By Marie Dufour, RD – It’s not just WHAT we eat, nor just HOW we eat, it’s also WHY we eat that matters. Compulsive overeaters, like alcoholics and gamblers, respond to psychological triggers that are often very complex, and more often than none, rooted in childhood experiences. Adult-life traumas and unresolved family conflicts can also cause the emotional eating response.
Whatever emotional trauma we have suffered and has not been psychologically resolved is a trigger for negative feelings. “Feeling bad” sends us reaching for feel-good stuff, in our case, food, and the results are evident on the scale, our hips, and eventually in our arteries.
What initially damaged our emotional heart, in the end will damage our physical heart if not addressed.
Therapy Today, the official journal of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy, agrees that “we need a better understanding of the issues underpinning compulsive eating so that psychological help can be successfully targeted.”
The brain is a complex chemical soup, and neurons can fire-up messages that will make us derail from our best planned behaviors. Discovering our overeating triggers, being able to make connections to the past, understanding our response, and adopting new behaviors are some of the keys to controlled eating.
In the case of emotional overeater, psychological counseling is one step in the way of healing old scars of the mind and getting a new body.
Source – British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy
Filed under: Lifestyle, diet, public health , childhood obesity, diet, emotional eating, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle, Marie Dufour RD, obesity, public health, weight control, weight loss, yo-yo dieting
