You can respond more intentionally when you understand what is actually driving the urge to eat.

Learn to recognize the different experiences that can lead to eating and identify personal patterns involving physical hunger, cravings, emotions, habits, environment, stress, boredom, loneliness, rewards, and social situations.

• Differentiate physical hunger from cravings, habits, and emotional triggers.
• Identify common personal eating triggers.
• Recognize environmental and social influences.
• Understand what emotional eating may be attempting to accomplish.
• Create alternative responses to recurring triggers.

If food helped you cope, lasting change requires additional ways to care for yourself.

Expand your coping toolbox so difficult emotions and life experiences do not automatically lead back to old eating patterns or other harmful behaviors.

• Recognize emotional states that commonly trigger old coping patterns.
• Develop multiple healthy coping options.
• Practice emotional regulation and stress-management skills.
• Strengthen relationships and willingness to seek support.
• Recognize when professional behavioral-health care is needed.