How to Correct Emotional Eating

How to Correct Emotional Eating

Emotional eaters come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and persuasions.  Just about everyone is prone to emotional eating from very young children to older adults.  What differentiates emotional eaters from those who are not?

Although there may be many reasons for emotional eating, I tend to look at the biological basis for this unhealthy habit.  Many of us are driven to eat “comfort food” when the stress hormone, cortisol, is elevated.  Comfort food, like pizza, macaroni and cheese, and ice cream is not called comfort food just because it tastes good.  It is called “comfort food” because it literally lowers cortisol levels.

Despite what you may think, cortisol isn’t always bad.  If it weren’t for cortisol, we’d have a very unproductive day.  Cortisol is what gets us moving in the morning and motivates us to meet tight deadlines.  On a typical day, cortisol levels drop roughly two hours after you wake up.  This is actually the best time to have that first cup of coffee because caffeine stimulates cortisol levels. So, you don’t really need coffee as soon as you wake up because your cortisol levels are already high; a cup of coffee will just make them higher. 

If chronically elevated levels of stress hormone promote emotional eating, then what can we do to lower cortisol levels?  Cortisol is produced from the adrenal glands, which are tiny appendages that sit on top of your kidneys.  It is part of the “HPA” axis that stands for hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, a glandular system for controlling stress.

The key to a healthy HPA axis rests in the gut.  The bacteria that live in your large intestine ensure the functionality of this system by producing serotonin, a neurotransmitter that promotes well-being.  Since 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut, a happy, healthy digestive track will insure a well-developed HPA axis.

Unfortunately, comfort foods do a terrible job of ensuring that the bacteria that live in your gut are well-fed.  Gut microbes thrive on “prebiotic” foods such as leafy greens, oats, asparagus, artichokes, onions, garlic, and the like.  They do not live on sugar and processed carbs.  As a matter of fact, pathogens, such as yeast, love sugar and carbs, which are the root cause of so many systemic yeast infections. (I had a sweet 7-year-old in the office today, who loves crackers and cookies, showing me her eczema and swollen eyes - a sure sign of a yeast infection).  A well-fed, healthy digestive track ensures production of serotonin and the neurotransmitter, dopamine, that make you calm, happy, and motivated.

Gut health is established at birth and, as a result, it’s greatly impacted by the gut health of the mother and the type of birth.  If the mother has poor gut health (and likely, a poorly functioning HPA axis) then baby will, too.  Cesarean section deliveries correlate with fewer microbes, less diversity of microbes, and higher levels of pathogens.  This, in turn, effects development of the HPA axis.  It is certainly possible to correct this, but only if the baby is well-fed.

As we get older, we have the opportunity to either improve the functionality of the HPA axis or to ensure its demise.  Taking a probiotic (i.e. a supplement that supplies billions of beneficial microbes to support gut health) helps, but we also need to feed these bacteria the food they love. If the diet does not contain the prebiotic foods previously mentioned, the bacteria in your gut will starve to death and, in a last-ditch effort to stay alive, they will eat you!

Once I clean up my patients’ diets, they frequently tell me how much better they feel mentally and physically, and how they are sleeping better at night.  Emotional eating simply begets emotional eating.  The more comfort food we eat the more we damage the health of the gut.  It is a vicious cycle that has dire health consequences.  Poor gut health correlates with just about every health condition including anxiety and depression, metabolic and autoimmune diseases, cancer, and even drug addiction.  Initially, ignoring comfort food cravings will be hard, so alternative strategies for lowering cortisol are needed.  The best antidote, for sure, is exercise. Walking outdoors is exceptionally helpful, but I also encourage the kind of exercise promoted by THE MAX Challenge, that makes you sweat and your heart beat faster (though, for some people, walking does indeed do the trick).

I also encourage meditation.  I recently hosted a transcendental meditation (TM) tutorial, and it was quite informative.  Closing your eyes and clearing the mind is incredibly effective at lowering cortisol levels.  Studies have shown that it even improves gut health.

Although I am not a psychotherapist, I believe that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) may be used to make people more aware of issues that artificially stimulate their appetite.  A psychotherapist can also provide some coping skills that may be used as a substitute for emotional eating.

If you are concerned about your eating habits and feel that emotional eating is something that needs to be addressed, please feel free to book an appointment at www.egglrock.com.  Dr. Laura would be happy to help you identify the root cause of this futile habit so that you may establish a healthier relationship with food.

This article was published in The MAX Factor magazine, Volume 2, Issue 1