To prevent boredom eating from becoming habit, try to keep your days from becoming too tedious or repetitive. Activities like talking a few short walks or periodic stretch breaks during the day provide a mental and physical break from usual routines. When you’re feeling bored, taking a walk not only provides a distraction from any urges to snack but also physically removes you from food temptations.

Drinking Was Hard On My Marriage. So Was Recovery.

• Tuck yourself in earlier than normal and wake up feeling fresh and being fully rested at your own pace.
• Over time, this pattern of behavior can inculcate a kind of learned helplessness, so that every time a person drinks to relieve boredom, they reinforce this learned helplessness.
• Get on Google, find a class, and make it happen.
• Take control of the aspects of your life that you have some influence over and watch the world change around you.

Do you walk around the block and phone a friend? Next time you feel bored, take a few minutes to think about how you’d really like to be spending that time. If you’re not able to take a walk, you might find it helpful to take a few minutes to stretch or do breathing exercises. Break associations you might have between eating and screen time by making a point of eating meals at a table — not in front of the TV — and putting your phone away while you’re dining. Some common triggers to be aware of are stress, food availability, and pictures of food (31, 32, 33, 34).

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To unpack some of the underlying reasons you feel bored right now, it helps to understand what alcohol does to your brain. If you’re having trouble making this change alone, Sunlight Recovery offers programs like individual therapy, group therapy and medical detox to help you with drug and alcohol treatment. All treatments are conducted by licensed therapists. If you’re ready for a consultation, contact us now. Boredom is a natural state or emotion that’s part of the spectrum of things we feel as humans, and we all experience boredom in different forms and at different times. If you’re drinking out of boredom, read on to learn more about what this means.

Learn to say NO

There can be a bit of stigma around boredom, but it can also fuel so much creativity. Fried and overly sugary foods will also artificially spike your dopamine levels and cause your brain to overcorrect, leaving you feeling irritable, depressed, and cranky. These are all things you’re trying to overcome from drinking. Early sobriety is a critical period when community and support networks are critical.

Why Do People Think Alcohol Relieves Boredom?

Catching signs of abuse early also minimizes the risks of adverse health effects and increases the probability of achieving sobriety much more quickly. Drinking out of boredom can reinforce negative drinking because of boredom feelings and self-medicate. When referring to alcohol addiction, some may conjure up an image of a person consuming multiple daily bottles of low-end vodka and struggling to hold a steady job.

If you like gin and tonic when you’re vegging on the sofa, swap it for fizzy water with lemon. If you know your willpower weakens after 9 pm, get up before then and go and have a warm shower instead. If you want to change something, you first need to understand what it is. This might be a bit uncomfortable, as we often drink to reduce the noise of our own thoughts. But if you can spend time with those thoughts, you will be better prepared to make changes that can positively affect them.

Take up a hobby