dLife Bookshelf
Your Emotional Environment
For many of us, our feelings play a role in when, what, and how much we eat. For example, we may eat to soothe physical or emotional pain or to suppress uncomfortable or painful feelings and temporarily distract ourselves from them. Because eating offers only a temporary solution, many people repeat the process and fall into the habit of using food to cope with painful emotional experiences. Some of us use food as a reward: Had a bad day? Treat yourself to a “special meal.” This is a particular problem for people who feel that they are always giving to others and have little time to nurture themselves. Food becomes a quick and convenient reward.
On the other hand, some people have too much extra time on their hands and use food to cope with boredom or to procrastinate. It is common for some people to take breaks from studying, housework, or other projects and use food to fill those breaks even though they may not be hungry. Interesting patterns in eating behavior start to emerge. People who are angry often look for foods with crunch and say that they need to chew. People who are sad, depressed, anxious, or emotionally upset turn to the “comfort foods” that they associate with pleasant feelings and memories stemming from childhood. Let’s consider John’s situation.
John has been struggling to lose weight. He noticed that whenever he felt stressed he would binge on cookies and milk, which made him feel better, but this sabotaged his weight loss. As we talked with John in detail about this pattern, he realized that he associated eating cookies and milk with happier times. His mother used to set out cookies and milk for him when he returned home from school. Once John realized why he binged on cookies and milk, he found other ways to connect with the nurturing feelings he associated with his mother. John started to look at his mother’s pictures and read the letters that he had saved when he needed to feel comforted or wanted to soothe his stress.
As we’ve seen (and some of us know all too well), eating can help suppress bad feelings. Think about your own situation. Do you eat when you are angry, bored, tired, lonely, anxious, or depressed? What about positive emotions—birthdays, holidays, vacations, parties, and other happy occasions where food is thecenter of the celebration? When you celebrate, do you overeat?
Instead of suppressing your feelings with food (“jack-in-thebox phenomenon”), try to process and deal with uncomfortable emotions by trying some of the following ideas:
Your Cognitive Environment: Changing Your Self-Talk
Not everyone overeats because of easy access to food or because of their emotional state. Some people overeat because their selftalk persuades them to. Self-talk is the narrative that goes on in our heads—our cognitive environment. We don’t usually think we control this self-talk, but if we’re conscious of it, we can. Do any of these self-talk statements sound familiar?
Some of these self-talk “tapes” are so familiar that they’re practically background music—we don’t even realize that we are saying them to ourselves. It is important for you to pay attention to your self-talk and change your inner dialogue, your cognitive environment.