emotional eating

Eat to Live, Dont Live to Eat

By: Kim A. McClintic MS, RD, LDN, OSF St. Joseph Medical Center
ur culture has changed in that we no longer eat to live, but rather live to eat. Food is no longer thought of as essential to sustain life as God intended it, but rather has become an answer to boredom, stress, anger, depression, loneliness, anxiety, reward, and pleasure. What triggers you to eat? If your answer is not Because Im hungry you might be eating in response to an emotion. Unfortunately, we do not always eat when we feel actual physical hunger. If that were the case our weight problems would be significantly less. Hunger is, however, the only real reason to eat. We live in the land of plenty so do we even know what true hunger feels like? Generally, you will feel a slight sensation for hunger approximately 3-4 hours after you eat. A good way to track if you are eating out of emotion is to ask yourself, Has it been 3-4 hours since I last ate? If not, it could be an emotion creeping up on you. We need to find non-edible things to do to address our emotions. If you are bored, is that bag of chips really going to excite your life so much that you are not still bored when it is gone? When stressed at work is that candy bar really going to extend the deadline?

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Page 50 Healthy Cells Magazine Bloomington September 2013

The trap with emotional eating is that often we start out with one emotion like boredom and then end up adding another one after the splurge. The end result is you are still bored but now you are also mad you ate it. Then, we often consider the day a total wash and our mentality is to just wait until tomorrow. Do not give up. Start immediately. The chances of one candy bar, an extra donut or even that row of cookies you just inhaled showing up on the scale immediately are unlikely. Remember you have to eat 3500 extra calories to gain even one pound. What can show up on the scale is several days and weeks of that, Ill just waitattitude. The first thing you should do to address emotional eating is to realize you are doing it. Keep a food and activity journal with columns that say mood, time, place, and who is around. Once you have identified those indicators, the next step is having a non-edible plan to address whatever emotion it is. Make a list of non-edible things you can do that take five to ten minutes and require the use of your hands. Often, engaging in these short activities will clear our minds and take the focus off of food. The goal is to take the association with food away, therefore making an association with something else. So, now when you are bored, you do not associate it with food, you associate it with a brisk walk or a call to a friend. Try some of these emotion-busters: Walk down the street three houses and back Do your nails, or do someone elses nails Brush your teeth, floss, and use mouthwash Take a bath

Jog in place for five minutes Make the beds Clean out one drawer Walk a few laps around the outside of your house Vacuum whether it needs it or not Do a puzzle Read one chapter in a good book Groom the dog Dance to one good song Call a friend Write in a journal/blog Meditate or pray Sweep the garage Leave the kitchen completely and go to another room When it comes to emotional eating you need a plan. Your goal is to think of non-edible things you can do to address the emotion at hand. Depending on your age, you might have an emotion that has an association with food that started as a child. Those are the tough ones to break because we have had the advantage of practicing it over the course of many years. Do not be discouraged if you cannot break it all the time. I have noticed in my own life that I have not completely been able to break all of them, but I have noticed that they occur less often. That is progress! For more information on healthy habits, contact the Center for Healthy Lifestyles, part of OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, at 309.661-5151.

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September 2013 Bloomington Healthy Cells Magazine Page 51