Complete Guide to Emotional Eating After Weight Loss Surgery

If you don't address the root cause of your overeating (especially emotional eating) you'll keep on overeating. If you stop, or gain control for awhile, it will come back. True story. Emotional eating is a powerful force that can become a deeply ingrained, almost automatic response to certain feelings. The idea of taking control of emotional eating sounds good, but I frequently hear from women trying to wrap their minds around the reality of looking their emotions squarely in the eye.

"It won't help. What's the point?"

"Why should I be angry, that's just unpleasant and it feels awful."

"He's not going to change so why get upset about it."

"There's nothing I can do about it so I just eat. How do I stop?"

We've come full circle.

Breaking free of emotional eating (and most overeating) means honoring the reality that you have feelings and learning how to approach them in ways that help you feel authentic and cared for and responded to-even if sometimes you are the one doing the responding.

The beliefs that you can simply decide not to feel the way you feel or that you can make your feelings go away simply by not thinking about them are myths. While there are some exceptions, feelings shift, transform, and evolve when you respect them, acknowledge them, and address them in a purposeful way.

"Eating your feelings" may temporarily soothe, numb, or distract you, but in the big picture, it doesn't address the real problem, won't make you feel better, and the emotions or the situation that triggered them will still be real.

How do you start facing your feelings if you are used to burying them with food?

Remind yourself that feeling and doing are two different things.

Even in the most powerless situations, it's important to acknowledge and respect your own reality. When I acknowledge that I'm scared or nervous or feeling hurt or angry or misunderstood, I can start looking for ways to take care of, soothe, or respond to myself in some kind of helpful way-even if I can't change the actual situation. When I have the flu, I can't fix it, but if I acknowledge that I don't feel good and do nice things for myself, I feel better. It's the same with feelings. If I drown my feelings in ice cream, my fear or helplessness isn't really being addressed. It's just covered up and not really tended to at all.

In a related vein, know that expressing yourself and creating change are both important.

Just because you can't have one, doesn't mean you should deny yourself the other. Yes, some people and situations are difficult and they aren't going to ever be what you want them to be. That's no reason to deny how you feel. And sometimes, simply expressing that feeling is important, validating, or empowering-even if the other person doesn't hear you. Yes, sometimes it's not prudent or helpful to share your feelings, but it's always a helpful option to consider.

You don't need an audience to express yourself.

Maybe you aren't ready. It might feel too scary, or you've got so many pent up feelings that when you start to speak it turns into a gloppy emotional scene that you aren't comfortable with. If you aren't used to respecting your emotions, it's pretty common to feel self-conscious when you are in the middle of them. That's okay. Give yourself permission to be where you are with your feelings. Practice being your own audience. Express yourself to you. Write, talk, and think to yourself about your feelings. And remind yourself, "This is hard for me."

And be proud of yourself.

Related: The Real Way to Break Free from Overeating

Have you checked out a newsstand recently? You won't be surprised that there are dozens and dozens of tips, plans, and miracle programs being promoted just this month to help you slim down, lose a pant size, make your butt smaller and lose your midlife muffin top.

More and more women-many of you-are struggling with the scale than ever before, and it's not just concerns about appearance that motivate you. Many of you have concerns about heart disease, diabetes, and losing your energy and vitality. You want to feel good about yourself-you want to feel like yourself again and you'd love to take all the energy that gets spent on struggles with food and your body and put it somewhere more productive and fun.

Concerns like this can lead a woman to pursue all sorts of craziness. I won't ask you about the weirdest plan for weight loss you've ever pursued. Just about all of us have stories that make us roll our own eyes.

The truth is that most of you have read, tried, witnessed, and researched more approaches to slimming down or ending overeating than you ever, EVER wanted to. And you are well aware that you still don't have the answers that you need. Because even if you feel one hundred percent certain that you know what you need to do, if you haven't been able to make it happen, something is missing.

Food plans, calorie counting tools, and fat burning tricks don't do you any good if you can't or won't stick with them.

Women do break free of overeating and emotional eating, they do achieve a size they love and maintain it, and they find out how to make food a much smaller part of their lives. There isn't one way that works for everyone, but there is one thing that all the successful women I know have in common. This includes women who've battled obesity and eating disorders, women who've had weight loss surgery and women who've dieted their entire lives.

The real way to break free of overeating must start with understanding why you're doing it.

Until you're clear on what's behind your constant hunger and what triggers you to reach for more than your body really needs, you won't be able to effectively address the biggest source of your struggle. Here's the other-brilliant-side of the story. Once you discover how to tune in to what your appetite and cravings are really about, you're empowered to take care of those needs in ways that are going to take you places that the bag of chips never will.

It's really not an exaggeration to say that creating peace with food changes lives.

Where ever you are in your journey with food and eating, if it's not a happy, successful place, I challenge you to try this. For a few hours, stop thinking about what to eat and allow yourself to focus on why you eat. What's the pull that eating has for you? What gets you craving the snack you don't need and what makes it hard to stay on track? Stop and write down everything you know about what your overeating is about. This simple exercise can be an eye-opening starting point and a great way to identify your next best step in breaking free.

