The Cure to Emotional Eating?
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. So hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning team, I'm back with a study for you. This study Mindfulness Based Emotional Eating Awareness that's the topic and I bet a few of you know like yes that's me, I emotionally eat. Help me Scott, help me now, please help me. Okay so when we typically look at fat loss approaches and stuff like that, I've mentioned it before, like a lot of the social media like quote unquote gurus will just keep telling you like calorie deficit bro.
Speaker 1:And like, just like all of these like top level things. When actually when it comes down to like the nitty gritty it's like there's so much more, such powerful forces at play like emotional eating is very powerful like stress can cause huge changes in the body, chronic stress can cause you to be even hungry, your appetite just goes through the roof for carbs and fatty foods. So like if you're not on then you know, negative self talk as well so like when you've got all these things at play and they're not addressed like yes, you might lose weight for a few weeks and stuff but if you haven't addressed the core things in the mind, the mindset, it's going be harder for that to be long term change. So this is great, this study came out in 2020 on mindfulness. They would they basically go they ask people, do you do you like, what BMI are you?
Speaker 1:Do you struggle with emotional eating, etcetera, etcetera? And they got a group of people, yours and his group, right? But they basically put them into different groups. One group was to use a mindfulness approach, for stress reduction, so it's called mindfulness based stress reduction MBSR program. So you can look that up if you wanna give it a go.
Speaker 1:And its variants originally devised by Kabat Zinn so mindfulness meditation training MMT exerts beneficial effects on a range of outcomes through attention, regulation, emotional regulation and enhanced executive functioning most notably in terms of inhibitory control. A lot of big words, basically mindfulness training. Now I'm not sure if you need to do all the specific ones but in terms of like being mindful and practicing bringing it back to the present moment you can read a lot on Zen Buddhism for example, you can read a lot about just stoicism is another one and basically if you can kind of bring what I think is happening is the people that are like emotionally eat, would, I know this is kind of like an out there guess but I'd imagine that their days are quite crazy as well that their emotions and stuff are so wild for the day that it's basically just this crazy day of being pulled and pushed and pushed and pushed and punched and pulled. And when it comes to eating because it's such a whirlwind anyway in terms of emotions, the decisions are like whirlwinds, grab and go this, but great, fuck it, do this, do that.
Speaker 1:So I think like being able to bring yourself to the present moment and I know topless and it sounds a bit like woohoo, but if you can bring yourself to the present moment and really like ground yourself in today, not let the future drag you, let Mr. Y Day, okay, pull you back to his grips, don't let Tom Oro ruin your mind, like you can bring yourself to the present moment and bring this sense of calm, that sense of calm or the cool head as we call it will then be in your actions so like you'll have a cool head when it comes to deciding what to eat, you'll have a cool head when you do have a crave and they've seen someone eat a magnum in the sun. You're like, oh, mate, I'd love a magnum right now. But maybe if you're emotionally just kind of just letting the day run you and being all crazy in terms of like the days running you, you you haven't got control of it. You'll just go and, like, I'm gonna get Magnum.
Speaker 1:But if you have a cool head, you might go, I had Magnum. Maybe I'll plan you know, maybe I'll have everything in my macros. Yeah. It's quite cool. So you kind of you are in control.
Speaker 1:Like, Donald says in one of the q and a's, who is in control, buddy? You or the Dorito? Right? Who is in control here? Anyway, let me get back to the study.
Speaker 1:So this is a study done. So the inclusion criteria was BMI between 18 and 29, history of problematic emotional eating and over the age of 18. Exclusions were current diagnosis for an eating disorder or any other mental health condition, food allergy or intolerance, currently pregnant or experienced mediator. Experienced mediator. They looked at impulse control, cue driven and emotional eating, intuitive eating, perceived stress.
Speaker 1:Okay. They basically just the intervention was doing mindfulness training. I mean you might get these in the apps like Calm, you might get it from the breathing things that we do on Mondays now. There's a few things it's like there's no perfect answer to these things like mindfulness is very like something might work for you some might not so you have to try loads of different ones right. But it was over six weeks and the changes were a lot like so perceived stress dropped by 30% after the mindfulness, so the stress levels came down perceived stress by 30%.
Speaker 1:Emotional impulse, dropped down 20 to 30%. Emotional eating dropped by 30% as well and mindfulness went up about 10%. Okay, so the changes are quite significant, right? So perceived stress went down. So you think about your stress has gone down from mindfulness, your emotional impulse goes down, so you're not reactive, you're responding instead and you're emotionally eaten therefore has dropped down as well significantly.
Speaker 1:And then your mindfulness goes up. So these are all linked behaviors. You can't do one and forget the rest. So, you know, have a look back through your beaten behavior, What's causing the emotional kind of like the emotional state? Think about what's causing it.
Speaker 1:Can that be reduced? Are you catastrophizing? Is it a stressful scenario? Are you dragging her out? Okay.
Speaker 1:And is it the environment stressing you out? Are you getting in your own way? Are you stressing yourself out for no reason? Are you being so busy because you just wanna be a busy bee where, you know, you can take a chill back, sit back a bit more and have more control? Are you, not planning and preparing knowing that when it comes to moments of decisions you're going to be feeling stressed and you lash out?
Speaker 1:Like think about it, how many times have you say no someone's asking you to like leave the house, you're in a rush, come on let's go, let's get out, come on we're gonna miss we're gonna miss a taxi, come on and you're rushing about oh my god and you know when you're ready and then you rush out the house, you get in the taxi and you forgot something and you're like, it's your fault if I go, are you rushing me? Was it that person's fault or was it your fault for not being more prepared and planned at the time because you knew you're gonna leave the house and go in a taxi, but you left a sore last minute that when it came to like picking up the speed you just forgot stuff. So that's how you look at like eating foods and stuff like that. If you let her get to that moment where you're in that peak feeling of emotion, you're just gonna make the bad decisions, right? And I'm gonna leave you on this as well.
Speaker 1:You don't have to, I know, you don't have to react when you can feel an emotion. I know you can you don't have to do it, can let it wash over you. So we all feel emotions every day. People who are angry, people who you'd call someone, someone who you'd call an angry person, the difference between someone who is labeled an angry person and someone's not, is not that the person who's not angry doesn't feel anger, they do feel anger, they just don't lash out at that peak anger, that microsecond where that anger is at its peak, instead of erupting like in a volcano, they let it wash over them and then they don't react and you can this can be done in all emotions, positive emotions, negative emotions. You can be and you know this is what the Zen Buddhism stuff's about, stoicism is you don't have to let your emotions tug and pull you all the time.
Speaker 1:I know it's easier said than done but you can let it wash over you and not react and I promise you, you give yourself those extra two or three seconds and you'll make better decisions. You'll respond instead of reacting. We don't want to be reactive, we want to be responders. Big up the responders. But I'll leave you guys.
Speaker 1:Mindfulness, triumph, Headspace, Brainfm, some of the meditation stuff we do, give it a go. It's not woo woo stuff. This stuff has been proven, research is back there. You've got to do it daily even if it's ten minutes. Give it a go.
Speaker 1:Let me know how it goes for you, and I will check-in with you all tomorrow. Ta ta. And that's it. Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Galf Lier. Hopefully, you understood something I said.
Speaker 1:I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website.
Speaker 1:What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy and your life will change.
