Psychology of Eating: PACER Integrated Behavioral Health with Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes

Foreign welcome everybody, to today's integrated Behavioral health show. Today we're going to talk about the psychology of eating and I am your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Briefly, what are the functions of eating? And you may say, well, to get full. Yes, it is physically. We eat to give our body fuel, but also to give our body the building blocks it needs in order to make the hormones and the neurotransmitters and the tissues for repair and all that other stuff. You know, food provides the raw materials, if you want to think about it that way. And yes, your body can extrapolate some raw materials from what you already have. It can pull some energy from stored fat, it can pull some protein from your own muscles. But ultimately, when we eat, we are supplying, we're filling that fuel tank affectively. We eat for comfort. You know, that's about the only emotional benefit to eating cognitively. We eat for brain fuel. Our brain is one of the biggest users of blood glucose. Bet you didn't know that. So when you're spending a day doing a lot of thinking, your blood sugar actually is going to be used up pretty quickly. So you may find yourself getting hungrier or sleep sleepier, easier. And a lot of children often have challenges if they are gifted or have ADHD because they tend to think a lot faster and or more intensely. Sometimes they speculate that there are certain issues that may predispose a child to need to eat more frequently in order to prevent behavior problems. When are body is malnourished for some reason or our blood sugar is low, that HPA axis gets set off and we know that triggers our fight or flight response. And in children that can result in irritability, hyperactivity, all kinds of issues. In adults, we see sort of the same thing. I know some of my friends refer to it as being hangry. You get hungry and angry and kind of smoosh it together. Environmentally, eating really doesn't serve any purpose. But relationally, interpersonally, we eat in order to be social a lot of times. So let's look at our motivations and what we can do about it. Physically, circadian disruption can cause us to eat when we're not actually hungry. When our circadian rhythms get disrupted, the hormones gin and leptin are hunger and satiation hormones get out of whack. And so when people's circadian rhythms are disrupted, a lot of times they either may feel like they're hungry all the time, or they may not feel hungry or get hungry at weird times. If you pay attention when your Circadian rhythm is actually set. And children tend to be very good examples of this because they get up about the same time they, you know, go to school, they have nap time, you know, their day is relatively regimented. So they tend to get hungry about the same times every day. Their body gets used to that and that's part of that circadian rhythm. So the solution here to help that ghrelin and leptin kind of stay in, in sync and to help your body know when it's actually hungry is to really focus on those circadian rhythms, making sure that you're doing, getting good sleep hygiene. When it's daytime, you're exposing yourself to bright light. When it's nighttime, you're exposing yourself to darkness. Sleep hygiene, you know, all that kind of stuff can be really helpful. And I do have videos, you know, longer videos on the YouTube channel on regulating your circadian rhythms. So I'm not going to go into that in depth here. Another thing that can happen when your circadian rhythm gets disrupted though is that HPA axis can get activated. When we are sleep deprived, our body registers that as a threat. It doesn't want us to be foggy headed, it doesn't want us to be fatigued, it wants us to be alert to any potential threat so that HPA axis activates. When our HPA axis is activated just because of exhaustion or because of ingestion of stimulants like caffeine, we do find that sometimes it makes us less hungry, a lot of times stimulants. Because when we're trying to fight or flee, our body is not in rest or digest, it is in, you know, let's get everything out of the system. Let's speed up that food moving through so we can focus our energy on protection. So when our HPA axis is overactive, it can impact are actual hunger signals. Now we're going to talk about other reasons we eat in a few minutes, but do recognize that it is important, just like for inflammation control, for mood, for a lot of other things that HPA axis regulation is so important and we want to be cognizant of that. We want to be mindful of how we feel and whether we feel like we're in that fight or flight mode. Malnutrition is another reason that we may have cravings. We may, you know, have cravings for certain foods we may want to eat. We're not that hungry, but we're craving a certain food. And that may be your body's way of saying you need this nutrient out here. It's important that our body has all kinds of different nutrients, macronutrients and micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, what, however you want to label them. All of those things are important in order to support the chemical processes that are necessary to break down food and recombine it into hormones and neurotransmitters and all that other stuff. How do you address this? Well, I am not a registered dietitian, so I'm not going to tell you specifics. What I am going to tell you is consider downloading an app that you can keep a food diary. And the one I like the best personally is Spark People because it gives you a really nice summary at the end of every day of what nutrients you were supposed to have and in what proportions and what nutrients you actually had and in what proportions. So you can see where you may be experiencing some deficiencies and you can talk about that with your doctor, doctor or with your dietitian. It's important to recognize that just like neurotransmitters and you know, everything else in our body, when you ingest certain vitamins, it may make other vitamins less available and vice versa. So mega dosing on certain things is not always the best solution. Actually it's usually not the best solution. So if you do notice that there is persistent deficiency in a certain vitamin, mineral, nutrient, figuring out what foods that's available in, maybe trying to incorporate those more in your diet. But also if, if you find that that is inadequate, then talking with your doctor about