How tracking can help you overcome emotional eating

We’ve all been there, perhaps now more than ever: feeling sad or anxious and looking in the fridge (or the biscuit tin) for something to ease emotions, like stress or uncertainty.

For most people, food is associated with emotion to some degree. From birth, we’re ‘trained’ to link food with enjoyment, affection and nurturing. However, when we link food with comfort, it can become a habit, and the long-term consequences can be far from comforting. You might feel guilt, shame, or frustration – especially as it can slow your progress – and these unpleasant feelings could send you back to the fridge.

Here’s how tracking on the WW app can provide useful insights into your eating habits and help you stay within your Points® Budget.

Tracking what you eat, along with your weight and how much you move, is one of the most powerful tools for weight loss.1

That's because being mindful of how much you eat and move - and whether you're gaining, losing, or maintaining your weight - helps you see your progress more clearly. It also helps you gain insight into patterns, which is key for making change.

For example, if you’ve gained weight from one week to the next, you can scroll back through the WW app, see what you tracked and make some changes the following week.

You could also keep a journal to track your feelings and help identify triggers that lead to emotional eating.

So, how to take charge of emotional eating? Developing an awareness of whether and when you might be eating in response to your emotions is the first step.

The next is developing techniques to manage it.

Develop awareness: Determine whether your desire to eat is true hunger or something else. Real hunger feels like a gnawing sensation in your stomach, often accompanied by tummy rumbles, depending on how hungry you are. If you find yourself reaching for food without those sensations, drill down deeper to identify the trigger using the WW app and your journal or mood diary.

Develop techniques: With the right techniques, it’s possible to retrain your response to emotional triggers and build a healthier relationship with food. There are much more effective ways to ‘feed’ your emotions, like developing a non-food response. Try these soothing self-care tips whenever your emotions nudge you in the direction of the kitchen. Over time, they could become a learned response and replace food as your go-to when you’re feeling sad, stressed or angry.

• Use the Barcode Scanner. Scan the barcode of almost any packaged food and it’ll automatically calculate the Points values for you.

• Takea pic. Don’t have time to track? Take a picture of your meal and track it later. It’ll help you remember exactly what you ate.

• Pre-track your meal. Planning ahead will help you know how many Points you have to spend and what you want to spend them on.

You've got this!

1. Burke LA et al. Self-monitoring in weight loss: a systematic review of the literature. J Amer Diet Assoc. 2011;111(1): 92-102.