The Neuroscience Of Emotional Eating And How To Break The Loop

We break down emotional eating as a brain and body pattern, not a willpower failure, and show how stress, environment, and biology quietly drive cravings.

 We share a simple way to interrupt the cycle in real time and build healthier “instead” habits that actually meet your needs. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello guys, welcome back to another podcast, another Heart Heart with Hads. Today I'm gonna be talking a little bit about emotional eating. I feel like this is a topic that needs to be discussed. I have clients who deal a lot with emotional eating, stress eating, and so this is something that I decided to do a training on for my clients, but I was like, you know what, I might as well make a podcast episode on this as well. And just kind of understanding like the neuroscience behind why we make the decisions that we make when it comes to food and like shedding light on okay, what are some things that we can do instead of using food as a coping mechanism? So let's get into it. We're gonna be understanding the why behind the buy itself. Just to start, like, have you ever had an instant where you sat down and you ate a whole bag of chips unconsciously, or you were so bored or like so stressed. You came home from a busy day at work, a stressful day at work, you immediately went to the pantry because you thought that that was gonna help make you feel better. Like you were just you were craving something. Um I don't know if you've ever felt this, but this actually has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with your emotional state. And it's actually a coping mechanism that probably once worked for you at some point in your life. And I want to reiterate that this is not weakness, this is not lack of willpower. This is just something that you have conditioned your body and your brain to do. Is every time you perceive stress, eat, stress, eat, stress, eat, stress, eat. And maybe you don't deal with emotional eating, but maybe you do deal with some other sort of poor habit or like addictive habit that you don't necessarily love. And this could you could easily apply it to that. So, like, for example, if you are somebody that struggles a lot with like being addicted to your phone, or like you grab your phone after any minor inconvenience or when you're bored, same thing applies to this food, phone, whatever your crutch is. So just think about that. As I'm going through this, of like if you're not somebody that actually struggles with emotional eating, maybe it's emotional binging on your phone or emotional, I don't know, just other little habits that maybe aren't the best for you or conducive to you and what you're trying to do. Now, the reason why I did this is because I do have clients that are going through weight loss journeys, but yet they do resort to emotional eating, therefore making it harder for them to lose weight. And so we're trying to break out of that habit of the emotional eating. The problem is not the food itself, it's a signal. Our brain's giving us a signal that we're feeling a type of way and we want to do something about it. And typically food is an option, but we're gonna rewire that. So let me get into kind of the neuroscience behind why we eat the things we do. So when you eat a hyper palatable food, think things like chips or pop or candy or going out to eat somewhere, or just like fatty foods, so like sweet and salty and things that are like give us that, oh, this tastes so good right now, but then you're hungry like 30 minutes later because there's literally no nutritional value to it. What happens is when you eat these things, your brain is releasing dopamine and opioid peptides. So obviously, opioid peptides are things that help are like addictive, right? It makes gives us that addictive like response. These specific chemicals reduce the intensity of negative emotions in the short term, okay? This is like that instant gratification. The same thing applies to the phone that I was talking about. These chemicals reduce the intensity of your negative emotions. That is why you resort to them, but only in the short term. And so I'm gonna talk about this. But one way that we can help help reduce us falling into quick little things is doing more things that require delayed gratification, like going to the gym, like cooking a meal, like just the process of something in general. And that's why I preach so much about you know the fitness journey and how someone's fitness and health journey really teaches them a lot of discipline, a lot of delayed gratification, because not always do you see that what you're doing is working. And that's could be a whole nother topic, but that ties into it. But I just want you to know like this is how our brains are wired. Our brains are wired for wanting comfort, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do. Find fast relief from discomfort. And that's a lot of the a lot of how our bodies actually are, our minds are, and that's why a lot of the times people are like, oh my gosh, I feel so uncomfortable in my skin. Like, what's the like, what can I do right now to like help me lose 10 pounds? Like, well, that's not how it works, right? You're so you're so much in