what he or she suggests to address that. Another reason we may eat is because we're at an energy deficit. Now this is when we're eating for hunger. Imagine that and we want to eat. We people need a certain amount of calories in order to fuel everything that they do. Their thinking, their, their emotions, their heart rate, their, their everything. And when we are energy, energy deficient, we become hungry. Now yes, we do have stored glycogen, stored blood sugar, we do have stored body fat. So our body can run to a certain extent off of stuff that we have stored for a short period of time. But again it's if it's not getting those other vitamins and minerals and in the amount and proportion that it needs, then it may not be able to create things like serotonin and dopamine, which we know we need to have energy and feel good and you know, have clear head effectively. We eat for a lot of reasons. Self soothing comes to mind. We have been, most people have been raised since they were knee high to A grasshopper that when you are upset or even sometimes when you're happy, but a lot of times when you're upset or when you're stressed or when you're bored, you know, food can make you feel better. And sometimes that can be programmed from infancy. If every time the child cried, a bottle was stuck into their mouth, or when they were toddlers, if every time they started acting out, they were given a cookie or candy or something just to kind of pacify them. But we can also learn it as we grow up. Think about in American holidays and American traditions, in you, we have Christmas, we have Thanksgiving, we have even the 4th of July. What is the 4th? What do we do on the 4th of July? We have barbecues. Almost every single one of our holidays, if not everyone revolves around food of some sort. When we are come home from the hospital, people bring us food. When there's a death, people bring us food. So we do spend a lot of time revolving and trying to nurture one another and express love with food. And it's important to go back to those love languages and figure out what other ways besides food can you experience and express love to others. Misidentified stress signals. Our body's signals for anger, for anxiety, and for hunger can get misconstrued unless we're extremely mindful and extremely aware of how we're feeling. And that's where mindfulness comes in. Before you eat, really checking in with yourself and asking yourself, am I hungry? You know, that's a pretty basic thing. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I bored? Am I, Am I just eating out of habit? So becoming more alert and attuned to your own stress signals, what those look like, and figuring out how to address the stress with the stress tolerance skills, coping skills, you know, problem solving, social support, whatever you use, instead of trying to pacify it with food. Now, sometimes we eat or we crave things, especially foods that are high in fat or high in carbohydrates, especially your more simple carbohydrates. We may crave those comfort foods because we are experiencing low levels of serotonin or dopamine. Food is only one way to increase serotonin and dopamine levels. Serotonin is a and dopamine. Both are chemicals that are produced when we're experiencing pleasure, when we're experiencing relaxation. So what other things can you do to promote serotonin and dopamine in your brain, in your body? You can, you know, physically. Massage can help. Meditation can help. Affectively doing things that make you laugh. Are going to increase both serotonin and dopamine. Cognitively thinking happy thoughts, focusing on the positive, guided imagery that can increase serotonin and dopamine. Environmentally, being in an environment that is pleasant, you know, for some of us, it's going outside or, you know, if you can't get outside watching videos of, you know, rats taking a bath. There's this little rat on YouTube that I just absolutely adore right now. He's so cute. But it makes me happy. Whatever you watch that makes you happy, any of those things. And relationally. Relationally is a triple whammy. Because when we engage with other people in a positive way, you don't even have to touch them necessarily. But when we do nice things for other people, when we are kind to other people, when we engage in a positive way, it increases serotonin, dopamine, and our bonding hormone, oxytocin. So it's a, it's a trifecta there when you are feeling like you want to eat, if you're. If you determine that you're eating to self soothe, exploring other things that you can do. And I had a professor in college when I was working on my dissertation that taught me the strategy of what. What we called try 15. So do something else for 15 minutes, and if you're still thinking about this other thing, then revisit it. So do something that makes you happy. You know, watch something happy, Listen to a comedian, play with the dog, whatever it is, for 15 minutes. If after that 15 minutes, you're still, you know, just jonesing for something from the kitchen, well, then reevaluate at that point in time what may be going on cognitively. Sometimes we eat just out of habit, and I am guilty of that. When I come home, put my purse down on the foyer table, I make a beeline for the kitchen. Now, generally, I'm making a beeline for the kitchen to start dinner, but I'm really bad about snacking while I cook. And that's a really not a good habit to be in. I'm not suggesting it, but I know that that's one of my habits. If I'm in the kitchen, I tend to be grazing a little bit more. So recognizing your habits when you eat. When I grew up, we always used to eat in the car. We used to eat while we watched tv. We ate a lot when I was growing up and recognizing those habits and starting to address those and break those habits. Habits are just, you know, routine behaviors that we do on autopilot. So before picking up food, you Know, asking yourself again, am I hungry? One of the best ways to break a habit is also to set new habits, set new rules. For example, no eating out of the bag. You know, put it on a plate and sit down at the table if you're going to eat instead of walking around the kitchen or sitting in the living room, you know, just that alone will stop a lot of mindless eating. Some of us also eat more than we should because we are members of the clean plate club. When we grew up, we were always told that it was important to eat what was on our plate. It's important to address those thoughts now, especially as adults. But when