March 22nd - Emotional Eating A couple of things before I get onto my main topic for the night.  Firstly, I am convinced that the WW scales are dodgy because my flatmates scales also say I hardly lost anything.  In the bigger scheme of things it doesn't matter that much - I'm still doing the right thing - but for those of you who are wondering about these massive losses I'm having, I truly believe the last 2 weeks are probably an overestimation of my progress. The second thing which is closely related is that it is my birthday tomorrow and Flopsy has bought me some new scales with the 100gm increments (wow he must read my journal too), but I'm not allowed to see them or stand on them til tomorrow.  In fact, we should probably pretend I don't know yet - so don't tell Flopsy will you.  I'm looking forward to getting a look at them though and being new I hope they are accurate for at least a good while and I can let you know my thoughts on how much the WW scales fluctuate. ***** On to more important things - I've been promising to share my thoughts on emotional eating for awhile and today is the day that I start.  I have the feeling I might write about this a few times because, like motivation, it fascinates me and I've spent more than a few quiet moments musing over it's role in the whole weight gain/loss debacle. First up, my definition of emotional eating is that it is eating in response to an emotional cue, and it serves some kind of emotional regulatory purpose - ie to alter your emotional state.  To me this is like a subtle form of substance use.  The effect of eating may not be as dramatically noticeable as getting drunk or stoned, but nonetheless I was certainly eating for an effect. Some specific examples of this kind of eating might be where it is used to enhance a positive mood (such as eating as a central part of celebration - just watch the movie 'Chocolat' and the party scene is SUCH a good example of this).  In fact, I don't think this is a very big deal if it's only occasionally.  Perhaps more problematic is eating to avoid or alter negative mood states such as sadness, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, anger etc.  This kind of eating was certainly my problem area.  I was in a rejecting, neglectful, abusive relationship and nearly every time I was upset I went and bought takeaway and chocolate and cheezels.  I felt lonely, unloved, miserable, angry and these foods were my ally - predictable, accessible, and within my control to have as I pleased. That's not to say that every time I ate these foods it was 'emotional eating'.  Eating these foods was already well and truly within my repertoire - but the way I ate them got entirely out of control during this period of emotional upheaval.  I had a background of moderately unhealthy eating before that, and this was compounded to the nth degree when I was unhappy. So I've been wondering about this close association between eating and comfort.  There's probably a bunch of physiological reasons that contribute (Nella from SFL is invited to post onto my message board with any scientific stuff that she might know about), but I've been considering the more psychological aspects.  For most people, our earliest experiences of being fed were closely associated also with feeling physically comforted by being closely held and reassurance that our caregiver was meeting our need.  It is also often the case that feeding is offered in response to crying - an association between distress followed by eating and settling. So I figure that these early experiences may create strong urges and associations that we regress to during times of distress.  After all emotional responses are very primitive. So, what do we do about this then?  It's worth pointing out that we are taught during our growing years how to moderate and overcome many primal sorts of instincts.  Even though we feel like it, we don't belt people when we're annoyed with them; we learn to moderate responses like crying depending on the appropriateness of the context. So the big question is why don't we learn to moderate our emotional  eating?  I have some ideas, let me know what you think; 1.Many people do.  I wasn't one of them.  Many people also have stories about how unhealthy associations were reinforced rather than discouraged by their family during their childhood.  2. Some people may emotionally eat but be lucky enough to not be prone to putting on weight.   3. Emotional eating can be pretty subtle and might be hard to notice until you hit an emotionally difficult time of your life. Emotional eating is probably not going to make you fat if it doesn't happen often. 4. Because eating is still a necessary and appropriate part of life it can be hard to separate out the good types of eating from the bad types of eating.  It's hard to be that self-aware.  5. On the whole, people are not terribly good at dealing with difficult feelings. If we're not going to emotionally eat any more, we better find some decent alternatives about how to manage feelings. That last point, about finding alternatives to manage difficult feelings sounds like a good place to leave off tonight, and a great place to start my next entry.  'Til then... <<Back    Home    Next>>