Denise Lamothe is an emotional eating expert, international professional speaker, psychologist and doctor of holistic health. She is the author of The Taming of the Chew: A Holistic Guide to Stopping Compulsive Eating (Penguin 2002) and has been noted in many publications, including “O” the Oprah Magazine. She has appeared widely on television and radio and has spoken across the country and in Canada. Dr. Denise is the emotional eating expert for Ann Louise Gittleman, The First Lady of Nutrition and is the professional, celebrity spokesperson for the renowned Bach Flower Essences of Nelsons’ USA.
EmotionalEatingHelp.org: What are the core issues around Emotional Eating?
Dr. Denise: Emotional eating is eating mindlessly to soothe difficult emotions. The core issue is that most of us were not taught as children how to cope with or express our feelings appropriately. Many of us were actually encouraged not to express ourselves and consequently, we learned early on in our lives that foods, especially sugars and simple carbohydrates will calm us down and dull the painful feelings we are unable or unwilling to express. We reach for these foods because they are quick, convenient and give us a temporary feeling of well being. The feelings that drive us to submerge ourselves in emotional eating patterns are different for each of us and surface at different times. For example, if we are tired or have just suffered a disappointment, we may grab cookies or prepare a big bowl of pasta instead of allowing ourselves to feel the exhaustion or disappointment. Sometimes we stuff ourselves with other foods as well like potato chips or peanuts. When stressed, eating can take the edge off and calm us down. Eating when bored, sad or frustrated and not in actual need of nourishment is often emotional eating.
EmotionalEatingHelp.org: Why is emotional eating such a large issue today?
Dr. Denise: Today’s world in general can be overwhelming. We have inventions that help us to do our work more easily and efficiently which theoretically should provide us with some free time. Instead of making our lives easier however, they enable us to increase our expectations of ourselves and become even busier than we were before, producing more and feeling more stressed and deprived. This is a high-tech, fast-paced society we live in and emotional eating is one of the popular ways we have found to relax and calm our emotions. Enjoying our food and eating reasonable amounts — perhaps a bit more than that now and then — is fine. Stuffing ourselves at the end of every busy day is not. Overeating can easily become a habit that serves as a way of turning off the pressures and worries of the day and with the availability of junk foods, more and more people are choosing that option. The more stressful things become in our world, the more people are likely to seek escape and choose over eating as a way of doing so.
EmotionalEatingHelp.org: What kind of emotional change or success have you seen in clients?
Dr. Denise: Once clients learn to view the issue of overeating holistically — that is from physical, emotional, social and spiritual perspectives, they are able to make different, healthier decisions and thus permanent changes. Once armed with the knowledge that overeating is a behavior they have become accustomed to doing for many good reasons, they are empowered to make the important changes necessary to turn their behaviors in to healthy, self-loving ones. Clients stop blaming themselves or feeling helpless when they can see the whole picture. If they go on a diet, for example, and deprive themselves they will inevitably stuff themselves later and gain back more than the weight they worked so hard to lose. Then they are likely to feel like failures and crave even more unhealthy foods. If a client understands that diets cause weight gain, that society is mandating they be unrealistically thin, that they must choose the healthiest foods possible for themselves and stay well hydrated and rested they come to understand that there is much more to feeling balanced and healthy and in control of their eating than they thought at first. If they also realize that their feelings are valid and worthy of expression and they give themselves the time necessary to nurture their spiritual selves, breathe, relax and have fun their emotional eating issues will fade into the background.
EmotionalEatingHelp.org- Why is this such an important issue for you, Denise?
Dr. Denise: Throughout most of my life I struggled with food control issues. I suffered for many years with anorexia and bulimia and was extremely obese for many years after that. All of these conditions were extremely painful and debilitating and, as I discovered ways to overcome these difficulties, I wanted to help as many people as I could to heal themselves and create lives of balance and joy for themselves. So I wrote The Taming of the Chew to help people understand that their food issues do make sense given their current situation and their understanding of the issues involved and that by seeing the bigger picture they can make constructive changes to feel better about themselves — to be happy, healthy and whole — physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. I share my story when I speak, in my book and will on this blog when appropriate to emphasize the necessity of realizing that what is important is not body size but happiness, peace and balance. Because I have weighed half and double what I weigh now, I personally understand the frustration and pain wrapped around the issue of emotional eating and I also understand what it means to feel healthy, energetic, balanced and to have a good relationship with food.