Related: Emotional Eating Solutions: 3 Tips for High-achievers Who Overeat

Many smart women struggle with their weight and many busy, successful professional women resort to food to cope with the stress, uncertainty, and other emotions that occur in a full, high-pressure life.

Unfortunately, for many, these battles with food become vicious cycles that look something like this:

"Fresh starts" and plans that don't work or don't last, followed by feelings of defeat and inadequacy, followed by overeating and a period of trying to generate motivation (again), followed by another "fresh start."

This vicious cycle leaves women feeling bad about themselves and ineffective. It also often leads to weight gain instead of weight loss.

If you are a high-achiever-a woman who is successful in many areas of her life who finds herself stuck in this cycle-there is a way out.

Here are three tips to start breaking the yo-yo diet emotional eating cycle:

• Let go of the belief that you are alone and the only one struggling like this. If you are caught in this cycle with food and overeating, you're in some great company. One of the most self-defeating actions you can take is to continue to struggle alone, heaping on self-blame and even shame. Find someone to talk to. Open your eyes to the possibility of support. Ask other women what they do when they struggle. Consider investing in yourself the same way you invest in your career and your family and your home and pursuing emotional eating solutions that can help you. 
• Take control of perfectionism. You're human and you'll never be perfect. Perfectionism or all-or-nothing thinking is common among women who expect a lot of themselves. It can get you stuck in a pattern where making a poor choice is interpreted as "blowing it." Women trying to lose weight fall for this all the time. Instead of continuing forward and allowing the next choice to be a better one, the tendency is to cash in all your chips and start down a road of overeating because you're upset with yourself and you "failed." Plan for imperfection. Train your mind to notice your progress and not just your missteps.  
• Stop relying on willpower. This is a biggie. You are a high-achiever. You probably have a lot of willpower and stick-to-it-ness in other areas of your life. You may be lost in a mindset of beating yourself up over this cycle you are stuck in. If so, you probably tell yourself things like:

• "What's wrong with me that I can't get a grip on this?"
• "This should be easy."
• "I'm just not trying hard enough."
• "This is an embarrassment and I need to stop being lazy and just take a tough line with myself."

If you are still feeling stuck, read my first two tips again. The truth is that you're stuck because your method isn't effective. You're missing something. Start with compassion for yourself for how big and deep and exhausting this struggle is. Try holding yourself in the same positive mental light that you'd hold a dear friend.

Take a deep breath and allow yourself to treat this issue as a legitimate problem. Allow yourself to respect that you are in a tough spot. Instead of blaming yourself, give yourself permission to take the situation seriously.

Now ask yourself what you need that you don't have that could help. You may be tempted to choose some kind of judgment ("I'm lazy"), but instead, focus on identifying the outside resource or concept that could help ("I'm overloaded and I'm at a loss about how to feel better without overeating. I need some new tools.").

I find that high-achievers who are stuck in this overeating cycle hesitate (or don't even think to) ask for:

• Help with finding motivation
• Help with creating time for themselves
• Help with accountability
• Help developing new skills and strategies
• Help with getting to the root of what's triggering their overeating
• Help. Period.

Approaching the problem with respect and allowing yourself the resources you need to be effective can make a world of difference.

Are you stuck? Are you tired of spinning your wheels and feeling like you are wasting your energy? What small change could you start making today? Leave a comment and share your thoughts

Related: What to do Instead of Overeating When You're Tired and You Want a Treat

If you are an emotional eater or someone prone to overeating, you know well that it's one thing to decide to change your eating habits-to cut back your portions, stop snacking in the evening, or to stop turning to food at the end of a long day. It's another thing entirely to act on your intentions and not overeat when you find yourself in the situation where that's all you want to do.

Many women find themselves using food as a treat, or resorting to stress eating or comfort eating at the end of a long difficult day. In fact, for most people, this is the time when good intentions unravel.

Why? Well, you're tired, your defenses are pretty low, and you likely don't have a lot of energy or creativity to conjure up an alternative to that big bowl of popcorn or ice cream or the leftovers that are calling to you from the refrigerator.

Relying on willpower alone is a recipe for self-sabotage and frustration. Plus, it's not very fun. If evening is a tough time for you food-wise, I recommend you take some time NOW to sketch out a list of things you can do instead of eating.

Here's an important tip: this list should not be a to-do list of projects you've been neglecting in disguise. If you're turning to food for comfort or to help you relax, the alternatives you come up with should have a similar effect and they should take into account your low energy level (i.e. your exhaustion).

Make a list now and start trying out these new strategies. Expect to tweak and revise it as you learn what works and what doesn't.

