What Is NLP and Can It Help You Stop Emotional Eating? | The Mindset Diet
If you find yourself reaching for food when you're not hungry, emotional eating may have become an automatic response to stress, overwhelm or a need for comfort or reward. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) offers practical techniques to help you identify the triggers and patterns behind your emotional eating, change the thoughts and mental images that fuel cravings, and interrupt familiar habits.
I'm Caroline Tyrwhitt, author of the best-selling and award-winning book The Mindset Diet, and I share how I have used NLP to change my relationship with food and help clients develop greater choice around eating, without relying on willpower alone.
Have you ever reached for chocolate after a stressful day, helped yourself to cake when you weren't particularly hungry or found yourself opening the fridge without really knowing what you wanted?
Perhaps the food provided a moment of comfort or relief. But afterwards, you felt disappointed with yourself and wondered why you hadn't been able to resist.
It's easy to put emotional eating down to a lack of willpower. But what if the answer isn't about trying harder to control what you eat?
What if you could become curious about what happens before you reach for food, the thoughts and feelings that influence your behaviour and the patterns you've developed over time?
That's where NLP offers an interesting way to explore your relationship with food.
What is NLP?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is an approach to understanding how we structure our experiences through our thoughts, language, mental imagery and behaviour.
It explores the connections between what we think, what we say to ourselves, what we feel and what we do.
One of the things I particularly like about NLP is its focus onhowwe do something. Rather than simply asking why we keep repeating a behaviour, we can become curious about the sequence of events that leads to it.
For example, you might believe you have no willpower around chocolate. But when you explore what happens before you reach for it, you may discover that the chocolate is only one part of a much bigger pattern.
NLP provides a range of tools and techniques for exploring these patterns and experimenting with different responses. It was learning NLP that helped me begin to understand my own relationship with food and move away from years of yo-yo dieting.
NLP isn't a clinically established treatment for emotional eating, however, the questions and exercises it offers can provide a useful framework for personal reflection, greater awareness and the groundwork and framework for transformation.
What is emotional eating?
Emotional eating is when we turn to food in response to a feeling, to soothe that feeling, rather than eating due to physical hunger.
Most commonly, the term 'emotional eating' is associated with eating because we're stressed, bored, lonely, frustrated or exhausted. But emotional eating isn't always about uncomfortable feelings, it can also be associated with celebration, excitement, reward or relaxation.
Perhaps you've developed the habit of reaching for something sweet when you finish a difficult task. Or you pour a glass of wine at the end of the working day because it signals that it's finally time to switch off, or in my case to make me feel like I had a life worth living while I finished marking books late into the evening!
There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying food for pleasure or comfort; food has social and emotional meaning as well as providing nourishment.
The difficulty arises when eating becomes such an automatic response that you feel you have little choice about what happens next. You may recognise this familiar cycle:
Difficult feeling → craving → eating → temporary relief → guilt or shame
Sometimes that guilt leads to another promise to be “good” tomorrow, followed by another round of restriction and cravings.
Rather than focusing only on the food, NLP invites us to explore the pattern around it.
1. Identify the strategy behind your emotional eating
One of the things we learn through NLP is to look at our strategies. A strategy is the sequence of internal and external experiences that leads to a particular behaviour or outcome.
We often think of emotional eating as a single decision:I felt like something sweet, so I ate it. NLP invites us to consider the steps leading up to that moment.
My overwhelm strategy
I used to think I was procrastinating when I found myself wandering off to look for something sweet instead of getting on with my work.
I'd have a long to-do list, plenty to get through and every intention of being productive. Yet somehow, I'd end up in the cupboard looking for something to eat. For a long time, I simply saw this as procrastination, but when I began observing what was happening, I realised something interesting.
I wasn't necessarily procrastinating. I was feeling overwhelmed.
My to-do list was full of big projects rather than small, achievable tasks. Each item represented something substantial, and I hadn't broken the work down into manageable steps.
