Many of us have reached for a sweet or salty treat out of loneliness, anxiety, or stress. But where does the emotional impulse to eat come from? And does what we eat impact our mood too?
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Read the transcript:
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I mean, I wish I could say if you eat a lot of fish, then your mood is going to be positive.
Tara Schmidt:
Not if you don’t like fish! This is “On Nutrition,” a podcast from Mayo Clinic where we dig into the latest nutrition trends and research to help you understand what’s health, and what’s hype. I’m Tara Schmidt, a registered dietician with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
This episode – food and mood. People always say, “You are what you eat” – but it might be more like you FEEL what you eat. Other times… you EAT what you feel.
How can we untangle our emotions from our eating? How can we even tell if they’re linked? To understand, I’m talking to my colleague Dr. Karen Grothe. Dr. Grothe is a psychologist and researcher at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. For the last 16 years she’s worked with weight management patients, focusing on the psychosocial factors to eating like impulsivity and food addiction. Hi, Dr. Grothe.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Hello.
Tara Schmidt:
I think I have been working with you my entire career. So, how lucky am I?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Well, ditto. I would say the same. Tara, you are one of the best.
Tara Schmidt:
I learned from the best. We get to talk a little bit about a topic we don’t always talk about, which is food and mood. One of the first things we brought up when this topic came up was the words hangry, hungry and angry, which I know is slang and I know it’s not technically a medical term, but what is going on physiologically? Is there something going on psychologically? Is this a true thing?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
It’s absolutely a true thing. I think it’s a really complicated thing because there’s so many things that play a role, like how much someone is in tune with their emotions and their physiology. A lot of times people have sort of tuned out that hunger and fullness scale, and they’re not even aware of it. Same thing with emotions. Sometimes we don’t know until after the fact that we’re kind of over and done.
I just got back from a Norwegian family trip. It was great. There was a day that I had gone a while without eating and I was making sure everybody else’s needs were met and I got so short with my sister and she just looked at me and was like, “All right, snack time.” It’s a real thing that most of us can relate to and whether it’s a drop in blood sugar, hunger is kind of a negative emotion or feeling. Just like if you had pain or a headache or something, it’s uncomfortable. It’s just going to wear on you a little bit.
Tara Schmidt:
I think we get away from the self awareness of “I physically am feeling hungry right now.” That probably means I should eat within the next X number of minutes or I’m physically feeling tired or I’m really stressed. Whatever the feeling is I think a lot of us just kind of breeze through it, especially in America. We’re like, go, go, go, go, go. Let’s complete whatever task we’re on. That can really complicate things because there’s so many balls moving in the air all at once.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Absolutely. Eating is often a mindless activity task or an afterthought, or, what we see a lot in practice is sometimes it’s just another task to get done. I do it as quickly as I can and as easily as I can. Then you’re not getting in tune with the hunger and fullness. It takes 20 to 30 minutes for gut hormones to talk to the brain and say, “Hey, we’re full, we’re satisfied.” I call them our hunger and our fullness signals.
But how many people really take 20 to 30 minutes to eat a meal? If I think I’m kind of hungry, it’s a state I don’t really feel comfortable with, so I want to get rid of it. I grab something, I eat it quickly—and I guess I’m done. I guess I’m satisfied. Some people will say to me, “I don’t know if I ever feel hungry,” or “I don’t know if I ever feel full.”
We all differ biologically in those signals and different things affect it. Ever been on a medication that made you feel hungry? You weren’t hungry, you had enough calories, but that medication is in there saying, “Hey, you need to eat a little more.” A lot of us have dulled our awareness or response to those signals over time.
Tara Schmidt:
That is why we encourage self-monitoring so often and I want to put it out there that self-monitoring is not for everyone. It is not even appropriate for everyone, but if you are looking to become more in tune with your reasons behind eating, or reasons behind not eating, or what you’re eating, self monitoring is one of the first things we ask people to do.
It doesn’t have to be calorie-counting, just whip out a post-it note, and and write down the times of day that you’re eating and maybe jot down what you’re eating because so often we’ll find people go, “Oh, I’m not actually hungry at five o’clock at night. I’m just stressed, or I’m driving home from work, or whatever it may be.