Here are some ideas of what to do instead of overeating in the evenings to get you started:

• Take a bath
• Soak your feet (really-this feels great)
• Blow bubbles
• Brew a cup of tea
• Listen to music
• Watch a movie
• Sit outside (or if it's cold, by a fire)
• If you have a cat who will let you, pet him/her and be one with the purr
• Curl up with a good book
• Update your Netflix list or put some new books on hold at the library
• Buy yourself some new music for your mp3 player
• Call a friend
• Play Scrabble or chess or even solitaire online. Better yet, get your family to play a game-live and in person
• Catch up on magazines
• Do a crossword puzzle
• Work on your birthday wish list (no matter how far away your birthday is)
• Listen to a relaxation CD

I'd love to hear what you've found as an alternative to eating when you are tired and want to overeat.

Related: Emotional Eating and Overeating: Five Triggers to Avoid

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it's important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point-Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.

Here are five common overeating triggers that you can take control of by taking some smart, active action before they sabotage your weight loss efforts.

1. Getting too hungry

Do you stick to your plan through breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples' hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it's not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.

The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don't arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in protein can make all the difference.

2. Evening eating

Evening (and late night) is a strong overeating trigger time for many busy women. If you are working hard all day long, it's easy to come to see the quiet of evening as your reward. And if you are too tired and depleted to really enjoy it, food and emotional eating can become a big part of the evening ritual. "I eat in the evening because I want to treat myself." "It's my me-time." "It's the only time of the day where no one expects anything of me." Women also overeat in the evening because they are tired (but don't want to go to bed because this is the only alone time they have).

Breaking free of the evening overeating triggers can be challenging, but it's essential. Start by creating a policy for yourself about eating after dinner. Be realistic but be firm. Now, identify the bedtime you need to honor so that you are getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep a night. This alone can make a huge difference in your overeating. Trust me. Create a new wind-down ritual that includes some nice things for you but that doesn't include food. Finally, start carving out some me-time (even ten minutes) on the front-end of your day. You might need to get up earlier, but you'll be focusing on you when you have the energy to do it.

3. Snacking on treats at work

Are you overeating or grazing at work on the sugary treats that your coworkers leave all over the office or the break room? Make it easy on yourself by making one decision instead of hundreds. Set a policy with yourself about your eating at work. Make sure it's a policy you can stick with. Sometimes something as simple as "I'll only eat homemade food that is truly a treat that I can't easily have any time" will do the trick. Spend a bit of time strategizing how you will avoid temptation and how you will reward yourself for doing so. And don't forget to enlist support. If you are putting on pounds at the office, I guarantee that you aren't the only one being haunted by the food.

4. Stress eating and overeating

Emotional eating-using food to cope with feelings-is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain. Smart women take this one seriously! Take the time to check in with yourself before you eat. Try to identify how you are feeling. Become aware of patterns. Are you a stress eater? Comfort eater? Boredom eater? The key to taking control of emotional eating is to create better strategies-ones that really address the emotions you are having. Start creating ways of addressing your feelings that you can use INSTEAD of turning to food.

5. Too much on your plate

When you are too busy, stressed, and overloaded, overeating can seem like an easy way to sneak in a reward, some comfort, or a much-needed energy boost. The problem is that any benefits tend to be short-lived and the costs and negative consequences aren't. If you want to take control of your weight, your eating, and your relationship with food, you MUST take control of your life. Learn to say no, cut back your schedule, carve out time that's just for you and start practicing the art of asking for help.

The best part of addressing overeating triggers is that when you take charge of what drives your overeating and emotional eating, you are almost always fixing a problem that's bigger than food. When you get to the root cause of your overeating and address it head on, the triggers often lose their power. When you find strategies for dealing with stress, overeating, and overload, you are also creating strategies for living a better life.

Related: Five Things You Can Do to Control Your Cravings, Eat Less, and Thrive More

Are you fed up with struggling with overeating, starting another d-i-e-t that you know will probably blow up on you, or wishing your pants were not so tight?

Here are five simple things you can set up today to control your cravings, eat less, and thrive more.

1. Sleep. Don't keep working harder and harder. Play it smart. Women who average five hours or less of sleep per night weigh more, gain weight more easily, and crave more carbohydrates and fattening foods-and it's not in their heads! Sleep deprivation leads to chemical changes in your body that cause overeating and weight gain (even if you don't overeat). Aim for at least seven and a half hours of sleep per night. Not only will you be less hungry, your productivity, focus, and creativity will probably improve. You may even find yourself accomplishing more than when you were burning the midnight oil.

Additional bonus: you're likely to feel a whole lot better.

2. Pay attention to your feelings. Emotional eating-eating as a response to feelings-is a major cause of overeating and packing on the pounds. Stress eating, comfort eating, eating out of frustration and even eating out of boredom or happiness can all sabotage your weight loss plans. Develop strategies to check in with yourself and with how you are feeling so that you can respond to your emotions in ways that don't involve food.

Added bonus: when you address your feelings instead of feeding them, you will be taking charge of your life and responding to what you really need. When you do this, life gets better.

3. Carve out time for you. Stress and overload can be a direct path to weight gain. If you're feeling time crunched, you're likely to make the all-too-common mistake of cutting out the activities that are actually the best for you. Me-time helps you relax and unwind. It also gives you an opportunity to pay attention to yourself and what you need to function and flourish. When you meet your needs and care for yourself in quality ways, you are less likely to find yourself using food as a "special treat" or a "band aid" to help you get through the day. Practice giving yourself a five or ten minute time out a few times a day.