So I'd look at everything I needed to do, feel overwhelmed and find myself heading off in search of something sweet. My strategy looked something like this:
See a list of big projects → not know where to start → feel overwhelmed → look for something sweet → momentarily escape the feeling
The craving wasn't happening in isolation. It had become part of my response to overwhelm.
Once I recognised that, I could begin to change what was happening before I reached for food. I could interrupt the habit by breaking my projects into smaller, achievable tasks and make it easier to get started.
Additionally, when I found myself in the cupboard looking for something to eat, I could recognise what was happening and go back and fix the to-do list that was too big!
I could stop feeding the feeling and start addressing what was creating it.
What I find particularly valuable about exploring our strategies, is that we may think the problem is a lack of willpower, procrastination or an inability to resist a particular food, but once we become curious about a sequence of events, we discover what's really going on. Which gives us more opportunities to interrupt it.
You might notice something similar with your own emotional eating. Perhaps your craving begins with a particular feeling, a familiar situation or something you say to yourself.
The important thing is to approach it with curiosity rather than criticism (see section 6)
2. Change how you represent food in your mind
Is there a particular food you crave more than others?
Perhaps you imagine a bar of chocolate. You can almost taste it, picture unwrapping it and anticipate the pleasure of eating it.
Our mental images and associations can influence how appealing something feels.
In NLP, we explore these internal representations and experiment with changing them. One technique, known as Like to Dislike, involves changing the mental associations connected with a food we crave.
When sugar lost its appeal
My client Debbie described herself as being obsessed with sugar in all its forms. She told me that she couldn't walk past the sweet and biscuit aisles in the supermarket without feeling tempted.
During our work together, we explored how she represented sugary foods in her mind. Using an NLP technique, we mapped her representation of sugar onto a food that she strongly disliked.
The intention was to change her emotional and sensory response to sugar, rather than asking her to rely on willpower every time she encountered it.
For Debbie, the change was striking. She described feeling physically put off by sugar when she encountered it. In her own words:
“Since those two sessions, I can walk down both the sweet and biscuit aisles without temptation as my desire has been ‘switched off’.”
Debbie's experience illustrates what's possible for some people when they change the associations they have with a particular food. It's her personal experience, rather than evidence that the technique will produce the same result for everyone.
But changing a craving is only part of the picture
As powerful as Debbie found this technique, I believe it's most valuable when it's part of a wider approach to changing our relationship with food.
Because even if we change how appealing a particular food feels, there's another important question to explore:
What was that food giving us in the first place?
Was it comfort after a difficult day? A reward for working hard? A moment of pleasure, relaxation or relief?
If we focus only on making a food less appealing, we may overlook the emotional purpose that eating it has been serving. That's why I also explore the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and familiar patterns surrounding our food choices.
It's not simply about changing our response to one food. It's about understanding what we're seeking through eating and discovering whether there are other ways to meet that need.
3. Discover the higher purpose behind emotional eating
Sometimes a behaviour that we wish we could change is also serving a deeper purpose. In NLP, this is often described as exploring the positive intention or higher purpose behind a behaviour. That doesn't mean every behaviour is helpful. It means we can become curious about what it is giving us.
Perhaps the chocolate in the afternoon isn't simply about chocolate. It represents a break from a demanding day.
Perhaps the takeaway after work offers relief from making another decision.
Or perhaps that evening glass of wine has become associated with relaxation, comfort or a sense of reward.
When we focus only on stopping the behaviour, we can overlook the need or feeling connected with it. If instead we focus on unravelling what we're actually getting from the behaviour, other options become visible.
If the higher purpose is relaxation, for example, we can explore what relaxation means to us and what else might provide that experience.
The aim isn't to deny yourself comfort, pleasure or enjoyment but to recognise that the food is not the only way of meeting a need. And that awareness creates more choice.
4. Interrupt an automatic habit by changing your response
Another NLP technique used to explore habit change is called Swish technique.
Swish technique works with mental imagery. It involves identifying your strategy and the image associated with your habitual response and then imagining an image of yourself responding differently.
