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March 6, 2024
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Food Conditioning
Emotional eating has never been about hunger or food. It’s the fulfillment of an emotional need with food consumption. Food and happiness get connected. It’s twisted and irrational. If you read 3 reasons for emotional eating you would know that food is a mere pawn in the eating process. To break the habit, you’ll have to be willing to acknowledge and appreciate the illogicality of the eating behavior and break the conditioning. Change isn’t easy to adopt or adapt to. Especially when the behavior in question (in this case eating) is immediately rewarding.
So, the first step is to think about your need to change this. Maybe you’re putting on weight, possibly your cholesterol has risen or you’re recently pre diabetic. You have to establish and build your motivation to stick to your goal and make the plan work for you. Fast weight loss is a dysfunctional trait of bulimia nervosa. So, the process has to be slow and steady. Getting the assistance of a mindfulness coach or therapist to quit emotional eating can keep you focused and help achieve your goal faster.
“Eat to fuel your body, not feed your emotions. Eat to fill your stomach; not your heart.”
Technique 1: De-Stress
Stress eating is a real thing. Few people are prepared or geared to deal with stress. Stress is an alien emotion. It makes you feel helpless, incapable, incapacitated and desperate. We all like to be on top of things; aware, in control, and complacent. And then life happens. Pandemics happen. Lockdown ensues. Layoffs occur. Goals get thwarted. And stress strikes.
We do not like how stress makes us feel. Whenever we’re faced with a threat that exceeds our coping faculties, we feel like a deer caught in the headlights. We freeze. Instead of fleeing the situation (which is very often rational) or fighting it tactfully (this is rather logical); we just freeze. This fright component of the stress response pushes us to dysfunctional, faulty, deceptive emotional states that lead us to wrong behavior choices.
Most turn to smoking, drinking or other drugs of abuse. Many get angry and upset and displace their anger on people and property. But the new age stress eating has become a more socially sanctioned escape. So, you eat. And almost become addicted to food. It becomes your readily available stress buster.
Stress is just another emotion that needs mature, and responsible handling. Food is not its solution. By adding it to the already distressed equation, you are further enhancing the problem.
Stress management is about dealing with your problems head on; you don’t need food to salvage you from the painful situation for momentary respite. Building mature coping defenses, enhancing your social network, exercising, engaging in meaningful hobbies, speaking to a friend and seeking professional help, are all useful stress busters that can change the catastrophic perception of the problem and lower stress eating. Here are some ways to combat stress.
Immediate Stress Relief
- Listen to your favorite music/ song
- Call a friend just to chat about life
- Watch a funny video on YouTube
- Do some exercise, pull ups or plank
- Stretch, do some yoga, meditate
- Step out for a walk, get some air
- Take deep breaths, just disconnect
Stress Management Protocol
- Get a good professional evaluation
- Correct any cognitive distortions
- Change irrational expectations
- Assess your outlook towards life
- Build better coping mechanisms
- Practice good time management
- Establish a good social network
Technique 2: De-Condition
When eating has become emotional, it’s less about the food and more about the emotion. The two just get clubbed together, unfortunately (conditioning). And nothing gets resolved. If you were conditioned to exercise when stressed, there would be a twofold advantage. The stress would get lowered (because exercise releases dopamine, which is a stress buster) and you would get healthier (exercise builds immunity and safeguards from stress). But unfortunately, the unhealthy conditioning takes over, you overeat, and you see dual damage.
Take for example, eating in the middle of preparing for a project submission. It’s very hard work and it’s frustrating. So, you take frequent breaks to recharge yourself. And you go to the fridge or the kitchen cabinet to look for a snack. When you’re done with eating, within 5 minutes you’re back to work and it’s all good.
Very soon, eating a snack in the middle of work becomes an outcome of conditioning. If you’re working with colleagues in office or offsite too, you ask others if they’re hungry and they’re surprised because they aren’t habituated to eat in the middle of work. It’s unique to you. It’s become compulsory. You’re not hungry. You’re just bored and overworked and frustrated. And you feel better with a break. And so, you eat in that break.
Truth is, you didn’t ever need food to get energized. You needed the break. Music or exercise or a walk or a chat with a friend would have done the trick too. But you conditioned yourself to eat. Eating and relaxation got clubbed together as a learned response, and it became your reality. Your habit. To decondition, you have to keep watch for these situations.
Conditioned Eating Situations
- Someone was impolite or nasty
- You passed your favorite bakery
- You saw someone eat a chocolate
- You were at a grand celebration
- You were watching a food show
- You simply had nothing else to do
- You’d felt empty, sad and bored
- You felt alone, low and neglected
- You were contented and excited
De-Conditioning Challenge
- Am I really hungry right now?
- Is this food easing my anxiety?
- How will food achieve my goal?
- Have I not just eaten my lunch?
- Can’t I just eat when I am hungry?
- Is this helping me in any way at all?
- Can I do something else right now?
- Do I have other ways to fight this?
- Can I be more engaged in my task?
When you get meaningful answers to the questions, you will be in a better position to not make any more defective connections between food and unrelated activities. This way you can deal with the problematic emotion independently.
Discipline Around Food
We practice discipline with our gadgets. We charge our phones each night, fuel our car before setting out on a long drive, and service the air conditioner way before summer, to combat the heat. What happened to discipline around food? “We just didn’t feel like it” isn’t enough is it? So many people say, “I ate because she’d be hurt if I didn’t eat” or “I ate because the food was right there” or “I can’t waste food, so I eat it”. Maybe the food would’ve gotten emotional and felt bad, if you hadn’t eaten it? These questions can gauge your motivation, and the techniques mentioned can structure your resolve to stick to your diet plan.
Readiness: Are you
- Aware of why this even matters?
- Cognizant of your commitment?
- Ready to make a harder choice?
- Able to resist most temptation?
- Going to follow the founded plan?
- Willing to fight back even if you fail?
Discipline Building
- Work with a professional initially
- Plan your diet at the outset itself
- Be prepared for contingencies
- Speak to people about your plan
- Learn skills to resist temptation
- Be assertive about food choices
“Listen to your body when it speaks to you. It might be too late if you only respond when it screams.”
Discipline is independent of your situation. It’s an internal tenacity and determination, to follow up on what you have set out to do. Barring a few exceptions of course (like enjoying on a holiday, or eating unhealthy on an aircraft where no other food is available). Take the right step to change today.
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