Are you eating your emotions? - The Derbyshire Benevolent Trust

The link between food, mood and emotional eating is a hefty subject that’s not to be taken lightly. But digging in can really open up some interesting patterns and information.

Emotional eating is more common than often admitted and is defined as “eating in response to negative emotions or stress”. In today’s society, we have far greater amounts of stress and negative emotions than around 20-30 years ago. Not only that, we also have far greater pressures to look a certain way and follow these ‘diets’ or consume ‘diet products’ that are heavily marketed to us as ‘healthy weight loss’. It’s no wonder we can find ourselves staring down the rabbit hole and feeling overwhelmed.

When you have these days that are stressful, generally your mood is a little bit down in the dumps, the first thing you do is reach for your “comfort foods”. These are the foods that are known to make you feel good, boost your mood and lift your spirits. Often these are high in sugar, salt and fat; again, completely normal behaviour. Yet we all sit here and wonder why we do it!

The science behind it is way more complex, but in summary I’ll give you the highlights (and none of the confusing jargon).

When we eat foods high in sugar, salt and fat, they are quick to jump into our blood streams and act fast, this meaning we get a very sharp increase in energy and ‘happy hormones’ (serotonin and dopamine). We feel better and our mood is lifted- happy days! But this only lasts a short period of time. The energy gets used up quickly and we get a ‘crash’ in energy, suddenly feeling tired and having a dip in mood again. This can lead to a cycle of eating, where we always reach for these “comfort foods” when our mood is down and also leading us down the path of guilt and shame for falling into these patterns.

Now, there is not just one cause of emotional eating, it’s always a little different for everyone- hence why personalised support is always highly advised versus blanket advice.

One factor that can cause emotion eating is ‘dieting’ and ‘energy-restriction’. When you start to restrict food and put yourself into an energy deficit to lose weight, your body is unable to tell that this is being done on purpose with the aim to lose weight, and acts as if it is in starvation mode. It goes to its default settings to slow down your metabolic rate and increase your hunger and appetite. At this point, all you can probably think about is food and what you’re going to eat next- your body’s way of trying to get you to feed it the energy it needs. In these situations, you are more likely to be craving foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat. These ‘restrictive diets’ affect you psychologically, increasing the feeling of deprivation, categorising ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods and forcing yourself to not being allowed certain foods. This negative emotion and stress leads to a higher intake of foods.

So, after finishing your diet and going back to ‘normal’ eating, it’s likely that you end up regaining the weight that you lost, plus some more, as it’s your bodies response to the conditions it was in and subconsciously making you want/eat more foods than you would.

Continuing in these patterns can increase the risk of losing feeling of hunger and satiety, and increase the risk of developing insulin sensitivity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Other factors can be:

Overeating when negative emotions hit
Overeating when you smell delicious foods
Overeating when you come in contact with foods you have forced yourself to stop eating, due to labelling them ‘bad’
Overeating when you get bad news

…and the list goes on. The situation is unique to you and why it causes you to be an emotional eater.

Below, is a diagram that shows just a handful of the factors affecting eating habits and emotional eating.

What can I do to help with emotional eating?

First off, find a registered professional to talk to and see what advice they can give. Remember, personalised advice is going to be much more helpful to you in the long run for sustainable changes.

Another good idea is to try and get 6-8 hours of sleep a night and reduce your stress levels the best you can. Exercising for at least 30 minutes a day can really improve mental health and sleep patterns. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme, picking up your pace whilst walking, jogging, home workouts, lifting weights, playing a sport, yoga- whatever you enjoy!

Some small dietary changes:

Aim to eat your 5-a-day
- Fresh, frozen, dried, tinned (in water or own juices) all count!
Integrate more wholegrain foods that will release energy much slower (low GI)
- Wholemeal bread, rice and pasta
- Sweet potatoes
- Grains, beans, pulses and lentils
- Wholegrain breakfast cereals (oats, Weetabix, bran flakes etc.)
Try to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day
Aim to reduce the amounts of red meats, processed foods, and full fat dairy products consumed per week
Swap out foods like; sweets, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, crisps etc. Find alternatives that aren’t going to give you that quick energy hit and are lower in sugar, salt and fat.

It’s key to remember, that these emotional eating responses have built up over time, and so they aren’t going to disappear in the blink of an eye. It will be a long process, but celebrating small achievements, keeping a positive mindset and reflecting on how far you have come are all worthwhile markers to look back on. But, also remembering that you are not alone and there are more people than you realise going through their own version of emotional eating.