The idea is to explore a new response to a familiar trigger rather than relying on willpower to resist the old one. Interrupting a pattern can begin with something as simple as noticing and changing what you're saying to yourself.
The cake by the kettle
When I was teaching, I'd often finish the school day feeling tired. I'd tell myself 'I need a coffee' and head towards the kettle. Almost always, there was delicious fresh home-made cake sitting next to it. When I saw the cake I'd think:
“That'll make me feel better.”
And I'd eat it.
Once I began paying attention to my internal dialogue, I realised how much that little sentence influenced what happened next. I realised I wasn't simply seeing cake, I was telling myself that eating it would change the way I felt.
So I experimented with a different response. Instead of“That'll make me feel better,” I changed it to:
“Maybe later.”
Incrediby, I stopped eating the cake by the kettle. In fact, I never ate it again. I still went to make a coffee when I was tired at the end of the day, but I never ate the cake again. What really surprised me was that I didn't feel deprived and there was no battle with my willpower, because I hadn't told myself I wasn't allowed to have it, I'd simply switched the familiar thought that had previously led me to eat it.
For me, that small change not only helped me lose 10 pounds over several months, but it made a lasting difference because I stopped the emotional eating behaviour that caused me to gain weight in the first place.
Feeling more in control around food doesn't necessarily come from controlling yourself harder, it begins with noticing what's happening on autopilot and discovering that you have another choice.
5. Notice the language you use around food
One of the most important parts of my cake-by-the-kettle experience was the change in what I said to myself.
Instead of“That'll make me feel better,”I began saying:
“Maybe later.”
Those two little words made a real difference.
I wasn't telling myself I couldn't have the cake. I wasn't making it forbidden or promising myself I'd never eat it again, I was simply giving myself the option of having it later.
And the interesting thing was, later never came.
The stories we tell ourselves around food
In The Mindset Diet, I explore how the language we use can influence the way we think about food and ourselves. Consider some familiar statements:
“I can't have chocolate.”
“I've been bad today.”
“I've got no willpower.”
“I've blown my diet, so I might as well start again on Monday.”
These phrases can become so familiar that we barely notice ourselves using them, but think about what they're silently reinforcing.
When we tell ourselves we can't have something, we may make it feel more desirable simply because it's forbidden.
When we describe ourselves as “bad” for eating a particular food, we turn a food choice into a judgement about ourselves.
And when we decide we've “blown it”, one choice can become the reason we abandon all our good intentions and start another diet on Monday.
The language we use can keep us stuck in familiar patterns without us even realising it.
What happens when we change the language?
NLP invites us to become curious about our choice of words and the meaning behind it In particular, it opens the opportunity to check our internal dialogue and explore what happens when we change it.
Instead of“I've got no willpower,”we might notice: 'I often crave something sweet when I'm tired” and I can address that.
Instead of“I've blown my diet,”we might recognise: “I made a choice I wasn't happy with.' and realise my next choice is still mine.
And instead of“I can't have that,”perhaps we could experiment with: “Maybe later.”
Not as another rule or a way of tricking ourselves into avoiding food, but as an opportunity to pause and notice what we genuinely want and providing an option of delay. You may still choose to eat it, and that's fine, or the desire may pass once you have stepped away..
The difference is that you're making a choice rather than automatically following a familiar pattern.
And that is where changing your language can become part of changing your relationship with food.
6. Replace self-criticism with curiosity and compassion
Another important reason to pay attention to our internal dialogue is that the way we speak to ourselves can influence how we respond when things don't go to plan.
Think about some of those familiar phrases:
“I've been bad today.”
“I've got no willpower.”
“I've blown my diet.”
I'm rubbish at dieting.
We might believe that being hard on ourselves will motivate us to do better next time, but research suggests otherwise. Self-criticism, it appears, isn't the motivator we think it is. Harsh self-judgement can be associated with greater stress and anxiety, making it harder to approach difficulties constructively.
And when we already feel disappointed with ourselves, adding guilt and shame keeps us stuck in familiar patterns rather than helping us move forward.