They often find a different trigger as I call it.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
If people are concerned about it, boy my emotions really do seem to be driving my eating habits more than I would like, because I think we all engage in this sometimes, and we’re not aiming for perfection.
That I’m never going to emotionally eat again, but if you feel like the emotions are playing a role then, when you’re doing that self-monitoring jotting down what you’re feeling at that moment, and you know, even that can be a challenge if you haven’t monitored your emotions before, it’s usually one word. I’m irritable, I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m lonely, I’m bored, things like that, then you might start to see a pattern because what we know from our clinical experience and from research is that not just negative emotions, like I just mentioned, but positive emotions trigger eating too.
Tara Schmidt:
Look at a celebratory experience. You can talk about happy hour, you can talk about baby showers or wedding showers or retirement parties, but it’s important to at least acknowledge “Hey, we’re not here eating for nutrition. I’m here to spend time or celebrate” and that’s okay. We don’t have to put blame or shame on that experience.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
What I hear a lot from folks is that it isn’t just those social events and holidays and all those things. It’s also how I self soothe it with food. It’s also how I reward myself. “Oh, I got that really difficult project done,” or had that really difficult conversation with a loved one. I deserve something and it’s often a treat. I will tell you I’ve had one person in 16 years that when she stress ate, it was on carrots. Most of us are not rewarding ourselves with broccoli or soothing ourselves with asparagus.
It’s that highly palatable kind of food or how well we like the food we’re eating, and that’s the other element that makes this so complicated to research how much dopamine it is really giving my brain, and that’s going to vary from person to person.
Tara Schmidt:
I think we kind of have even more, so now this kind of treat yourself trend, or mentality and my more concerning aspect of this, is how often do you do it? Maybe how much, because I will tell you that if I go to Target and with zero children and zero husbands, I have an hour to do nothing but smell candles and look at makeup. I’m probably going to get myself a 6 coffee drink. I know that it’s not for nutrition, I’m just enjoying the fact that I’m at Target by myself. It’s not emotional, it’s that I recognize it, and I move past it, because it’s okay sometimes.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
If you’re not doing it every day, then that’s not as much of an issue. I love that example because first of all, Target is very soothing. But I really like when people have kind of a toolbox of things like if you’re going to reward yourself or soothe yourself, it’s okay if a special food or beverage is a part of that occasionally, but what else is a part of that?
Maybe it’s time on my own. Maybe it’s an activity I really enjoy that I don’t get to do that often. What is it that also will either calm that anxious stress response or will celebrate you. The people that I have seen that are really successful with weight loss in the long term, they’re pretty good at finding rewards for themselves that have nothing to do with food. I will ask that in our group sometimes, what else could we do for rewards other than food? Sometimes it’s crickets because food is everywhere. It’s legal, and it’s pretty rewarding. This is not an irrational behavior.
Tara Schmidt:
It’s pleasure. If you’re eating good, tasting food, which you’re likely doing if you’re rewarding yourselves, there’s a pleasure component. I will sometimes have my patients challenge themselves to do the same activity without the food. This would be me going to Target and not getting the drink and that’s fine. Or when people have transitional habits, I come home from work, I grab a glass of wine and I go sit on the porch with my partner. Okay. Come home from work and go sit on the porch with your partner and you may have just as much pleasure, relaxation, soothing, stress relief, as you did when the glass of wine was involved.
It’s okay to just experiment on whether or not food needs to be involved because sometimes it’s just part of the reward. It’s not always the reward.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Or it’s part of the habit. I think of it as muscle memory. It’s like I come into the house, I surf the kitchen, I grab something, I sit in this chair. It’s just that pattern of habit. Some of my favorite research studies on emotional eating brought people into the lab and they induced different moods for folks like positive mood, negative mood and then they had them eat like Swiss chocolate.
But the interesting thing they found was that, especially for people where they induce negative moods and they got to have some of their favorite chocolate at that time, their mood improved. But how long do you think it lasted?
Tara Schmidt:
Not that long.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Three minutes on average. It doesn’t last all that long. That piece of chocolate, or let’s say, that glass of wine — it might make you feel good, but it’s only going to be for a few minutes. Then it might impact your calorie total for the day, or what you eat afterwards. But those other habits, or ways of rewarding yourself — without the chocolate or wine — might actually have a bigger impact on your mood.
