How You Can Stop Stress Eating

Emotional, stress and binge eating is often a train wreck waiting to happen.

I have been an emotional, stress, and binge eater ever since I was a child. It was the go-to thing as we were growing up. My dad would bring home money every Friday – which was payday for him. He’d give my sister and me “pocket money” and we were always so excited about that. For both of us, it was an exciting day. We looked forward to Friday all week long! We would take our money and go over to the little store across the street and buy candy. Our special treat and reward for the week. So this became a source of comfort and happiness for me.

For many years I didn’t even realize that reaching for the candy or the sweet things was often a way of handling my stress or emotions. I know myself better now and I realize I am really good at stuffing down my feelings with something that – in the short term – brings me some comfort!

Does this sound familiar?

Maybe things haven’t been going your way over the last few days or weeks. All you know is that you come home drained and you have no time to look at what you have been eating. You go for the easy option, the lift-your-mood option, the convenient catastrophe. Maybe you started the week out with your willpower at a 100, and you were all set to climb the elementary school food pyramid, but somehow your energy tanked and your cravings skyrocketed.

How do you prevent a crisis like that? You prevent it the way you prevent all crises: a crisis management program or, in this case, meal planning. Yeah, yeah! I know it sounds boring and time-consuming but actually, it’s not! It can be simple. And after you’ve done it a couple of times, you realize it’s not that hard, and it definitely saves time in the long-run.

Doing this definitely keeps you on track toward your objectives and gives you easy plans to fall back on. When energy and willpower are running low, there is already a plan in place – one that you put in place when your energy and willpower were high. A meal plan provides the proverbial breadcrumbs for you to follow the way to the healthy, balanced lifestyle you had set out for when life was sunshine and rainbows.

Still not convinced that meal planning can really make your life easier and keep you on track for your health goals? Let’s look at the advantages of at least giving meal planning a try.

Energy

Like many of the resources that play an integral role in our survival, our willpower is non-renewable. We start out our days and weeks with a certain amount of willpower that gets used up rapidly in small decision-making tasks, everything from what we should wear to what we should say. When it’s time to eat, if we do not have a good store of willpower, we fall back on fast foods and unhealthy meals.

Meal planning prevents you from crashing midway because you have plan A, B, and C to resort to when you cannot figure what to make for dinner that is easy and healthy. Meal planning takes one thing off your daily to-do list, freeing up time for you to treat yourself no matter how hard the day has been going.

Portion Planning

Meal planning allows you to give all the important things the appropriate place on your menu. When you plan a menu beforehand, you get to choose what goes in there. Meal planning gives you the opportunity to stick to your resolution of treating your body right and having your doctor’s recommended portions of fruits and vegetables. Even on days when you feel like putting no effort into cooking or you feel like eating whatever your first craving is, a meal plan reminds you that there is an alternate meal that will not only gratify you in the moment but will keep you on the right path toward a healthier you.

Treat Yourself

Some days you will want to piece together any and every crumb you find to just get through the day and eat for the sake of survival. With meal plans, you get to go the extra mile and plan for yourself a meal that you know you will like. This preplanned blessing might just be the meal that turns your awful week around because you planned a meal that was nutritious and a treat to pick you up.

The Tension

Lack of planning and prepping often leads to more stress, but too much structure can make life predictable and boring. With a meal plan, you get the best of both worlds. You can avoid the dreaded question, “What do I make for dinner?”, but you can also allow yourself some freedom to experiment. For example, you had planned to make pizza tonight, so you have all the basic ingredients, but you see you also have canned artichokes and some roasted chicken left—let’s throw it on! Because you planned the big stuff ahead of time, you have a little extra energy to spice up a trusted staple with some little stuff. Sometimes it’s that little stuff that makes all the difference!

I would love to know if you already meal prep. How you do it, and what types of meals you plan and prep ahead. Hit reply and let me know.

I often share my meal planning and prep in my private Facebook group for women. We all need ideas and recipes to keep our meals fresh and exciting. So head on over. Oh, and up through August 15th, I am having a free giveaway in my group. So invite some friends, join the discussion, and enjoy the fun!