that discomfort that you're like, okay, what's the quickest thing that I can do to stop feeling this discomfort? The same thing comes for food. When you are stressed, okay, what's the what's the thing that I can get? What's that dopamine I can get right now that's gonna make me feel better? It becomes a loop because our brain predicts, remember, that stress is coming, food will fix it. And not everybody's not everybody's wired like this, but if you can think of a certain instant or time in your life when, okay, when you were first stressed, when something first traumatic happened to you, what did you first turn to? And honestly, I can think of this myself. I honestly feel like I did not have a problem with I don't feel like I have it now, but I do remember when my dad was like very, very sick and people just kept bringing us food. And it was like food every day. We had food. I would I would specifically request a specific person to like get these these like Italian rolls from a specific place. And like I really ate my feelings really, really badly because that's what was provided to me. That was what that was my environment at the time. Like there was nothing else that was bringing me comfort. And yeah, obviously, uh food I think is a better option like than me going and partying and turning in turning to drugs and things like that. But at that instant, like food was there, and that's what I that's what I resorted to. And I don't know how I I think how I got over that is whenever people stopped bringing us food because my mom wasn't like my mom's not a foodie, she wasn't just like bringing us getting more food and like constantly constantly cooking and making more things. Like when he passed, it was like, okay, yeah, people brought us stuff for a little bit while longer, and then time passes and the environment changed. And just that environment shift was like, okay, like I I no longer no longer use food as comfort because it was no longer there. And so I'll talk about this in a second, but just like removing things from your environment, and it's not because you're being restrictive, it's simply because that is not serving you, especially not serving you if you're trying to lose weight. I was talking with a client and she was like, Oh, I was just like going ham on Oreos. Like, why do you have Oreos? Like, throw that away. I literally said throw that away. She's like, Well, she owns a bakery and she's like, Well, what about bakery? I said, Okay, that stuff stays with your bakery food stuff. But the chips and the other things that you're talking about, throw it away. Throw it away. Out of sight, out of mind. You have to break the pattern or it's gonna just keep repeating. Not to say you can never eat a chip again in your life, but if this is something that you're constantly turning to, it's no different than say you're you're somebody that's trying to quit smoking. Are you still gonna buy the smok the cigarettes and leave them in your car and just like have them there sitting for temptation? I mean, you could. That's crazy. I would do some shit like that because I'm crazy with temptation. I'm like, oh no, I'm disciplined. I can't do that. But like most people can't resist that urge. And so think of it in that sense. It's the same kind of scenario. All right, now we're gonna get into kind of the trigger loop. And I'm gonna break down the loop and how it's a never-ending loop unless you break one of the break one of the stages of the loop. So the first part of the loop is obviously the emotion, right? That emotion then surges some type of craving or urge. Then that next that next part of the cycle is you resort to eating. What does that eating give you? Temporary relief. But then you're like, oh my gosh, I feel guilty. Guess what? You're back at the emotion. You're back at a negative emotion. And then guess what? You're back at the craving, you're back at the eating. And then it's just a never-ending cycle. And the whole loop, realistically, is only 90 seconds. So if you can, okay, number one, recognize the emotion that's coming up. If you can stop right there, pause, be like, okay, this is what I'm feeling. And ask yourself in that moment of feeling that emotion, what do I need right now? Not what do I want, but what do I need? If you can stop right there, you're gonna stop the loop. Now, maybe you don't do that, and then you get to the urge and the craving, you're like, oh, I'm craving this. Same thing. Ask yourself that question. What is my body asking for right now? It may actually be that you are hungry, and we we'll get into that of like the actual biology behind it. Then you're eating and you get that temporary relief. Then maybe you do eat and then you get that temporary relief, but then you don't guilt yourself about it. Maybe you stop the loop there. And really, I think the goal is about like stopping the loop before each thing and like just getting better about working your way back on the loop. So, say you do go all the way up to guilt, and then you're like, mm, I feel guilty, but I'm not gonna let that guilt repeat this loop. And then you're getting better each and every time. So the physiological lifespan of an emotion is approximately 90 seconds, but after that, the emotion itself either dissipates or