The bonus: these short breaks help you get perspective on your day. You're likely to feel more organized and relaxed as a result.

4. Feed yourself quality food at regular intervals. If you are trying to eat less, it can be tempting to cut back too far and allow yourself to get too hungry. Big mistake. While depriving yourself with strict diets may initially seem to create results on the scale, in the long run, eating too little leads to stronger cravings (usually for foods that will spike your blood sugar levels quickly), overeating, and binge eating. Do you find that your healthy eating plan always gets blown in the afternoon or evening? Try eating smaller, more frequent meals during the day and make sure that you are including some protein each time you eat.

Bonus: when you feed yourself well, both your energy levels and your mood are likely to improve.

5. Savor. You might be surprised to find how little of what you eat you actually allow yourself to savor and enjoy. Eating on the run and multitasking while you eat mean that your attention is divided between food and your hunger and whatever else you are doing. When you eat without giving it your full attention, you are likely to eat more and not feel as full. Impose a ban on multitasking when you eat. Take your time and practice eating mindfully-paying complete attention to your food-the taste, smell, even the texture. Notice how full or hungry you are and allow yourself to enjoy the act of eating.

Bonus: savoring is a pleasant activity and it tends to be relaxing. Practicing enjoying your food in this way and getting in the habit of doing one thing at a time is a great strategy for reducing stress. If you apply the concept of not multitasking to other areas of your life, you're also likely to see an improvement of the quality of your results.

Related: Emotional Eating Help: Indulge is NOT a Four Letter Word

If you are like most busy women with too much on their plates, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to practice indulging-really indulging. Interestingly, most women who really need to indulge more will tell you that they believe they ought to be indulging less.

What's this about?

Let's get really clear about what indulging is.

From my perspective, to indulge means to allow yourself to experience something really wonderful. Indulging comes from a place of compassion and kindness and respect. It's a gift, freely given.

Indulging means to allow yourself to enjoy fully.

It means to thoroughly experience something and soak up and savor the experience. An indulgence is not a candy bar from the vending machine that you shove into your mouth while driving to your next appointment. It's your favorite food on a beautiful plate in a setting where you can truly savor it.

Indulging isn't just about food, but it's something that feeds our senses in a wonderful way. You might indulge in a bubble bath or a foot massage or a solitary walk in the woods. Your indulgence might be your favorite CD played in your car or fresh flowers on your desk or a glass of red wine enjoyed on your deck.

Indulging is a full-body-use-all-your-senses experience.

It fills you up, brings you joy, refuels you and adds color to your life. Indulging feeds your soul and is a necessary ingredient for thriving. Your inner champion, or what you may think of as your "best self" absolutely purrs when she is indulged.

So why does indulging have such a bad rap? Why do so many women think that indulging is selfish or nonproductive or just plain wrong?

I'd like to bust some myths about indulging, and while I'm at it, let me remind you that many bad habits such as overeating, procrastination, and spending too much time online or "not doing" what you really need to do, happen because you aren't indulging enough.

When your spirit and soul aren't being fed, you will grasp at straws (or potato chips or chocolate chip cookies) to try to make up for it. When you don't allow yourself to truly indulge, you will find yourself reaching for poor substitutes that might help you feel better temporarily, but that don't make anything better in the big picture.

Here are some more truths about indulging:

1.\t Indulging is not about greed or sloth. Indulging isn't about excess. It's about allowing yourself something wonderful or special and allowing yourself to really experience and savor it-without guilt or shame. It's not eating the whole box of cookies or bingeing on clothes at the mall. It's about allowing yourself just the right amount of what you really crave and fully enjoying the experience. Indulging is not about gulping, it's a melts-in-your-mouth experience.

2.\t Indulging is not laziness. Indulging is a way of feeding an important part of yourself and adding dimension to your life. Some women worry that if they start to indulge they'll "lose control." The truth is, when you really allow yourself to indulge, you tend to be more satisfied with less.

3.\t Indulging does not have to be earned or "deserved." Some women believe that they haven't "worked hard enough" or "accomplished enough" to indulge. When you don't allow yourself this kind of self-care, it's easy to become caught in a cycle of working harder and harder and feeling more and more behind and burnt out. Again, indulging yourself is a way of refueling. It actually enhances your productivity.

4.\t Indulging does not decrease your productivity or make you fat. I've already addressed this, but this is such a common myth, it's important to restate. Allowing yourself truly indulgent experiences, ones where you are completely present and savoring the moment, satisfies you. Real indulgences don't leave you hungry and craving more-they rejuvenate you and fuel you to be your best. What does leave you primed for a binge of food or laziness is the feeling that your special treat is forbidden or undeserved. The message that you are never going to be allowed to rest or feel like "enough" or eat chocolate again will almost certainly create a craving for the forbidden that can be almost impossible to resist.

My challenge to you:

Start indulging. Make a list of things that you experience as special treats. Keep it somewhere where you can add to it as new ideas occur to you. Begin scheduling these into your life on a regular basis and enjoy.

