Time & time again we hear our clients talk about emotional eating – turning to food to soothe emotions related to major events & daily stress.They say things like,

“But I was really stressed…”

“I just felt sad…”

“It calmed me down”

Emotional eating is reported as one of the most common reasons our clients sabotage their weight management attempts.

While occasional overeating, like letting go on Christmas Day, is not too much of a worry, doing it more often than not drags you into a destructive cycle of using food to manage your mood, cope with stress, or overcome feelings of anxiety or boredom.

We are ‘psychologising’ food when we use food to fix psychological issues such as stress. Of course, most of us know that food does not resolve stress and depression, and not surprisingly ends up making us feel more stressed and depressed when we gain even more weight. But, do we stop doing it? No! We stay stuck in the cycle of emotional eating!

As boring and blindingly obvious as it sounds, food is an energy and nutrient source. It supplies our body with  protein, fat and carbohydrate and vitamins and minerals.

Technically speaking, we should be eating to live, not living to eat!

Two-thirds to three quarters of Australians eat more than their body needs and as a result deposit excess body fat. And, it is not just Australians that are getting fatter, it has become a planetary problem!

We are actually designed to maintain our body weight in a range that is appropriate for our skeleton and body build. We have a feeding and satiety centre in our brains that if we listened to it, would keep us at an ideal body weight all our lives. Unfortunately, our emotions and thoughts can override a natural tendency to manage our weight through appetite regulation. So instead of eating when we are physiologically hungry we eat emotionally – when we are sad, when we are happy, when we are stressed, when we are angry, when we are bored and when we couldn’t care less. And, because we are such emotional creatures, we just get fatter as we eat in response to emotions.

We also allow our more unenlightened thoughts and beliefs to determine what we eat. Typical examples include: “Go on, eat that dessert, you can start your weight loss program tomorrow!” or “I’m on holiday, so I’ll eat what I like, and start my weight loss program when I go back to work”, or “I deserve it!”.

How Does Food Relate to Mood?

1. Eating some foods like chocolate  releases small amounts of mood & satisfaction elevating hormones, meaning you want to eat them again.
2. For those who psychologise their food, the ”pleasure” of eating can offset negative emotions, and even though the effect is usually temporary, it is powerful enough to cause the person to repeat the exercise, making it a habit.
3. Food can be a distraction from worry, anxiety, sadness and other negative emotions. Unfortunately, the distraction is only temporary & when you are done overeating, your attention returns to your worries. On top of that, you’ll probably be feeling guilty too, which could start the whole eating cycle again.

Following are Some Tips to Get a Grip on Emotional Eating…

Firstly, know your triggers…

We all react to different things. For some of us, being stressed leads to over-eating, while for others, it leads to under-eating. Tracking what & how much you eat, when you eat, how you’re feeling when you eat & how hungry you are will allow you to identify triggers of overeating & deal with them before emotional eating takes hold! Creating awareness of your motivations for eating is crucial to weight loss success. We call it self-monitoring.

Secondly, know your hunger…

Learn to recognise true hunger. Is your hunger physical or emotional? Some signs of emotional hunger include:

• It comes on suddenly – you go from being not hungry at all to starving
• It is stimulated by pleasant food smells and, you were not hungry before you smelt the food
• It is stimulated by pictures on TV of food
• It begins in the mouth & the mind, not the stomach
• It often craves specific food a favourite being chocolate
• It often accompanies an unpleasant emotion such as a feeling of agitation or being unsettled
• It involves mindless eating
• It isn’t satisfied when you’re full
• It makes you feel guilty
• It co-occurs with self-sabotaging mental chatter such as “One won’t hurt”, “I earned it”
• It occurs outside your normal eating times
• Once you start eating you can’t stop

Thirdly, to control emotional eating find comfort elsewhere or in diffierent ways… Soothing or sedating yourself with food isn’t going to get you anywhere! Instead of opening a packet of chips, do something positive for your health, such as taking a walk, taking time out to see a movie, drinking water, listening to music, reading, or calling a friend. If your stress is about a particular thing, try talking to someone because food will not support you, fix your problem or talk back.