Tara Schmidt:
When we eat as a reward are we mainly seeking that dopamine, or are there other factors? Where do these impulses come from? There’s so many contextual things. We have this years long, all of us, this years long relationship with food, whether it’s been positive, negative or neutral. I mean, when infants are born, they soothe them right away with a sweet solution. Or when they’re getting a shot, they do that too.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
We’re trained right away to pair different things, and I work with a fair number of people that have experienced food insecurity where they didn’t have enough food or it was not predictable, or people that grew up or were part of that diet culture. I have people whose parents restricted their food because of concern about their weight or as a form of neglect. That’s going to really complicate what is happening biologically when we have food and have an emotional response to it. I was gonna say access, if I’m in my living room and I am in a negative or a positive mood, I have access to my pantry in the kitchen and I could even drive down the street if I wanted to.
Tara Schmidt:
Even where you physically are, what food is physically available to you, your food environment is a huge part of this. If you arrive home from work and your spouse or partner has a bottle of wine open, okay, well there we go.
I always say, is there a cookie jar on your island or is there a fruit bowl? There’s a big difference if you’re a 10 year old kid coming home from school. I have the best story from a patient recently. Around here in Minnesota is Girl Scout cookie time. That is a dangerous time for many of us, myself included. This woman’s husband knew that the thin mints were her favorite cookie. I’m a caramel delight kind of gal.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Are you? They’re all dangerous. I feel like the thin mints, cause they’re so thin, you can just eat a bunch of them and not realize, but he knew that was her favorite. He saw the Girl Scouts selling their cookies. He bought her a box and he put it on the passenger seat of her car for the next morning when she was getting in her car to go to work as a surprise.
She was so upset with him. The availability of things and also the relationship piece. He was showing her, “I care about you. I know what you like. I was thinking about you. Here’s something special.”
Tara Schmidt:
You’re sabotaging.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Exactly. She was like, “I’m in this program.” We thought through that a little bit
and I said, “What if you talk to him because if he had written her a little note and put it on the front seat of her car that said, ‘I’m thinking about you,’ or ‘I hope you have a great day,’ it would have the same emotional attachment that he’s trying to show.” But if we’re around people that’s how they show affection, they are going to make our favorite things more available and complicate the picture a little bit.
Tara Schmidt:
Speaking of nostalgia and food – how much of our impulses are ingrained from our long-term habits, like muscle memory?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I think often it is, and because we think about it, grandma rewarded us with treats or when we got home from school. Often you’d have that snack. I do think some of this is muscle memory. I do work with a subset of people where some people’s brains, it seems, are wired and some of the research on food addiction places people into an MRI machine, which tracks the activity in their brain and which parts of the brain it’s going to the reward center or not.
People who screen positive for food addiction, if you show them pictures of food, they used a milkshake in this one experiment. Their brain reacts just like a drug addict does to their drug of choice and people without food addiction.
Their brain does not react in the same way.
We’re all wired a little differently, whether we develop that over time. I love following Ashley Gearheart because she’s done a lot of this work and one of the approaches that they’re taking is a harm reduction approach because like we mentioned before, we don’t have anyone who’s addicted to broccoli.
If people are really struggling with problem foods, it’s usually highly processed foods, high fat, high sugar, not in the natural environment kind of food. One of the things she does that I love with this harm reduction approach is we think about low risk to high risk foods, make a list of those, if we’re saying a zero to 10, a zero food, it’s very low risk that I’m going to overeat, overdo it, or feel like I’m getting out of control.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
You might think brussels sprouts are not going to overdo it, right? I don’t know. It depends on how they’re cooked, but no, that’s probably a low risk food. The top three American high risk foods are ice cream, pizza, and Oreos. With those foods it’s going to be more likely that maybe I’m going to eat more than I intended, eat more quickly than I intended, eat until I’m uncomfortably full. Then you do the same with situations. What are my low eating situations and my high risk eating situations?
Some people might say if I’m going for a walk and it’s in the morning, that’s a low risk situation. Or if I’m in a meeting where no one else is eating, that’s a low risk situation. A high risk situation would be, I get home, I’m hungry, I’ve had a really stressful day. I’m alone. I’m in a negative emotional space and the Oreos are sitting right there on the counter. That’s a high risk situation.