Related: Is Your Eating Maladaptive?

WHAT IS MALADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR?

The term "adaptation" brings Charles Darwin to my mind. His theory of evolution is considered heresy where I live, but whatever your personal belief about the origin of the human species, you've probably observed many times that humans and other living things have an amazing ability to adapt their behavior, and even their forms, to better survive and thrive in its environment, and that as the environment changes, so do the creatures living in it.

Here in Tennessee, the weather is getting hot enough to send us into our closets to bring out the shorts and sandals and bathing suits we need to comfortably survive the summer. At the same time, our dogs and cats are shedding the extra fur they'd acquired to keep them warm during the winter. The humans are adapting their dressing behavior and the cats are adapting their forms to adjust to hot weather. This is adaptation in its positive sense, but adaptation also has a dark side.

Defining "maladaptation" requires us to assume that certain behaviors are normal, while others are abnormal. That does not necessarily mean that normal is healthy and abnormal is unhealthy. Someone (or something) is considered "normal" if they conform to a widely accepted standard or practice, and abnormal if they deviate from the norm.

A behavior can be identified as maladaptive or abnormal only in the context of an environment. It is not intrinsically wrong or evil, and its degree of deviance or abnormality depends on things like cultural and social rules and norms (cannibalism may be a normal behavior in one society, but not in another), systems of psychological and medical thought (a mentally ill person may be "abnormal", but able to function despite that); as well as political beliefs and ideals (in a democracy, the practice of communist principles is considered "wrong"). I'm going to try to bypass all those interesting but knotty aspects and give you definitions and examples that don't require a PhD in sociology or psychology to decipher them.

Some maladaptive behavior is disruptive to society because it interferes with group functioning. A child "acting out" at school in reaction to the stresses he experiences at home is an example of this. His frustration with his home life turns into anger that fuels temper tantrums in the classroom. His behavior is maladaptive because it doesn't eliminate the stresses at home and creates a whole new spectrum of stresses and problems at school as his teachers and fellow students react to his aggression. He can't learn lessons in school that he needs to learn because his "bad" behavior gets in the way.

Other maladaptive behavior is expressed in an inward fashion. A shy, anxious art student is horrified when her painting teacher publically critiques her painting and tells her and the rest of the students that her artwork is exactly what they should not be doing. The art student loses confidence in her talent and changes her major to another subject. Her behavior is maladaptive because it makes it much harder for her to achieve her original goal of becoming an art teacher.

My own definition of maladaptive behavior is this. It's a nonproductive behavior that prevents you from adapting to situations, or changes in yourself or your environment, in a healthy way. It can begin as an attempt to deal with or avoid an unpleasant experience but it does not solve the original problem and eventually becomes dysfunctional. You adjust to a situation in a way that makes sense at the time but that eventually misdirects your energy and focus, and interferes with your personal and interpersonal functioning, your health, and your ability to achieve your goals. At the start, the behavior feels like a helpful, even positive response to abnormal, difficult, or negative circumstances.

As a bandster, I used both old and new maladaptive eating behaviors. My decades-old behaviors, like eating to deal with stress, did not disappear on the morning of my band surgery, and 5 years later, I'm still working on changing that. I also developed new behaviors in response to the experience of having an adjustable gastric band. The long term result of these maladaptive behaviors is unintended and undesirable. The maladaptive eating tactic may seem to solve a current problem while it's actually creating future problems: slowed or stopped weight loss, weight gain, band slippage, band erosion, and so on.

SOFT CALORIE SYNDROME & OTHER DANGERS

A classic example of bandster maladaptive eating behavior is known as Soft Calorie Syndrome. I discovered the perils of this syndrome for myself when I traveled to New York City to attend a trade show when I was about 8 months post-op. I had gotten a fill the day before I left, and by the time I got to New York I had realized that my band was too tight for me to tolerate. I couldn't eat any solid food, so I spent the next 3 days eating soft, high-calorie, low-satiety foods like soup, milkshakes, and ice cream. I was just trying to survive long enough to go home and get an unfill. My eating behavior achieved a temporary goal (comfortable survival) while sabotaging my long term goal of losing weight. In fact, I gained weight during that trip and ended up feeling disappointed in myself.

A frustrating aspect of maladaptive behavior is that it's often easier to see in others than it is in yourself, but even someone who's fully aware that her or his behavior is counterproductive may feel helpless to change it. If I had a dollar for every time a bandster has confessed to eating to relieve stress or boredom, I'd be a wealthy woman now. Emotional eating tends to be so longstanding and deep-rooted that it takes on a life of its town, like a devil lurking inside us who seductively whispers, "Chocolate! Chocolate will make you feel soooo much better!" when you're too vulnerable, tired, or upset to make a different or healthier choice.

When I was being treated for PTSD years ago, a counselor asked me to make a list of behaviors and activities that I could choose to do instead of engaging in self-destructive ones. At first the exercise seemed contrived and silly, but eventually I realized its usefulness. I was not able to think clearly and make good choices when in severe emotional distress. All I could think of was razor blades. My index card of alternate behaviors reminded me that I could telephone a friend, go for a walk, take a bath, listen to music, pet a dog, and the like instead of playing with sharp objects.

