On
an Emotional Roller Coaster
Consider this question:
“Why do we eat?”
Answers run the gamut: “I’m hungry.” “It’s
time to eat.” “Everyone else is eating.” “Someone
offered me food and it’s not polite to refuse.” “I’m
tired.” “I’m bored.”Many people also
eat to fill an emotional void. If we eat when we’re sad, under
stress, angry, or lonely, then emotions most likely are driving
our behavior, rather than hunger. Everyone eats due to emotions
at some point.
But it can become a habit that can interfere both with the ability
to meet true emotional needs at the same time that it causes weight
problems.
Emotions or Physical
Hunger? Emotional eating is in
vogue. It often seems that by confessing our emotional eating problem
we take away responsibility for our actions. Mimi Francis, BSN,
RN, MSN, behavioral health therapist at Green Mountain at Fox Run,
a healthy weight loss retreat for women in Ludlow, Vermont, observes,
“All too often, a person believes she is too much of an emotional
eater when the real problem is how she feeds herself. Sometimes
nonsupportive eating behaviors are the result of getting too hungry,
which can lead to overeating, which often then starts the emotional
eating response. When many people begin to feed themselves well-balanced,
regular meals and snacks, their ‘emotional eating problem’
goes away.”
Doreen Virtue, PhD, author of The Yo-Yo Diet Syndrome,
describes the differences between emotional eating and eating due
to physical hunger:
1. Emotional eating
comes on quickly, where physical hunger occurs gradually over
minutes or even hours. Grabbing a few handfuls of cookies after
an argument with your teenage daughter leaves you angry and frustrated
is emotional eating. Noticing you’re getting hungry at 10:30
a.m., continuing with work, hearing your stomach grumble at 11
a.m., attending a meeting, and eating lunch at noon is responding
to physical hunger.
2. Emotional eating
requires a specific food to satisfy its hunger. Kathryn Fink,
MS, RD, LD, Nutrition and Fitness Consultant at www.dietitianadvice.com
talks with her clients about the apple test. When you crave a
food or feel hungry, ask yourself if an apple will satisfy your
hunger. If you really want a specific food (not an apple), then
you’re most likely responding to emotions instead of physical
hunger.
3. If hunger originates
in your mouth or your mind, where you can’t stop thinking
about a specific food, or all you’re craving is the creamy,
cold feeling of ice cream in your mouth, you’re feeling
emotional hunger. Physical hunger has physical symptoms: a growling
stomach and an empty feeling.
4. Emotional eating
demands that you eat right now. Physical hunger allows you to
wait a few minutes.
5. If you can link
a stressful situation to your hunger, then you’re experiencing
emotional eating. Coming home to an empty house after work may
lead you to deal with loneliness by watching TV and eating. If
confronting an angry colleague at work causes you to dive into
the bowl of M&M’s in the break room, you’re dealing
with stress and anger by eating.
6. Do you ever suddenly
notice that you ate all the ice cream? Or all the potato chips?
You may not even remember the act–or taste–of eating.
Eating mindlessly is usually associated with emotional eating.
Geneen Roth, author and nationally recognized expert on emotional
eating, explains that allowing ourselves to go unconscious when
we eat is an escape method from difficult situations.
7. Eating past our
point of fullness, sometimes until we’re physically sick,
is usually due to emotional eating. Eating second and even third
helpings may be a way to try and deaden our emotions, not satisfy
physical hunger.8.
How we feel after we eat is a clue into emotional eating. If we
feel guilty, upset, angry, and embarrassed about what or how much
we ate, then emotions fueled that eating.
Breaking the
Cycle
Eating to deal with our emotions is a learned behavior according
to Roger Gould, MD, former head of Community Psychiatry and Outpatient
Psychiatry at UCLA and author of Shrink Yourself: Break
Free From Emotional Eating Forever, a practical manual
to free yourself from emotional eating. Gould explains that using
food for reasons other than simple physical hunger is a normal part
of our society. We
celebrate with food, and we grieve with food. When we’re children
and get hurt, we may be comforted with an ice cream cone. When eating
becomes the only way we know how to deal with difficult feelings
and situations, we no longer believe we have the ability to solve
problems without food. Gould recommends devising other ways to deal
with these emotions as a way to take back power and control over
our lives.
Figure out what’s
going on
Jessica B. Fishman, MS, RD, CDN, nutrition consultant for the New
York Dermatology Group, helps her clients understand what causes
emotional eating so they can develop ways to change their behaviors.
She encourages them to think about emotional eating situations by
first identifying the “fuel” or the cause of the emotion
such as a bad day at work. Next they identify the “fuel category,”
such as social, situational, or psychological. Fishman helps them
describe the feelings that lead to emotional eating in these situations,
as well as the consequences of the eating. Clearly outlining the
causes and thoughts that lead up to emotional eating sets the stage
for developing alternative behaviors.
Replace eating
with other behaviors
Cathy Leman, RD, LD, founder and owner of NutriFit, Inc, encourages
her clients to make a list of alternatives to eating. “When
in the throes of emotional eating it's extremely difficult to focus
on anything else. Having something tangible, legible, and logical
that they've created and can access at any time allows them to make
the choice to go ahead and eat, or engage in one of their alternatives.
They find that having that choice, particularly if they've never
before felt that there was one, is empowering.”
One of my clients consistently found herself prowling through the
kitchen at night, even when she wasn’t hungry. She determined
that she was bored, and that she didn’t want eating to become
her nighttime hobby! We developed a list of other activities for
the evening hours: reading, walking on the treadmill, and listening
to music. Each time she found herself in the kitchen, she’d
ask what she really wanted to do, and more often than not she chose
one of the other activities.
Take back power
and control
Gould believes that emotional eating ultimately comes down to a
feeling of powerlessness. When we eat because we’re afraid
of a situation or uncomfortable with a feeling, we reinforce the
idea that we have no control, or power, to change the situation.
He offers examples of how we can learn to take back power and stop
the urge to eat. For instance, if we’re dealing with a sick
parent and feeling exhausted, we may fear that we just can’t
handle the situation and so overeat to stop the feelings. To develop
power, we can analyze what’s happening, understanding that
while we have a lot to handle, it won’t last forever and we
can ask for help. The act of taking control over our emotions lessens
the desire to eat.
Learn to change
thoughts and judgments
Francis encourages participants at Green Mountain at Fox Run to
work on three aspects of emotional eating:
1. Learn to
feel emotions and express them in ways that are not harmful;
2. Examine the thinking behind these emotions; and
3. Let go of old stuff from the past.
Emotions are driven by
thoughts, and different people may have vastly different emotions
even in the same situation. Once we become aware of our emotions
and the thoughts behind them, we can learn new behaviors that truly
meet our needs.A
Long-term Solution to Weight Management
How many times have you been on a diet? How many exercise plans,
weight loss books, and diet programs have you tried? The experts
I spoke with all agree that learning to understand how emotions
fuel your eating, and developing new methods of dealing with emotions,
is often the long-term solution to maintaining a healthy weight.
And it’s not a “diet” at all.
--Lynn Grieger is a sought-after speaker and writer on a variety
of health and wellness topics. She’s a registered dietitian;
health, food and fitness coach; and certified personal trainer who
empowers clients to improve their health and wellbeing in southwestern
Vermont and online at www.LynnGrieger.com.
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