What they’re trying to do is say that in high risk situations I want you to have your low risk foods because you’re going to be much more likely to stay on track. You’re going to be less likely to feel out of control. You’re going to feel more in control that your emotions aren’t controlling what you’re eating.
Then in my low risk situations, I have my high risk foods. We don’t like to say any food is forbidden. The minute you say it’s forbidden it sounds pretty darn good. I like that thinking of the context and the food and how I respond, whether it’s my brain or whether it’s biological or whether it’s habit, it’s just like, okay, on my low risk times I could have some ice cream and maybe keep it a little more under control because you know what, if I eat that out of control then I emotionally beat myself up. It’s a vicious cycle sometimes.
Tara Schmidt:
You won’t ever be in a high risk situation, which let’s be honest, we’re going to be in those situations, and like you said, it doesn’t restrict or pretend like you’re never going to have pizza again, which is perfect. When we’re talking about eating based on how we’re feeling emotionally, how much does hunger even play a role? Is it hunger? Then the emotion or the emotion, and we happen to be hungry. Is this like a chicken or an egg type thing?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I think hunger often plays a role, but not always. hunger can serve to exacerbate the situation. We used to say it’s kind of old school, but halt, don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. When you combine hunger with negative emotion, I think it just ups the intensity of the emotional eating situation. Now, sometimes for some people, hunger is not a part of it. It’s more, “I’m stressed. I need to self-soothe. I’m just really used to food being that main comfort.” But a lot of times hunger will complicate things for people.
Tara Schmidt:
It kind of ignites what’s already happening. You can always just ask yourself, when was the last time that I ate? Or when was the last time I ate a reasonable meal or snack? If that’s your first question, you can kind of pause and then decide which direction is this going in? Is it the fact that I am hungry and it’s exacerbating?
What’s going on in my brain? Or, I’m really struggling with this emotion, but I know that I’m not physically hungry. We got to tackle the healthier way then with time to address that emotion.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I love the pause and the reflection, not to go back to the self-monitoring, but that is something that we will sometimes have people do if they’re not sure. If it’s a physiological hunger or a psychological hunger, well, let’s look back at your food diary. Let’s reflect on, “I have eaten 2000 calories today.” I mean, you could also look at the quality of what you’ve eaten too, but it isn’t necessarily that you’re at a calorie deficit. Something else is probably playing a role.
Tara Schmidt:
Understanding hunger starts with understanding that mind/body connection. After we eat it may take 20 to 30 minutes for our stomach to tell our brain it’s full. Try to tune into your hunger and fullness signals. How can you tell when you actually feel full? How can you tell when you’re actually hungry? One thing you could do is self-monitor for a while, if that feels right for you. You’ll hear us talk about self-monitoring quite a bit in this episode – but that’s because it’s helpful! Take note of the times that you eat or what you’re eating along with the mood you might be feeling at that moment, and see what that tells you about your patterns because eating patterns and impulses are complicated.
They can be informed by our dopamine levels, a hardwired addiction or just muscle memory inherited from our family environment. As you try to understand your patterns, try switching things up! Instead of reaching for a high risk guilty pleasure when you’re stressed out, try doing so only when you’re at peace. When you’re feeling emotional intensity, try to stay away from those high risk foods, and reach for something lower risk. Or try that experience where you’d go out for a sweet treat without using food as a reward.
Maybe the part you most enjoy isn’t the treat itself, but getting out of the house or meeting up with a loved one. But how can you know for sure whether parts of your diet are directly linked to how you feel? We talked about how your feelings can impact your food choices. Now let’s talk about the flip side of that: how what you’ve eaten can impact your feelings. What kind of effects do you see food have on people’s moods?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
The data’s just emerging there too, where they’re starting to look at specific diets for specific mood disorders. But the data’s pretty equivocal right now. I mean, I wish I could say if you eat a lot of fish, then your mood is going to be positive. Not if you don’t like fish.
You got to figure out how to like it. But some folks notice, and this comes from data, mostly originally from animal studies, that when they reduce the amount of artificial sweeteners that they’re having, they notice less cravings. Some people notice when they eliminate sodas, and I don’t know if it’s the artificial sweetener, if it’s the carbonation, if it’s the calories, but they notice an improvement in mood.
