American writer Maya Angelou once said: “Eating is a very intimate process. When you invite someone to eat with you and want to cook for them, it’s like you’re giving them a pass into your world.” Any memorable event in our life, be it joyful, exciting or sad, is not complete without a set table. Food is part of our culture. Therefore, it is not surprising that today most of us perceive it not just as fuel for the body, but also as an important emotional component of our lives.
Complex relationships with food are a problem in modern society. We eat when we are nervous or sad, thereby compensating for the lack of positive emotions. We are on endless diets, switching from a protein diet to cabbage soup. We conduct experiments on our own body, achieving the “ideal” weight and returning to the previous parameters after another breakdown. Perhaps we should finally admit to ourselves: we suffer from an eating disorder to one degree or another, and something needs to be done about it.
View on Instagram
Why does food evoke such strong emotions in us?
“Food and emotions are inextricably linked. All key processes of socialization and maturation are accompanied by meals. It starts in the first days of our lives: to bond with our babies, we offer them milk,” says Laura Thomas, Ph.D., nutritionist and bestselling author of Just Eat It.
“We often talk about this phenomenon in a negative way, trying to explain the nature of so-called emotional eating. When I work with my patients, I see these eating behaviors as a sign that something is wrong with the person,” Thomas continues. She explains that the desire to eat something tasty in moments of stress or excitement is due to habits formed in childhood.
View on Instagram
What makes you eat emotions?
How to calm down and stop being nervous and worrying about trifles
Different human needs can provoke stress eating. They can be both psychological and physiological.
Support is an important element of a good mood
Among the most common are:
- Need for support. Occurs before a responsible task or difficult negotiations.
- Need for rest. If a person simply does not allow himself to take a break from work, food becomes a serious reason for him to put things aside.
- Need for a good mood. If everything is boring and monotonous, tasty food will help trigger the production of the joy hormone called endorphin.
- Need for consolation. With the help of food, a person is able to help himself cope with pain, resentment, and insults.
What is emotional eating?
Emotional eating is quite common. People susceptible to it tend to fall into two types: those who start eating more than usual due to stress, and those who eat less. The essence of this unhealthy eating behavior is that the process of food consumption becomes a response to emotions. “When we work with patients on this problem, we often find much deeper root causes,” says Thomas. “This could be years of self-restraint and dieting, disrupted or malnutrition. A psychological ban on food, manic calorie counting, the perception of certain foods as bad and harmful - all this leads to negative consequences. As a result of such prohibitions, the body gives a response that provokes emotional eating.”
During the first consultation with the patient, the nutritionist first of all finds out what role food plays in a person’s life. Then Thomas finds out from the client what he lacks for happiness and what gaps he is trying to fill. “There’s nothing wrong with us using food as such an emotional plug. People who engage in this habit should not be shamed or judged. This is a harmless defense mechanism. Some people become addicted to gambling, alcohol, sex or drugs, although these addictions are not so adaptive.”
Problems arise when, in our arsenal of life, emotional eating becomes the only tool for shifting attention from the problem. Thomas advises expanding the adaptive toolkit: for some, it’s enough to just have a good cry, for others, it’s worth going to psychotherapy or developing mindfulness.
View on Instagram
How we block emotions when we can't express them
Let's figure out what happens in the body and psyche during the emergence of emotions.
Since emotion is a process that occurs in three areas at once: physiological reactions, mental states and display on the face, on the body (as a consequence of physiological processes), - by suppressing an emotion, we can and try to suppress only its external reflection (facial expressions), mental states and slightly physiological manifestations.
That is (attention!) we are trying to suppress the consequences of those primary impulses that are beyond our control. We block and suspend the natural course of these processes.
Imagine: you’re at the stadium in sportswear, you’ve almost raised your leg to run, you’ve just shifted the weight from your back leg to your front leg, but suddenly you decide that you don’t need to run.
What is the body's reaction? You almost fell, because you need to somehow maintain your balance, lower your raised leg, level yourself. It would be much smarter to start running, take a couple of steps and then stop in the usual way than to block your movements. This blockage is a kind of stress for the body.
From this example, you can understand that the physical impulse to “run” has not gone away. In the same way, the impulse from the emotions that have begun remains in your body. And he didn’t go anywhere and didn’t express himself in any way. It sits in the body and psyche. He oppresses you, irritates you, infuriates you. Consider yourself suspended in the air, just like that time at the stadium.
