If, during the pandemic, food has become your friend and fitted clothing your enemy, you’re not alone. “People are struggling with eating at record numbers,” says Dr. Cortney S. Warren, a board-certified psychologist, author and adjunct professor of psychiatry at UNLV’s School of Medicine.

She says a lot of people have gained “a considerable amount of weight”—often referred to as the “COVID-20”—due to the stress and upheaval of the pandemic. When you’re dealing with acute stress, Warren says it’s “really easy to either eat more or less than you [normally] would or different kinds of food than you’re used to.”

For some people, especially those who follow strict diets, the feeling that they’ve “blown it” can lead them to eat even worse. The key to getting through a trying time is to be nonjudgmental and flexible with yourself. While it’s not a healthy daily habit, Warren says that “there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating a doughnut.”

She recommends adopting the mindset where you can say to yourself, “Wow, there’s a lot of stress in my life, right now. There’s a lot of change. I am going to really try to roll with it without being so hard on myself or others.”

If you find yourself stress-eating, Warren recommends pulling back without beating yourself up. “Any of that negative self-commentary usually makes you feel worse and makes your eating more dysfunctional,” she says. “It’ll just snowball.”

Happily, you’re not doomed to mindlessly scarf down potato chips. Warren offers practical ways out of the emotional eating trap that has ensnared so many of us during these crazy times.

Pause. “The first thing that I always recommend is to pause,” Warren says. “And I literally mean pause.” If you’re having an emotional reaction, pause and ask yourself, What am I feeling? What am I thinking? “If you can become aware of what you’re experiencing, you will be able to slow down the eating process and make much better, more deliberate choices,” Warren says. This helps break the habit of “eating almost by default.”

Question your intentions. Before putting anything in your mouth, Warren says to consider, Why am I doing this? Am I actually hungry? Is this a food choice that I’d like to make? Is this something that’s good for my body? Or, Am I completely overwhelmed and I just want to eat three Snickers bars?

Keep a food (and feelings) log. Don’t worry about being super detailed; Warren says that a simple log will change your behavior. She recommends writing down what you eat, the time you’re eating it and how you’re feeling when you eat it. A few days of logging will reveal your eating patterns. “The more aware and mindful you can be of your general eating patterns, the more you’ll be able to intervene for yourself,” Warren says. “One thing you’ll also realize [via] a food-monitoring log is that the times you want to eat because of emotion will become very glaring.”

Think about how you’ll feel later. When facing temptation to eat for the wrong reasons, Warren recommends considering how you’ll feel 30 minutes after giving in to that craving. For five minutes, the junk food might be very satisfying. But afterward, you’ll have a stomachache and you’ll feel guilty. If the answer is that you’re going to feel the same or worse after those Doritos, it’s probably a really bad choice, Warren says.

Tackle your emotions before you eat. “As soon as you notice how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking, take some time to work with your emotions before you eat,” Warren says. You can still eat what you want, you’ll just be doing it deliberately rather than reactively. “The more deliberate we are with our eating behavior, the better we feel about the choices that we make,” Warren says.

Embrace your power. When you’re fully aware of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors, you claim the freedom and the power to make the best choices for yourself.

Enjoy your indulgences. “I’m never going to tell people that they can’t eat junk food sometimes,” Warren says. “I [just] hope that when you do, you really enjoy it.” The key to happy indulgences is not to eat treats in an emotionally reactive way. Rather, indulge because “it sounds like an enjoyable, pleasant experience for you at the time.”

Coping without junk food

If you’re used to reaching for cookies and chips whenever you feel down, it’s important to develop other coping mechanisms. “First, you need to find a way to still express your emotion,” UNLV’s Dr. Cortney S. Warren says. Here are her suggestions for ways to work through your issues that don’t involve the kitchen:

• Journaling. Writing can be “incredibly helpful in processing emotion and becoming more aware of yourself,” Warren says.

• Mindfulness and meditation. When you’re having a craving, Warren says to key into your body’s sensations and try to notice where the anxiety and/or sadness is coming from. You can use a meditation app, such as Calm, to shift focus away from the bag of chips on the counter and instead tap into your own emotional experience. Even a five-minute meditation can change your mindset.

• Call a friend. Get social support, even if it’s just talking about what the emotion is that you’re feeling, Warren suggests.

• Exercise. They call it a runner’s high for a reason!

• Chew gum or brush your teeth. It can help to still have some sort of physiological sensation, so chewing gum or brushing your teeth can help people who have a craving for a sensation in their mouth. The minty, clean flavor can also make junk food less appealing.