The Impact of Dieting & Emotional Eating
We live in a world of dieting.
Dieting is everywhere. It’s been estimated that almost half of all the adults on planet Earth at some point, are on a diet. Many of us have been dieting for nearly our entire lifetime. Ask anyone that you know and ask them how long they’ve been dieting. Many people are introduced to dieting as early as age five (5)!
Dieting affects the body, mind and soul.
Here is one specific downside of dieting: Dieting essentially teaches people how NOT to eat.
This means… for many of us, dieting has the following impact:
Dieting asks us to undereat
Dieting trains us to see food as the enemy
Dieting requires that we suppress our natural appetite
Dieting can cause us to punish ourselves if we can’t follow our diet perfectly
So what does this have to do with emotional eating?
Well, when we reduce calories (and therefore underfeed our body), we become deficient in our caloric energy requirement from food – AND the body takes notice.
In fact, the body views a consistent lack of calories as starvation conditions, which activates the emergency part of our brain: the sympathetic nervous system. The brain interprets this emergency situation as life or death and causes our appetite to scream – HUNGRY!
Our primal evolutionary hardwiring is all about survival. Life must continue. Our brain is doing its best to save us. So in times of low nutrition and low food intake, the human brain thinks our life is in peril and increases our appetite.
And … we are DRIVEN to eat.
What’s fascinating is that most people will then interpret this “unwanted eating,” this ravenous appetite, this inability to control themselves with food as “emotional eating.”
The thing is, it’s a strange hybrid between emotional eating and a physiologically driven survival response.
To our mind, it FEELS like emotional eating because it occurs as an unstoppable ravenous sensation. But it’s all driven by our survival physiological biology.
What’s more, the stress of low-calorie weight loss dieting, the anxiety of constantly monitoring our food, and the negative self-talk that most often accompanies the dieting experience is enough by itself to make anyone want to emotionally eat.
In other words:
We can easily turn to emotional eating to help relieve the stress of trying to lose weight.
Can you see the irony here?
So, here’s the most straightforward and honest remedy to help let go of the emotional eating that’s driven by low-calorie weight loss dieting:
Stop dieting
Stop seeing food as the enemy
Stop trying to suppress your appetite
Stop weighing yourself every day
Stop hating on your body
Instead….
Replace dieting with learning how to be an eater.
Enjoy your meals.
Make friends with food.
Celebrate the body you have right now.
Be grateful you have an appetite – it means you’re alive.
Practice speaking kindly to your body.
Treat your body as if it were your special loved one or your child.
Let go of dieting for several months and live life as if this is the body you’ll have forever.
See what it’s like to stop bullying your body into losing weight and instead, enjoy it while you can.
Jessica Kishpaugh is a Holistic Nutritionist, Nutrition Psychology Counselor & Emotional Eating Coach, Owner of LoYo Wellness in Wyckoff in Bergen County, NJ and Founder of The LoYo Method Coaching Program for busy women to heal their relationship with food through the power of food psychology and mindset and behavior habit changes. Jessica specializes in nutrition psychology, emotional eating, binge eating, overeating and mindfulness stress reduction.
Book your FREE Breakthrough Call HERE to get clarity on your relationship with food, to understand what’s holding you back from achieving your health and wellness goals, and to discover a solution so you can nourish your mind and body and live into your full potential.