What role does stress play in our relationship with food?
A Harvard Health report states: “Stress can reduce appetite. In stressful situations, the nervous system sends signals to the adrenal glands to increase the release of the hormone epinephrine (also known as adrenaline). Epinephrine helps the body become fully alert and enter an excited state, which suppresses the feeling of hunger.”
However, after some time, the adrenal glands begin to work again, this time releasing the stress hormone cortisol into the body, which, on the contrary, awakens appetite and the desire to eat everything. And even when the stressor is no longer bothering you, your cortisol levels may still remain high, leading to a stress-eating-stress-eating cycle.
View on Instagram
How has the diet industry affected our relationship with food?
Following diets has always been associated with a healthy lifestyle, but in recent years the situation has gradually begun to change. If previously diets and fitness were perceived primarily as a means of losing weight, now the focus has shifted to health, mental and physical, and long-term results.
Thomas notes a significant difference in attitudes toward diets between younger and older patients. “This is especially true for those who are now 50–60 years old. They are children of a diet-obsessed society. However, now the situation is returning to normal. Among young people there are much more opponents of diets. True, they have other problems: many become victims of “clean eating” and orthorexia. Adult patients prefer to use diet pills and laxatives the old-fashioned way.”
Dalton Wong, trainer to Gwendoline Christie, Jennifer Lawrence, Olivia Colman and other stars and founder of the London studio Twenty Two Training, also notices all these changes. “Many of my adult clients were raised by parents who, as a result of the war, developed the habit of eating every last crumb. Naturally, they taught their children the same. Because of this, many of us become addicted to food. When choosing a training program for my clients, I always try to understand their triggers and emotional reactions to food.”
Society is finally coming to understand that there are no good or bad products. “People believe that poor eating habits are the result of a lack of willpower and self-control. Do you regularly use food as a way to relieve negative emotions? Or is it just a breakdown after prolonged self-restraint? Or maybe the whole problem is an imbalanced energy balance? — Thomas shares the questions he asks his clients during consultations.
View on Instagram
Be mindful of food
Analyze your eating habits.
Psychoanalysis, awareness of childhood traumas and habitual ways of reacting in different life situations establishes a connection between the conscious and unconscious. What is conscious ceases to influence us and is amenable to change.
There are many invisible levers in the subconscious that control life without our participation. We can start with the collective unconscious, that is, with the memory of humanity, which affects everyone. Ancient people also relieved tension from stress (at that time due to hunger) by sharing a meal. After a person has eaten, he feels better, and hostility towards his own kind goes away. We still unconsciously use the same methods of dealing with stress. But for us this is already an archetypal (outdated) approach to solving problems.
You can also remember what eating habits were ingrained in you since childhood. Perhaps you were force-fed, and the long-forgotten stress of force-feeding forces you to eat when you are already full, when there is no feeling of hunger. Or they calmed you down with candy when they couldn’t agree otherwise. You need to remember all this and realize how childhood behavior patterns laid down by your parents still influence you.
“Debriefing” is the subject of two thematic lessons on food at the “System-Vector Psychology” training, during which students have important realizations, and their attitude towards food and life in general changes significantly.
Become aware of the conditions that trigger the eating response.
Everyone would do well to take a closer look at themselves while eating.
Elias Canetti, writer, playwright, thinker
System-vector psychoanalysis helps to better understand yourself and your conditions. Previously, you did not realize that you were in fear, chronic resentment, or that your lack of joy in life was due to hidden depression. Once these conditions are understood, it becomes easy to track which deficiencies are being replaced by overeating. What becomes the trigger for eating “everything that is not nailed down”? Fear, anxiety, resentment? These are states characteristic of different vectors, which means you need to cope with them with knowledge of your psychological characteristics.
Imagine: you suddenly find out that the report is due tomorrow, and you only have half a day to complete it. Instead of concentrating and sitting down to work, you stop thinking at all, your thoughts run wild, and your legs themselves drag you to the refrigerator. When you come to your senses, you have already eaten too much and are even less inclined to work. You put it off until the last minute.
This is a typical reaction of a person with an anal vector. He reacts to sudden changes with stress, which puts him into a stupor. Food calms you down, but the desire to act remains even less. Knowing your properties, the desire to do everything as much as necessary for a high-quality result, you need to avoid such turns. You don’t want to make mistakes in a hurry, do you? Is the urgency really justified or is this someone’s extravagant decision not dictated by reason? This needs to be found out. If this happens all the time, is this the right job for you? This question needs to be answered, something needs to be changed in life, and the cause of stress will be eliminated.