Again, there aren’t solid studies to say everybody’s going to respond this way to reduction in artificial sweeteners. Usually what I will say to people is, “Well, let’s try and experiment because you can live without soda or you can live without artificial sweeteners.” I’m not saying it’s not a challenge because it really can be, but let’s try.
Usually it’s a period of at least three weeks. Do you notice any changes in mood, energy, or cravings? About half the time, people will come back and say, “I really did notice a difference.” About half the time people will say, “I didn’t notice a difference at all.” I’ll say, “All right, go back to your Diet Coke.”
Tara Schmidt:
I always tell people, “You will be telling me the answer about how you responded to this because how you experience artificial sweeteners might honestly be the opposite of how I do. Most people can identify that one fairly quickly though if I fall into A or B.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
The other thing is the anti-inflammatory properties of food. We know inflammation plays a role in depression. I think there’s a lot of complicating factors that, if anything, people would say it’s not going to be harmful to eat something healthy, like a Mediterranean diet, because you are getting the good antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Does a western diet really induce a negative mood or puts you at higher risk for depression? I don’t know because it’s going to be conflated with maybe my income level or my stress level or my food security level. It’s just a really complicated question.
Tara Schmidt:
There may not be a clear line between food and mood, but what about the physiological effect some foods or beverages might have on us? Let’s start with caffeine, for example.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Caffeine, obviously, is a stimulant, so it can create symptoms of anxiety. We metabolize caffeine differently. If you know someone that says they could have a cup of coffee and go to bed and someone that says they cannot have coffee after 4 p. m., or they will not sleep, there’s some truth in that, in that some are slow metabolizers and some are really fast metabolizers.
A lot of times I will see people and they will tell me about symptoms of anxiety. Like, “I can’t turn my brain off, or I’m shaky, or I can’t fall asleep. I can’t initiate sleep,” and they’re having seven or eight Mountain Dews a day. I’m like, “Well, this is a low hanging fruit.” Let’s do an experiment, because we don’t know what kind of caffeine metabolizer this person is, but what if we reduce that? Is that going to reduce that anxiety?
Tara Schmidt:
I think about the crashing as well. You can kind of come crashing down from a caffeine high, if you want to call it that. Your blood sugar can kind of come crashing down, especially if you have like a cup of coffee and a donut is the example that I always give of like, we’re going to feel real good for about 15 minutes and then we’re going to come crashing back down.
The older studies, when they looked at mood and that crash, your mood might start at a certain level and then you have high sugar food, your mood will crash down below what your baseline was. It’s a temporary lift and then it’s kind of worse after the fact, unfortunately.
Tara Schmidt:
Got it. So what about alcohol?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Alcohol is a depressant. That usually calms things. Some people use it because of that. A lot of times we’ll see people who have social anxiety. They’ll be like, “Oh, if I have a drink when I’m at a social thing, I’m not quite so anxious.” But it can lead down a not very good road. We have to be careful.
The other thing with alcohol, especially if people are having several drinks a day, several days a week, if you are on an antidepressant medication, it may make that medication ineffective because alcohol is blocking the impact of that treatment because again, we metabolize those differently, but alcohol can affect mood that way too.
Tara Schmidt:
There’s a little bit of research about vitamin D. We’re in Minnesota, so we don’t get real good vitamin D from the sun, but thinking about vitamin D rich foods, which could be anything from dairy that’s fortified to plant-based products that are fortified fish, if they’re canned in their bones.
I know that that’s weird, but it’s pretty normal in the food industry. Vitamin D was honestly the only nutrient that I found that had any form of research behind it. Have you found the same?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I know that in our mood disorder clinics for adults and for peds, that is one of the levels they always check. That is one of the supplements they often recommend for folks. If you’re deficient, not just because we live in Minnesota, but yes, that plays a role too. You wonder how much of that is the changes in our built environment, we’re not outside as often, the changes in our food environment, maybe we’re not getting natural food sources of vitamin D quite as often. That is one of the things I see our psychiatrists always checking on.
Tara Schmidt:
In an environment, I also think, “Okay, I’m working from home today, so I’m not going to see my coworkers in the break room, which I used to love to do.” What about that social aspect of food and mood?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Social support is such a strong variable when it comes to health. If you have really poor social support, limited support, it’s as risky to your health as smoking cigarettes.
