Food is a complicated topic. Everyone needs food to live, and yet it is consumed for an astounding amount of reasons. I eat food to celebrate, to grieve, when I am anxious, stressed, or tired, I eat as a reward for a hard day’s work, I eat to recover from workouts, I eat to connect with other people, and I eat when I’m bored.
Food isn’t just sustenance, we don’t use food like an energy atm, we have an emotional connection to the ways in which we consume food. This is at least one of the reasons why changing our eating habits is so difficult. We aren’t just eating different things, (or less, or more of something) our emotional state is impacted by how we eat.
In order to start changing our eating habits, we have to become aware of the “why” behind our eating habits.
Stress eating
Stress eating is, experientially speaking, one of the most common ways we use food to regulate our nervous system. In order to understand a bit more of what this means, it will be helpful if we understand what stress feels like.
Stress feels like chaos, or being out of control of your world. Things are spiraling and all you can do is watch. Eating food is a very real way of engaging in a behavior you have control over; that also ends in being satiated. This is especially powerful when there are things in your life that you cannot control, and are relatively problematic.
When the world around us is chaotic, we often try to do something to take back a piece of the power. (This is why I have a tendency to over eat at parties where I don’t know anyone, and feel socially uncomfortable.) When I use food as a regulation mechanism, it becomes much more complicated to change my habits. I am not just changing the food I eat, I am challenging the emotional state the kind of food I eat produces. I am literally making myself more vulnerable to dysregulation.
Practical ways to change eating habits
In order to change, you have to pick something that’s sustainable. Too much change, (which is another word for stress) and your body will revert back to its old ways of existing. A good place to start is not taking anything out of your diet, but just trying to eat more of what’s good for you.
1. Eat whole foods (five ingredients or less)
2. Aim for 20% more protein than what you currently consume
3. Drink 20 more oz of water.
Before we take anything out of our diets, we want to make sure we are competent in doing the right thing. (which is different from not doing the wrong thing, it is a completely different way of thinking) This also begins to introduce positive habits that will produce new emotional responses. If you start by adding things to your life you can develop positive reinforcement around those behaviors which is more
Lee Ramsey has a passion for fitness as a way to help people grow and change into more adaptable, capable and resilient versions of themselves. He is owner of Sanctify Fitness in Covington and a regular fitness columnist for the NKyTribune.