Weight and Eating: When Life Is Hard To Swallow

When looking at weight and eating, there's lots of information available about the importance of healthy food and exercise. What is less commonly voiced is the role emotional stress plays not only in eating behavior, but also, in weight gain.

Dr. Dean Ornish, a visionary physician who has spread the message that "heart disease can be reversed through comprehensive lifestyle change,"1 notes that to lose weight and maintain weight, we need to work more deeply than with just what we eat and how we behave.

In "Why A High Protein Diet May Make You Fatter" by Kathy Freeston (see 1 below), Ornish notes, "The real epidemic in our country is not only obesity, but also depression, isolation and loneliness. As one patient told me, 'When I feel lonely and depressed, I eat a lot of fat. It fills the void. Fat coats my nerves and numbs the pain.'"

In this sense, we can both overeat when life is hard to swallow. And we can choose unhealthy foods to offer emotional comfort and soothing, since it may not be readily available in other, non-food-based ways.

Ornish points out that emotional stress plays a big role in weight gain, even beyond eating or overeating foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar.

1. Ornish notes that "chronic emotional stress stimulates your brain to release hormones that cause you to gain weight, especially around your belly where it's most harmful and least attractive." Long-term stress (which is sadly, defined as stress lasting 15 minutes or more) causes the body to produce cortisol, which contributes to stress-related eating and weight gain.

2. "Chronic stress also causes stimulation of hormones such as cytokines that promote inflammation." He notes that obesity itself causes a low-grade inflammation, "which in turn, tends to promote more obesity in a vicious cycle."

3. Because chronic emotional stress causes you to gain weight, using stress management tools may be necessary to lose weight and keep it off. So often, we ignore our emotional and spiritual needs, including our need for connection with self, a higher power and others. And when we lack connection, we feel a void. Meditation, mind-body tools and reaching out to others can fill the void with emotional, physical and spiritual nutrients not available in food.

It is important we pay attention to our emotional, spiritual and relational diet when looking at health and weight management. As we nourishing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and relationally, our bodies will response by generating oxytocin, the love or bonding hormone, and we will experience a greater sense of peace and well-being at all levels.

There is a lot of truth that when life is hard to swallow, we might really need a hug, a shoulder to cry on or a hand to food--not a bag of chips!

1 = From "Why A High Protein Diet May Make You Fatter" by Kathy Freston, AlterNet, March 18, 2010

Food and Sex Addiction: When "Abstinence" Isn't Really A Healthy Option

The term "addiction," according to an article a colleague sent me from Alternet, "was originally and properly defined as a physiological dependence on a substance to which the body had grown accustomed, such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin and various other drugs. The cure was to end the dependency and abstain from further use of the substance in order to avoid a recurrence of the physiological dependency."

In the case of substances that we can easily live without, and truly do not "need," abstinence makes a whole lot of sense. Over time, however, the scope of the term "addiction," expanded to include more than drugs and alcohol, to include other substances and processes (including food, sex, money, computer games and internet use), some of which ARE essential for our existence and well-being.

Food, for example, is on the basic level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, along with shelter and clothing. We need to eat to live. And if we don't eat a reasonably healthy, balanced diet, we become ill, and can even die.

Sex, is a basic human need, and a source of connection and expression, as well as reproduction. Without sex, we would become extinct. Without the connection of sexual intimacy, love relationships would lose a major contributor to bonding, mutuality and long-term staying power.

Yet, when our relationships with food or sex become imbalanced, when food or sex become compensations for trauma, emotional wounding or unmet needs at other levels, we can develop behaviors which today are called "eating addictions" or "sex addiction."

Clearly, an unhealthy relationship with food or sex can jeopardize our health and at worst, our lives. However, the "simple" abstinence approach to "beating"the addictive behavior is not really an option. Somehow, we need to connect with, face and heal our wounded places while still relating to the nourishing and healthy parts of food or sex.

In some cases, we've either lost touch with or never developed a healthy relationship with food or sex. For example, do you really know the signs when you are hungry? Do you pay attention to what you eat, when and why? Do you understand sex to be a sacred connection with a loved one? Do you practice safe and conscious, consensual sex? For some people, when they feel a bad feeling, they eat for comfort or to stuff the uncomfortable feeling down. If a person turns to sex because they are angry, bored, feel trapped or have no other outlet for emotional discomfort, they are "using" sex to fill a void rather than connecting with the healthy and more complete experience of sexuality.

In today's world, junk food, fast food and lots of food are easy to come by. Likewise, junk sex, fast sex and lots of sexual imagery are easy to come by. Often, it is just a few key strokes away.
Helping heal from an unhealthy relationship with food or sex does require stopping the unhealthy behavior. But it also requires noticing the uncomfortable feelings the behavior is "self-medicating," and learning to uncover what we really need and how to get it.

There are some parallels, in this sense, with healing from a drug or alcohol addiction. Until we stop engaging with the substance, we don't have the space--either biochemical or emotional--to discover the pain, trauma or difficulty feelings we are "running away from." However, in the case of food or sex, we need to somehow re-establish and new and healthy relationship with these life fundamentals, rather than living a life without food or sex.

In all cases of trying to heal from or overcome an addiction problem, we cannot do it all alone. There is an emotional component. There is a spiritual component. There is a behavioral component. It takes at least one other human being to tell your full truth to--a safe, compassionate human being who will listen deeply and who really understands. And it really does take a village, whether that village is a 12-step program, a support group or some combination of resources that hold you accountable, let you know you are not alone, and give you emotional, practical and spiritual support in a constant, regular way.

It is too bad that we so easily reduce human struggles into one or two-dimensions, when in actuality, they exist in more dimensions. And I find it most sad that so many human beings end up so isolated with their pain, that they turn to a substance or process, rather than another human being for consolation.