Realize whether you are really hungry.
The best seasoning for food is hunger.
Socrates
At the moment when you want to have a snack, you need to stop and ask yourself the question: “Am I really hungry or just imagining it?” When there is a real feeling of hunger (physical, not emotional), even a crust of bread with salt will seem tasty to you. This is a test to see if you are really hungry. When you go through one dish and then another in your mind and cannot stop at anything, this means that, most likely, there is no hunger.
This is how the human psyche works: he experiences the greatest pleasure when he has accumulated a great shortage. The larger the size of the void, the greater its filling.
Try fasting for at least 24 hours (for example, from dinner to dinner), at least once, as an experiment to compare the pleasure of eating. After fasting, ordinary borscht will seem like a haute cuisine dish. And when you experience emotional hunger, you may endlessly eat chips, cookies, cakes, candies and not feel their taste. Because you are consumed by emotions and not by the taste of food. You are not enjoying the moment, but are caught up in excitement.
When you gain the experience of eating only after the feeling of real hunger appears, you will no longer want to fill your belly when there is no such desire. Because it doesn't taste good.
“Another visible result is that in a month, after level 2 lectures on food, I lost 6 kg. I couldn’t do this before, I ate constantly, and it seemed to me that if I didn’t eat a lot, I wouldn’t be able to live, my body wouldn’t withstand all the horrors of this life, or I’d do something bad. This is in the past, thank God. Now I can't eat too much. I really like the state of hunger and then eating in it...”
Elena L. Read the full text of the result
How are food and exercise related?
According to Dalton Wong, food, exercise and health are links in the same chain. “Before you build a connection between training and nutrition, think about why you are doing physical activity in the first place. Is this a way to boost your ego? Or do you want to get in good physical shape to run a marathon? Maybe you are trying to become stronger or is it for rehabilitation? In each of these cases, the nutrition plan should be different.”
However, regardless of the goal, Wong encourages his clients to exercise for fun. “If you are running or training for a marathon, 80 percent of the program, including nutrition, should be aimed at achieving the final result, the remaining 20 percent is space for freedom. There is no need to keep yourself in Spartan conditions.”
View on Instagram
How to learn intuitive eating?
Thomas says the first thing you need to do is change the way you think about nutrition. This applies to everything from the perception of food (what is “good” and what is “bad”) to the ability to recognize the body’s signals for satiety. “Imagine your body has a gas gauge, like a car. When the needle is at a minimum, you experience extreme hunger and work on your last legs. And if it goes off scale, it means you overate to the point of nausea,” explains Thomas. Learning to read your hunger signals, which can be accompanied by sudden mood swings, loss of energy, headaches, stomach discomfort and excessive salivation, is the first step towards healthy eating behavior.
Thomas believes that it is very important not to blame yourself for breakdowns and treat your body with care and love. You need to learn to understand, recognize and feel your emotions. “Allow your inner self to establish a dialogue with your body.”
In conclusion, it is worth quoting the words of Padma Lakshmi, author of Love, Loss and What We Ate, food critic, TV chef and woman from the cover of the May issue of Indian Vogue, about our difficult relationship with food: “I am what I eat. And how I feel at every moment. I know I'm not alone. Food not only fills our stomachs, but also our souls.”
Subscribe and get one step closer to fashion professionals.
Why diet won't help you forget how to eat stress
One of the most useless ideas in the fight against emotional eating is trying to go on a diet. You won’t be able to crush the problem with willpower; you will only make it worse. You can chew celery as much as you like and arrange fasting days, but sooner or later you will still be tempted by a delicious cake. And after it will come an even greater feeling of guilt and a new diet, but more strict and still just as unnecessary.
Since overeating is caused by stress, anxiety, depression or other similar psychological conditions, you need to deal with them first. The first step is to identify the factors that trigger stress and try to eliminate or minimize them: find a hobby you like, expand your social circle, or, conversely, stop communicating with the cause of your anxiety, change jobs.
And after (and best of all, at the same time) begin to control your eating behavior. Do not hesitate to contact a psychologist, nutritionist, nutritionist and other specialists. They will help you choose the right therapy, minimize the likelihood of a breakdown and calmly overcome it if it does happen.
