What do I do when I want to eat when I am feeling: Depressed, Stressed, Happy, N

The only situation listed in this group that is not an emotional eating problem is eating when you are happy. People eat when they are happy on occasion, not on a regular basis. You get engaged, you are happy, you get your friends together, and you go out and eat. You get a major job promotion, you get together with your friends, you go out and eat. These situations are not all that common.

However, if I eat when I am depressed, stressed or frustrated, these can be habitual emotional states, especially depression. People that tend to get depressed, for the most part, are depressed on a regular basis, so food becomes their means of chemically altering their brain chemistry to feel better. Yes, foods have chemical properties and have different effects on different individuals in the mid brain. For instance, sugar can lift someone up and make them feel better, at least momentarily. Comfort foods are usually carbohydrate-based foods that tend to calm down the mid brain and make the individual feel better. For millions of years, the number one cause of death was food – our brains became programmed to equate food with safety and survival. Even though this is no longer the case, my mid brain still has the programming from tens of millions of years of starvation, so what do I do when I am depressed? What do I do when I am frustrated or scared? I eat even if I am not hungry. The need for food in emotionally stressful situations is built into our mid brain.

Females are the biggest victims of this genetic programming because females bear the babies, and they need to have adequate body fat to support a pregnancy, and then to be able to nurse that baby. Men on the other hand, don’t usually have this type of eating disorder, but there are exceptions. So the next time you find yourself emotionally distraught and want to turn to food, tell yourself I am not starving to death and find another means of dealing with the emotion than food. A good way to deal with these types of emotions is exercise. Exercise will release endorphins, make you feel “high”, and forget about the emotional problem. You can literally work it out.