Tara Schmidt:
It’s a predictor.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Now, ever since the pandemic, loneliness is such an element. Then, food is where it gets a little complicated. Often when we’re working with people in our programs, we talk about how you can create that support system around eating habits and food that’s going to be helpful to you. Sometimes it’s asking people to join in with you and trying new recipes, asking people not to bring the Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies and put them in the car.
Tara Schmidt:
Most of the time you’re gonna be telling this to people that you care about and they care about you too, and they’re going to want to help. We could totally get into food pushers and people in our lives that try to sabotage and that’s a whole nother hour. But most of the people I’m helping in someone’s life just want to know and you don’t have to tell them why if you don’t want to, but just sharing more might really give them some tools to be that support person. That husband didn’t know he was just doing the best that he could, but now maybe they had a conversation, polite or not, now he knows and might do something different.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
It feels good to support other people. Allow the people in your life that positive experience too. It’s another way to treat those mood pieces of things. If part of my mood is I feel down, I don’t feel motivated. I don’t feel the energy to do these things, to take care of myself. Bringing in support people is a great way to treat that rather than going for the ice cream or the pizza. Let me go for the phone and call my best friend and say, “Let’s have a walk and talk.”
Tara Schmidt:
To find out if parts of your diet are killing your vibe, treat yourself like your own guinea pig because the data’s not concrete on whether certain foods will boost or lower your mood 100% of the time. The way substances like coffee or alcohol metabolize in our body really depends on our individual makeup. That’s why it’s best to experiment with eliminating categories from your diet one by one, like artificial sweeteners or ultra processed foods for about three weeks at a time.
What do you observe about how you feel? Have your cravings lessened at all? When it comes to gauging your mood, you are your best barometer and there is no magic food that will physiologically improve your mood, though we do know that Vitamin D is linked to mood regulation.
If you think a deficiency might be the culprit of your low mood, try eating more vitamin D-rich foods like mushrooms or fish, or talk to your doctor about supplements and sometimes the best resource for these experiments are the people around us. Loved ones don’t just provide moral support when you make these big transitions. They can also be a fun alternative if you’re used to reaching for food out of loneliness. Now let’s talk about how to identify our triggers, and tap into self-compassion. I feel like we’ve talked about a hundred different things that impact our food intake and that are impacting our mood intake. How do you have a patient kind of evaluate whether or not food is impacting their emotional state?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
One of the ways is going back to self-monitoring. Of course, you guys all know Tara and I are big fans of this.
Tara Schmidt:
Get out your journal.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I know. But really it’s reflecting on it in some way, it’s stopping to assess that in some way. One of the questions I really like is what percent of the time are you in a positive mood? If I’m telling you 20 percent of the time I’m in a positive mood, there’s probably room for a better quality of life there. Making those dietary changes and then periodically monitoring. I like the idea of looking for signs or if other people are noticing.
We’re often not very self-aware for our moods. If other people are saying, “Wow, you got a little skip in your step,” or it looks like you’re feeling good, or nice to see you smile more or something like that, they’re noticing a change. We should also pay attention to when people around us are going, “Hmm, how’s your stress level? You’re a little cranky,” or I’m noticing this goes both ways.
Tara Schmidt:
If you don’t want to do it on paper and pen, that’s fine.
You can also just reflect at the end of the day and reflect by being totally neutral with yourself, which is very hard, but you could have had a fabulous eating day and you can say “Today went awesome. What did I do? Okay, I had my snacks prepped.” I was really careful about not doing this. I was really intentional about doing this or the opposite.
You could have a horrific day, whatever that means to you in terms of eating, and instead of blaming yourself, instead of going through the shame and blame cycle, he was like, “Oh, you know what, when I came home I opened that bag of chips and then I got the salsa out and we’re done. But you can just reflect neutrally, “How does my environment need to change? What are good habits that really help push me along?” You’re just reflecting. But you need to keep it neutral and/or positive.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
But Tara, I love how you said that it’s just a neutral reflection. Most of us will make a mistake with something and say things to ourselves that we would not say to our worst enemy, and so stopping and catching that. Whenever I do that lesson with folks in our programs a lot of them say half their battle is what’s going on in my brain. I start my day with really good, healthy eating intentions and then I get to work, and someone’s brought in their homemade cookies that are fabulous and I end up having three. Then I go into this all or nothing mode of like, “Well, today is shot. I’m a failure.