Now, I very much hope that you're not dealing with severe emotional distress (which I would wish only on my worst enemy), but I do believe you can benefit by making your own list of alternatives to emotional eating. Carry a copy of that list with you everywhere you go and keep a copy in an easily-accessible spot at home (I tacked mine to my bulletin board).

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES

In the 1960's and 70's, contestants on the "Truth or Consequences" game show would try to answer ridiculously obscure trivia questions and be forced to perform silly stunts in punishment for getting the answers wrong. The host ended each episode by saying, "Bob Barker saying goodbye, and hoping all your consequences are happy ones!"

The relief or pleasure or other immediate consequences of a maladaptive behavior may seem like happy ones, but they generally short-lived, so the behavior must be repeated over and over for the benefit to be felt. As with an addiction, it takes more and more of the behavior or substance to cause relief or pleasure. An anxious person, whose mother lost a leg to gangrene (death of flesh) from bacterial infection in an untreated injury, naturally fears germs. She washes her hands thoroughly and often, especially after touching anything that might harbor germs. At the start, her own home is clean and safe, but because her hand washing doesn't remove her basic fear, eventually she must practice it all day, every day, over and over, even in her own home, until her skin is scrubbed raw. She sees the abrasions her scrubbing has caused as more vulnerable to germs and increases the hand washing. Soon the hand washing excludes all other activities and she dares not leave her home. The salutary practice of hand washing has become a maladaptive and destructive behavior.

Unlike the hand washing or other compulsive, fear-based, abnormal and ritualistic behavior, maladaptive eating is rarely perceived as strange. Eating is socially acceptable as long as the meat on your plate belongs to a different species. It's also something that's easy to do in secret, while you're alone in your car or your bathroom or wherever you go to escape other people. But when you do it over and over again, your repetition of the behavior cements it into a wall around you, keeping you locked inside instead venturing forth to find relief elsewhere. And should you confess to this maladaptive eating behavior, people who don't use food in this way simply cannot fathom why you would do it. They say impatiently, "Put the fork down! Step away from the table! Just say no to chocolate!" Ah, if only it were that simple, that easy…

SMALL-TIME CRIMINALS

Some maladaptive behavior arises from ignorance, misconceptions or misunderstanding. Take the case of Martin. He received minimal pre-op education, so when he found himself PB'ing (regurgitating) on a daily basis after his 3rd fill, he assumed that this was simply a fact of life for bandsters. His problem is ignorance. The same thing happened to Annie, who assumed she was doing something wrong but was too shy, ashamed and embarrassed to ask her surgeon about it. Her problem is misconception. And when PB'ing intruded into Carol's daily life, she believed it was like vomiting, caused by "a stomach bug", so it never even occurred to her that her eating behavior might be causing it. Her problem is misunderstanding.

All too often, a maladaptive behavior seems like such a small "crime" - it was just one ice cream cone - that the bandster minimizes its importance without realizing that the cumulative effect of a series of small crimes can be just as destructive as a single big one. It's kind of like ignoring the posted speed limit when you're driving your car. You shudder at the news of a fatal car accident when an acquaintance driving at 70 mph in a 35 mph zone loses control of his vehicle and crashes into a telephone pole. In that instance, ignoring the speed limit is clearly a bad choice. But when you're late for work (again), run a few yellow or even red lights (again), and drive at 70 mph in a 35 mph zone (again) in your eagerness to get to work on time, and nothing bad happens, speeding doesn't seem like such a terrible crime…until the day you can't stop in time to avoid the car turning into your path and end up as a bleeding mess choking on dust from your car's air bag while an ambulance carries off the person you killed because of your maladaptive behavior.

IS THIS BEHAVIOR GETTING YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO?

A bandster once confessed, "I eat pretty good all week and then I allow myself a junk food day...a bad mistake on the weekend since that usually means a junk food weekend...once I start, it's so hard to stop and of course weight gain is the result and I end up beating myself up. I'm never going to be where I want to be if I continue this behavior."

I want to repeat that all-important last sentence: "I'm never going to be where I want to be if I continue this behavior." That, my friends, is the take-home message of this article. Take it to heart, take it home, and take it out and study it often. Ask for help in identifying and dealing with your maladaptive eating behaviors. Take them seriously, but don't build them into mountains right in the middle of your path to success. Sometimes the solution or treatment for a big maladaptive behavior can be a small piece of common sense. One of my favorites is: Don't keep trigger foods in the house. If chocolate is your bête-noir (the black beast that's the bane of your existence), you're not going to be able to gorge yourself with it the next time you're feeling weak if there is no chocolate in your house. Yes, I know you can hop in your car, ignore the posted speed limits, and pull up in front of the Chocoholic Market in a matter of minutes. That's why we have to be vigilant, honest and aware.

And remember this, from page 299 of Bandwagon: It takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of daily repetition to make a new behavior automatic….so, practice, practice, practice!

