How to Stop Letting Our Emotions [Completely] Dictate Our Eating
The Elephant and Rider Analogy
In today’s newsletter:
Emotional eating: The elephant and rider metaphor (via Jonathan Haidt)
Strategies to manage emotional eating
Links and resources (for paid subscribers):
What’s making life easier in the kitchen
What I’m reading
What I’m listening to
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our emotions affect our eating. It’s common to struggle to stick to changes that we know would make us feel better. While emotional eating is normal, our emotions shouldn’t ideally dictate all of our eating decisions.
Our emotional and rational minds can be likened to an elephant and its rider. If we picture a rider sitting atop an elephant, we know the elephant (our emotional mind) has the ultimate power over where the rider (our rational mind) goes. Whether we consciously realize it or not, our emotions often dictate our actions (such as eating) more than we’d like them to.
Let’s imagine you return home from an indulgent vacation. You feel like crap (tired, bloated, inflamed), and you’re finally going to get serious about eating healthy. You’re fed up with your unhealthy habits, and you’re going to make a “lifestyle change.” (I know, big eye roll, but “lifestyle change” is a staple phrase when someone’s getting serious about eating better and is determined that it’s not another crash diet).
At first, your perfectly constructed diet has clear, black-and-white rules, so it’s easy to follow. You feel motivated to stick with the plan because you never want to feel as bad as you did when you returned from your trip. As days and weeks pass, you have social engagements, work events, celebrations, travel, time constraints, and just plain boredom with eating the same things over and over. You allow minor exceptions or concessions to your rules. Steadily and imperceptibly, you realize you’ve reverted to your “normal” eating that’s not as healthy as you started eating when your mind—the rider—was firmly made up, and you’d made a full-blown life overhaul. You’re back to square one. chinchilla
The reality of those weeks and months creeping back to your regularly scheduled eating (old habits) is that the elephant (your emotional mind) has a stronghold over what you do and pulls you back into the old eating ruts that led you to the new diet in the first place.
I know some of us would rather eat like we monitor the gas gauge of our car: every so often, we check the meter and decide when to fill up. If we’re busy or distracted, the warning light keeps us from running out of gas completely.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), humans’ eating is more complicated. Sometimes, we’re hungry and simply eat to fill our tank. Other times, we eat because we’re celebrating, because we’re sad or stressed, or we might just be bored and want something to do. This is emotional eating, and it is common.
Experts define emotional eating as “eating in response to negative emotions instead of physical hunger.” (Fuentes, 2022)
One theory about the cause of emotional eating is the positive incentive theory. In this theory, food serves as reinforcers of positive or negative stimuli. It accounts for cultural, social, environmental, and evolutionary influences on eating behaviors. This may be why our hunger and satiety cues can be disrupted (or confusing) when we’re emotional. These are probably evolutionarily protective mechanisms. Just like our bodies’ ability to store fat for an unforeseen/potential future famine, our bodies protect us from a potentially life-threatening scenario by driving us to eat emotionally. Not to mention the obvious role food plays in soothing (numbing us to) our emotions.
Emotional eating has a positive relationship with BMI, which means that when our eating is driven primarily by emotion, we’re more likely to weigh more than someone who doesn’t. Side note: Our BMI doesn’t necessarily predict our health, but it is one factor that contributes to our overall chronic disease risk.
Ultimately, we want to appeal to our emotions in a positive way to help get the rider to where we know we want to go—becoming a healthier person. So, how do we do that?
Increase positive emotions: I realize this is easier said than done, but based on a study in the journal Appetite, we’re more likely to make healthy eating choices when we experience positive emotions. Here’s a primer on increasing positive emotions. And positive emotions aren’t just about “being happy.” It means increasing feelings of compassion, interest, love, hope, pride, joy, amusement, and gratitude. National and state parks are some of my favorite places to increase feelings of awe. Over the past 5 years my husband and I have hiked or backpacked here and here and here. I always feel better after visiting big, beautiful places that make me feel small.
Create an identity around the change you want to make. I want to sustain these healthy habits because being healthy is important to my identity. Being a Crossfitter, a runner, or a vegetarian can offer a personal identity that may help you stick with healthy habits.
Attach meaning to the changes you want to make. I’m choosing to eat healthy because I want to be an active parent who can play with my kids. Parents getting healthy for the wellbeing of their family or even showing their kids what it looks like to live a healthy life are ways to attach meaning to health-focused behaviors.
Ask a friend or family member who is also trying to be healthier. If you work together to share what you’ve been eating or even make healthier eating into a friendly (and not overly restrictive) competition, you will both likely build healthier habits.
Leverage community: You might find parents at your kid’s activities, coworkers, friends at church, or even join a group on social media that’s focused on developing healthy habits. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there to find someone else you can lean on so you can both successfully reach your goals.
Emotional eating is 100% okay. However, it’s also important to build skills for handling our emotions outside of eating to soothe ourselves. It just takes some awareness and practice.