Fourthly, have healthy snacks within a balanced food plan…

Bt filling up on basic, healthy food you are more likely to feel fuller, for longer. Eating at regular times and not skipping breakfast will help you maintain control throughout the day. Snacks should be low-joule foods, such as fruit, vegetables with fat-free dip, or multigrain crackers. Research has shown that missing breakfast contributes to difficulty with weight loss. Small, frequent, healthy meals are the key to appetite control.

Fifthly, take care of other factors

Remember, things like sleep and exercise also affect your mood, and taking care of these things can make your mind & body better able to cope with stress. People will often confuse tiredness and low energy for hunger. Be rested.

Finally, lose the guilt…

We all stuff up sometimes. The problem is when you run around with guilt for days & let you Mad Monkey Mind tell you to give up! If you give in to emotional eating, forgive yourself & get back on track ASAP. Most importantly, try to learn from the experience, and make a plan for how you can prevent it or manage it better in the future. Focus on the positive changes you’re making in your eating habits and give yourself credit for making changes that ensure better health.

Overall, it’s not about a diet failing, or your emotions mucking you up, YOU need to take responsibility for your actions and eat more mindfully and consciously. Remember, you eat to live, not live to eat!

Food does not solve emotional issues!

Photo Credit:  sxc.hu

Related posts:

1. Eating Mindfully
2. Does eating six small meals a day produce more weight loss than eating three meals a day?
3. Our Obesogenic World

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And, the culprit? Cortisol.

Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone and is secreted by the adrenal glands in response to stress.

It may surprise you, but the body interprets high intensity, frequent exercise as a stress.

Exercising too much, too often, & without a break, leads to consistent high cortisol levels, and can negatively affect weight loss attempts.

How does this come about?

Under stress, cortisol functions to help the body produce blood sugar and pour it into your bloodstream. The blood glucose provides you with the energy to mobilise your “fight or flight” response.

Scientists believe that in prehistoric times, the “flight or fight” response was designed to facilitate an intense physical effort, such as “fighting” your attacker or taking “flight” from a threat such as removing yourself from the path of a t-rex.

While in emergency situations our stress response is vital and valuable, in modern times, our stress response is often activated in situations where the response is not useful such as when you miss the bus, or when your boss upsets you. Our prevailing social and legal norms don’t encourage us to physically hit or verbally abuse people who upset us because we could be up for an assault or bullying charge!

The bad news for weight losers under chronic stress whether this stress be exercise-induced or otherwise, is that the blood sugar build-up stimulated by cortisol, if not utilised to fight or flee, is deposited as fat.

As well as causing fat gain, especially around the stomach, chronically elevated cortisol levels lead to:

• muscle loss (lowering your metabolism),
• a less effective immune system, and
• slower recovery from injury.

Cortisol can also inhibit thyroid function, which also lowers metabolism and prevents weight loss.

So, if you already have a stressful job on top of a stressful life juggling work, family and other commitments, too much exercise will only contribute to the maintenance of high cortisol levels, encouraging you to hold onto your fat.

And what’s worse, research shows that people with high lifestyle stress release MORE cortisol during an intense bout of exercise than someone who has a lower stress level.

The solution to the effect of stress in relation to weight loss is to create more balance in our lives and reduce both our stress levels, and our response to stress (ie don’t react in the first place).

So, how does stress affect appetite?

High blood cortisol, brought on by high stress levels, not only increases the production of blood sugar, it can stimulate our appetite, particularly for carbohydrates, fat, & sugar. One of the major excuses weight losers give for ‘giving up’ on their weight loss programs is ‘they were stressed’ and turned to food for comfort. Emotional eating is a major obstacle to weight loss so learning non-food related ways to manage stress is essential for those who wish to lose weight and keep it off.

There is also a relationship between stress and gender-based coping styles & eating behaviours

On top of these biological changes, we know that some people, especially men, cope with stress via social withdrawal, substance abuse, including food & alcohol, and aggression.

The easiest way to put on weight is to drink it one. Alcohol is 7 kilocalories or 29 kilojoules per gram and unfortunately we can drink a lot more than we can eat. While fat is more fattening (37 kilojoules or 9 kilocalories per gram), we aren’t going to sit down and drink cup after cup of fat. Watching what we drink be it juice, cordial, alcohol, or even milk, is a non-negotiable step in losing weight and keeping it off. And, of course, it will come of no surprise to learn that drinking either alcohol or soft drink does not “fix” your stress; it will likely just cause more!

