When emotional eaters go on a diet, all we do is turn our food-obsessed thoughts into diet-obsessed thoughts. It may be effective at first, but we will inevitably slip up and blow the diet. Then we feel like failures for doing so, and experience guilt and shame, which sends us immediately back into food-obsessed mode. We think we can’t do it, and those self-defeating thoughts lead to self-defeating behaviors. Again, the best alternative for emotional eaters is to first deal with the problems which are causing us to overeat, the issues we’re “stuffing” with food. Then we can work on actually losing the weight.
Learn to eat in moderation.
After you’ve learned to deal with your root issues, you can begin to change your eating habits and attitude towards food. Don’t deprive yourself of your traditional “comfort foods” because this can be emotionally difficult. Instead, divide them into appropriate portion sizes – eat your chips from a sandwich baggie instead of straight from the bag they came in; that way, you’re only getting one portion rather than eating enough for five people.