Forget "Emotional Eating"...Think "Learned Eating"

[Warren L. Huberman PhD. 227]

"Emotional Eating" is one of the most common topics addressed with regards to weight loss surgery. Every weight loss surgery book, blog and website is full of articles explaining the causes of emotional eating and tips on how to defeat this dangerous villian that threatens to derail your success from surgery!

Hold onto your seat because I'm going to try and convince you that "Emotional Eating" is an overused and incomplete expression to describe the very problem the problem it is supposed to address. I'm also going to provide you with a new way of thinking about your eating behavior and a methodology to change it so that you can have more success from weight loss surgery.

"Emotional Eating" is generally thought of as eating that occurs in response to a particular emotional state. The basic premise is that a particular emotional state somehow triggers undesired eating. Some people eat when they're depressed, some when they're nervous and others when they're angry. Of course, others eat when they're happy or in the mood to Celebrate. In fact, virtually everyone on the planet does the latter. If humans didn't eat in response to positive emotions half of the restaurants around the world would close within the next few weeks. Thanksgiving would be cancelled and Christmas dinner would be no different than Tuesday's leftovers.

What about eating in response to negative emotions...is that fairly universal as well? I can confidently tell you that in working with thousands of patients over the past 20 years, many of whom were NOT surgical weight loss patients, that almost everyone has used food on occasion to provide temporary relief from emotional distress. In fact, many researchers believe that our brains are actually pre-wired to use food in this manner. Such researchers will tell you that drugs such as heroin, cocaine and others are actually "hijacking" the receptors and neural pathways that were designed for food! So there you have my first problem with the expression "Emotional Eating"....JUST ABOUT EVERYONE IS AN EMOTIONAL EATER TO SOME DEGREE, so labeling yourself an "Emotional Eater" is to state the obvious.

However, it is interesting that there is considerable variability in the behavior of those who describe themselves as emotional eaters. As I mentioned, some people eat in response to one emotion while others eat in response to others. Some people eat in response to mild disappointment while others eat only when they feel really distressed. Why is this so? The reason for this and for a wide variety of eating behaviors is that most eating behavior is "learned."

I will spare you an Introduction to Psychology class and try to minimize the psychobabble, but consider that when it comes to human behavior, we do what we do either because of our genetic endowment or what we've learned. Nature (genetic) or nurture (learning). Much of this learning isn't voluntary. In other words, most of your eating behaviors were not learned the way you would learn to play the piano. Much of what we've learned we picked up by watching others or by being instructed by others or through trial and error and the positive or negative consequences that followed.

Learning as it relates to food and eating begins on day one. Consider that at birth the behavior of a newborn is 100% genetic and 0% learning. Nothing has happened to the newborn child yet so they haven't learned a thing. Nurture has yet to exert an influence...it's all nature. Whatever a newborn does is pre-wired. But that changes almost immediately. Here comes the first bottle...yum! Sweet sugary milk. Lesson one: Milk tastes good and feels good going down. Later that day the baby cries...mommy rushes in with a bottle. Lesson number two has just occurred: I cry loud enough and mommy feeds me. I feel better and I stop screaming. Food is a reward and soothes my distress...and I am now in complete control of mommy!!

"Learning Eating" quickly proceeds in leaps and bounds in childhood. There's a very good chance (for example) that you "learned" to clean your plate because your mother told you that you had to and that you wouldn't be allowed to have dessert if you didn't. Or perhaps you received Cookies as a reward for good report cards or for cleaning your room. Now as an adult, long after mom stopped giving cookies for good report cards, you continued the habit of rewarding yourself for your daily successes. I can think back to all of the times that I was offered chicken Soup by my grandmother when I was disappointed for some reason or another as a kid. There is still no scientific evidence that chicken soup is effective in treating disappointment or depression, but the soothing taste of the soup sure does make you feel a little better. Even better, eating chicken soup today at age 41 provides me with warm memories of my grandmother. Starting to get the picture? From a young age, we quickly "learn" to like certain foods for certain reasons and develop eating habits and preferences almost completely without effort and often without any awareness.

By using the term "Learned Eating" you are more elegantly and accurately describing what is really going on here. The concept of "learning" better answers the questions of "Why do I eat this way?" and "How did I develop these problematic eating patterns?" Also, "Learned Eating" accounts for more of your eating behavior than just what is triggered by emotions. All of the behaviors that we commonly call "habits" are more accurately called "learned behaviors." So "Emotional Eating" is just one of the many types of eating behaviors that you've picked up (learned) throughout your life.