Women tend to cope with their stress by “tending & befriending” their female friends, which may or may not involve food. The recommendation of course is going to be obvious. Talk and walk; don’t eat your problems away.

Most weight losers would have to admit that one of their main reasons for not losing weight is because of stress and/or emotional eating.

We were designed for short adrenaline and cortisol bursts to mobilise our “fight or flight” response, NOT the prolonged stress associated with modern-day life.

Apart from the disruptions it causes to our weight loss and metabolism, stress also disrupts our sexual response. Libido’s wane and sexual arousal is harder to maintain.

Chronic stress also contributes to gastro-intestinal changes including diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, reflux, flatulence and abdominal pain.

And, the solution is obvious. Manage stress for better sex, improved coping, a more normal appetite control and a happier gastro-intestinal tract.

Stress also affects sleep. High cortisol levels lead to restless sleep, which also negatively impacts on weight loss. We need sufficient relaxation and sleep to produce enough growth hormone. Growth hormone is involved in fat mobilisation and helps make us leaner and stronger.

The effects of not enough sleep on obesity is also at least partly due to the the hormones leptin (leptin has a role in hunger control) and ghrelin (grehlin triggers hunger). One study has shown that people who slept only 4 hours a night for 2 nights saw an 18% decrease in levels of leptin, & a 28% increase in ghrelin. They also had a 24% increase in appetite, craved sweet, starchy and salty food, and lost interest in fruit, vegetables, protein and dairy products.

Again, the solution is obvious. Sleep 7-8 hours every night.

Recent research has suggested that supplementing the diet with fish oils can reduce cortisol levels.

6 Recommendations to Optimise Weight Loss:

1) Optimise exercise, but with the following caveats in mind:

• Exercise but ensure down times  between intense exercise sessions
• Mix up your workouts. For every hard workout with strenuous cardio and weights, do two easy days, either resting or doing yoga, gentle cycling or walking, keeping your heart rate below 70 beats per minute.
• For every 3-4 weeks of exercise, have an “unloading week” that perhaps includes massage, gentle yoga-type exercises, walking, gentle cycling and stretching. When you head back to the gym, your body will be fully rested and you will be able to train harder, which will mean greater weight loss and an improvement in strength.

2) Manage stress in the following ways:

• Identify your stressors
• Learn & implement stress management strategies such as breathing techniques & stretching
• Monitor stress levels

3) Optimise your home-work balance

4) Take fish oil supplements

5) Have adequate sleep, remembering you need more in winter

6) Embrace positive psychology by

• Firstly, keeping a gratitude journal. On a daily basis, write down 3 things that have gone well and that you are grateful for
• Secondly, by focusing on positive events & feelings because this has been clinically proved to reduce stress and elevate mood

Photo credit:  sxc.hu

Related posts:

1. A Bit of Motivation from Buddha for Those Who Have Lost Their Weight Loss Mojo or Think Losing Weight is Just Too Hard
2. Is Cutting Calories Sufficient for Weight Loss?
3. To Add Years To Your Life You Need to Exercise – Here’s Why!

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Post tags: how stress affects weight, over-exercise, stress and eating, stress and exercise, stress and weight, stress and weight loss

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Get Off the Couch!

Many people say time appears to be moving faster, and they feel older than they are.

They complain about their knees, lower back, feet and energy levels when they are overweight.

They say their bodily ailments are a constant reminder of their age!

Many studies have proven a commonly held belief – to add years to your life you need to exercise!

For example, researchers at the King’s College in London measured the length of telomeres – the DNA cap at the end of your chromosomes – in 2401 twins. These ‘DNA bookends’ shorten each time your cells divide. When they become too short, the cell cannot reproduce, making you frail and aged.

If you don’t exercise enough in your spare time, you are likely to have shorter telomeres and overall, your biology is a decade older than people who are active!

Not getting enough activity shortens telomeres regardless of whether you smoke, are overweight, or already have a chronic disease. This adds support to the ‘fit but fat’ rule in health promotion – more activity improves your health regardless of how much you weigh and your other health behaviours!

