How to stop stress eating and notice emotional eating

Emotional eating is eating as a response to feelings rather than hunger.

Most people use food as an occasional pick-me-up or celebration, but it can lead to a cycle that causes weight gain and mental health issues over time. Knowing your triggers and having other coping tools, like healthier feel-good foods or hobbies, can help you manage stress.

In this guide, we walk you through stress and emotional eating, whether they are signs of an eating disorder, how to spot them, and different ways you can break the cycle.

Key points

• Emotional eating is eating because of your feelings, not because you are physically hungry. It can feel comforting at first, but if it becomes your main way to cope, it can lead to guilt and health problems.
• You might notice you eat in secret, crave sugary or fatty foods, or feel a strong urge to eat even when you are already full. This often links to your past experiences, emotions, and stress.
• You can break the cycle by spotting your personal triggers and trying new ways to cope, such as a hobby, gentle exercise, or simple breathing exercises. Remember, you are not alone. You can talk to friends, your GP, or a support charity for help.

What is stress eating?

Stress eating means you’re eating in response to stress or anxiety instead of hunger.

It’s a type of emotional eating behaviour where you eat to cope with a low mood or stressful days. For example, if you reach for a bar of chocolate when you’re struggling to cope at work, you’re stress eating.

Food acts as an occasional pick-me-up for most people, and it’s completely normal to associate wanting to eat with good moods, bad feelings like anger or stress, or even neutral emotions like boredom.

However, if you do not have any other strategies for responding to stress or you feel like you cannot control stress eating, you can wind up in a cycle that can lead to negative body image issues, shame, depression, and physical symptoms. This can, in turn, lead to more stress eating.

The following behaviours, signs, and symptoms might suggest that you’re having problems with stress eating:

• you’re bingeing, or eating a lot of food in a short period
• you often find yourself eating in secret
• you hide food wrappers
• you spend a lot of money on food
• you’ve become withdrawn and spend lots of time alone
• food brings you short-term feelings of relief, escape, and comfort
• in the long term, thinking about food might make you feel worry, guilt, and shame
• you have depression or anxiety
• you have regular stomach pain or bloating
• you feel sick
• you have trouble sleeping
• you’re putting on weight

"Stress eating because of emotional hunger is different from physical hunger. If you’re physically hungry, it’ll come on gradually, doesn’t feel urgent, and you’d be happy with a full stomach after eating a range of foods. It is also not linked to negative emotions.

"Emotional hunger, on the other hand, comes on very quickly, feels like you need to address it right there and then, and involves craving specific, often high-fat or sugary foods. Even if you have a full stomach, you might not feel satisfied, and you might feel guilty, ashamed, or powerless after eating."

Ayesha Bashir, weight loss expert at myBMI

Why do we stress eat?

There is no single cause for developing emotional eating issues. It’s often a mixture of influences from your personal and family history, genetics, social environment, and biology.

We stress eat because our emotions become linked to certain foods over time. When you repeatedly pair a certain food with a specific event, trigger, or emotion, it can form a routine that you might not be aware of.

For example:

• You order a pizza after your Friday shift ends to help you chill after a demanding week.
• You go out for coffee and a slice of cake with a friend to catch up and feel connected.
• You might eat a pie at a football match, pairing it with the excitement of matchday.
• A wedding cake might make you feel happy at a celebration.
• You might have bags of crisps in your desk drawer that you reach for after a challenging work call.

Eating certain foods might also remind you of a specific person, place, or time, making you feel better. For example, if you’ve moved from one town or country to another, eating certain comforting food from your hometown or home country might have a calming, nostalgic effect. If you have a friend you no longer see, but you ate at a particular restaurant with them, ordering from there might trigger happy memories.

The world around us also encourages emotional eating. If you feel sad at your mum’s house, she might offer you a cup of tea and a biscuit. Food is often tied to celebrations and rewards, and sharing food is tied to generosity and love.

Everyone has a different relationship to both stress and eating. However, the following factors might increase your risk of harmful stress-linked eating patterns:

• low self-esteem or self-worth
• depression, anxiety, or other mental health problems
• past trauma or stressful experiences
• feeling unhappy with how you look
• feeling lonely, bored, stressed, or angry
• having different chemicals or hormones in your brain than people who do not tend to eat emotionally
• following strict, low-calorie, or restrictive diets

Is emotional eating classed as an eating disorder? 

