Emotional Eating and You

Interview by Lynn Mundell

Sherilynn Cooke, MD, MPH, is medical director at the Kaiser Permanente Martinez Medical Weight Management Program and is chief of Patient Education for the Kaiser Permanente Diablo Service Area—and she’s here to tell you to walk away from that bag of chips. She’ll give tips on just how to do that when she is featured guest for the free Health Talks Online webinar “Emotional Eating and Weight Management,” on Wednesday, July 10, at 12:30 p.m.

Why do we overeat?

There are a number of reasons that together are pretty powerful. Biologically, it goes back to the time when food was not as abundant, and was punctuated with periods of famine. The result is that we are hard-wired biologically to take in calories when food is available. The problem is that now in the U.S. food is available all the time—24-7. So, we are eating constantly instead of sparingly.

Second, emotionally, we eat in response to feelings rather than physical hunger. These feelings can span the range, but are often negative: stress, anxiety, boredom, or loneliness, for example. Food is comfort. Finally, these days we have environmental triggers, primarily fast food advertising. This is driving us to restaurant types of food that are specifically formulated to layer on sugar, fat, and salt—the three components heavily used to have us come back and to eat more.

If you add all of this together—eating too much bad food as a response to emotions—and throw in a sedentary lifestyle, it is not surprising that so many Americans are now overweight or even obese.

I can certainly see why we overeat. But where does our desire to eat ‘bad’ food live?

Sugar, salt, and fat are very addictive, according to food scientists. And they are everywhere in abundance these days. We are very familiar with them. If you eat something sweet, you get the sugar high that can give a nice emotional boost or a surge of energy. But then there is the down side; after the blood sugar spike, you have the crash and you feel worse. Then you want that high again, so you have more. It can continue over and over—the high followed by the crash.

Emotions do seem key. How do we manage our emotional eating?

There are some techniques to be more mindful of our eating. I’ll give one, which is called HALT, which stands for ‘Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?’ You stop yourself when you are about to eat a meal or large snack. Ask yourself if you are really hungry or if there is something else driving you to eat. If there is, what is it? Take that moment and try to evaluate the situation.

Another tip is to keep a food diary. While many have heard of this, I take it one step further by encouraging you to write down not only what you eat and when, but also what you are feeling at the moment. If you do, you can start to see patterns of certain emotions for what you ate. Then you can begin to start substituting less caloric, fatty foods in response to those feelings, or exercise, meditation, and relaxation techniques in response.

But I emphasize that it is also important not to beat yourself up for your food choices. Have some compassion for yourself. Understand that there are a lot of things out there driving you toward overeating. Just be aware of the drivers, as well as your own response versus your actual needs. If you make yourself feel bad, you might just turn around and eat more.

What is your single best bit of advice for maintaining a healthy relationship with food?

The best solution when you do have the trigger to eat bad food or just too much, is to stop and think. Ask yourself, ‘Why am I eating now?’ But then also ask, ‘Is this particular food going to truly nourish my body? Will it make me feel good not just 2 minutes after I eat it, but 30 minutes later?’ We really do have the power to use our minds to connect to and influence our feelings and choices.