Emotional Eating Cycle Worksheet
Worksheet published on January 12th, 2025
Emotional eating is a common way clients in therapy cope with stress. When life becomes overwhelming, food can be a relief from uncomfortable feelings. While emotional eating can temporarily provide feelings of relief, it has long-term consequences that can impact a client’s mental health.
Learning about emotional eating and healthy alternatives can help a client learn how to cope with stress. Emotional eating can occur in cycles, so the first step in learning healthy alternatives to emotional eating is identifying the patterns of behavior that come with emotional eating.
About This Worksheet
Learning about the cycle of emotional eating can aid in replacing the cycle with healthier coping skills. This can help with reducing anxiety and improving the client’s ability to cope with stress. It can also aid in boosting self-esteem.
The Emotional Eating Cycle worksheet provides a visual aid for learning about how emotional eating can affect a client. It also offers reflection questions to aid in learning healthier coping skills. This worksheet can be used with adolescents and adults in individual and group therapy sessions.
Instructions
Begin educating the client about emotional eating and how it may affect them. Then, introduce the worksheet and explain the emotional eating cycle. Allow the client time to answer the reflection questions.
When the client has completed the questions, review their responses with them. Start a conversation about how they have used the emotional eating cycle and what they would like to change about their emotional eating habits. End the exercise by providing the client with a copy of their completed worksheet to refer to when needed.