"Doctors do not officially recognise emotional eating as an eating disorder – it’s a very common response to stress and other triggers. However, regularly eating too much in response to your emotions or doing it for a long time can increase your risk of binge eating disorder.

"Binge eating disorder is a severe eating disorder where a person eats massive quantities of food in a short period and doesn’t feel like they can control what they’re eating. This can lead to distress, guilt, and feeling overwhelmed, which can trigger more emotional eating in a dangerous cycle."

Ayesha Bashir, weight loss expert at myBMI

Is professional help available?

Although having problems with emotional eating is not considered an eating disorder, you aren’t alone and can still seek professional help if it affects your daily life. You can ask your GP or a private counsellor for support.

A GP may refer you to a dietician or nutritionist, prescribe treatment that could help, or refer you to a counsellor or doctor who specialises in eating problems if they feel that the stress eating has reached the point of binge eating or another eating disorder.

You may need to pay for private counselling, but many charities can help you connect with a counsellor. You can find a counsellor on Beat’s Helpfinder.

How to stop stress eating and craving comfort foods

You can recover from stress eating and comfort food cravings by practising self-care, understanding your triggers, and finding other stress-relief methods, hobbies, and distractions.

Pick up a new hobby

Learning a new hobby, especially one that supports expressing how you feel, can help you disconnect from a hectic schedule, reflect on your feelings, and take pride in something you’ve created. It can also be a helpful distraction for breaking the emotional eating cycle.

Learning to draw, play an instrument, or dance are good options. It could even be as simple as reading a book you love. Alternatively, you could regularly meet up with your friends for a light sport activity in the park – it’s a perfect mixture of fun, talking to your support network, and exercise.

As long as it calms you down, keeps you engaged, and doesn’t involve eating, it might help you find other ways to de-stress.

Swap comfort foods for healthy alternatives

Stress eating often triggers cravings for fatty, sugary snacks. But if you can slow these cravings down with a healthier snack – say, a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts – you might not feel the need to reach for comfort foods.

As emotional hunger often leads people to crave specific foods, this can help you reduce your risk of weight gain and break the cycle of craving a particular snack when you’re stressed.

Exercise

Exercise can help you feel better both physically and mentally by releasing feel-good chemicals in the brain and supporting weight management. If you feel stressed, try going for a walk around the corner or from the top to the bottom of your office building.

Exercise is a great way to look after yourself that does not involve eating. If you have the budget and feel motivated to challenge yourself, join a gym or exercise class. Otherwise, just try to move more throughout your day. Carrying bags home from the shop, walking the dog, and gardening are also forms of movement!

Exercises are more than just physical. Practising mindfulness such as meditation, colouring or drawing, or deep breathing exercises can help you stay “in the moment” and become more aware of how you feel.

Mindfulness can help you look more closely at your thoughts and how they affect your behaviour, such as recognising when you're eating in reaction to stress.

Understand triggers

Try to work out the link between the triggering situation or emotion and the urge to eat. This can help you break the cycle and put different coping tools in place.

Some people find that keeping a food diary helps them understand their emotional eating patterns and spot triggering times in their day. They write down not only what they eat but also when and how they feel before and after eating it.

This can have a doubly positive impact, helping people understand both their feelings and their eating habits, laying the groundwork for a more balanced and healthy relationship with food.

Seek help if needed

Remember that you are not alone – most people stress eat in some way. So, if you feel comfortable, reach out to the people you love and let them know you’re struggling. Asking for help, or simply for someone to listen to you, is not admitting defeat.

Connecting with strangers can be a great first step towards managing emotional eating. You can find support groups on Beat’s HelpFinder to speak to others on the same journey, share your struggles, and learn about tried-and-tested coping mechanisms.

Body Whys is the eating disorders association of Ireland which provides a helpline staffed by dedicated workers who can help you navigate complex feelings about food:

• Call (01) 2107906 for support.

Sources

• Binge Eating Disorder (BED). (2025). NHS Scotland. [Accessed February 10, 2026]
• Emotional overeating: The facts and where to find support. (PDF) (n.d). Beat Eating Disorders. [Accessed February 10, 2026]
• Introduction to emotional eating. (2025). NHS. [Accessed February 10, 2026]
• Managing emotional eating. (2024). NHS. [Accessed February 10, 2026]