we re-trigger it by continuing to think the same thoughts. So most emotional eating actually happens in response to an emotion that we didn't let complete its cycle. Crazy. I know. So I'm gonna now kind of explain the types of triggers that there are. First one being emotional. And I see this a lot. This is stress, loneliness, boredom, anxiety. This right here activates your brain's emotional center before your rational thinking center. Next one, environmental TV on, driving, kitchen counter, pantry, fridge. Like the things where it becomes the unconscious behavior. The environment is signaling this is when we eat. So every time you sit down to watch TV, maybe you're like, this is when I eat. Or every time you're driving, you're like, okay, this is when I eat, this is when I snack. Or the kitchen counter is just there. You're sitting at the kitchen counter and you're like, this is when I eat. And it's really just being very conscious of your thoughts, your environment, everything. And then pantry and fridge, obviously, like what's going on in the pantry? What's going on in the fridges? Every time you go in the pantry, you gotta get a snack. So every time you go in the fridge and you make something for somebody else, you have to do it. It's all about becoming conscious of these things. Then the social trigger. Obviously, family gatherings, people pleasing, I'll just have a little. Whenever somebody asks you or asks you if you want it, oh, I'll just have a little. And celebrations. You typically mirror the behavior of the people around you. So, for example, like Brock and I will go out to eat sometimes, and this dude's like, I'm gonna get two burgers and fries, and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, but you see him doing their like, oh, like I should be kind of doing the same thing. No, you don't have to eat an asshole like an asshole, just because the person around you, the people around you, are scarfing their scarfing everything down. Then we get into the physical trigger. Physical, we're gonna go more into the like biological aspect of this, but the skipping meals, the blood sugar drop, lack of water, poor sleep, all of these things raise your hunger hormone ghrelin by 24%. So when you skip a meal, whenever you don't drink enough water, whenever you sleep very poorly, this increases you and your hungriness. Most of most, not all, but most emotional eating actually stems from the biological triggers. But wear an emotional mask. So, for example, say you have you don't eat breakfast, and then by the time 2 p.m. comes around, like I haven't eaten breakfast, I haven't eaten lunch, I'm starving, I'm hungry. This happened at work, and then it all just kind of like gets mixed into like a big old tumbleweed. When in reality, if you would have just ate a balanced breakfast, you would have ate a balanced lunch, you wouldn't be feeling these emotions. And I think a lot of people struggle with their emotions and these negative feelings because they didn't take care of their body to begin with. And so it all really starts with taking care of your body to begin with, with the right things. So something that you can do is kind of like map out your personal triggers. So you like think of a situation that happened, think of the exact feeling, think of what exactly you reached for, and then what exactly you actually needed. Because most of the time, what you actually needed wasn't food. It was connection, rest, control, validation, safety. So for example, someone at work pissed you off, you get super frustrated, you're like, oh fuck it. When I get home, I'm gonna have a glass of wine, I'm gonna go to takeout. Is that really what you needed, or did you actually just need to be heard by someone? Did you actually just need to vent? Did you actually just need to go blow off some steam, go on a walk, go to the gym? And I say these things like you think it's like, oh, really, Henley, like I can't just, like, I can't just drink this in my piece in peace. Like, no. Like, do you want to continue to build that habit of every time you're stressed? Oh, I I deserve a reward. I deserve some type of treat to help bring me comfort. No. What is that teaching you? So now we're gonna talk a little bit about the neuroscience behind naming the emotion. Naming the emotion. Naming the emotion is putting words to what you feel. Name exactly what is happening. Example, like I already said, Sally pissed me off at work. She told me that I don't even know work drama because I don't work with people. But like X person pissed me off because they didn't show up to this meeting and they didn't do what I asked them to do. And they're constantly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now I'm really frustrated. I'm annoyed. I hate my job. Okay, what is it that I need in this moment? Like, can I do I have a solution to this right now? Or can I just do something else? But what happens when you do this, going back to the naming the emotion, is it reduces the activity in your amygdala, which is the part of the brain that is like your alarm alert system. And it increases activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is where you make your rational decisions. And so instead of making an emotionally charged decision, you can make