by Amber DeAnn
Feeling sad can lurk you into eating happy junk food ie, popcorn. This elicits the happy, relaxed feeling of being at the movies with a bag of popcorn. Or maybe you have fond memories of eating ice cream at a picnic with friends, so you eat a whole carton of ice cream tonight while you remember the feeling of being at a picnic.
Feeling abandoned can lurk you into eating potato chips, cookies and chocolate thinking you are pampering yourself— showing yourself love.
Feeling angry can cause us to wander into the “fight, flight or freeze” response of the nervous system. Then our digestion stops and the nutrients we normally get from food gets hijacked.
Anger is also avenue into sadness, anxiety and antagonism which further kicks in the stress hormones. This destroys brain neurons associated with judgement, short term memory and weakens the immune system. This further lead us to eat the junk “fast” food.
And the circle of emotional eating appears. Right?
I eat to stuff my feelings because if they were to arise I might explode like a volcano and spew hate, anger, resentment all over other people and they would resent me. I stuff my feelings because that’s what we did at home. Eat- stuff – eat – stuff. But the stuffed anger & resentment
don’t go away and i keep eating.
So i eat to avoid my feelings because I don’t know how to express them, or my expressing them would hurt another person, or offend another person.Then I will have to deal with the backlash as others share their negative feelings about me and the the war of words will be on. I can’t deal with this— it’s too overwhelming. So I tell myself feelings are not important.
Yet the next time my true feelings come up, I choke them back down with food. Then the weight and other health problems drop in.
I eat because I’m bored and I’ve picked up the cultural message from others that food fills the void. But I’m now feeling more lonesome when i eat because eating alone reminds me that I’m missing the fun of being at a party and eating with others, so I eat more to assuage my remorse about not being at a party right now. But the lonesome feeling doesn’t leave and keep eating until my weight becomes a problem – stress on my joints, digestive issues, heart problems, possibly diabetes.
The best solution is to identify and address the emotions as they come up.
Contact – me at amber@coachingbyamber.com
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