Ep: #36 - The Emotional Connection to Food: How It Can Affect Your Weight Loss

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Do you ever find yourself turning to food at the end of a busy day, mindless eating when bored, or turning to favourite foods when feeling low?

You're not alone. Many people eat when they're feeling stressed, sad, or angry. But we also eat from joy, happiness, and to create relief to name a few others.

What I am going to explore with you in today's show is the type of emotional eating we can do when the body is not physically hungry.

As you may have seen in the show titled "The 5 E's of Eating" one of the 5 reasons we eat (although I have since added a 6th!) is due to emotional hunger.

Many people struggle with their relationship with food. Saying things like: “they just love it too much”, “how sugar is there kryptonite”, “how they just can’t seem to keep away from blank”, “how they just can’t seem to control themselves around food”.

I am going to explore the science behind food and emotion. You might be surprised to learn just how closely linked these two concepts are. By understanding the connection between food and emotion, you can begin to make more informed choices about your eating habits.

If you want access to video to go with this blog check out Wellness 4 Women

Keep reading until the end for some super helpful tips.

So emotional eating.

Technically speaking every meal you eat is borne out of emotion, when you understand that a situation occurs leads to a thought, leads to an emotion, leads to action/inaction, and then the result.

When you eat for energy though the thought model would look like this:

Situation: Genuine hunger cues

Thought: I am hungry

Emotion: Desire

Action: Eat to be physically satisfied

Result: Body is satiated, go about day.

When we eat for emotion though the model looks different, this is a simple version for illustrative purposes.

For example:

Situation: Disagreement with partner

Thought: They shouldn't have spoken to me like that

Emotion: Anger

Action: Raid fridge and binge on comfort food even though not hungry

Result: The body has more food than it needs. Cue further thought models. still angry at partner, now angry at self for eating, the body feels full and uncomfortable maybe sick.

What is the difference between physical hunger and emotional eating?

Let's start with physical hunger. Genuine physical hunger is a physiological response to being physically hungry. It ultimately occurs when the body's energy reserves are low and it needs food to replenish them.

Your brain is monitoring your body constantly to try and keep it in the status quo.

The hypothalamus is the area of the brain that controls hunger and fullness cues, as well as regulates our body temperature, sleep, and hormones.

The hypothalamus is constantly monitoring our energy levels and when they dip too low. It then tells us to eat and tells us when to stop.

The problem is it can also send out false signals due to our emotions.

Emotional eating is when a person eats for emotional reasons, as opposed to having a physical need. It is eating when our brains have a mental and psychological response to a situation or event in our lives.

Certain emotions can lead you to seek out food even when you are not physically hungry, such as, happiness, love, pride, sadness, anger, stress, anxiety.

Emotional eating often leads to overeating because it's not based on genuine hunger. People often crave their favourite foods and also foods with high energy when emotional. Not many people stress eat carrots!

The reason for this though is science. Which I will cover later.

The effects of emotional eating on weight gain

Emotional eating can lead to weight gain (no shit Sherlock) why because you are eating when you are not physically in need of food, it can lead to overindulging and maybe making choices that are not going to serve your health, well-being or weight management.

But it goes deeper than that.

Your emotions play a powerful role in your eating habits. And emotional eating isn't just about weight gain. It can also lead to feelings of guilt and shame, which can trigger more emotional eating in a vicious cycle.

It likely means other areas of your life are being affected too, such as, work, relationships, and social activities.

This is why life and weight loss have to be worked on together if you want long-term weight loss success as this is about how you show up in all areas of your life as they knock into each other.

So emotional eating is something you want to be aware of and work on if it is something that applies to you

So if you are stuck in the emotional eating trap, how do you break free?

Whydo we emotionally eat? The Science behind the feels!

As always we are going to use the Triple-A Method  - Awareness, Action, Accountability.

Your first port of call is always Awareness.

Just knowing why and how you emotionally eat which we have just covered is powerful in itself and that is before we get to the action and accountability.

So you already have a bit more awareness already, you know what emotional eating is and how it can affect your weight let's explore the science behind food and emotion and learn more about why we feel the way we do when we eat certain foods.

Emotional eating and the stress response

When you are stressed, your habit brain takes over. It can perceive the emotional threat as a physical threat. This then triggers your fight or flight response, which can lead to cravings and overeating.

Your habit brain is always trying to keep you safe. If you think about it, back in the day as cave people we didn't have busy modern lives it was all about survival. It makes total sense to me that our prehistoric wiring is confused.

If you are facing saber tooth tigers daily your body needs to be ready, it needs to be as fuelled as it can to fight so your brain is going to try and get you to increase your energy consumption. In modern-day terms that is likely to be all the things traditional dieting will have told you, you should not eat as your brain tells you go get food…like go now…grab what you can… the tiger is coming!.

