Rethinking our Emotions will Impact How We Eat
If you have been following me or have read my book, you already know that I talk alot about the science of emotional eating and how negative emotions literally increase our hunger hormones- yup like the ones we mimic with drugs like ozempic, wegovy and mounjaro. But this week I heard something surprisingly new and fascinatingly applicable about how we can be with, perceive and understand our emotions which I think is game changing for how you experience you emotions and of course as a result how that impact how you soothe with food.
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 include the food that we eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. And before we get started, I want to share some really exciting news. Our link is live for my first ever personal event, a transformational event, Ditch the New Year New You Shenanigans, a new approach to sustainable weight and wellness in the new year. In this course, I will help you redefine nutrition beyond what's on your plate to receive actionable guidance on how to incorporate diet, sleep, movement, and contemplative practices into your daily routine. We will discover together the profound link between physical and emotional hunger, help you break through your barriers, and give you a chance to meet with me and ask all your questions.And because I am so grateful for your listernership I have created an exclusive promo for you. Head to the link in the show notes and check out with code pod20 for 20% off the event.
Okay, now let's dive into today's episode. So this week I happened to stumble upon a researcher, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barret that totally flipped my belief about emotions.
Conventional wisdom, and so what I knew to be true was that emotions were predictable reactions to a certain event. For example, you see a lion, you automatically experience fear and your heart races, your blood pressure goes up and you feel the sensation of fear in your mind as a kind of anxiety and in your body.
But what Dr. Barret shares is that these feelings are not automatic. In fact, your brain is like a command center that is constantly making predictions that determine your bodily reactions and more to the point here your mood and emotions.
THe information that the brain uses is past experiences of fear. And that is why it feels automatic, it draws from experiences of fear that you have had and sets the balls in motion for the changes in your body and in your mood, emotions and mind (which I use separately from the structure of the brain)
But what if your brains prediction is wrong, and there was no bear and you were just startled by a sound, but nonetheless the emotion of fear was set in motion, even tho the reason for it was false.
Dr. Barret goes on to say that there are 3 ingredients to your emotions: your body budget, your current situation, and predictions from past experience. And that modifying these ingredients, allows you to take more control over your emotions.
The first one - your body budget - is one that is in line with so much of what we talk about on this podcast. The food that you eat, how much sleep you get, if you are moving your body regularly. And this makes alot of sense right? We all know we are better able to regulate our emotions when we are well rested and are more likely to be irritable or snappy or hangy when we dont get enough sleep or are hungry. So taking care of our bodies in the most basic way is the most relaible way to regulate emotions
THe second is your current situation so in the case of the bear, get yourself away from the bear. But lets give a more practical example, like you are on instagram and you are getting agitated so change your current situation and shut it off. Right
Lastly and this is what I find most inreguiging, most challenging but also most intriguing and that is changing your predictions of your past experience which to me sounds like change the narrative.
Someone cuts you off in traffic and you take it very personally and you feel affronted, you feel angry. What if the “cut off” was not lodged in your brain as a personal attack, what if your past experiences had been that someone who cut you off had actually been distracted because he/she had just received bad news. Then your prediction or narration of the “cutting off” could lead you to a place of sympathy or even curiosity- like gosh I wonder what happened to the poor fella.
Or here is another scenario, you are walking down the hall at work or pickup at your child school and your co-worker or a fellow mom scowls at you as you pass by. Now you could feel anxiety in that moment by making the prediction that the scowler is mad at you or doesnt like you. ( I want to point out that your past experiences do not necessary need to be true, so your predictions could be based on false story lines and often are)
Or you could say to yourself, oh john has gas. Im serious, Barret says that the data shows that a scowl represents anger less than 30% of the time. It could be gas or just concentration.
SHe uses another example and I just love this so I am going to read it to you verbatim,
Have you ever felt wretched, like you’re a horrible person, everybody hates you, and the world is going to end… but in fact, there’s nothing actually wrong with your life? That’s the emotional flu – you’re having an unpleasant physical feeling, probably from a disrupted body budget, and your brain has constructed all sorts of negative explanations that are deeply personal.
To deal with these feelings, we took inspiration from the real flu. The influenza virus isn’t personal – it simply takes up residence in your lungs. Likewise, we worked hard to view the wretchedness as purely physical, and to treat the symptoms with naps, walks, exercise, hugs, or whatever works.
By repeatedly reframing the situation from personal to physical, my family and I changed our brains’ future forecasts, making it easier to create the non-personal, non-judgmental, emotional flu.
THis is really brilliant because you are literally rewiring your brains reactions to outside events and therefore changing the emotional fallout into a more positive and even more realistic response.
THis is not easy or automatic, it takes work, but I feel it is the work of emotional maturity. And you need not be perfect to be effective. I can just see how some micro- tweaks can make life easier on me.
And so how does this impact how you eat?
Well we often disentangle food from emotion after we are already behind the 8-ball. For example you feel sad and now you have to stop yourself from soothing the sadness with food. You feel board and now you have to stop yourself from soothing the boredom with food.
What if you replaced boredom with curiosity then there would not be a difficult emotion to soothe.
Now I dont want to be unrealistic here. There are occasions when big emotions are predictable and understandable. Of course I get that.so lets start with the small stuff, like the scowling gassy co-worker and see if we can work our way up from there. Remember that our work towards emotional regulation and recognizing our emotions, disentangling from them and learning not to soothe them with food or any other substance or distraction is not a destination but a life-long pursuit.
I would love if you would join me Feb 13 for my first ever personally led and run workshop. .We will get into the nuts and bolts of how we regulate our emotions and our relationship with food. DOnt forgetg to Head to the link in the show notes to sign up and dont forget to use the promo code pod20 all one word. Have a great week and i’ll see you again here next week on healthbite