What Happens To You Affects The Way You Eat

What happens to you, what you live in your day to day and how you process it affects the way you eat. Because beyond what we may think, what we put on the plate is not always intended to nourish us. Much of the time it is intended to quench or blur a series of specific emotions.

There are those who binge eat when experiencing stress. Others, on the other hand, lose their appetite and turn to very specific and frugal foods. The selection we make when we go shopping or when we go to a bar or restaurant is mediated by how we feel and, most of the time, by what we are dealing with mentally and emotionally.

There are studies that speak to us, for example, about how having a complicated or unstable relationship affects us in eating behavior. Experiencing tension, distrust, worry or anguish due to the fear of breaking that bond with the loved one often leads us to a series of ups and downs in this matter that can put our health at risk.

Let’s dive a little deeper into this topic.

Your experiences and the way you feed yourself: an almost direct relationship

Nutrition experts often find something contradictory. Most of his patients know which foods are healthy and which are not. They are even clear about what type of diet would be the most appropriate to take care of health and well-being. However, even knowing it, they don’t always apply it.

For what reason? What then explains those bad habits? The key to everything is in the strong connection that exists between food and the social and emotional aspect. What happens to you affects the way you eat, what you feel impacts on a good or bad diet.

Therefore, in this area of ​​health, it is not enough just to understand what we should eat and what we should restrict. It is also necessary to remember the intimate connection that exists between what we put into our mouths with what we think, what we feel and the experiences we live daily.

Thus, a bad day can cause us to look for high-calorie products to enjoy that brief rush of endorphins and serotonin associated with products such as crackers, pizzas, ice cream, hamburgers, etc. Products that activate the brain’s reward system.

Next, let’s try to understand this reality a little more.

Situational factors, stress and emotional eating

When we speak of situational determinants, we refer to the circumstances that surround us and how they influence eating behavior. In this way, we could say that there are two basic triggers: personal dissatisfaction and stress.

• This last factor is understood by all of us. When we go through times of high stress, the diet varies. Either the feeling of hunger is reduced or, on the contrary, food acts as an escape valve.
• On the other hand, there is also the frustration, dissatisfaction, unhappiness … Going through a few days when one does not feel good about himself or when nothing goes as it should affect eating. We can derive in the classic binges or in a clearly harmful eating style.

Both behaviors are mediated by what is defined as hedonic hunger, that is, resorting to a type of eating guided only by impulses, emotions and feelings.

Affective problems and eating

Psychologist Lisa Jaremka (University of Delaware) conducted a study to show that relationship problems affect the way we nurture ourselves. On average, what happens to you affects the way you eat, but when what happens to you has to do with the sentimental level, the impact is much greater.

What’s more, there is a change in muscle mass index, weight gain, and even general health can be affected. Anguish, discomfort, emotional intensity, worry … They are all “edible” emotions, feelings that we want to camouflage with junk food or unhealthy or unhealthy products.

How do you know if the way you eat is related to your mood?

What happens to you affects the way you eat. When we go through a satisfying, relaxed and focused time it is common that we worry more about our nutrition and that we want to take care of it. Now, when things don’t go our way, when work fails, there are problems at home or in any other area of ​​life, good eating habits tend to vary.

Almost without realizing it, we begin to eat poorly and poor diet leads to poor health and a further increase in dissatisfaction. What can we do in these cases? The ideal is to be aware of it, to know if what we are actually doing is “eating emotions.”

These questions can help us:

• Do you use food to feel good? If so, how do you do it? What do you eat?
• Do you use food to deal with a bad day? To alleviate loneliness or anger, perhaps? Do you think that works for you or does it make you feel more dissatisfied?
• Does eating certain foods make you feel more anxious, guilty, or ashamed?
• Do you think that your eating habits take care of your health or are they harming it? If so, what do you think you should do to feel better?

To conclude, if when we ask ourselves these questions we perceive that there is a problem that is difficult for us to control, it is important to always seek specialized help. Eating well happens in many cases to “feel good” and to achieve this it is essential to attend to our psychological universe.