Tara Schmidt:
I got to start over.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Totally off. Really it’s not the food itself necessarily, it’s how we’re responding to that behavior in that food.
Tara Schmidt:
Overwhelmingly, the people I work with that are struggling with weight management are really fabulous caregivers. They take care of everyone. Everybody else and not themselves. I say to them, “Okay, let’s say you have a day where you have a mistake or a slip up with your eating or your activity.”
Dr. Karen Grothe:
What kind of things are you telling yourselves? It is usually, “Oh, I’m a failure. I’m worthless. I can’t do this.” I say, pretend your best friend is saying that to you about themselves. What would you say to that best friend? Everyone can come up with great words of encouragement for that other person that they care
about. But applying that skill to yourself, having that self-compassion, that’s a muscle not a lot of us have exercised.
The evidence on people who are really resilient, one of the consistent factors is that they look at mistakes and challenges as opportunities to learn. They don’t beat themselves up. They say to themselves, “Okay, today the chips and salsa and margarita snuck in.” What got me there? You come at it with just this curiosity and not judgment. Let me learn from this experience, and tomorrow, maybe I’ll do things a little differently. It’s like building that resilience muscle too. I really like that.
Tara Schmidt:
What other advice do you have for someone who’s identified that they really have trouble separating food from mood?
Dr. Karen Grothe:
I really like the idea of the toolbox for how do I self-soothe and how do I reward something that’s completely unrelated to food? Think about all the other senses other than your sense of taste. How can we use those other senses either to reward ourselves or calm ourselves?
This is where you think about tactile things. Sometimes people will have worry stones. This is part of why pets can be so therapeutic. The act of petting an animal is very therapeutic. A certain smell can be very therapeutic, calming or rewarding, certain images, sights, sounds. Really digging into the senses that way and/or figuring out what the mood is and targeting that mood directly. Sometimes it’s just about treating the particular emotion, and then that will help manage the eating behaviors.
Tara Schmidt:
I want to use the word untangling. I was going to say, do you have strategies for helping us stop these patterns? These patterns that are tangled into emotions or emotions that are tangled into eating patterns. It sounds like we are just slowly separating them. We just have to look at our very, very individualized, messy ball of yarn and kind of just take one step at a time.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Some of it’s just practicing acceptance. I’m going to feel bored sometimes. I’m going to feel anxious sometimes. That’s okay. It doesn’t necessarily have to change my eating habits. If it does on a particular day, it doesn’t need to continue to be a pattern. It’s the things that I think people really notice are really strongly tied to their eating. Let’s target it. If this is something that happens once every few months, let it roll off the back. Acceptance. That’s a part of life.
Tara Schmidt:
I feel like I just got free therapy. Thank you for being with me, Dr. Grothe. I so much appreciate your expertise and have spent a lot of time being here at Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Karen Grothe:
Thank you so much, Tara. Always a pleasure to work with you.
Tara Schmidt:
We often turn to food to soothe some painful or uncomfortable feelings. That’s why self-monitoring can be a helpful tool. It’s not meant to police your eating. It’s more about self reflection and getting back into the mindfulness of your everyday actions. That means having a neutral or even positive mindset as you reflect on your day: “What a privilege and a pleasure it is to eat! I ate some chips with salsa for dinner and didn’t feel too chipper after. That’s good to know.”
In moments of temptation, we can turn to our other senses and find alternative, non-harmful ways to self-soothe. Like petting a dog or lighting your favorite candle. Perhaps in that practice, we can identify and untangle those underlying emotions from our impulses. You can also take into account what your loved ones are saying about your mood as it changes. Think of them when you snap at yourself for eating something you hadn’t planned to. Having emotions is human, but the good news is that they come and go – just like cravings. As you ride those waves, give yourself some grace. Like all worthwhile things, caring for yourself takes practice.
That’s all for this episode. But if you’ve got a question or topic suggestion, you can leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272 – we might even feature your voice on the show!
For more On Nutrition episodes and resources, check us out online at mayoclinic.org/onnutrition.
Thanks for listening! And until next time, eat well, and be well.
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