If you know that food calls your name when you’re emotionally upset and you turn to food for comfort, it’s time to put on the brakes and start strategies to stop emotional eating. I want you to take these three steps over the next three to four weeks.

1. Recognize emotional eating for what it is. Pay attention to your emotions all this coming week and notice every time you eat if you’re truly hungry or if you’re reacting to something and eating because of the emotions.

2. Decide what actions you can take to help you deal with the emotions besides turning to food. Seek professional counseling if you feel it’s needed or confide in friends or family members and come up with some strategies to begin to deal with the situation instead of the situation driving you to emotionally eat.

3. Start one new healthy eating strategy. Here are two to choose from:

1. If you don’t eat breakfast, start. Research shows that people who eat breakfast eat less during the day so it’s easier to control your food intake when your emotions feel out of control.

2. Eat more frequently. If you are an emotional eater and go more than four hours without food, you already know that it’s easy to eat and eat a lot. When you eat more frequently, you have less low blood sugar moments and feel less compelled to eat in response to your emotions. If it’s hard to find time to eat, make sure you have healthy snacks at work, in your gym bag, briefcase or home office. Otherwise it’s too easy to reach for junk….it’s always available somewhere right? What should a health snack be? A lean protein and high fiber carbohydrate combination.