Or maybe your emotion is triggering flight mode, your brain is looking for a way to make you feel better, to keep the status quo. It can often seem easier to distract ourselves, to bury our emotions than to deal with them head-on but really we are just masking. When we're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, eating can be a way to distract ourselves from our problems. It is a way to numb out, buffer and not have to deal.

We have acquired over time our own unique combination of comfort foods that our brain knows lead to us feeling 'good'.

Often the comfort foods are high in sugar and fat, which provide a rush of pleasure due to hormones that get released. The feel-good chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. These little gems make us feel happy, relaxed, and calm.

The problem is those feelings do not last typically only about 90 seconds and then you either go for more food for another hit or you feel guilty because you have just eaten something you told yourself, you ‘shouldn't’. Sound familiar?

It's a bit of a vicious cycle that can lead to weight gain and feelings of shame and guilt.

For lasting weight loss, we need to uncover our emotional connections to life, food, and weight loss.

I know this can sound scary, like opening pandora's box but it is really not. The problem with keeping the box locked tight though is it is still in there eating away internally so even if you lose weight on another diet say keto, ww or shakes you are not truly free.

When I am working on these things I find it so much easier to process. When I think “it's science!” as it helps to reduce the personal judgment which creates the suffering.

Your brain remembers everything.

Over time you have built up connections with certain foods. These are the foods you will likely crave whenever you experience the emotion that fits.

Your brain remembers everything, so it knows what made you feel happier last time you felt this way.

So say, you feel sad. Your brain wants to make you happy. It remembers the last time you felt sad, it says I know chocolate... chocolate makes her happy. It sends you the thought…we should eat chocolate…this leads to the feeling of desire and can also trigger a physical response for hunger even though you are not hungry.

Our brains are flawed though and it conveniently forgets you then feel shit afterward when you feel shame for an overeat.

The real trick is to catch the thought or the emotion before the action of eating and ask yourself "What do I really need right now?"

You can also develop an emotional connection to a certain food/s, maybe from having fond memories of them or because you feel like might miss out...FOMO is real!

So for me, for example, I had a lovely Nan who sadly is no longer with me. We would bake together, I would lick the bowl these were happy times. So baking makes me happy. I still want to lick the bowl. If working on weight loss this could be a cue for an overeat so it is something I have gathered awareness over during my weight loss journey and the kind of things I help my members uncover. I can then step into action.

How to step into action and hold yourself accountable for your emotional eating.

Ultimately there is no one-size-fits-all solution for managing emotional eating. What works for one person might not work for another and this is why true sustainable weight loss is so much more than food in and out and movement.

If you are calorie counting, counting points, drinking shakes, or taking appetite suppressants they are not really teaching you how to change your relationship with food and in some cases could be deepening a poor relationship with food and yourself.

Here are some general tips that might help:

1) Ditch the diet mentality

Feeling restricted, telling yourself you can’t have things, you should not have things, that x y z is not allowed is not helping your relationship with food. All you are doing is fighting reality. This creates needless suffering and is why most diets fail as they are not sustainable.

2) Be aware of your triggers

The first step is to be aware of your triggers. What situations or emotions lead you to emotional eating? Once you know your triggers, you can start to develop a plan for how to deal with them.

3) Be aware of your food stories

Identify your relationship with certain foods. Where does this come from? How deep does it go? What purposes does it currently serve? Is it serving you now? Anticipate when it may comes up and solve the problem in advance.

4) Identify your emotional needs

Are you really hungry or are you looking for something else? If you're not physically hungry, try to identify what it is that you're really craving. Are you looking for comfort? A distraction? Something to make you feel better?

5) Find other ways to meet your needs

Once you've identified your emotional needs, try to find other ways to meet them that don't involve food. If you're looking for comfort, try talking to a friend or family member, reading a book, or taking a relaxing bath. If you're looking for a distraction, try going for a walk, watching a movie, or working on a hobby. And if you're looking for something to make you feel better, try practising self-care and mindfulness in whatever way works best for you.

6) Work with me

If you've tried these tips and you're still struggling with emotional eating, it might be time to seek additional support

I can teach you all the techniques you need to figure this out and provide you the coaching support to help you through it.

Whether you are a lone wolf and want 1 to 1 or to be part of a community such as my membership I can support your goals.

Conclusion

The emotional connection to food can run deep like an ocean. Just when you think you have it figured out, there is always something else to discover. There can also sometimes be hidden depths that can seem impossible to fully explore. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. You can always learn more about your emotional connection to food and how it is affecting your well-being.

Weight gain is a result of a combination of factors but emotional eating will be one of them.

So today you have learnt a bit about the science of emotional eating. How it shows, up, why it shows up.

Interesting right.

How do you feel now you know it is science?

That you are not broken.

That you are not failing and out of control.

It’s just science!

You have some tips to try so commit to trying them out today. Start to get a hold of your life and weight loss in a way that suits you and your life.

Need more I am here for you.

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P.S.

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Categories: : mindset, Weight loss, yoga