How to stop stress eating ...

You need to get exercise to balance the stress.

You need to stock up on extremely low calorie food that you can stress eat between meals.

An alternative would be to smoke cigarettes for the period. Just saying.

Keep glasses of water handy. Drink water between shoving your piehole with crap. The fluids will help in any event.

Get a prescription for ADHD drugs - decreases the appetite and also increases your productivity for the high task load.

I'm the opposite. I lose my appetite when I'm under stress. Thank God.

I envy you r2!!

Tell me your secret.

Try a bowl of salted ice cubes or a mug of boiling water with a chicken bone.

I am a stress eater as well. When I am under great stress - exercise stops as well as I would rather have the sleep after working 16-18 hours. When I am less stressed and have time to think about what goes in my mouth I lay out my "snacks" for the day on the counter (I work from home) - that way if stress does strike, the snacks are out and ready. I put out a sliced apple, an 1/8 cup of peanuts with 6-8 chocolate chips and a small cup of cherry tomatoes. I know 3-4 is my hour of trouble so I save the peanuts and chocolate for then. The other things are there if I need them - I just walk thru the kitchen and grab a couple of slices of apple or tomatoes. I vow this strategy for when the heavier periods of stress are upon me but alas, I am not always successful. Good luck OP

I've found drinking coffee throughout the day suppresses my appetite. I have strange eating habits though to begin with though, and I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that I loathe cooking; there are days where I will not eat anything all day, and then that night I'll eat half a bag of chips and a banana for dinner. It's completely unhealthy (and un-nutritious). Stress will sometimes exacerbate this for me, and I'll end up eating a bunch of snack foods in place of legitimate meals.

If you have a sweet tooth, try watermelon chunks, pineapple or grapes. If you like salty crunchy, try nacho chips. This works for me, but I also have a cheat day where I usually go berserk.

Per what R7 said, frozen bananas is another really good snack that is relatively healthy. They have a texture similar to ice cream.

Visit your local gloryhole. You get to eat AND you only swallow relatively few calories.

Try cutting your head off.

Hypnosis can help you with this, OP. Not self-hypnosis. That will come later. But, for now, find a therapist who uses hypnosis to get started. You can tame those stress induced triggers with hypnosis.

Get rid of the stress.

There’s help OP.

Keep eating, but only have crudités, protein, no carbs/sugar, and pace yourself. It takes an awful lot of celery or cauliflower to take in too many calories. Fibre fills you up, and it takes longer to digest. Hummus, and other bean dips are satisfying and filling too. I also like to snack on beef jerky, lean salami sticks, herring, mackerel fillets, those don't appeal to everyone, but better in the long run than chips, bread, or sweets. If you feel hunger pangs, or an acid stomach, take Zantac or Tagamet. Alka-Seltzer helps some too, until your body becomes accustomed to less food and more infrequent snacking. Tea and coffee certainly helps to curb hunger as well.

Keeping junk food out the house is definitely a good first step, and it will help cull some calorie binging. But, ultimately, just that may not help if getting to junk food is easy (e.g. a trip to a nearby grocer, or late night drive-thru). I used to have this same problem, and still do to a certain extent. Part of what you need to do is, during a period of less stress, really make an effort to change your diet and abrogate all problem foods. And the problem is, at least for me, it took a good length of time to really wean myself off of junk food as a diet staple (I do still eat my fair share of it). Nowadays, I will still find myself in the Taco Bell driver-thru late at night or perusing the candy aisle and ice cream aisles at the grocer, but I'm not buying nearly the amounts I used to, and what I do buy, I no longer really enjoy with the same fervor, so there isn't an issue with me falling into the trap of going back the next day, or continuing the bad eating much past that evening. There's a certain point where I actually start to crave good, nutritious (read non-fast) food. Really, you have to just get yourself off the junk food in order for your body and mind to recognize it as crap. I used to love going through a fast-food drive-thru and ordering a family size portion of stuff off the dollar menu. And what was worse, is that it tasted good to me. Now, I may still go through the drive-thru, but I don't order nearly as much, and frankly, the food tastes so bad to me that one trip is enough to satisfy me for weeks until my next binge.

