10 Biblical Keys To Overcome Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is when you use food to comfort you, to be your friend in hard times, and to help you stuff down difficult emotions.  If you are overweight, chances are you have some issues around emotional eating.

Most emotional eaters have tried many diets, and may have even lost weight.  But because diets are totally inadequate in dealing with the problem of emotional eating, it isn’t long before you have regained the weight you lost and then some.   This creates an even stronger cycle of emotional eating because you become depressed at your apparent lack of self-control and will power.

As believers in Christ, we have been given everything we need to overcome emotional eating.  But it is not through a set of rules given by some diet, and it is not through trying to change yourself on the outside.  What it is about is changing the way you think.  The way you think about food, the way you think about “bad” emotions, and the way you think about yourself.  The Bible says, ‘as a man thinks in his heart, so is he’.  If you want to overcome emotional eating, you must realize that it is all about what is in your mind and how you think.  If you change the inside, before you know it the outside will reflect a new you.  A you that has climbed to a higher place of spiritual maturity and personal growth.  A new place of freedom, a new place of joy, and a new place of overcoming!  Not to mention a body that reflects the beautiful YOU that God created you to be!

The 10 keys I outline below are the steps God showed me as I began my own journey towards overcoming emotional eating.  These keys are not “quick-fixes” for being overweight, but they are a sure foundation for anyone who has cried tears of frustration and regret over food choices that have left them unhappy with their size and with their health. 

1. 1. Never Give Up!  Hope against Hope.  Never lose hope, no matter how many times you’ve tried to lose weight.
2. Choose to Believe.  Believe that your health matters, that God cares about your health, and that He wants you to live at your best.
3. Embrace Who You Are.  Who the Bible says you are that is.  Not who you think you are!  God does not call you a failure does He?
4. Know Your Enemy.  As a believer, you should know and be familiar with the traps of your enemy.  He wants to steal your destiny, and he will use food to do it if he can.  He’s done it before (Remember Esau?) and he’ll do it again.
5. Realize Your Efforts are Seeds.  Don’t see all of your attempts to lose weight as failures, see them as seed you are sowing towards success.  They are seeds of growth and maturity.
6. Create Your Place of Refreshment.  Running here and there and never taking time for prayer and meditation is a sure-fire formula for disaster.  Take time to get “centered” – it’s a key to your success.
7. Realize that Life is Full of New Beginnings.  God is faithful and His mercies are new every morning.  He will give you a fresh start as many times as you need it.
8. Hire A Life and/or Wellness Coach.  Hiring a coach moved my life forward in ways I never dreamed.  Working with a coach can empower you, encourage you, challenge your wrong thinking and your negative habits, and help you get ‘unstuck’.
9. Decide to Become Resolute.  Remember that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.  Have a fixed mind and purpose as it relates to your health.
10. Forgive Yourself.  Don’t beat yourself up, no matter how many times you think you’ve failed, no matter what you look like right now, and no matter how many times you need that fresh start.  Forgive yourself!

I hope this article has been a blessing to you and has imparted hope that you can change and you can be free from emotional eating.  God bless you as you pursue a higher place of health and wellness.