POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: Some food for thought if you're eating too much
Recently we took a look at the difficulties involved in keeping to New Year’s resolutions. Specifically, the resolutions many of us make regarding health, eating, drinking and exercise at the start of every new year.
Many of us are still dealing with the after-effects of December’s over-indulgence. The gym is certainly a busy spot at the moment. In that article, we cited research which shows the importance of self-compassion to motivation and self-control when trying to change our unhelpful eating habits. We also discussed the importance of mindful vs mindless eating when it comes to the kind and amount of food we eat.
In the course of our work, we meet many clients (both male and female) who are trapped in a cycle of overeating, emotional responding, food restriction and dieting. Let’s start off by saying that we are not trained in nutrition and dietetics. However, as psychologists, we are very interested in the connection between mood and food and the link between emotions and eating behaviour. Indeed, psychologists have long played a part in the behavioural and cognitive aspects of weight management programmes.
Regular readers of this column will know the importance we place on mindfulness and self-compassion in our daily lives. In our clinical work we try to teach people how to approach problems such as overeating and disordered eating with both mindfulness and self-compassion.
Dr Ken Goss is head of the Eating Disorders Service in Coventry in the UK and has used Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT) with patients for the last two decades. He has written a self-help book, entitled 'The Compassionate Approach to Beating Overeating, using Compassion Focused Therapy' which we find useful in our practice with patients who are frustrated with their eating habits and want to make sustainable changes.
Early on in the book, Goss explains why us humans get caught up in patterns of over-eating in the first place. Apparently we have evolved to have a “see-food and-eat-it” mentality. This is a throwback to when food was scarce millions of years ago and we had to go out and hunt, forage and gather it. Because our food source was often precarious we had to eat what we could, when we could and our bodies evolved to store energy. Nowadays, food is no longer scarce; in fact in the western world in particular it is plentiful. So, we have this evolutionary predisposition to seeing food and eating, but we don’t have the supply constraints that our ancestors had.
In addition, eating has always been a sociable and a comforting habit. Most of us will recognise that food is about much more than nutrition; we eat when we are happy and we eat when we are sad.
Food can be a distraction and a comfort when we are distressed. However, if we over-indulge or eat foods we consider 'bad' we often criticise ourselves. This can lead to emotions such as guilt and shame.
Guilt and shame are unpleasant, uncomfortable emotions which cause further distress. So then we eat to manage our distress. Sometimes the shame, guilt and self-criticism makes us restrict our food intake and we engage in dieting behaviour.
But when we punish ourselves by not eating or cutting out certain foods, this can lead to anger feelings which in turn can make us 'rebel' and break out (back to over-eating again). It really can be such an exhausting and frustrating cycle.
However, we find that when clients understand and develop awareness about the link between emotion and eating, that they feel more empowered to take control back. Mindfulness is about becoming more aware of how we are in the moment.
That includes becoming more aware of how we feel and how we can act impulsively on these feelings. If we become more aware of this link, we can perhaps slow down the reaction (urge to comfort eat) and even sit with and tolerate the emotion (anxiety, depression, anger...).
If we find ourselves eating in the evenings, maybe through boredom or loneliness, it can be helpful to look at alternatives; for example if it’s loneliness, maybe we need to engage in more social interaction or pursuits. If it’s boredom, can we find something that can engage our attention, for example, pursuing a hobby or getting back to something we may have enjoyed in the past.
Goss draws from Professor Paul Gilbert’s theory of emotional regulation. Gilbert states we have three main emotional operating systems - threat, drive and soothing.
For psychological well-being, we need to have balance between the three. Being self-critical about our weight, our eating habits, our food choices, rather than being helpful, can actually trigger our threat system, resulting in emotions such as anxiety and anger and triggering release of stress chemicals.
Constant dieting and comparison to others can trigger our drive system which can feel good for a while but can also lead to frustration and burnout. Goss’s book draws heavily on the tools of CFT to address the above. He says that we have to activate a different kind of mind, one driven by the soothing system.
So just how can the compassionate mind help here? We need to cultivate compassionate attention and thoughts instead of repeating and focusing on self-critical, self-shaming ones.
We must acknowledge the struggle to lose weight, to stop over-eating, to stop comfort-eating and we need to realise that this struggle is often a universal experience.
Most of us have an emotional connection to eating and part of that is absolutely beyond our control. This connection stems from evolution, perhaps genetic factors and perhaps learned behaviours that we have picked up as children.
Human beings often use food to reward ourselves, to soothe ourselves and even as a focus of our socialisation, for example, having dinner with friends, having a Friday night takeaway.
Compassionate behaviour is not about avoiding these situations, but it is about taking back more control of when and what you eat, rather than just eating to dampen emotions or soothe our spirits. CFT teaches us to actually enjoy eating and drinking rather than associate it with threat, reward, punishment and so on.
Goss’s book outlines a number of techniques that the reader can try out. One technique is a version of the food diary. This type of diary incorporates space for the thoughts, feelings and sensations that drive over-eating and comfort eating.
This diary can also help you identify the foods which are most likely to lead to over-consumption. Very careful planning and timing of meals is very important as if for example, you slip up and over-eat you are not tempted to restrict food or skip a meal to compensate for this. Instead you acknowledge compassionately that to slip up is human and you just move along as planned.
Behavioural strategies such as putting off the urge to comfort-eat (thereby to soothe anxiety) rather than reacting immediately and reaching for the ice-cream, the chocolate, the crisps is the kind of response prevention that we advocate in the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for managing urges and rituals.
Goss tells us not to ban foods. We all know that it is part of the human condition to want what we cannot have. It’s like what we call the 'pink elephant' in therapy with clients.
If we tell you, that you can think about anything at all, anything at all in the world, except a pink elephant, well of course, you cannot help but see/think about a pink elephant. As Goss says it’s not about banning or avoiding certain foods, rather it’s about changing our relationship with them.
Another effective CFT technique which some of our readers will have heard us mention in previous articles is the compassionate letter. This is basically a tool whereby we can write to ourselves to encourage ourselves, to acknowledge our struggle, to explore what helps and what does not.
When Paul Gilbert talks about our mental health struggles with anxiety, depression, anger and so on, he always tells us that it is “not our fault, but it is our responsibility”. When it comes to our struggles with food, diet and emotional eating, the same mantra applies.
Julie O’Flaherty and Imelda Ferguson are chartered clinical psychologists, both based in private practice in Tullamore. Through Mind Your Self Midlands, they run courses on Positive Psychology and mindfulness throughout the year. They can be contacted through the Psychological Society of Ireland www.psihq.ie (Find A Psychologist section) or on their Facebook page, Mind Your Self Midlands.