R14 celery, cucumber, hummus and bean dip all contain carbs.

Eating them is not "low carb". Carbs are: sugars, starches, and fibres.

You are trying to recommend: "do not eat sugary foods". To which one might add: "Do not eat starchy food" because starches do get broken down into glucose.

In fact a mix of fat, protein and complex carbs could be fine for stacking - but in limited amounts to limit calories.

I would say to make sure to eat breakfast. Have snacks on hand (yogurt, popcorn, hard boiled eggs, dark chocolate). Eat several small meals throughout the day.

You need to work on your trigger response (eating unhealthy food is the response when you get triggered by stress). That takes a shit ton of discipline and Tupperware (to bring healthy snacks to your workplace from home), because you will still be near vendors who sell unhealthy food. Lower the consumption of unhealthy food by using it as reward only. You ate all your healthy snacks for today? Get a little reward. You had a successful day at work? Have a reward. You didn't call your friend Julie a cunt? Have a reward. Sticking to your new habits will raise your self-confidence. Don't try to get too confident and think you can change more things in your life too soon or all at once, because you will get overwhelmed and the stress will drive you back to your old, unhealthy habits.

Explore which healthy snacks you like best. Don't despair when you don't find a lot of choices right away. Start small and get creative.

Thanks r18.

It's easier to keep junk food out of my apartment. I never buy junk food when I shop.

But I do all my work at my office (can't work at home for a variety of reasons) and I am surrounded by vending machines and restaurants (fast food, basically).

This is especially a problem when I work late -- past dinner -- and I don't want healthy food, I want de-stress food.

I can usually manage to eat healthy during the day, but when evening rolls around, all bets are off. Even if I'm not particularly hungry, I want unhealthy food for the comfort factor.

Try HIIT or other shorter interval/tabata workouts for quick endorphin sweat sessions. Stock up on crunchy vegetables

Like R1 said, when you get a craving always start with drinking at least a big glass of water, and also something low calorie and high in fiber (apples are ideal and it's easy to keep one or two on you when you go to work, carrots are good too because it takes time to eat them). It won't be easy at the beginning and you'll have to force yourself to do it, but this way you'll feel a bit full before going to eat and won't get as much junk food.

OP, Have you tried increasing your levels of Vitamin B Complex? Stress depletes it. I'd also add Magnesium and other related vitamins, as well as nutrient dense foods like beans and legumes.

Curry, garlic, cinnamon and other spices have also been proven to reduce cravings.Start your mornings with oatmeal and cinnamon to reduce your desire for excess sugar.

[quote]carrots are good too because it takes time to eat them

If you choose "baby" carrots, though, DO NOT break them in half with your teeth first, or your co-workers will plot to kill you.

R1 is right. I’d suggest sugar-free jello.

Much of healthy eating is made of habit and (as someone mentioned above) adjusting your body to better fare. Make a plan of action for when the craving hits and enforce it until it becomes automatic. Don't be too strict or cut carbs completely if your body isn't used to it - just strive for a balance and strictly limit the bad carbs. Don't punish yourself if you lapse. Just get back to a good diet straight away. Don't adhere too rigidly to someone else's dietary advice as it may not suit you.

OP. Big props for reaching out, typing fat. You're trying to do two hard things at the same time—three months of intense work stress + change your stress related overeating.

The big drink of water before eating is a great idea.

Here's what helped me during work stress: go into the stairwell at work, walk up a flight of stairs, slowly, and come back down. Used it as a kind of meditation, left right left right. Following week, added a half flight of stairs.

It forced me to take a nonfood time out, and to take deep breaths (hauling all my weight up a flight of stairs). Made myself go s l o w l y. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But I kept it up.

r26 thanks.

I work in a twenty-hour story building and have plenty of stairs I can cover.