6 Realistic Tips on How To Stop Boredom Eating
Is boredom eating a struggle for you?
When you find yourself bored, is the first thing you gravitate towards food? Even when you're not hungry?
Honestly, we all have probably eaten when we've been bored, despite being hungry or not, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you find that your boredom eating habits are interfering with your health, physically or mentally, then this article is for you.
As a non-diet dietitian who helps women uncomplicate their health and nutrition habits to find what will work for them, I want to provide you with a bit of insight when it comes to your boredom eating and how you can identify your patterns and stop boredom eating. In this blog post, I will be breaking down what boredom eating is, why it happens, when it becomes a problem for most people, and real-life tips to help you get out of your boredom eating habits.
What Is Boredom Eating?
Believe it or not, boredom eating is a type of emotional eating.
Just like when you feel anxious, stressed, or upset, gravitating towards food like ice cream or takeout is normal and may help to soothe you and your emotions a bit.
Being bored is an emotion, meaning you're doing something that isn't bringing you satisfaction, leading you to feel uninterested.
So, the problem isn’t that you’re eating when you feel bored; rather, the real issue is that you don’t know what brings you satisfaction other than food.
Is Boredom Eating Bad For Your Health?
Not necessarily!
Eating out of your emotions isn’t a bad thing, but just like with anything, it depends if you use food every single time you experience boredom or any other emotion. Sure, when you’re upset and want some ice cream, there’s nothing wrong with that, except you need to understand that the ice cream isn’t going to fix the emotion you’re experiencing.
And let’s not forget that emotions aren’t always negative. There are positive emotions we experience as people as well, like celebrating a birthday or anniversary. And most often, there is food involved.
I’m not here to take away food when you experience either positive or negative emotions. Rather, let’s look at food as one coping mechanism and add more coping mechanisms you can use as well.
When your boredom eating may begin to sabotage your health, physically and/or mentally, it is when the frequency and urgency rise and leave you not feeling your very best most of the time.
When Bored Eating May Become A Problem
Boredom or emotional eating is bound to happen, but when it begins to interrupt your physical and mental health, it may be time to consider new alternatives.
More than likely, you’re reaching for foods like ice cream, cheesy pasta dishes, chips, or fast food when you’re bored, rather than, let’s say, carrots or an apple. There’s nothing wrong with choosing those particular foods, but when you start to feel out of control around them, you may find your habits compromising your health.
Examples of how boredom eating may be sabotaging your health:
Eating too much for your body (past your comfortable fullness)
Lack of interoceptive awareness (sensations within your body)
Emotional dysregulation
Lack of sustainable energy
Feelings of guilt and shame
Food brain (constantly thinking about food)
Remember, frequency, urgency, and how you feel afterwards, matter! The questions below can help to identify whether or not your boredom eating is affecting you and your health.
How often are you emotionally eating?
Frequency matters. Again, emotional eating happens and is totally normal, but if you’re emotionally eating most days of the week, it may be time to make adjustments.
Who is in control?
Are you in control, or is the food controlling you? There’s a difference between knowing food is an option and thinking food is your only option.
How is emotionally eating affecting you?
Sometimes, food will do just the trick in helping you feel a bit better, but if your emotional eating episode leaves you feeling yucky, physically and mentally, then it may be time to make adjustments.
But WHY Food?
You may be wondering why food is the object you’re drawn to when you’re bored or when emotions arise.
All food increases a dopamine response, your feel good hormone. Our brain’s preferred source of energy is carbohydrates, which in the body will turn into glucose (aka sugar). Our brain craves energy to keep you thriving, especially hyperpalatable foods like chips, cake, cookies, ice cream, etc. These foods provide you with quick energy and acts as a mood-booster.
Naturally, as humans, we don’t like to feel uncomfortable, so when you’re unsatisfied (bored), food can offer that feeling of pleasure you’re seeking.
So, it makes perfect sense as to when you’re feeling bored or upset, those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are so enticing and you just can’t seem to stop going back for more.
Real-Life Tips to Stop Boredom Eating
Here are six realistic tips you can start applying to your daily routine today to put an end to your boredom eating habits and realign your body with healthy behaviors, leaving you feeling good!
Eat Enough with Balance:
If you find yourself consistently inside your kitchen pantry when you’re feeling bored, it may simply be because you’ve not eaten enough and/or included a balance of nutrients prior to.
You may be thinking there is no way that you aren’t eating enough, but trust me, most of the women I work with truly aren’t. Remember, we live in a diet-culture-obsessed world where our perceptions of food and bodies are skewed. Not eating enough could look like you only having a cup of coffee or a granola bar for breakfast, skimping on carbs at lunch, or eating too few calories overall.
