Options abound for treating the symptoms rather than treating the system. We see this in everything from pain killer medication to diet shakes to sleeping pills. We want to fix what ever is causing our pain and we want to do so quickly. Humans are problem solvers and we like concrete, quantifiable ways to measure progress and success. We like the idea of hard parameters like cutting carbs entirely, only eating in a certain window, calorie counting or cutting out an entire food group. These things can often work to improve certain health metrics but it does not get at the core of what got us to overeating in the first place.

We eat for a multitude of reasons. Our meal choice is a chance to nourish and provide our bodies with fuel to complete tasks and reach goals. It’s social and healthy to share meals with our families at the end of the day or with a colleague at lunch time. It’s fun and interesting to try new foods and extremely pleasurable to taste delicious foods. Food is also soothing, it can feel relaxing to eat something when we are stressed. It can feel comforting to get something from the pantry when we feel sad or disappointed. Often we eat just because we think we should, we walk into the kitchen around lunchtime and our instincts take over. Whilst food has the potential to play these roles it does not mean that it should. Learning how to overcome these habits or how to move past using food as a crutch is hard. Your degree, apprenticeship or first work experience also seemed hard but you invested time and effort and the results were worth it.

Why do we eat for reasons other than real hunger? Evolution made sure that we would experience eating as pleasurable as it is so essential to our survival. Hormones such as serotonin are released in response which make us feel sleepy and relaxed, a trade anyone would like to make when feeling stressed or rejected. Foods like sugar have the affect of rewarding our system with dopamine to make us want to go out and seek more of those foods. Thus, when we are in these heightened states of stress or emotional turmoil, we can be swayed to reach for food to calm and comfort ourselves.

How can you overcome this tendency to “eat your feelings” or to eat out of habit? Learning to recognise your emotions accurately, practicing awareness and developing a tool kit to work with them is extremely helpful to overcoming this susceptibility. Learning to tell whether you are hungry or not is part of a broader skill repertoire of knowing what you are feeling. Having a well developed emotional vocabulary is a worthy investment of your time to avoid all sorts of harmful choices. For example, you are considering accepting a job offer and you feel happy. Get specific. Are you inspired because this is your dream job and you can’t wait to put your skills to use? Or are you flattered that they want you to work for them even though its a mediocre role at a stagnating company? Being able to distinguish past being happy or sad is a fantastic place to start and clearly helpful in other areas of your life. Are you yelling at your partner because they really are a useless jerk who can never be bothered to do chores in a conspiracy against you or are you tired and suffering from a bit of recency bias because you took the bin out the last two times? Stepping back and asking yourself such questions can avert or sorts of escalations and disasters, as you will see yourself when you get the chance to reap the fruit of this mindfulness. How can you develop this skill? First by not doing anything to hamper this development. It is extremely common to have had parents that did not validate your feelings or invest in teaching you to name your emotions. This is something you can learn in adulthood but recognising your foundation is also an important first step. If you go through a hard times or are being overwhelmed then acknowledge that. Don’t stuff down the sensations and tell yourself you will be fine. If you really are at breaking point and ignore the signs you are at risk of burnout, depression and developing anxiety. If you feel lonely because you are not getting the social interaction you crave then honour that and call a friend or family member, join a community group or opt in for a volunteering experience. Validating yourself and making adjustments as need be to your workload or support network is so valuable for equipping your system to not just avoid stress but to reframe and problem solve, a skill that transcends to appetite regulation. When we ignore internal cues we also teach ourselves to ignore cues that we have had enough food, that any more of the rich, creamy pasta will make us feel uncomfortable and too full. When we use social media or alcohol to distract ourselves from what we are feeling we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to connect and explore how we are responding to the world around us. We are also reinforcing a pattern of distracting ourselves that works agains the ability to self-regulate. Below is list of tools that can help you in the moment as well as habits to be practiced to fortify your self regulation.

In the moment
Try to ask yourself what you are really feeling. Are you eating because you are hungry or are you eating because you are sad or stressed about work? If the source is emotional then try working with that first. Tell yourself you can have something better later when you really are hungry and then devote five minutes to your stress relief.
– Rate your hunger on a scale of 1-10 before you prepare or buy whatever it is you would eat. Check in with yourself to work out how hungry you actually are, if you are only a 2 or 3 out of ten you probably aren’t hungry enough for a full meal and waiting till you feel a 7 or 8 out of 10 will help you enjoy the meal more, feeling as though you are satisfying a real need rather than eating for another reason.
– Go for a walk outside, just five minutes in the fresh air and natural light. We are cued by our environment and sometimes just getting ourselves away from the physical environment that we had the craving in is enough.
– Write down what you are feeling but try not to ruminate, think of other problems you have solved in the past and give yourself a kind word or two about your own abilities and talents to solve the current one.
– Practice gratitude and awareness of what is going well in your life right now, even if that is just having a roof over your head or getting to watch the sunset on the weekends.

Helpful habits
– Name your emotions, with specificity. Write a journal and details what you are feeling and what things trigger you. Not being invited to something made you feel… and then noting down if it led to any other action like ordering too much uber eats because you were lonely. Having lunch with your parents made you feel… Perhaps blissful and engaged, you felt stimulated by their conversation, encouraged by their kind words and relaxed in their company. Maybe you experienced a mix of emotions. Perhaps you noticed them leaning a little on the table to get up and looking quite frail and this made you feel… not just sad but, aware of your own mortality, anxious about their health, pensive about their future.
– Gaining new perspectives often and in many contexts. When we mindfully put ourselves in a new situation we are stimulating our system into learning how to navigate something novel. Tuning into the process and detailing in your mind what you feel and how you are responding expands us and gives us the opportunity to learn new categories of feelings.
– Movement An incredibly powerful method of self-regulation is movement. Be it yoga or something more vigourous. Using your breath in rhythm to your movements in yoga or resistance training is so powerful for connecting to your body. Thinking about what muscles you are using and the physical strength you are recruiting is empowering and a great way to train self-control. Pushing yourself safely past an old limit is not only motivating but a way to master yourself and unleash potential.
– Sleep. It is much harder to employ self control when you are tired and often we eat just because we feel fatigued rather than hungry. We do this not just in a misguided attempt to feel more energised but also because when we sleep less we produce more of the hormone that cues hunger signals, ghrelin. We also produce more cortisol (stress hormone) which makes our body crave food to relieve the stress. Stack the odds in your favour by prioritising sleep.

I have scratched the surface here on emotional regulation as it relates to appetite. If you would like someone on your team to help you through the journey of improving your nutrition, movement and appetite regulation then reach out to an experiences nutritionist and personal trainer.

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