When People Trigger You to Eat: Taking Back Control
Sometimes it’s people that trigger eating.
A disagreement with your partner. A stressful moment with your child. A difficult conversation that leaves you feeling upset, anxious, or angry. For so many people, those moments lead straight to chocolate, crisps, or whatever feels comforting in the moment.
That can feel defeating, especially when you know food hasn’t solved the real problem.
Why people can be such powerful triggers
Your brain is constantly interpreting what happens around you through the lens of your past experiences. So when someone says something hurtful, dismissive, or unsettling, your mind doesn’t just register the event. It responds to what that event means to you.
That meaning creates the feeling.
And when the feeling is uncomfortable, the brain looks for relief. Food often becomes the quickest way to soothe what’s going on inside.
This is one of the reasons emotional eating can feel so automatic. Over time, the brain learns to connect emotional discomfort with the temporary comfort of eating.
The key to changing the pattern
The feeling itself is not always the issue, it’s the meaning and the response attached to it.
When you change the meaning, you change the response.
That is where this new technique can be so powerful. It helps you reframe a thought so it begins to serve you in a more positive way. As the meaning shifts, the emotional charge can start to reduce. You feel more relaxed, grounded, and less pulled towards food.
This is how you begin to create space between a trigger and your response.
And in that space, you get your power back.
A small step that can help
When you notice yourself feeling triggered, pause for a moment and ask:
What am I making this mean?
That simple question can help you step out of reaction mode and begin to respond differently.
Small shifts like this, repeated over time, help create new patterns on their own.
Your audio support this week
I’ve also created the special audio for you to listen to at the top of the page.
The technique I’m giving you can be extremely empowering because it allows you to have control over your feelings.
When people used to come to see me for one-to-one sessions in Harley Street, this is what I often use to help them.
It can be used in all sorts of ways for feelings such as anger, tension, anxiety and so on.
It makes the feeling you’re experiencing shrink and disappear. It will need to be done more than once but when you teach yourself how to do it you can call on it at any time.
Remember to save this to your favourites so you can come back to it when you need it!