Dr Bach was a visionary who believed that allopathic medication was not the answer to all health problems — be they physical or emotional. He cared so much for his patients that he sought alternative, natural ways of helping them. He was inspired one day by the flowers in his garden and determined that specific flowers contained healing properties that could help his patients balance their energetic, emotional energies. His belief was that in order to heal our physical selves we must first attend to our emotional states and balance our energy. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Bach and have witnessed the effectiveness of his remedies in removing blocks to emotional healing in my clients for over twenty-five years. There are 38 remedies all together and 2 blended remedies (Rescue Remedy and Rescue Sleep). I often suggest specific remedies for clients, such as beech for coping with anger or elm when they feel overwhelmed. I do strongly suggest the remedies contained in the emotional eating kit for all clients who approach me with food control issues and I have seen dramatic results. I am thankful to Dr. Bach for his insight and for his discovery of the many of the healing properties found in nature.
She is located in Exeter NH and can be reached at 603-778-4814 or 603-493-6043 www.DeniseLamothe.com or Denise@DeniseLamothe.com. Her blog can be found at: chewtamers.blogspot.com
On WLSLifestyles.com, Melissa McCreery, PhD has a post examining the link between sleep and emotional eating. The article cites a University of California, Berkley Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory study that looked at sleep deprivation and its effects on the emotional processing centers of the brain. From the post:
The brain imaging study suggests that a good night’s sleep helps regulate your mood and cope with the next day’s emotional challenges. When the brain is deprived of sleep, it is less able to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, reasoned responses. In fact, in the study, the emotional centers of the brain were over 60 percent more reactive under conditions of sleep deprivation than in subjects who had obtained a normal night of sleep.
Put another way, if you aren’t getting enough sleep, the study suggests that you will be physiologically predisposed to react emotionally rather than choose a deliberate response to emotional situations. You are less likely to stop, think, and choose your response. So, if your goal is to curb stress eating, stop the nervous eating, or no longer reach for chocolate when you are feeling down, a lack of sleep is going to make it a lot harder to be successful.
The rest of the article can be read here.
Natural News, a site about Natural Health, Natural Living and news has an interview entitled “Stop Your Food Cravings Before They Start“. In the interview, Jonny Bowden (author, nutritionist, and personal trainer) talks about emotional eating with Kevin Gianni. An excerpt from the interview:
Kevin: Wow. So let’s get right into it. I sense a theme of the questions that we got and I got a chance to take a look at them, kind of revolve around to very specific things. One is emotional eating and the other is sugar cravings and I have a feeling that they’re a little bit connected, but I’m going to let you talk about that. So let’s talk first about emotional eating. How can someone overcome emotional-type grabbing for food no matter what it is?
Jonny: Well, it’s certainly something that we can spend an entire hour on, but let me just give you a tiny piece of the way I approach it. I did a program a while ago, which has been doing really well on my website called the Diet Boot Camp Program. It’s four CDs and a manual and it’s the text that we use in our private coaching program. It’s kind of a textbook, but this is an at-home version that you can do without the coaching program and everyone talks about using a food journal to keep a record of what you eat, so that you can kind of monitor food reactions and calories and be accountable to yourself. In the Diet Boot Camp Program, I particularly added to that food journal questions about what you just asked. “What am I feeling when I’m eating this?” “Am I really hungry or is something else going on?” “How do I connect the dots between the triggers for eating and my eating behavior?” Because I think the answer to your question is really about how we connect the dots? How do we identify what triggers happen often subconsciously, and often without us even noticing them. They happen so quickly.
What cues do we respond to that trigger eating behaviors, because until we can make that connection we can’t break the link. So what we’re looking for is a circuit breaker. We’re looking for a way — if you know those Christmas lights that you have that you put on a Christmas tree. When they’re all kind of chained together and there’s one little circuit that’s broken in there then all the rest of the lights beyond that don’t light up. That’s what we need to do with some of our more addictive behaviors, whether it be food behaviors or drug behaviors, whatever we’re addicted to and here we’re talking about sugar and cravings and emotional eating.
