Using Food to Manage Mood

Food and feelings are closely intertwined. When are the times you over-eat or eat mindlessly? Generally these are times when you are feeling an emotion that you want to avoid or extend. Food, when used as a mood management tool, can miraculously make strong feelings disappear for a time.

Take boredom for example. Do you find yourself perusing the cupboards and hanging onto the wide-open fridge door looking for something to eat when you are feeling a restless sense of boredom? When you are watching bad, boring TV, do you find yourself thinking of and then hunting for some morsels of food that might make the sense of boredom (lack of excitement and interest) go away?

Consider sadness. When we experience the loss of a love to death or break-up, we reach for food. Our culture supports this with the ritual of providing food for the grieving family. This is a wonderful tradition and it’s very helpful as one deals with a great loss and may lose focus for a time in caring for oneself with meals. But if you struggle with emotional eating, you may carry this pattern of over-eating and binging to deal with the strong feelings of sadness on and on. This delays the normal working through of sadness and loss, and packs on the pounds.

Do you ever eat “at” someone? Sometimes when we are angry, we eat “at” the person we are angry with. Some of us rely on the hurried pace of locating the food, the chewing, and the gnashing of teeth to squash the feeling of rage down. Eating at someone never works, of course! We end up numb or at least the rage has simmered down to a bubbling resentment. The one thing anger needs is release - not at a person but a productive release of the energy of anger. When we eat our anger, we stuff the feelings and ourselves.

And when you feel your heart has been broken, is chocolate the answer? Well, maybe for a brief time, chocolate is soothing and feels like a comforting treat. But really, when our heart is broken, we need to grieve the loss, consider what we learned in the experience, and make sense of it over time. Eating away the hurt often leaves one with unresolved losses and greater self-loathing in the punishment the once-soothing food has become.

When you are anxious or fearful, do you turn to food to soothe your nerves? Does a cookie, or box of cookies, or a bag of chips calm you? Do you find that food distracts you from your concerns and thus provides some respite from the worry?

So, what can we do with these normal, common feelings if we choose to be more mindful? Mindful eating does not preclude that we’ll ever eat in boredom, or anger, or sadness. Mindful eating guides us gently to greater awareness and acceptance of feelings as normal, tolerable, passing states of experience rather then something intolerable that we need to run from and into food.

IF you’d like to practice mindful eating with emotions, try this:

The next time you feel bored, sad, angry, or anxious, feel it. Yep, just allow some time to FEEL the feelings. Examine the feeling. For example, What do I experience when I feel bored? Where do I feel it in my body? What am I saying to myself that makes this feeling more uncomfortable? If I allow the feeling, just the feeling, and not feed it with inflamed thoughts like “I am so bored.” “There is nothing to do.” “My life is so dull.”, what do I experience? How long does the feeling last? What might I like to do other than this activity? What is holding me back? Is my sense of boredom turning into another feeling like anxiety as I just allow and observe it? OK, then what does that feeling feel like in my body and mind?

This kind of mindful observation can interrupt the pattern of eating to avoid or squash down feelings. You may find after a few times through this process with feelings, you’ll learn about your pattern of using food to manage mood. And over time you’ll feel freer to allow a wide range of feelings, having learned that they are just feelings and will pass, like everything. Managing your mood by allowing your feelings rather than eating them away will result in a brighter mood, as your mind and body are not numbed out but free to experience the joy available in the present moment.

JME Affirmation for the Day

I accept my feelings as a natural part of life. I am safe. I am strong. I honor my feelings by allowing and examining them. As I honor my feelings, I grow in respect for myself and the power of my mind and body.