Mastering Emotional Eating: Uncovering the Roots and Finding Control

Can emotional eating ever be truly controlled, or is it an inevitable part of our biological response to stress? On this episode of Imperfect Nutrition, I dive deep into the intricate relationship between our emotions and our eating habits. Drawing from my personal stories and cutting-edge neuroscience, I explore why we often find solace in food during difficult times. From the soothing memories of childhood to the neurotransmitters that calm our minds, discover the hidden reasons behind those late-night cravings for carbs.

But understanding the 'why' is just the beginning. I'll also equip you with actionable strategies that I've used with my clients to manage emotional eating more effectively. Simple yet powerful techniques like pausing to reflect on your emotions can make a world of difference. Whether you're struggling with stress, sadness, or just plain boredom, identifying these triggers is key to developing a healthier relationship with food. Join me as we uncover how small pauses can lead to big changes, helping you navigate your emotional eating journey with greater awareness and control.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:26

Hello and welcome to Imperfect Nutrition. I am your host, stephanie, and today I'm going to be talking about emotional eating. So a lot of us struggle with emotional eating. I have even struggled with emotional eating in my past. I can actually, like remember certain points of my life where I, you know, basically went into just a feeling to feel better, right, I remember I got in a fight with my boyfriend back in high school and I had all of these chocolates in front of me and I just kept eating them and eating them because I was trying to make myself feel better. And I remember that incident because I remember just feeling so good in that moment, just feeling better, and I was just sobbing and I was just eating the chocolate and I I don't know even why I wanted to do that, you know.

Speaker 0: 1:16

But I think emotional eating, like all of our eating, is somewhat emotional. You know, eating is an emotional experience and I think a lot of times we say emotional eating and we just automatically think binge eating, stress eating, overeating, feeling sick to our stomachs after, you know. But it doesn't always have to be like that and you know, I think the first thing to do about emotional eating is just becoming aware of when we do this and why we do it right? So really, just deep diving into you know, why are we emotional eating in the first place? Like, why are we turning to food when we have some sort of you know issue or stressor in our life? And I think it goes back all the way to being a baby, right? How did we get sued? We got sued by our mother's milk, right, that helped, sued us, right? So, thinking about that, like it's like ingrained in us for us to feel more calm when our bellies are full, and when we think of this from like a neuroscience perspective, when our stomachs actually, um, are descended, something that happens is that serotonin gets released. So serotonin is a neurotransmitter in our brain that makes us feel more calm and happy and just satiated. So that's why a lot of times we will overeat or emotionally eat on things like carbohydrates, because carbohydrates expand in the stomach and create this distension in our stomach.

Speaker 0: 2:35

So a lot of times when we emotionally eat or stress eat, we are doing that to feel that distension, to feel that fullness, and that makes us feel calm. It basically takes us out of this fight or flight response that we're in. So that is something that happens when we're in a stress response. It's our stress response. So, when we get stressed out, cortisol, adrenaline start getting released and we're in a fight or flight, right. So, in order to calm ourselves down, we eat a bunch of food, and this puts us in a rest and digest state, and this is our calm state, this is our parasympathetic state. Okay, so it makes sense from like a biological level why we emotionally eat or why we stress eat. My dog's gonna bark, I know it. He's gonna bark, don't bark. Don't bark, noxy, don't do it.

Speaker 0: 3:20

So I'm gonna give you a couple of tips that I use for myself and my clients in order to, you know, help not maybe not stop emotional eating completely, but just get a handle on it a little bit better. The first thing to do is to pause. So anytime that you want to go and grab, you know, the chocolate bar, the chips, the cookies in the cupboard, you know, giving yourself a pause, just pausing, even if it's just for a couple of seconds, and just like asking yourself, you know, is this going to get me closer to my goal? Is there an emotion that I'm feeling right now? Do I feel stressed out? Do I feel sad? Am I happy? You know what is it? What is the emotion? Am I bored? Right? So identifying the emotion that you feel and pausing for a second, because a lot of times when we emotionally eat, when we stress eat, we are just in this fight or flight response and we're just trying to make ourselves feel better and we're we're not thinking clearly, we're not pausing, we're just like on autopilot, right? So giving yourself a pause and something that you can do that is pretty, um, good for just day to day is pausing before you eat a meal. So a lot of times we can't practice these things when we're already in a stress state. So practicing a pause before you eat, so before you go and eat your meal that you've planned out, take a pause, take a breath, check in with yourself how am I feeling, what are the emotions right now? Right, and taking a pause. So that can really really help when it when you are going to stress eat or emotionally eat.

Speaker 0: 4:47

Another thing to do is distraction. Set a timer for like five minutes and just go and do something. Right, twiddle on your phone, watch a youtube video, go outside, go for a walk, um, go and clean something. Just do something for five minutes to distract yourself and then come back to it and being like, hey, am I still hungry, do I still want this or is that just a moment? Right, and just trying to identify that right again. A lot of this comes with awareness and pausing and you are capable of doing these things. I know maybe you don't feel like it in the moment, but just even setting a timer for like five minutes, it actually shows studies that after 20 minutes, cravings go down. So if you can do something for 20 minutes, like go for a walk around the block, those cravings will go away, right.

Speaker 0: 5:32

And I think it's important to understand what real hunger is and what, like you know, just mental hunger. Right, they're different. Where do you feel it right? Is it more in your mind? Are you just thinking about it or do you actually feel that hunger pang in your stomach? So identifying that as well is going to be super helpful. And you know, before you go and eat any sort of meal, I think doing these things can be helpful. You know, taking a pause, asking how you feel with your emotions, where are you feeling the hunger? You know really getting more awareness around yourself and understanding, because a lot of these things happen because we're just not aware, right. So awareness is always going to be that key, fundamental thing when it comes to helping you with emotional eating. All right guys, thank you so much. I hope this was helpful. If you did find it helpful, please share with someone else and we will talk soon. Bye.