So what we tend to do… and I was a cigarette smoker, for example. Certain subjects would come up. Certain anxiety producing subjects would come up in conversation. You automatically reach for the pack. So what I talk about on Diet Boot Camp is making a chink in the link. You’re looking at that link of behaviors that starts with an emotion of feeling of fear or anger. In the 12 step program they talk about ‘don’t get too angry or too tired or too thirsty or too hungry or too lonely’. There are these triggers and what we’re looking for is ‘what is the link of behaviors that ends with us eating something that doesn’t support our health and how do we break that link? How do we put a little circuit breaker in that link of lights’ and I think that’s the key to getting mastery over emotional eating.
Check out the rest of the interview here.
HealthNewsDigest.com has an article entitled “Eat, Drink And Be Merry: Your Holiday Eating Survival Guide” by Heidi Diller, RD. The article gives tips on how to avoid gaining weight over the holidays due to emotional eating. For those she calls “Emotional Bingers”, she gives the following advice:
Emotional Bingers: Create a list of things that make you feel good (that doesn’t include food). When you are on the verge of a binge, refer to your list to find another way to soothe yourself. If these techniques don’t eliminate your emotional eating urges, go ahead and indulge–but try substituting healthier foods. Drink sparkling water instead of sugary soda; munch on veggies and healthy snacks; or nibble one or two pieces of dark chocolate instead of binging on a plate of chocolate brownies.
The rest of the article can be read here.
The Mayo Clinic has an excellent post entitled “Weight-loss help: How to stop emotional eating: Find out how emotional eating can sabotage your weight-loss efforts and learn how you can regain control of your eating habits.” The post describes the problems associated with emotional overeating and offers several practical tips on how to stop emotional overeating such as:
- Learn to recognize true hunger.
- Know your triggers.
- Look elsewhere for comfort.
- Don’t keep unhealthy foods around.
- Snack healthy.
- Eat a balanced diet.
- Exercise regularly and get adequate rest.
Inny, at I’m No Quitter, has a great blog chronicling “my weight loss struggles and accomplishments, my work towards having a healthier life and the occasional musings about life and it’s meanings.” Her post entitled “On carbs, serotonin and why we binge” is a great first person account of emotional eating and binging. From her post:
What got me interested in reading about depression and serotonin is the struggle I’ve had with my weight for as long as I can remember. I didn’t become overweight because I wasn’t eating healthy. Most of the time I was. Even now I have no problem limiting the food I eat, I love eating vegetables and cooking healthy recipes. What made me gain weight was that at least once every week I would have a huge craving for something sweet or starchy and the urge to overeat on those foods was so big that I gave in and consumed thousands of calories in the form of chocolate bars. Now that I have to lose weight I still deal with those cravings and it’s as hard as always to resist them.
When guilt settles in after binging, I blame myself, I blame lack of self control, I blame laziness in keeping a food diary, I blame my mom or roommate or friend who bought the chocolate in the first place. I try to battle with this in the way everyone else does. I keep a food diary, limit my daily food intake, try not keep any sweet or starchy food at home. What haven’t actually occurred to me is: How great will life be if I didn’t have food cravings in the first place. Or if I had them so rarely they were not a problem.
The rest of the post is available here.
On the healthcare.com blog network, Dr. Hal has an article entitled “The Mental Fitness Solution For Emotional Overeating.” The post discusses the idea that to stop emotional overeating, we need to simply change the emotions that trigger overeating. From the post:
If you want to change your feelings and reduce emotional overeating, then change your thoughts. Consciously think in a way to create feelings that will result in emotional satisfaction. Then think the new thought repetitively. Repetitive thinking of the new thought not only will change our feelings, but also will program our brain.
The goal is to repetitively think in a way that provide emotional satisfaction of our wants and needs rather than deprivation.
Emotional overeating is the product of deprivation thinking. We are think and feel deprived of love, happiness or something in our lives, so we indulge in eating and gain weight.
Emotional overeating is often the product of rewards thinking. We think and feel successful, so we reward ourselves by overeating or eating whatever we deserve. Over-eating to reward ourselves is a delusional reward. In reality, gaining weight is not a reward; it is a punishment and burden.
The bottom line is to think to change our feelings. The goal is to repetitively change your thinking in order to change your feelings and achieve your desirable weight.