When you’re not fueling your body with adequate and balanced meals and/or snacks, it can be difficult to determine if your “boredom eating” habit is an act of being bored or if you’re truly hungry.
Working with a dietitian can help you discover what enough food is for you and your body, but a good starting point is three meals a day with a combination of macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber. Most people (including myself) will need snacks in between meals as well!
Identify Trends/Patterns
Do you notice a pattern in your boredom eating habit? This is such an important tip for you to take note of and discover points in time during your life that may be driving your desire towards food when emotions arise.
This can go hand-in-hand with the first tip. If you notice yourself reaching for food in the evening, but you recall from lunch that the salad you ordered didn’t have enough carbohydrates, then this can help you build a strategy for next time. This also helps to relieve any pressure or guilt by knowing that it’s not a lack of willpower or that your body is wrong; it’s that you didn’t provide your body with the necessary nutrients it needed, and now it’s asking for more.
Patterns can be on a day-to-day basis or even over a few days. Maybe you noticed your stress level rising one day; the next day you were overwhelmed with a busy work schedule and navigating the kids after school; and that next afternoon, when the house was finally quiet, you caught yourself in the kitchen pantry, elbow deep in the cookie jar.
Looking at your patterns of highly vulnerable times can help you bring awareness to the boredom eating action so that you can create space to shift the behavior. Maybe you’ll discover when looking at your patterns that
On Wednesdays, when your partner is gone
Watching TV after a long day of work
Avoiding your long list of chores
After a busy day without taking 5 minutes for yourself
Is when you are typically engaging in your boredom eating. Now, after knowing this, you can apply the following tips:.
Pausing and Evaluating
After identifying your patterns, take a pause before reaching for food. During this pause, ask yourself a series of questions, like:
Am I physically hungry?
Am I mentally hungry?
How do I feel?
How hungry am I? Do I need to add more food for substantiality?
If I’m not hungry, is there something else I can do to fill this desire to eat?
You may find that you’re not hungry, and this gives you the opportunity to step away and do something that you may find more enjoyable.
Or you may be hungry, and that’s totally okay, too. Go eat something!
Create A Self-Care ToolBox
To break away from boredom eating, you’re going to need to build out other coping skills other than food! I always tell my clients that we’re not taking away food as a coping mechanism; rather, we’re keeping it as one and adding more! So, when you find yourself feeling bored and not really hungry, you have ideas on what you can do instead.
Grab a sheet of paper or the notes on your phone and create a list of easy activities or tasks you enjoy to help break away from boredom eating. Here are a few ideas:
Going for a walk or working out
Reading a book
Listening to a podcast
Calling a friend or family member
Gardening or mowing the yard
Cleaning and/or organizing
Baking
Plan a trip
Mindfulness
Two things I want you to practice when it comes to being mindful are:
Notice any sensations rising within your body when you experience emotions. It could be that your chest feels tight or your hands are sweaty. This allows you to build up your interoceptive awareness, become aware of what is happening, physically and mentally within your body, and provides you with the space to make a decision (you are being put in control rather than the food.)
You’re allowed to eat when you feel bored or with any emotion. If you make the decision to eat, mindfulness is KEY. There’s a difference between eating ice cream out of the container in front of the freezer door versus putting the ice cream in a bowl, sitting on the couch with a warm blanket, and noticing how the ice cream actually tastes.
Kindness, Grace, and Patience
If I could shout this from the rooftops, I would. When it comes to boredom eating or learning how to make healthful shifts in your nutrition, give yourself kindness, grace, and patience!
So often, as people, we are quick to bully ourselves. Maybe there was a day where your nutrition wasn’t the best. Maybe you’re having a bad body image day. Maybe you criticize yourself, saying you shouldn’t have eaten that or that you should have worked out more. For many reasons, we are taught to believe that the harder we are on ourselves, the more productive we can be. But honestly, being harsh on yourself doesn’t move as far as you might think.
It may sound cliche, but talk to yourself as you would to someone you love. It may be a friend, your mom, a partner, or your dog. The idea is for you to give yourself the space to learn without judgment or harsh criticism. You wouldn’t expect someone to run a marathon in a day without training beforehand. So, don’t expect yourself to automatically change your behaviors without a few bumps along the way.
Leaving You With This
It’s not wrong to eat out of boredom or your emotions, but if you’re finding that it’s interfering with your physical and mental health, then you can work towards shifting your behaviors. Remember, you’re not taking away food; rather, you’re keeping food as one coping mechanism and adding more to your toolbox so that you have options.
If you’re needing more support in establishing healthy habits for yourself while establishing a positive relationship with food, click here to work with me! Together, we can overcome your boredom eating habits, chronic overeating, and dieting mindset, all while I support you in understanding nutrition in a way that helps you get to feeling good in your own body.