a rational decision because you're not just going based off your emotions. You literally change the state of your brain by simply naming what's happening. Crazy. So breaking the loop that I was talking about in real time. First thing, stop and breathe. Okay. Okay, I'm really pissed off right now. This happened. Breathe. Inhale for four and exhale for six. This is gonna activate your parasympathetic, but also just helping you calm down, rest, and digest. So stop and breathe. Okay. It's fine, Athlene. Name the feeling, say it out loud or write it down. I am feeling blank, not just stressed, but I am feeling unappreciated and exhausted. And okay, why? Why am I feeling unappreciated and exhausted? Because XYZ, because I'm running around the house, because I'm doing the laundry, I'm taking care of the dogs, I'm doing the dishes, I'm making the dinner. And the list goes on. The more specific you can be, the better. And then ask yourself the real question. The real question. And this is where radical honesty comes, comes, comes into play is what is it that I actually need right now? Sit with it. Do not rush your answer. What comes up first is typically what the truth is. And then the last thing, choose consciously. You may still eat, you may be like, well, food is the answer. But that's fine because now it's actually a choice. You're making the choice and you're not just immediately reacting to a certain situation. You've slowed down, you've like, okay, what is it that I really need? Maybe you are hungry, like going back to that biology that I talked about. Maybe biologically, maybe physically, you are actually hungry. And that's okay. And you deserve to eat, but you deserve to eat something that's gonna make you feel nourished and not like a piece of shit. Alternate routes for each of the emotions. Now we're gonna get into that. Because we can't just say put the cookie down or quit eating. What are we gonna do in place? We have to give the brain a better option. I want you to think of this. Like anytime you feel like you're reaching for something, you shouldn't be like, okay, what's the I want you to think, and you really have to, this is a practice. You have to think, what's the better option for me right now? What is the better option for me so that you can actually build the tools that are meeting that underlying need, like we talked about? So stress or overwhelm, box breathing, meditation, walking outside in nature, calling your FaceTiming a friend, writing a brain dump, cold water on your face or on your wrist, loneliness when you're feeling loneliness and disconnection. Send your friend a voice note, show up in your community group, journal a letter to yourself, make eye contact with nature, go out into public, see, connect with people, go to the gym, get out of your way to make, go out of your way to make conversation, build your own community, whatever that looks like for you. And a lot of the times, too, I see boredom. Um, I'm I just eat because I'm bored. This is not an excuse. Change your physical location. If you're in the living room, in the kitchen, go somewhere else. Go into your room, go start reading a book, go outside on a walk. Start a creative project, a hobby. Put on some music, move, dance, clean the house, do something that you've been putting off, call somebody, watch a movie, get on your phone and scroll for all I care. Boredom is typically an understimulated nervous system. What that means is you typically either need one of two things: either novelty, which is creativity and um connection and doing something fun, or you need rest. Like there's there's no in-between. It's either you need to rest, like you're bored because you actually need to rest and chill and because you're always doing something, or you maybe actually do need to do something creative. Let out your creative juices that are not harming you. And remember, like all these things I'm talking about are free. Free things you can do. It's not like these things cost anything, and I think that's what's most helpful about this. And then anxiety and worry and fear. Obviously, I already mentioned, but meditation. You can also journal like worst case, best case scenarios. I think this helps a lot. It makes me feel so much better. Prayer, slow physiological size. So double inhaling through your nose, low exhale through your mouth. Not low, long exhale through your mouth. Uh long exhale is so critical for your breathing and it helps bring you back into that rest and digest state. Another thing, too, that I haven't really tried, but EFT tapping, and basically it's like tapping different points of your body to help bring your body back into a parasympathetic state. So let's see. Last thing I really want to talk about is well, we have a couple things actually, but I want to talk a little bit about the shame because there are there is a lot of shame that comes with the sh, there's a lot of guilt, I should say, that comes with when we overeat or overindulge or emotionally eat. And that's actually the worst thing you could do because food-related shame does not reduce emotional eating. It actually increases it because the more harshly that you're judging yourself for eating emotionally, the more you're going to do it. This doesn't mean that you