We all know what can happen. We get ourselves on a diet, losing weight, feeling good about our health and appearance, and then, bam, something happens in our lives and we reach for the goodie bag. We get stressed about work, about our finances, about family and the holidays. And it’s so easy to find comfort in food, especially stuff that’s not so good for us. However, there are strategies we can use to avoid emotional eating.

First off, one of the biggest culprits in emotional eating is stress. When we are stressed, we eat to cope. Thus, finding effective ways to combat stress will reduce our chances of binge eating. As many studies have shown, daily exercise reduces stress, ridding the body of chemicals that produce stress reactions. Just 10 or 20 minutes a day of vigorous exercise can lead to a less stress-filled life. Then, not only are we less likely to engage in emotional eating, the exercise will burn off calories as well.

Another cause of emotional eating for many people is boredom. You sit around the house, watching television or surfing the internet, and to give you something to stimulate yourself, you head to the refrigerator. Yet a healthier and more productive reaction to boredom is to find a new hobby or activity. Getting involved in volunteering or joining a sports or gaming club takes your mind off eating and gives you people to spend time with.

Having people around you to have fun with is a great way to avoid emotional eating. These friends or family members can also act as a support group in your efforts to stop overeating. Supportive friends will encourage you to stick with a diet and exercise plan, and can probably even be convinced to exercise with you. You can also keep each other strong in times of stress, lending a listening ear instead of a trip to the kitchen.

Being mindful of how and when you eat is important too. Sometimes we are not conscious of what we eat and why, and instead tend to eat on autopilot. We come home from a busy day of work, and we pop open a tub of ice cream without considering why. Did something unpleasant happen at work that we are trying to smooth over by emotional eating? If we are mindful about why we might engage in emotional eating we can better keep ourselves from relying on it as a crutch.

One last strategy to avoid emotional eating is to break the cycle of food and guilt that is so often at the center of this problem. You eat because you’ve had a hard day and aren’t feeling too good about yourself. But then, you feel bad about yourself for overeating! Key to breaking this debilitating cycle may lie in being nicer to yourself. Know that sometimes you will slip and eat too much. When this happens, pat yourself on the back and say you’ll do better the next day. You’ll feel better about things and less likely to succumb to emotional eating.