Related: How to START Breaking Free of Overeating, Stress, and "Too Much on Your Plate"

"I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don't know where to start."

That's what a new client said. Her head was so full of diet advice, nutrition tips, weight loss ads, and beliefs about what she "should" be doing, that she was overwhelmed and feeling stuck before she even started.

Should she cut back on carbs? Start working out? Keep a food diary? Rejoin Weight Watchers? She knows she's a stress eater, so maybe she should start meditating and eating mindfully.

She also really needs to catch up on her sleep, but her desk is a mess and she wants to spend more time with her husband….

Overload is like that and so is emotional overeating. Both can feel like tangled messes with no obvious starting point. When you are stuck in a cycle you don't know how to stop, taking action can start to feel like it's going to start an avalanche. Add to that the panic many of us feel when we are exhausted and overloaded that paradoxically causes us to bite off too much, and see our options as "all" or "nothing," and many stressed-out overeaters see themselves facing a challenge that feels insurmountable.

"If I'm going to go to the gym, I really need to go six days a week and stay for an hour," said a client who hadn't felt she could fit in a workout for weeks.

"I need to start keeping track of everything I eat, I need to drink more water, and I need to start eating more vegetables and stop eating after dinner."

"I'm going to eat healthy, journal, meditate, and work out every day."

"I'm so stressed. Nothing can change until I get a new job."

All of these women started to feel overwhelmed before the words were even out of their mouths.

Guess what? The road to lasting change is hardly ever a major life overhaul. Creating peace with food and peace with your life almost always happens in small do-able steps. Contrary to what your stressed-out brain may be telling you, powerful change can be created from simple consistent shifts.

How do you start taking charge of overeating, stress, or that feeling of having too much on your plate?

You start by creating success and effectiveness and allowing that to snowball. The success and feelings of accomplishment are what help you create momentum-and that, in turn, creates more ease and motivation. Pick one small simple step that you can commit to for the next week. If it makes you tired or feels intimidating to say it out loud, cut the size of the step in half.

Now do it. Check it off every day, and celebrate yourself profusely. After four to seven days, choose another step.

Your goal here is to choose a step that increases your progress and momentum one inch-not a mile. When you are getting started from a place of stress and overwhelm, your goal is to get into action, but NOT to add more stress and overwhelm to your life.

The first step should feel almost (but not quite) effortless.

• Eating breakfast in the morning
• Checking in with yourself midafternoon and and asking yourself what you need
• Making a list of five things you can do when you feel stressed (that are not food)

Start small. Create effectiveness, and the momentum and your progress will build. Really.

Related: Healthy Weight Loss 101: The First Step to Breaking Free from Overeating

What should you eat to lose weight?

How much energy have you devoted to this question? Low carb? Raw food? Jenny Craig? Women spend billions of dollars on weight loss, and create a lot of stress making decisions about which diet or weight loss plan to try this time. It's ironic, because deep down, we know that diets don't work. And in fact, many of us have lived out the lesson that diets can lead to binge eating and weight gain and bigger problems with food than we started with.

It's not hopeless. Healthy weight loss and what I call peace with food are possible, but they don't begin with a diet.

Here's the important truth:

The battle with overeating isn't going to be solved by a diet because the root battle with most overeating isn't about the food.

If you want to break free from overeating cycles and weight loss battles, the critical question you need to be asking is this: What are you using the food for?

• What's triggering you to overeat?
• What propels you towards the vending machine or sends you straight for the comfort food?
• What role does food play in your life?
• How does your current way of eating serve you?

THESE are the million dollar questions. The truth is, you are smart and resourceful and you better believe that you are turning to food for a reason.

The way you are currently eating does something important for you.

Maybe your eating distracts you or comforts you. Food might momentarily boost your mood or your energy. Maybe you use it to procrastinate or hide out or reward yourself. Are you eating to cope with stress or frustration or exhaustion? Be curious about your hunger and the reasons that you eat.

Understanding the meaning of your overeating changes everything. Understanding the purpose of your overeating helps you move beyond unhelpful self-blame and shame and guilt and into a place of compassionate understanding. From this place it's possible to start addressing the real root causes.

Because it's probably not about the food.

If you are a stress eater, you'll want some more effective tools for addressing the stress in your life. Comfort eater? With the right tools, you can definitely find a better way. Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Nervous? Upset? There are better tools and strategies to address these feelings. And the truth is, once you have the tools and strategies to feel effective, food just doesn't have the same appeal. Really.

Effective weight loss doesn't start with the food-and-when you address the root cause of your overeating, you don't just change your weight. You change your life.

Related: The Dreaded Food Diary: An Easier Way to Track What You Eat

It's clear that keeping a food journal or food diary-a written record of every bite you put in your mouth-is an effective weight loss tool. Women who record what they eat eat less and lose more weight. They are also more successful at keeping the weight off. A food diary (done correctly), can also be an effective tool for taking control of emotional eating.