lower your standards. It just means okay, have self-compassion for what I did and also accountability. They can coexist. You can have both. And so reframing your mindset from I failed again, I have no self-control, I'll never change. Because if you keep telling yourself this, this is going to re-trigger that loop that I talked about at the beginning. Okay, now what if we do? I noticed the loop, I can see what triggered it. What would I do differently next time? This thought is going to build a new connection inside of your brain that we're not going to associate stress with food or overwhelm or boredom or all those emotions that we don't love or those feelings that we don't love associate that with food. And I just want to reiterate, too, like, it's not about eating perfectly. Nobody's going to be perfect. But progress is actually catching that part in the loop. Like, One step earlier each time until one day you finally just catch it before it even starts. Like you, like I said, you get to that spot where you feel the emotion and it's like, oh, this is how I feel. Now I don't have to act on this. Like sometimes you really just feel something and like, okay, that's literally just how it is, and move on with it. I wanted to just reiterate understanding your biology, lastly, because obviously I do a lot of holistic work, and so I want to talk about you know cortisol, blood sugar, your gut, and sleep and all the things that can really play a factor in you quote unquote emotionally eating, but it could just be tied back to some of these things. So cortisol and cravings. When you have chronic stress, this elevates your cortisol, which is going to directly drive cravings for high sugar, high fat, those hyperpalatable foods that I talked about. This is a survival mechanism because stressed, when you're stressed, you need fast energy. And when cortisol is chronically elevated, you're not really just emotionally eating anymore. You're biologically compelled to because of what I said. You're in a survival mode, you're stressed, you're like, Oh, I need something quick to help me feel good and give me energy to go. And you're in that like state of chaos. And then we get into blood sugar. Blood sugar crashes, especially from skipping meals or just having like a high carb food without any balanced meals. Like I always talk about this, like balanced meals having protein, carbs, fat, fiber. When you're not having specific meals like that, you are going to get the blood sugar crashes, which does then create the irritability, the anxiety, the low mood, all of which are triggers for the emotional eating. So by simply just stabilizing your blood sugar, removes the trigger from the equation entirely before any of the mindset stuff that we talked about is needed. Crazy. I know. Then we get into the gut brain axis. 90%, 90% of your serotonin, the feel-good, the feel-good calming neurotransmitter is produced inside of your gut. When you have poor gut health from eating poor food, shitty food, this can impair your emotional regulation, increase your anxiety, amplify the stress that's already there, which is making you more susceptible to emotionally eating. You see how all this is kind of interconnecting? I know, I know. You're like, Holly, what the heck? And then lastly, sleep deprivation. Whenever you get poor sleep, your hunger hormone raises the ghrelin, like we talked about, and lowers leptin, which is your fullness hormone, and which also impairs activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is the brain region needed to pause and name emotions. So when you're not sleeping, literally everything is discombobulated. So you're literally like fighting this battle with one hand tied behind your back, basically, because you didn't sleep good. And so now it's like, oh, you have extra like, oh, I feel so that's kind of understanding the biology behind what could be triggering the emotions, but kind of getting into what I want to leave you with and like your homework if you do struggle with emotional eating is keeping like a trigger journal. So the situation, the feeling, what you ate, what you actually needed instead. And then build your instead list. So two or three things that I kind of mentioned from each category of things that feel good for you, and put it somewhere where you can see it, maybe your notes, something, or just start practicing grabbing other things or these other coping things you can do. Just start with one or two at a time and just see how it feels, you know. See if you actually feel better after it. Um I think too, at least once a week when you do feel the emotion. If the emotion comes up for you, pause. Okay, pause. Try to do it one time this week if you notice it or when you notice it next. Pause to stop. Breathe, name the feeling, ask what you need. And I think this will help a lot. This is gonna like help help make those new neural pathways for you. Okay, guys, that's all I got for this episode today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I really loved researching the behind of these things, and I think it'll be really helpful for you guys. So if you like this episode, leave me a rating, review, share with a friend, whatever you gotta do. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.