References

S. et al (2003) Emotional Eating, Alexithymia, and Binge-Eating Disorder in Obese Women. North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) (V11.2, pg 195-201).
Van Strien. T. (2018) Causes of Emotional Eating and Matched Treatment of Obesity. Springer (doi: 1007/s11892-018-1000-x)
J., Gangwisch. J.E., Borsini. A., Wootton. R.E. & Mayer. E.A (2020). Food and Mood: how do diet and nutrition affect mental wellbeing? BMJ2020;369:m2382
Diabetes UK (2021). Emotional Eating and Feasting. https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/food-psychology/emotional-eating-and-feasting

Steph Hayes is a Registered Associate Nutritionist and her website can be found here: https://stephhayesnutrition.com/

I’ve not received a password reset email?

Be sure to check spam folders, Some email providers may consider the email to be a spam email and automatically file it into your spam folder.

The email is not in my Spam folder?

Some email providers may have very strict spam blocking in place. If this is happening you can add our email address to your ‘white list’

To do this please follow the instructions in the below links, by choosing your mail provider and adding the email: “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your whitelist.

AOL

Add the “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your AOL address book:

Click the “Mail Options” menu and select “Address Book”.
Inside the “Address Book” window, click the “Add” button.
Inside the “Address Card for New Contact” window cut and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the “Other E-Mail” field.
Make our From address the “Primary E-Mail” address by checking the associated check box to the right of it.
Click the “Save” button.

If the mailing is in your SPAM Folder, you can open the email and click the “This Is Not Spam” button.

Gmail

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Gmail Contacts List:

Click “Contacts” along the left side of any Gmail page.
Click “Create Contact”.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the primary email address dialog box.
Click “Save”.

If the mailing is in your SPAM folder, check the box next to the mailing and click the “Not Spam” button along the top.

Hotmail/Outlook/Live

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Hotmail Safe List:

Open your mailbox and click “Options” (upper right hand corner).
Click the “Junk E-Mail Protection” link.
Select the “Safe List” link.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the dialog box titled “Type an address or domain”.
Click the “Add” button next to the dialog box.

If the mailing is in your “Junk E-Mail Folder”, open the email and click the “Not Junk” button.

You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your Blocked Senders list. You can find your Blocked Senders list by following the directions above and going to “Blocked Senders List” instead of “Safe List”. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the Remove button.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Thunderbird Address Book and configure your Junk Mail Controls to white list your address book.

Add an address into your Personal Address Book:

Click the “Address Book” button.
Make sure the Personal Address Book is highlighted.
Click the “New Card” button.
Under the “Contact” tab, copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the Email dialog box.
Click “OK”.

White list your Personal Address Book:

From the main drop down menu, select “Tools –< Junk Mail Controls..."
This will launch the Junk Mail Controls window that has two tabs: Settings and Adaptive Filter
Under the Settings tab, update the “White Lists” module by selecting Personal Address Book from the pull down menu and then check mark the box next to “Do not mark messages as junk mail”.
Click “OK”.

If the mailing is in your junk folder, right-click the mailing and choose “Mark –< As Not Junk".[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title="Netscape Mail" tab_id="1498728551530-a54d18f1-2c51"][vc_column_text]Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive into your inbox:

From the Edit drop down menu, select “Message Filters”.
Click “New”, and give the new filter a name (e.g. “Whitelist”).
Change the drop down on the left to “sender” and the one in the middle to “is”.
Copy and paste username@domain.com into the box on the right.
Make the bottom two drop downs “Move to folder” and “Inbox”.
Click “OK”.
Make sure that your new filter is located at the top of the Message Filter list so it is run before any spam filter.

Outlook 2003/2007

Add the address you want to receive mailings from to your Safe Senders list:

On the Tools menu, click “Options”.
On the Preferences tab, click “Junk E-mail”.
On the Safe Senders tab, click “Add”.
In the Add address box, copy and paste in username@domain.com and click OK.

If you are using a different version of Outlook you can add the mailers From address to your Address Book. This can be done by opening the email, right clicking the From address, and selecting “Add To Contacts”. You can also access your Address Book via the tools drop down menu.

Yahoo

Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive in your inbox:

Open your mailbox and click on “Mail Options” (upper right hand corner).
Select “Filters” under the Management column.
Click the “Add” button on the Filters page.
In the “From header:” row, make the drop down “contains” and put the mailer’s from address username@domain.com in the box.
At the bottom of the page Click the “Choose Folder” pull down menu and select “Inbox”.
Click the “Add Filter” button.

If the mailing is in your Yahoo Bulk Folder open the email and click the “Not Spam” button. You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your “Blocked Addresses” list. You can find your “Blocked Addresses” list by clicking “Mail Options” and then clicking the “Blocked Addresses” link under the Spam column. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the “Remove Block” button.

Others

The most common way to whitelist an address is to add it to your address book, white list, or safe list. There is no universal way to whitelist an address, so if this is not an option, you will have to consult the help section associated with your email application. They should have instructions on how to whitelist an address there.