Here's a message I got this week. Please do a segment on stress eating because I think I eat my weight in food every day. Here's another one. I've spent more time in my refrigerator than at my desk this week. And to quote one of my patients in the office, I'm so anxious right now, it feels like a hole in my stomach that I keep filling with food.
So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the impact of stress and emotions on how we eat. Let's talk about emotional eating. Why do we do it? And what can we do instead?
Welcome back to Health Bite. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I help people redefine nutrition to not only eat well, but to nourish themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. I just love this stuff. And frankly, emotional eating, that's top of mind these days. So let's dig in.
So first things first, why do we emotionally eat?
I mean, honestly, it's something that we all do at some point in time. Why is it? While we tend to, I don't know, we tend to assume emotional eating is this image. The girl who just got dumped by her boyfriend, sitting on her couch with Haagen-Dazs. These days, maybe it's like Ben and Jerry's, I don't know. Maybe something more relevant. Eating ice cream and sobbing over some rom-com.
But you know what? Emotional eating is something that we all do. Why? Because it is ingrained in our physiology. So let me give you some background. We all have hormones that manage our hunger. When we eat food, for example, food travels down into our gut, we release certain hormones that signal to our brain that we've received food.
When we don't eat, certain other hormones get released by our gut that build and build and build until we get the cue from our brain that it's time to eat. And these hormones, as you can imagine, they're managed by our food intake. So it makes sense that when you're empty stomached, the hormone will go up.
And then when you eat food, that hormone that causes hunger gets suppressed. And that's the truth. But here's the thing. When we're stressed, when we are experiencing difficult emotions, we actually get a rise in those very hormones that cause hunger, even when we've eaten.
So again, this desire for food, when we're stressed, when we're experiencing difficult emotions, is hardwired in our biology. It's out of our control.
Why else do we do it? And why do we go to those hyper palatable, meaning super yummy foods? Why is it that when we're stressed, we want ice cream, we want chips, we want chocolate. That too is hardwired in our neurobiology. So what happens when we eat a piece of chocolate, for example? Well, we get a hit of dopamine in the brain.
We also get a hit of serotonin. These are neurotransmitters that make us feel good. These are also neurotransmitters that help us feel a sense of reward. But what dopamine also does is it puts us on a chase because when we eat those yummy foods and get that hit of dopamine, it's short-lived.
And so then we seek out that same feeling, that same relief. And if we do this enough times, our brain figures it out. Whenever we get stressed, whenever we get emotional, our brain thinks to itself, um, what was that thing that made me feel good? Oh yeah, it's chocolate.
So that habitual response to palatable foods plays into that habitual cycle of seeking palatable foods to soothe difficult emotions.
I tell you all of this not only because I think you might be interested in the nerdy science like I am, but I tell you because there is so much shame around emotional eating. And what I want to tell you is that it's not a character flaw. It's actually something that is ingrained in your body and in your mind.
And when you know this, you can actually deal with it in an effective way rather than trying to shame yourself away from it. So what can we do in these moments when stress and emotion is driving our desire to eat? Well, the first thing is to pause. to pause and gain awareness because oftentimes when we are habituated in this way, we act in autopilot.
We feel the trigger, the stress, we experience hunger, the emotional hunger, and without thinking we are off to the fridge or to the pantry. So the first step is to create pause, to create awareness of what it is you're actually feeling. Hey, I feel the hunger. Is this true physiologic hunger or is this hunger for something else? And then once you have awareness, you can name what it is you are feeling and experiencing.
Name it. Say it out loud. As they say to the kids, name it to tame it. Name the experience.
I'm sad right now. I'm scared right now. I'm anxious right now. I'm stressed right now. Name the motion. Because once you name it and say it out loud, if you notice, you literally downplay the effect that it has on your mind and body. You might even sense your nervous system kind of power down because by naming the emotion you start that process of self-regulation. So now you're aware, you've named the emotion, now what? Now you can actually address the true hunger.
What is it that you're really hungry for? What is it that that emotion or stress is pointing to? What can we do instead?
Maybe you're feeling, like I said, sad and distressed and what you really need is to reach out to a friend. Maybe you have been so stressed out that you haven't gotten enough sleep. And maybe you need to go and take a nap. And actually, as I've shared before, sleep deprivation also increases our hunger hormones and our desire to eat hyper palatable, really yummy foods.
Maybe your stress and anxiety is calling for you to go out for a walk. To go for a run and release some serotonin and dopamine and endorphins from exercise. Maybe it's asking you to go sit by a stream, go for a hike, walk down to the beach, go to a park, just be with nature because nature in and of itself will help regulate your nervous system.
So ask yourself what it truly is signifying, what truly it is that you are hungry for. Because I promise you that piece of chocolate, that bag of chips, while it feels good in the moment, it's temporary, it's short-lived, and in the end, it doesn't really scratch the itch. I know that people are really experiencing a lot of distress right now. And let's face it. It has just been one thing after another.
There was COVID, the pandemic, social injustice, political strife, war in the Ukraine, war in the Middle East, and then all the other little things that happen to us on a day-to-day basis. And this emotional eating thing, it's gotten the best of us because our weight has gone up over time throughout this timeframe of back to back stress and distress. And I don't say that because I want you to feel bad. I don't say that because I want you to be ashamed. I say that because this is a collective experience and it is something that we are seeing in every demographic, in every age, in every space out there. And so instead of reacting, instead of being triggered by that stress and that difficult emotion, I want you to lean in.
Lean into that hunger because when you do so, when you seek it out with curiosity, with awareness, with a desire for understanding, naming, and addressing the difficult emotion, you actually build resilience.
You build emotional resilience and you build emotional regulation. You learn that you can sit with the distress and with the difficult emotions And you can actually identify what it is that you truly need in that moment, what it is that you are truly hungry for. So I'm going to give you a challenge the next time you feel stressed this week either because you are consuming too much news or social media or maybe because you just, I don't know, got up late and are running behind on your day.
When you feel that surge of emotion and stress and that desire to soothe it with food or anything else for that matter, a glass of wine, a cigarette, scrolling on your phone, shopping, gambling, I don't know, whatever your thing is, I want to challenge you to take it on as an opportunity to build your skills for emotional regulation and for emotional resilience.
Because I promise you, you've got this and you can do this. I know so. Why? Not only because I do this work with my patients every single day, but because I've done this work personally and I can tell you from personal experience that it works.
So I'm going to ask you this. If this podcast has been helpful, if you know someone who is feeling distressed and maybe soothing with food or something else this week, share it with the person that you love.
I'm also going to ask you to head over to the show notes and sign up for my newsletter. When you get that newsletter, shoot me a response and tell me how you managed this challenge this week. I get every single email and I read and answer every single one. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and to seeing you here again next week on Health Bite. Bye now.