Obviously, I was not particularly hungry, but I ate a whole table of vegetables, drank two cups of tea, ate several chocolates at work in the afternoon, and held a whole bag of potato chips when I came home from work to watch TV. But I didn't feel happy after eating it, but I felt more guilty because I was afraid of being fat. Do you have the above situation?
During the global epidemic in COVID-19, we are worried about whether the place where we live is safe, whether our favorite family members will get sick, whether we will be taken unpaid leave at any time, and even feel bored and irritable at home because we can't go out to play with confidence.
Under such emotional pressure, many people tend to overeat.
Accidentally eating too much is all caused by emotions.
When people are faced with stress, their body and mind will have a "fight or flight response", which will make our muscles tense and our breathing shallow, and even it is easy to escape the uncomfortable feeling through "emotional diet". According to the survey of American Psychological Association (APA), 38% American adults overeat because of stress, and 49% of them eat emotionally at least once a week.
Studies have found that people who are prone to overeating have one trait: they are not very good at dealing with negative emotions, such as anxiety, shame and sadness, especially when the epidemic is serious. "Eating" is a way to distract attention and bring comfort.
"When a person overeats, his brain will secrete a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which will make us feel happy for a while. Jennifer Lombardi, an American psychotherapist for eating disorders, said.
However, the terrible thing is that when we overeat, we feel guilty. In order to alleviate this kind of mood, we will accidentally eat too much, forming a vicious circle. Only "self-pity" can break this cycle.
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Let "self-pity" stop the vicious circle of overeating
Living in a high-pressure and fast-paced society, we become easy to "self-criticize". If we don't do well enough, we will blame ourselves internally for not working hard enough or lament that we are not smart enough. However, such self-criticism is eroding your inner security fortress, making us more and more shy of facing the immediate difficulties, and even being depressed for a long time.
Although it is difficult for us to change the things we face, Ann Saffi Biasetti, a clinical psychologist, suggests that kindness and caring for ourselves can make us realize our difficulties and accept them.
"Self-sympathy" can help overeating in the following three aspects:
1. Be aware of what kind of emotions make us want to overeat. 2. Relax the nervous state of mind and body. 3. Avoid the sense of shame after emotional eating.
How to feel sorry for yourself? You can meditate for about fifteen minutes on a regular basis and look at the setbacks you face with gentle eyes, just like a mother comforting a crying child after a fall.
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Biasetti said that he would instruct his patients, put his hand in a place that would make you feel comfortable, such as his chest, and then take a deep breath and repeatedly tell himself, "I understand that it is not easy for you now. 」
Just being aware of such emotions can relax your inner pressure a lot.
The research published in the journal Appetite shows that subjects who use "self-sympathy" skills are less likely to have emotional diets than those who use "self-criticism".
When the mood is stable, we choose things that are better for our health more rationally.
VidaOrange authorized to reprint the original source and accidentally ate too much! Psychologists suggest: use another "self-comfort" way to get rid of the emotional diet under the pressure of the epidemic.