Historically, the main problem related to food that humanity has faced is that there usually wasn’t enough of it. However, nowadays, although there are still millions of people around the world suffering from starvation and food shortage, access to food is ample in the majority of modern-day countries. An average person living in North America or Europe, for example, can afford a lot more food than they physically need on a daily basis. What this leads to for some people are problems that are the polar opposite of starvation and food shortage, namely, overeating and emotional eating.
The connection between emotional eating and anger management lies in the shared realm of emotional regulation. Individuals struggling with emotional eating often use food to cope with underlying feelings of stress, frustration, or anger. By addressing anger management issues, individuals can gain better control over their emotions, which can positively impact their relationship with food. Enrolling in anger management training can provide valuable tools and techniques to manage emotions effectively, ultimately contributing to a healthier approach to eating habits.
The modern problems of emotional eating and overeating
Basically, those refer to eating food not for the nutrients that your body needs but rather as a means of getting a hit of dopamine and serotonin - hormones responsible for feeling pleasure and for regulating your mood.
You see, our primal instinct is to associate food with pleasure, satisfaction, and reward, which is a universal mechanism that encourages not only us, but also most animals, to seek food with great determination. However, these instincts have evolved in a totally different context, where food was usually scarce.
Nowadays, for many people, food is very easily accessible, yet the primal instinct to seek it and eat it as much as possible is still there, which is why people tend to keep on eating way past the point where their body has acquired the necessary nutrients. Not only that, but foods rich in calories that are metabolized more quickly (e.g. foods with lots of sugar or other carbohydrates) are usually the ones that our lizard brains are most attracted to, since they provide the biggest hit of happy hormones in the shortest amount of time. And as we all know, these are the exact types of foods that we should have less of if we want to stay physically healthy.
Unfortunately, it’s a closed loop and one that’s really difficult to break, especially since, most of the time, we don’t even realize it’s there. Most people do not think too much about food and, more specifically, their eating habits, which is what allows this “reward-seeking” behavior to continue. In this post, however, I’ll go over some common causes for why people tend to overeat and eat emotionally and also provide several simple, yet helpful pieces of advice that can help break this vicious cycle and to stay out of it for good.
The vicious cycle of emotional eating
From a very early age, most people’s brains get conditioned that they can easily acquire whatever food they want, whenever they want it, so that once we grow into adults, we know that it’s really easy to “reward’ ourselves whenever we feel like it with a chocolate bar or a bag of chips (even when there’s nothing worthy of being rewarded). This is the starting point of the vicious cycle of emotional eating, because it teaches us that we can very easily regulate our mood and make ourselves feel better by simply going to the nearby store and getting a piece of unhealthy food. Now that this pattern has become hard-coded into our lizard brain, it gets triggered every time we feel the slightest mental discomfort. Got a bad grade at school, rough day at work, or an argument with your partner? Simply get that candy bar and you’ll instantly feel better! And the worst part is that it truly works, even if only for a couple of minutes.
Other possible triggers are when a person is faced with a difficult situation, when they have a lot of work ahead of themselves, when they are stressed, and more. Generally, every time you feel any kind of emotional discomfort or stress, it is a situation in which this pattern could come into play.
Breaking the cycle
Bear in mind that feeling good and having fun can also be triggers. For example, going out with friends can also cause you to let your mental guard down and get that large burger with extra bacon and cheddar.
Therefore, an important first step towards breaking the cycle is identifying what triggers.
The next step is realizing that, no matter what your brain tells you at the moment, you don’t truly have the will power to always resist the urge when the trigger occurs. Maybe you can resist it once or twice, but ultimately, it’s a losing battle.
This leads me to the third important realization - that this is a battle that you shouldn’t be fighting to begin with. In other words, it’s not about trying to keep yourself from eating a candy bar at night, when you feel miserable because you still have work to do, or in the morning, when you struggle to get out of bed because you’ve had less than 5 hours of sleep. It’s about not falling into such situations in the first place.
Continuing with the previous examples, if having stuff to do at night is what triggers you, then be sure to complete all your work during the day, so that you don’t feel stressed at night, and you don’t get a strong urge to regulate your mood with unhealthy food. Or if waking up tired is what sends you straight to the box with unhealthy goodies, then be sure to go to bed on time and get the amount of sleep needed by your body and brain in order to be rested and refreshed once you wake up.
Then again, as I said, there are so many possible triggers, and each one requires a different approach. Ultimately, you are the only one who is best suited to identify what triggers you and think of a creative way to prevent that trigger from ever occurring. Something as simple as keeping the jar with cookies out of sight can be enough for some people to avoid thoughtlessly grabbing one every time they pass by them.
In other words, brute-forcing your way out of those bad habits is a bad strategy and one that’s likely to fail. Instead, I recommend planning ahead of time so that your future self isn’t placed in a situation where they’ll need to use their sheer power of will to keep themselves from overeating or eating emotionally.