Beyond
Walking

By Ronda Gates, MS

Ronda Gates, MS, is a pharmacy grad who traded her white coat for a pair of athletic shoes and never looked back. Her health promotion business, LIFESTYLES, provides motivational speaking, program development, and fitness assessment services to support people making a lifestyle change. She has developed health promotion programs for many organizations nationwide.
Visit www.rondagates.com for a complimentary subscription to Ronda’s weekly email newsletter.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

— Henry David
Thoreau

Emotional Eating: Obsessed with the Obsession

Americans are obsessed with food. Dieters seek the perfect food formula to lose weight. Physicians search for ways to convince us to lower the saturated and trans fats in our diet. Runners hunt for foods that give them lasting energy. Parents worry about junk foods. Magazines feature recipes. And Hollywood personalities promote everything from water to frozen foods.

Instead of continuing to look for a magic bullet, I encourage you to consider tuning out the external pressures and the internal “tapes” that tell us what to eat. Instead, consider using your intuitive wisdom to eat for health. The premise of intuitive wisdom is accepting that your body is naturally wired to care for itself. Given a neutral environment, research reveals we might initially make unwise choices but would ultimately choose a balance of nutrients to meet our needs.

Knowing this, I’ve asked hundreds of people, “Why do you eat?” Although I often hear, “to fuel my body,” few of us choose foods solely with a goal to get the vitamins and minerals we need to survive or to set the stage for peak performance. More often than not, our food choices are triggered by stressful events — and especially by the emotions and feelings that we are uncomfortable expressing.

Early in life too many of us were soothed by caregivers who gave us a bottle of milk or juice or a sweet treat to manage our impatience, sadness, anger, fear, or loneliness. If we never learned more appropriate coping skills, we internalized the message that eating keeps problems at bay.

We also grow up pressured by cultural, social, and environmental influences. This includes comfort food at football games, turkey “with all the trimmings” (and calories) at Thanksgiving, and the requisite party foods at holiday gatherings. Often the appearance, aroma, texture, and taste of food influences our food choices. We are bombarded with messages that label food as “good” or “bad”. Fresh fruit is “good,” and Twinkies are “bad,” despite knowledge that a starving child in some remote part of the world could survive for several days if given a Twinkie. Furthermore, a lack of truthful information or mixed messages about food leads us to believe we must eat (or not eat) this or that food to be happy and/or healthy.

Our grab-and-go lifestyle and eating on the run don’t help. When a vending machine, drive-in restaurant, or quick stop market is the source for a quick bite to eat between soccer games and doctor appointments, our choices are rarely the healthier lower-in-fat, lower-in–sugar, and higher-in-fiber foods that keep our bodies tuned for peak performance.

Soon we find ourselves on a lifetime path of dysfunctional, emotional eating instead of learning to express ourselves appropriately. If that dysfunctional eating leads to extra pounds, too many of us choose a fad diet or program that deprives us of favorite foods that nurture us, leading us to crave them even more. We “cheat” and beat ourselves up for our “failure.” A better course of action would be to treat the lapse as a temporary slip, use the experience to pro-actively prevent future lapses, and get back to our intuitive loving selves.

Regardless of the environment, when an eating decision or food choice presents itself, take a deep, calming breath and check in with yourself. Ask, “Am I hungry or am I eating because I have an uncomfortable emotion I don’t want to face, or because it’s convenient, or any of the many reasons I find myself in a feeding frenzy?”

If the answer is, “Yes, I’m hungry,” rate your hunger on a scale of one to ten, with one being “If I don’t eat now, I would be fine,” and ten being “If I don’t eat soon, I may faint.” Next ask yourself, “Based on this hunger level, what do I want to eat and what do I need to eat?” Then choose appropriately.

I urge my clients to follow the principles of the Smart Eating Food Target I created with nutritional biochemist Covert Bailey. The Food Target is a system for evaluating foods, diets, and menus. It doesn’t say, “Eat this now, and eat this later.” It doesn’t say, “This food is forbidden, but this food is a must.” It does, however, give a visual framework for people to choose a balanced and varied diet to meet their nutritional needs — with a dose of nurturing foods as part of the total plan.

It takes patience and persistence to shift from years of habitually choosing foods based on emotional cues to using food to meet nutritional needs. Making the time to eat intuitively is a rewarding experience in the long run. You can look back and feel good about taking care of yourself. It is one of the many rungs on the ladder for success.