The problem is, just about everyone hates keeping a food log, and setting up an approach that you dread can be an easy path to self-sabotage. Writing down everything you put into your mouth can be inconvenient, tedious, and it requires a lot of discipline. It can also be difficult to record portion sizes accurately, and far too tempting to bend the truth.

Here's a smart weight loss tip that holds promise. You don't have to write down everything you eat anymore to get the benefit of keeping a food diary. There's actually a simple, graphic and accurate way to record what you eat-at the touch of a button. Grab your cell phone and snap a picture. Yep, take a picture of your food-all your food-before you eat it. Pictures don't lie. They don't fudge on portion sizes (consider placing something like a fork in the picture so that you can assess for scale), and they show everything on your plate. They even document the times when you skip using the plate (not a good weight loss tactic, by the way).

Research indicates that keeping a photographic food diary may work even better than a written one.

What to do with these photos? A simple, free solution is to set up a free blog at BariatricPal. You decide whether you want to keep it private (for your eyes only) or open it up to friends or to the world (accountability helps). New apps and options are being developed as we speak. For those on Twitter, this app, for tweeting what you're eating, allows you to add pictures to your tweets and says it will be simplifying the process in the near future.

What do you think? Have you used a food diary (written or photo-based)? How has it worked for you? What has helped you stick with it, or what has gotten in your way? Please share your thoughts by adding a comment.

Related: When Life Gives You Lemons . . . Strategies for Avoiding Stress Eating and Comfort Eating

No matter how much yoga, meditation, or spa time you put in, life will eventually through you a curve ball. And if your life is anything like mine, life often seems to throw two or three at once. The balance can tip from bliss and balance to stress and overload pretty quickly. And the best new habits, the most well thought out food plans, and the loveliest self-improvement strategies can quickly go to h*ll in a hand basket when stress, exhaustion, or just-plain-misery enter the picture.

When the going gets tough-many women just want a carb-fest.

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is how not to turn to food for stress relief or comfort.

Having a rough day, week, or month? Here are some strategies that can help:

Strategies for Avoiding Stress and Reducing Comfort Eating

Have an Instead Plan

White knuckling it rarely works for very long, and when you eventually have to let go, the reverberations can be huge. In fact, one of the most common triggers for food binges is deprivation and extreme dieting. What this means here is that "not eating," is not a strategy. If you are going to get through a rotten day without resorting to chocolate, you're going to need some ideas of what to do instead.

Here's something else you need to know. When you are in a state of stress or overload, or any other strong emotional state, your brain isn't firing on all cylinders. Creative problem solving is impaired. It's best to create your Instead Plan before the crisis hits. You've heard this from me before. Start making a list of possible alternatives to overeating now.

Aim for the low hanging fruit

Strategies to avoid comfort eating and stress eating should be easy. If you are having a bad day, don't expect an awful lot of yourself. When I help my clients craft their instead plans, it's not uncommon for their first ideas to be out of alignment with their mood and their energy level. "I know that instead of bingeing on leftovers, I should go work out/do the dishes/stop procrastinating on … " are all common responses. Maybe. I'm a firm believer in the power of exercise to shift mood and energy, and accomplishing something does feel good. But if you feel like collapsing onto your sofa and you give yourself a choice between leftover macaroni and cheese and a half hour on the elliptical or finishing your taxes-do you think your instead plan has an iota of a chance? Really?

Identify strategies that match your energy level and your motivation on a cruddy day. That probably means going for the low hanging, easy-to-grab fruit. Also, make sure your strategies meet the same need that the food would be attempting to fill. If you are seeking indulgence and comfort, than "tough love," isn't going to fit the bill. Instead of a hard workout, you might want to consider a movie you can get lost in, a phone call with someone who loves you, a lazy evening on the sofa, or a long hot shower.

Retreat

Sometimes we resort to stress or comfort eating because we simply don't know what else to do. It's an attempt to keep going when the going has gotten really tough. It's hard for high-achievers to comprehend, but sometimes the most effective thing you can do is to do nothing. Stop. Step away from your stress for ten minutes or a day. Change your scenery-leave the room, go outside, or take a short drive. Consider retreating into your senses. Choose a short escape into a sensory experience that is not taste-a warm bath, great smelling tea, a foot massage, or some fragrant flowers. Take a nap. If you are someone who seems to spin out of control with food after a long stressful day, don't be afraid to throw in your cards for the night and go to bed early. You could probably use the extra sleep anyway and you'll wake up with more perspective and better focus.

Call in the troops

Stress is often not only a trigger for overeating, but for isolation. It's not uncommon to feel "too busy" to ask for help or to reach out for support. It's a big mistake. Tell those who love you that you are having a hard time and you could use some support (even if you aren't sure what they could do). Give away, delegate, or ask for help with the tasks that you can share or let go of. Ask for company, or ask for the support you need so that you can be left alone. Here's something important to note. Strategies for avoiding comfort eating and stress eating aren't usually major life overhauls. They rarely fix the stressful or difficult situation-but then again, neither does eating. What these strategies are designed to do is to help you feed your spirit and your soul during a very tough time.

Isn't that what comfort really is?