So, the moral of the story is – better to be fit and fat, then slim and not fit!

But some may say, I get my exercise at work!

Many people justify not doing regular exercise because they think they get enough exercise or activity at work – lifting, walking, carrying etc. But unfortunately, slogging away in manual jobs tends to shorten telomeres because of work-related psychological stress. The results show that exercise alleviates stress and benefits your DNA only if you do it as part of your leisure.

But it’s in my genes some may say, not because I exercise!

Twins share both their genes and environment. The research at King’s College in London was able to show that twins who did more exercise had significantly longer telomeres than their twin who did less exercise, throwing the ‘it’s in my genes’ theory out the window.

Regardless of your genetic background, your health is in your hands!

Getting active is the key

What we do know is that exercise can slow down the shortening of your telomeres, even if you’ve been a couch potato in the past. These days, we spend loads of money on dietary supplements and meal replacements in the hope of losing weight and slowing down the ageing process. This research shows that the easiest way is to get out for a walk and do your mind, body, and spirit a favour for life!

“The U.S. guidelines recommend that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity at least five days a week can have significant health benefits,” the authors write. “Our results underscore the vital importance of these guidelines. They show that adults who partake in regular physical activity are biologically younger than sedentary individuals. This conclusion provides a powerful message that could be used by clinicians to promote the potential anti-aging effect of regular exercise.”

Ref: Tim Spector et al, Arch Intern Med. 2008;168[2]:154-158.

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Related posts:

1. How Stress & Over-exercise Can Prevent Weight-Loss

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Post tags: Exercise, exercise and anti-ageing, exercise for weight loss, weight loss, why I need to exercise

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One of the most helpful habits for managing your weight and health involves paying attention to WHAT and HOW much you eat.

Below are some DietPsyche top tips for transforming yourself from a mindless eater to a MINDFUL EATER!

1. Take the Time

• Allocate time for your food – eating on the run, snacking at your desk, and/or rushing through a takeaway only promotes mindless eating.
• Eat slowly because it takes around 20 minutes after you start eating for chemicals in your stomach to travel to the satiety centre in your brain to tell you that you are “full”. So, eating too quickly often means eating more than your body needs. Try putting your fork down between each bite and become conscious of chewing and really tasting the food you are eating.

2. Make the Space

• Only eat in one place. If you eat when you’re watching tv, or get into the habit of  buying a snack at the petrol station when you fill up your car, your body and mind will be cued to eat every time you watch tv or put fuel in your car. Choose one or two places, for example the kitchen at home or the staff room at work where eating occurs.

3. Control Portion Size

• Along with using other behaviours to control how much you eat, controlling your portion size is a key! For snacks, portion out smaller amounts of large packets into a bowl or plate then put the large packet away. At meal times, especially dinner, serve your meal on a smaller plate and do not leave serving dishes of food on the table.

4. Pay Attention While You Eat

• Notice how your food smells, its texture, what it feels like to chew, and how it tastes. Taking the time to do this will increase the enjoyment you get from food, as well as prolong your eating, giving your satiety centre time to switch on and tell you when you have had enough.

5. Don’t Psychologise or Humanise Food

• Food is NOT comfort, an escape from boredom, a reward, or our best friend. Food is not ‘good or bad’, ‘boring or interesting’. It is protein, fat and carbohydrate, replete with vitamins and minerals. We eat to live, not live to eat.
• Let go of self-talk such as “but, I love food” and  “I feel deprived when I can’t eat my favourite foods”. When you think about it, such beliefs are not only unhelpful they are ridiculous. It’s a total ‘cop-out’ blaming food for your own lack of self-discipline.

6. Create Good Home and Office Habits

• Environmental strategies work. If the “high joule/calorie” food is not easy to access, you won’t eat it. So keep the coke and chocolate out of sight, and replace it with healthy alternatives such as salad, vegetables, fruit, and water.

© Mindz Matter Pty Ltd

Related posts:

1. Getting a grip on emotional eating
2. Does eating six small meals a day produce more weight loss than eating three meals a day?

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Post tags: bullimia, eating disorder, eating mindfully, mindfulness, weight loss

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