Emotional eating, what a load of bs put out there to make people feel guilty for eating real food in real amounts. Have em starving and you have em by the strings to puppet around and eat what you want them to eat and in what amounts. Serve em up mouse portions of health foods at exorbitant prices and then when they 'binge' cos they are so hungry, have fast food on every fricken corner and vouchers already in their letter box to remind them.

Im one of the only people I know that believes you cant emotionally eat. Look how fat Ive become as a result.

[youtu.be]

I would say that ANY eating is emotional.
I mean,emotions such as "oh my I am hungry and I need to live".
Its emotions that cause us to eat,and survive.

Vinny

Causation is a tricky thing. What causes person x to eat food y? Environmental cues, hunger, habits. Since we by definition always experience emotions, we will experience emotion before, during and after eating as we have since the day we were born. That's not emotional eating, that's just eating.

Emotional eating suggests that people using eating as a coping strategy in response to a stressor or pressure in their life, a way of getting through the day. And having experienced it first hand, and watched loved ones experience it second, there is no doubt in my mind that it is real and not linked to someone's control over me or other people.

But we are not robots. And experiencing emotion doesn't mean that eating has to be our only coping strategy. So, there is a grain of truth in Harley's post. Free will is like a muscle that is strengthened when exercised. Were it otherwise, it would be difficult to explain the National Weight Control Registry., the largest data base in the world of people who have won at weight loss.

As I mentioned at the beginning causation is a tricky thing, outcomes are influenced by genetics, environment, emotion and character which are not operating in isolation but together in one body through time. Isolating them for study can't account for synergisms and antagonisms resulting from their interaction. But it's a bit of an oversimplification isn't it to say there is no such thing as emotional eating. To make such an arrogant self-centered statement assumes you can either extrapolate from your own personal experience to everyone else or you omniscient.

It would be interesting to study the extent to which emotion is a more important factor than say environmental cues or addiction. My hypothesis is that emotion is not primarily responsible for the current obesity epidemic in the United States but rather food addiction and environmental cues. People raised during the depression and WWII experienced tremendous stress yet did not use become obese.

What's changed? Cheap targeted fat salt and sugar in foods with marketing and frankly addiction. For more, read The End to Overeating. Kessler is one of those rare individuals to have served as the head of a US independent regulatory agency (like the EPA where I work) as the Head of the FDA under both Democratic and Republican Administrations. The story of the coopting of our self-control and health for profit is truly astounding. So, to sum it up.

- I don't agree with Harley that emotional eating is bunk. It's real.
- But I do agree with him that we have free will and self-control upto a point on what we put into out mouths.
- Food addiction is real. You can go to Neal Barnard's books and read about the exercises of naxolone and chocolate if you doubt it.

- so emotion has occured through time, but cheap salt, fat and sugar that are consciously placed to addict us are relatively new. And that's what is killing us now. The End of Overeating by Kessler should be suggested reading for every American at least though I doubt that is where the influence stops.

Kessler isn't vegan, to the best of my knowledge. But he is a whistleblower. And perhaps the most important one of our time.

Paul

Of course you can emotionally eat. YOU don't, I get that, but what about the people who purposefully eat a lot of BAD foods because they have low self esteem? I'm not talking bananas and dates here I'm talking bags of marshmellows, entire cakes, etc.

People do it and many do it when they are upset or hurting. I agree we shouldn't say ALL eating is emotional eating, but there is such a thing as emotional eating.

Ive never met anyone that couldnt 'get over something' that was carbed up, hydrated and well slept.

Of course its normal to feel emotions but my point is that when we DWELL on them that something is out with our sugar/sleep and water intake.

Lets take care of our basic 3 fundamentals before we focus on anything else.

Bit like pouring the cement before you focus on the tiles.

Yeah I agree. The problem is when people are so far gone they don't really want to care for themselves.

Bingo! Like the drunk that is 'ok to drive'. Or the dehydrated child that doesnt want to drink.

I'd say that to the extent one's is not using
reason, in balance with one's emotions, that
eating choices are emotional to that same extent.

And just because you're eating RAW food is not
necessarily, in all cases, done for rational
reasons.

Our emotions involve every choice we make,
whether we're conscious of it or not. And, quite
often, we're not the least bit aware of what's
going on, internally. (If we were aware, and
took responsibility for our choices, much of
what people do would never take place.) For it's
not the least bit unusual for people to "disown"
their emotions (i.e. to be cut off - or alienated -
from awareness of them at any given moment), and
the results of such disowning can run the entire
gamut from minor to catastrophic; in any context,
whether it be personal, interpersonal, political,
etc., including all of our choices in life.

Which can be healthy or unhealthy, to varying
degrees. And just because you think you're doing
something "healthy" doesn't necessarily make it
so. (I can't tell you how many time I've heard,
over the years, that consuming such things as
chicken, alcohol, cooked tomatoes, etc., etc.,
etc. is "healthy." People fool themselves every
day to the extent they do not understand Reality,
non-contradictory Philosophy, and their own their
own emotional world.

And, if one does not make choices, in part (and very
often in large part), for emotional reasons, then what,
exactly, is one motivated by?

Steve
[www.meetup.com]
[www.rawgosia.com]

Great post steve

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

I think we are more manipulated by advertising. We've been trained to drool and crave junky foods. Ads will get you with their 'emotional' ties of all kinds.

Parents condition their children also with rewards of comfort foods in times of stress, love, upsets, pain, etc.

It seems to me since we are emotional beings, we do a lot of things based on emotions and not based on common sense.

I feed my dog his raw foods diet of raw meat (he's a carnivore) and I always think it would be great to have someone like me to just place food down for me and that's what I eat no matter what. He can stick on his diet, be contented, and thrive. He's over 12 yrs. old. The only time he thinks he wants something more is when I'm eating. I would call that conditioning, because now in his later years I will give him a few bites sometimes. We are conditioned too with the advertising and our parents and caregivers food choices they offer us.

Eventually it becomes emotional eating for many of us. Not all eating we do is based on emotions, we do get hungry and that's natural. I don't know that many people who have never been deprived of foods has experienced true hunger though.

Love,
Prism



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2011 04:35PM by Prism.

irregardless of what has been said

"emotional eating" is an incredible luxury and one that i feel i can actually be grateful for

if i were in an area where there was NO food and i was struggling to just get one measly ounce... or begging on the streets in a country where there are no food lines etc. i would do anything.... ANYTHING... to be in a "dilemma" where there is so much food and choice that one of my "problems" is that there is too much food and choice

i am not ignorant of the ramifications of emotional eating etc. and this has been explored in depth in a great percentage of these threads and other places so no one needs to remind me of what it actually means and entails

i'm just saying that... it is still a luxury to have this as a "problem"

consider the alternative