stop emotional eating.

Bullet Journaling Narrows Down Trigger Patterns

In addition to helping you slow down and move slower through an emotional eating process, as well as helping you focus on the real issue

that triggered you, journaling has another great benefit. Journaling during or just following an emotional eating moment can help you see a pattern with what is triggering you the most. You can go back to the journal and note what the main trigger was that day. Just put a small note at the bottom of the journal entry that states what the trigger was for that moment. As you review your journal and the notes, you will see a pattern. Once you see this pattern, you will be able to focus on those triggers and avoiding them in the future. What better way to learn about yourself?

Don’t have a bullet journal? Read my Blog on why I FINALLY hopped on the bandwagon, and what I use to make it beautiful!

By journaling through your emotional eating moments, you can learn more about yourself, your true triggers, and what to do to avoid the issues in the future. These combined efforts will result in a dramatic reduction in emotional eating and stress-related triggers in your life.

What are your best tips to stop emotional eating in its tracks? Share them in the comments!