4 Easy Tips To Beat Boredom Eating
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4 Easy Tips To Beat Boredom Eating
Do you find yourself reaching for snacks, even when you’ve eaten recently? One of the most common reasons for this is boredom eating.
If you’re looking for practical advice around how to stop boredom eating and develop some healthier coping mechanisms, you’ve come to the right place.
Why do we eat when we feel bored?
Boredom eating is a sub-category of emotional eating where you’re eating to avoid the discomfort of feeling bored. Although you may just eat when you’re bored, there is often an overlap with other emotional eating behaviours such as eating when you’re stressed or sad. It’s also associated with other mental health concerns such as depression and anxiety.
But why does eating relieve the feeling of boredom? This comes back to a brain chemical we produce called dopamine. Dopamine is the reward chemical – we get it in response to pleasurable stimuli such as spending money/shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol and exercise.
When you’re bored, your dopamine levels are low because you haven’t done anything to stimulate them. So your brain tells you to eat something yummy to raise those levels again. Unfortunately, this can turn into a bit of a rollercoaster – you end up depending on treats and other dopamine triggers to feel good, but come crashing down afterwards.
The more that you eat in response to boredom, the more it becomes a learned behaviour. Once you’ve established the habit and behaviour pattern between boredom and food, it can become more difficult to break.
Your goal isn’t to eliminate boredom eating forever. But what I teach my clients is to create some healthier mechanisms to lean on, so you can choose to respond differently.
4 Tips To Bust Boredom Eating
#1 – Identify your cues
Once your boredom eating becomes an established habit, we need to look at your cues. Every habit you have has some form of cue that compels you to take the action itself.
Think about when you experience boredom eating.
Is it a particular time of day?
Are you in one location consistently?
Is there another behaviour or action you’re taking, such as watching TV or scrolling through socials?
Once you understand your cues, you can start to shift them. For example, if you tend towards boredom eating in front of the TV after dinner, you could:
Go for a walk after dinner before watching TV
Switch the TV for reading a book or doing some journaling
Make yourself a cup of herbal tea to sip while you watch TV so you have something to enjoy
Even if it only works half of the time, that helps to break the established pattern in your brain.
#2 – Learn to recognise your emotions
Many people are uncomfortable when it comes to sitting in their emotions. But even if they are uncomfortable, feelings are just that – things that you feel. So take some time to tune into what you’re actually feeling, and why that’s feeding into your habit.
Are you truly bored – and if so, why are you bored? This might be a sign that you want to incorporate more positive and enjoyable habits into your day.
Are you avoiding something? If so, what is it that you’re avoiding?
Most of the time, whatever we are avoiding is not as bad or unpleasant as we think it is. By getting clear on what you feel, you’re less likely to need food to distract you from it.
This can be a process where you sit down and think it through. But you may also find it useful to incorporate other tools like meditation, sitting in stillness or journaling.
Here are a couple of journal prompts I give to my clients:
Do you feel healthy.. physically and mentally?
What do you need to do today to take care of yourself?
How does a bad mood disrupt your routine? How can you minimise the disruption?
#3 – Evaluate if you’re hungry
Sometimes, you might just be bored. But other times, you can be bored AND hungry – so your ‘boredom eating’ is you trying to refuel your body.
Have a look at your daily diet and pattern of eating for clues around whether you’re eating enough in the lead-up to boredom eating.
Do you skip breakfast, and then boredom eat after work or post-dinner?
Are you leaving too much of a gap between your early lunch and dinner after 7pm?
Do you make meals that are high in protein and fibre, or are you tending towards carb-heavy meals right before you boredom eat?
You might like to track your diet and your boredom-eating urges over a period of a week. Looking at the pattern can help to identify whether what you’re eating and when you’re eating are triggers for the behaviour.
The same goes for hydration. Are you drinking enough water throughout the day before you hit the time you tend to boredom eat? If not, your body may benefit more from a big glass of water, rather than another snack.
#4 – Create a toolkit
When you feel bored or sad, it’s harder to come up with solutions to help you feel better. That’s why you want to create yourself a boredom eating toolkit when you’re feeling good.
Create a list of things you can do instead of eating when you feel bored or upset. This list looks different for everyone, but it might include ideas like:
Call a friend for a catch-up chat
Go for a walk
Do a 10 minute yoga video
Make a cup of herbal tea
Listen to a new podcast episode
Journal
Spend time with your pet
Have a powernap
Go for a drive
Take a shower or bath
Work on your side hustle if you have one
Research something you’ve always wanted to learn more about
Make a new vision board
Find a new hobby to try out
Obviously you don’t need to do all of the ideas – pick whichever one appeal most in the moment, and get started. I recommend my clients do this on their phone, so it’s always available for you to refer to when you need.
If you struggle with boredom eating or emotional eating, you can still achieve your health goals! All you need is the right strategies in place, along with some accountability and support.
Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
Here I share healthy recipe ideas, training plans, and nutrition & wellness advice you need to know.
Check out my free guide to healthy eating to design your own version of a healthy lifestyle so that you can feel energised and vibrant, or hire me to work my magic on your health through mindset, nutrition, and movement.
While we make every effort to make sure the information in this website is accurate and informative, the information does not take the place of medical advice.