The real #1 reason that I'm trying to get your vote for "Learned Eating" is that this expression makes you empowered and able to change. Everyone is familiar with the concept of learning because we are all students in our own way. You don't need to be a psychologist to understand "learning." "Learned Eating" is a simple concept: If you have "learned" maladaptive or destructive eating behaviors that have contributed to weight gain, you can also "unlearn" these behaviors and "learn" or "relearn" new ones that help you keep the weight off after surgery. Emotions are a whole other murky, mysterious matter. Many people feel confused by the concept of "Emotional Eating." It doesn't empower you. It doesn't tell you how to change. So many people ask me, "I can't just stop feeling depressed, anxious or even happy. So how can I stop eating in response to these emotions?" The answer is that you need to understand how your emotions have become triggers associated with eating. Only then can you change your behavior. That is the stuff of "learning."

Here's an exercise to put the concept of "Learned Eating" to work in helping you to identify and correct some of your unwanted eating behaviors and to learn some new healthier ones. In fact, this exercise is one of the very exercises that I do with "emotional eaters" who come to me for assistance if they're struggling to make changes in their eating behavior either before or after weight loss surgery:

Take out a few pieces of paper and make six columns going from the top to the bottom of each page. Write the following headers on top of each column from left to right: Food eaten, Time of day, Location, Reason, Thoughts, Feelings. Over the next two weeks (14 days) write down what you ate, when you ate it, where you ate it, why you ate it and what you were thinking and feeling when you ate it. I know, you hate writing things down. Want to learn? You've got to do your homework.

The purpose of this exercise is to learn as many of the associations between your eating and its causes as possible. In case you're wondering, you can think of the feelings column as the "emotional eating" column. Now there are certainly more than 6 causes for your eating behavior, but this will give you tons of useful clues as to the cues that trigger your eating. By filling out these forms you will start to see what is pushing your eating buttons. Sometimes it will be genuine hunger. When this is the case, be sure to write "hungry" in the "why I ate it" column. Sometimes you're going to eat potato chips because you were bored. Write "bored" in the "why I ate it" column. Sometimes it will be an emotion like loneliness that triggers your urge to eat. Write "lonely" in the feelings column. Always fill out every column because you are going to find some surprising associations by completing these logs. You're going to find that where you are and the time of day are often the key triggers and not just that you were bored or lonely. You will find that feeling depressed isn't always the trigger for eating but feeling depressed when you're alone on a Friday night seems to push the potato chip eating button. Very important and useful information.

Learning to identify all of the cues, triggers and associations between your internal world (thoughts and feelings) and external world (people, places, times of day, etc) allows you to see what pushes your brain's eating buttons. Having this information allows you to comprehensively assess your eating behavior and to identify where and how to make changes. For example: should you clearly see from your logs that being alone at home at night is almost 100% associated with eating ice cream, you now know that you must address what's going on at home under these circumstances. Perhaps you need to change what you're doing at home at night or consider finding ways of getting out of the house some evenings altogether! Here's another example that you probably already know: The very sight of certain foods is a big trigger for eating. This one is easy to fix and many of you already know this....stop bringing the foods you find irresistible into your home! Either unlearn the habit of bringing cake into your house or relearn by bringing in healthier foods to eat.

Hopefully, I've convinced you that emotions are really just one of many triggers for eating and that "Emotional Eating" is no longer the best or most comprehensive concept to use if you want to make significant changes in your eating behavior. The concept of "Learned Eating" better explains how to understand, think about, and change your behavior. Take the time to learn as many of the cues, triggers and associations that relate to your eating behavior so that you can begin making changes in your eating and become more successful in keeping the weight off beginning right now. Do your homework...it's due tomorrow!!

:wink2:

Edited June 4, 2009 by wlh104

[Jachut 487]

Makes heaps of sense! I find the term "emotional eating" a very annoying overused excuse for people not taking responsibility for their own behaviours - which as you rightly point out means identifying learned eating patterns that are not helpful. Tying it up neatly to "I saw my dog get run over wehn I was 10 so I cant help but eat to squash my anger and misery" is just too easy. Admitting "this is a behaviour that I can control" is not so easy.

But people dont seem to realise that controlling it by degree is an achievement too! We dont have to totally obliterate every bad eating behaviour, we just have to try to make enough difference to our intake and enough difference to our output to reach a new balance. Its not an all or nothing thing.

How disappointing about the newborn analogy though. A bottle? Tsk tsk. What's wrong with a breast? Sorry, lifelong member of the milk mafia here.

[Cassy 0]

Thanks, I never know why my therapist and doctors are telling me to write things down. I think...what am I supposed to get from this...I already know I'm eating things I shouldn't and eating too much.

This makes it a little more fun to tabulate how many times I'm eating for a certain reason and then I can think about it the next time I go to write it down.

Cool

[Melody2006 1]

This was a great read and I agree completely. We are products of our environment and the company we keep. I think this applys to our eating habits as well.

[heartfire 4]

Very good article. I have to agree with what you have said. makes a lot of sense.