Why being kinder to yourself can support change
Psychologist Kristin Neff's work explores the power of self-compassion in achieving our goals. Self-compassion is often misunderstood to be about making excuses, lowering our standards or pretending that our choices don't matter. In reality, it's about recognising that we're human, that we sometimes make choices we're unhappy with, and that we can respond to those experiences with kindness rather than judgement.
Research by Breines and Chen (2012) found that encouraging people to respond to personal weaknesses or mistakes with self-compassion could increase their motivation for self-improvement.
Being kinder to ourselves doesn't mean accepting the status quo, it helps us approach change more constructively.
And this is where an approach I use alongside NLP, called Clean Language, becomes particularly valuable.
From judgement to curiosity with Clean Language
Clean Language is a questioning approach that helps us explore our own thoughts, feelings and experiences without introducing someone else's assumptions or interpretations. Rather than telling ourselves what we should think or feel, we can become curious about what's actually happening.
For example, imagine you've had a difficult day and eaten more chocolate than you intended, your habitual response might be:
“I've got no willpower. I've ruined everything. I'll start again on Monday.”
If instead of criticising yourself, you become more compassionate and curious, you could ask yourself:
“And what was happening just before I wanted the chocolate?”
In that space, you may notice that you were feeling overwhelmed, which would allow you to gently explore:
“And what kind of overwhelm is that overwhelm?”
Or, if you notice yourself saying,“I needed a treat,”you might ask 'And what kind of treat is that treat?”
These questions don't assume that the chocolate was wrong or that you need to stop eating it, they invite you to explore your experience which may reveal something you hadn't previously noticed.
Perhaps the chocolate represented a break, comfort or a moment of reward. Perhaps it had become part of a familiar response to a particular feeling.
Instead of turning the experience into evidence that you've failed, you're beginning to understand the pattern and have the opportunity to change the pattern.
Self-compassion creates a kinder way of relating to ourselves when things don't go as intended. Clean Language gives us a way to explore those experiences without rushing to interpret, criticise or fix them. Together, they encourage us to replace“What's wrong with me?”with a more curious exploration of what's happening.
When we see our patterns more clearly, we have opportunities to make a different choice.
The aim isn't to make the perfect choice every time but to develop a relationship with ourselves in which we can learn from our experiences without feeling that every setback requires another diet, another Monday morning or another promise to try harder.
Changing your relationship with food begins with curiosity, understanding and compassion.
Can NLP really help you stop emotional eating?
NLP offers ways to explore your thoughts, language, mental imagery and habitual responses. Some people, including me, find these approaches transformational.
Not every craving has a hidden emotional cause. Emotional eating can be influenced by many factors, including physical hunger, restrictive eating and specific individual circumstances.
For me, the key was learning to stop treating every craving as a battle with my willpower. Looking at a wider picture gave me something I hadn't felt I had before.
Choice.
From my point of view, it's not about preventing every craving and definitely not removing the pleasure of eating, it's building a relationship with food in which you can recognise your patterns, respond with greater awareness and begin to trust yourself.
Start by getting curious about one craving
If you'd like to explore this for yourself, think of one craving you experience regularly.
Perhaps it's chocolate in the afternoon, something sweet after dinner or a particular food you reach for when you've had a difficult day.
The next time you notice it, you might gently reflect on what was happening immediately beforehand.
Was there a particular feeling, situation or thought? Was the craving connected with a familiar routine? What did you hope eating that food might give you?
There's no need to find an answer straight away.
Simply noticing the sequence can be a useful beginning.
Because when you begin to recognise a pattern, you create the possibility of choosing what happens next.
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Caroline Tyrwhitt is a PCI-accredited health coach, an NLP trainer and author of The Mindset Diet. This article is for education and self-reflection and is not a substitute for professional support. If eating feels persistently distressing, out of control or connected with significant guilt or shame, a qualified healthcare professional can help you explore appropriate support. If you would like to chat to Caroline about your options, book a call here. Perhaps I can help, and if not we can discuss your other options.
