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Book: Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon
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Authors: Linda Bacon
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and the United States how they decided it was time to stop eating after a meal. 25 The French reported that they stopped when they were full. The Americans? They stopped when their plates were empty. Also interesting, the heavier the person was, regardless of whether they were French or American, the more likely they were to rely on external cues, like a clean plate, as opposed to how they felt.
For years we’ve automatically assumed that the reason the French weigh less and have a lower incidence of heart disease is because of the types of foods they eat and the red wine they drink. Maybe it’s how they eat that really makes the difference.
If you don’t trust and respond to hunger, after a while the self-regulatory setpoint mechanism that controls your fat stores breaks down. You weaken your innate ability to hear your hunger and fullness signals. When this happens, you start to gain weight. No ideas you (or anyone else) may have about how to maintain a healthy and appropriate weight can be as effective as listening to your body. Losing weight is not about finding the perfect proportions of carbohydrates, protein, and fat or tricking yourself into feeling satisfied. Rather, maintaining the right weight for you is about respecting your hunger and trusting your body to guide you in doing what’s best. And that’s hard to do if you’re regularly eating for reasons other than hunger and making choices that don’t give you pleasure.
As you continue reading, you’ll come to understand how we often try to nourish ourselves emotionally with food. See if you recognize yourself in these pages. Perhaps it can help you become more conscious about why you crave donuts.
I Hurt, Therefore I Eat: The Truth Behind Emotional Eating
We live in a culture in which food has become inextricably bound up with emotion and situation. We eat because we’re bored, because we’re sad, because we’re happy. When we want to celebrate, we go out to eat. When we’re grieving over a romantic breakup, we drown our feelings in ice cream. When someone is sick or someone dies, food becomes the way in which we show our sorrow and support—great amounts of casseroles and cakes and salads.
I’m not saying this is all bad. While food has inherent limitations in meeting our emotional needs, an emotional connection with food is part of a normal and healthy relationship with food. Food can and should bring us pleasure and comfort. Just think of the associations certain foods and aromas stir up for you: the sense of “home” you feel when you smell cinnamon and vanilla; the sense of safety a meatloaf and mashed potato dinner can provide; the sense of longing you get when your sister makes your grandmother’s famous broccoli casserole at Thanksgiving. On rainy Sundays, a cup of hot cocoa is a wonderful accompaniment to reading the paper, while the ritual of a celebratory cake adds meaning to birthdays.
But too many of us have come to view food as a blanket for our emotions, numbing them as we turn to food to provide the love and comfort we crave. Food is reward, friend, love, and support. We eat not because we’re hungry, but because we’re sad, guilty, bored, frustrated, lonely, or angry. In doing so, we’re ignoring those internal hard-wired hunger and fullness signals. And because there’s no way that food can really address our emotions, we eat and eat and eat, but never feel satisfied.
Unfortunately, at this point most of us get stuck. We recognize the short-term comfort or pleasure we get from food, and without other skills to take care of ourselves, we come to depend on it for an instant feel-better fix. Then we get stuck in a downward spiral: Eating to feel better doesn’t help us feel better in the long run; instead it adds guilt and anger about our eating habits and their ramifications on our weight. In fact, studies show that although you might receive immediate emotional comfort from eating,
For years we’ve automatically assumed that the reason the French weigh less and have a lower incidence of heart disease is because of the types of foods they eat and the red wine they drink. Maybe it’s how they eat that really makes the difference.
If you don’t trust and respond to hunger, after a while the self-regulatory setpoint mechanism that controls your fat stores breaks down. You weaken your innate ability to hear your hunger and fullness signals. When this happens, you start to gain weight. No ideas you (or anyone else) may have about how to maintain a healthy and appropriate weight can be as effective as listening to your body. Losing weight is not about finding the perfect proportions of carbohydrates, protein, and fat or tricking yourself into feeling satisfied. Rather, maintaining the right weight for you is about respecting your hunger and trusting your body to guide you in doing what’s best. And that’s hard to do if you’re regularly eating for reasons other than hunger and making choices that don’t give you pleasure.
As you continue reading, you’ll come to understand how we often try to nourish ourselves emotionally with food. See if you recognize yourself in these pages. Perhaps it can help you become more conscious about why you crave donuts.
I Hurt, Therefore I Eat: The Truth Behind Emotional Eating
We live in a culture in which food has become inextricably bound up with emotion and situation. We eat because we’re bored, because we’re sad, because we’re happy. When we want to celebrate, we go out to eat. When we’re grieving over a romantic breakup, we drown our feelings in ice cream. When someone is sick or someone dies, food becomes the way in which we show our sorrow and support—great amounts of casseroles and cakes and salads.
I’m not saying this is all bad. While food has inherent limitations in meeting our emotional needs, an emotional connection with food is part of a normal and healthy relationship with food. Food can and should bring us pleasure and comfort. Just think of the associations certain foods and aromas stir up for you: the sense of “home” you feel when you smell cinnamon and vanilla; the sense of safety a meatloaf and mashed potato dinner can provide; the sense of longing you get when your sister makes your grandmother’s famous broccoli casserole at Thanksgiving. On rainy Sundays, a cup of hot cocoa is a wonderful accompaniment to reading the paper, while the ritual of a celebratory cake adds meaning to birthdays.
But too many of us have come to view food as a blanket for our emotions, numbing them as we turn to food to provide the love and comfort we crave. Food is reward, friend, love, and support. We eat not because we’re hungry, but because we’re sad, guilty, bored, frustrated, lonely, or angry. In doing so, we’re ignoring those internal hard-wired hunger and fullness signals. And because there’s no way that food can really address our emotions, we eat and eat and eat, but never feel satisfied.
Unfortunately, at this point most of us get stuck. We recognize the short-term comfort or pleasure we get from food, and without other skills to take care of ourselves, we come to depend on it for an instant feel-better fix. Then we get stuck in a downward spiral: Eating to feel better doesn’t help us feel better in the long run; instead it adds guilt and anger about our eating habits and their ramifications on our weight. In fact, studies show that although you might receive immediate emotional comfort from eating,
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