you go out to eat, the amount of food that they give you in a restaurant or even, you know, fast food in a bag is far more calories than you probably need at any one sitting, far more than you actually probably need to feel full. Your stomach, when it is not all expanded with food, is only about the size of your fist. So next time before you eat, look at what's on your plate and look at your fist and think, do I really need to eat that much at this sitting right now? Generally, probably not now. Our stomach obviously expands. It's meant to handle larger quantities, quantities of food. But recognizing that a lot of times we eat more than we actually need to, it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to even register that anything's in your stomach. So those of us who eat like, you know, somebody's going to come steal our food or there's a famine, often don't even register we're hungry until long after we have cleaned our plate and put it in the dishwasher. So slowing down can be helpful and then recognizing that food will be there. You know, you can portion off half of your food and save it for later. You can, as soon as you get a plate at a restaurant, if you feel like you'd be too tempted, ask for a to go box and put half of it in that to go box. So there are ways that we can address our eating. So we're only eating for satiation. We're not eating to quiet that voice in the back of our head saying, you need to eat everything on your plate environmentally a lot of times, and they've done studies, they found that people who tend to keep food, food on their countertops, even if it's in baskets and Tupperware and all that kind of stuff, if it's within sight, it's within mind. And people who have food that's visible, tend to eat up to 30% more calories every single day. And it's not necessarily healthy calories. So putting food away can also help because when we see food, we think about food and just like Pavlov's dog, we start thinking about food, we start salivating and you know, then we start thinking, oh, I'm, I'm salivating. I must really want that right now. Eliminate the sights. That can be helpful. Smells can also trigger our desire to eat. But smells can also suppress our desire to eat. Certain essential oils, especially in the grapefruit and citrus kind of area, have been found to have appetite suppressing properties. So it may be helpful if you walk into somewhere and you know, maybe at work there's a cafeteria and you can smell them cooking pizza or fried chicken or whatever they make in the cafeteria and you know, your tummy starts getting grumbly because it smells so good. If you can replace that smell with a, you know, essential oil of some sort that you can inhale sometimes that can help to re, get you rebalanced a little bit. Obviously, if you're hungry, if it's time to eat, that's something completely different. And smelling grapefruit probably isn't going to make your desire to eat go away if you need those nutrients and that and, and that energy. But it is interesting to note that sights and smells can trigger our desire to eat. It primes that dopamine and that dopamine says, oh, I remember what that stuff is, I want that. And dopamine is our, let's do it again, our perseveration chemical. And when dopamine gets triggered, we're going to have those cravings, we're going to have those urges. Interpersonally, we eat sometimes just to conform to expectations. If you are not hungry but it's dinner time, you may feel like you have to eat because everybody's sitting down to the table to eat. And it's important to figure out how you're going to deal with that. Are you going to eat, but instead of eating what everybody else has, you're going to have a little side salad or some soup, or are you just going to have some ice water, but sit at the table and join the family, how are you going to handle that? If you are, you know, if it's mealtime but you are not hungry for some reason, and celebrations, you're at the barbecue, you're at the Christmas party, how do you handle that? If the expectation is that you're going to eat, or if you're there and there are, oh my gosh, just Goodies galore and goodies galore. Get me every time. What can you do to address that? For example, maybe making sure that you are continually sipping on some water or some ginger ale or something to occupy your taste buds. Maybe filling up your plate, Get a small plate and fill it up with vegetables. There's lots of different tips and tools for handling holiday parties online. You can look those up. But knowing ahead of time that just even if you're not hungry, the sight of something that is, you know, really rewarding to your taste buds, really dopamine inducing, is going to prime that dopamine circuit and create cravings, even if you're not actually hungry. So how are you going to handle that? And then sometimes people just engage in activities that surround food. Your friends want to go out on Friday. What do they want to do? They want to go out to dinner, you know, they want to go out on the weekends, maybe go shopping and go to lunch. It seems, if it seems like your interactions with your friends, with your significant others always end up revolving around food, that may be something to try to plan out ahead of time to figure out, you know, is there something else we can do instead of ending up at a restaurant if that's not something that you want to do, or if you feel like, you know, well, it's going to be two in the afternoon, and that's not when I actually eat. A lot of it depends on your own motivations. But being mindful, you know, it really boils down to stopping before you start to put food in your mouth and ask yourself, am I actually hungry? And if not, what's going on? What need am I trying to fulfill or pacify with this food? Am I trying to, you know, be friendly? Am I trying to increase dopamine? Am I just bored and I want something to do? What is it? And when you notice that you're trying, you're thinking about eating for reasons other than hunger, identifying, you know, two or three alternatives. Try it for 15 minutes, and then if you're still just, you can't stop thinking about whatever it is, then revisit that. But most urges, most cravings will peak and, and start to decline or go away within about 10 minutes. So in 15 minutes, you might not be thinking about it at all. I know in the evenings when some of those commercials come on for, you know, some of your less healthy foods, and I'll be sitting there watching tv, thinking, oh, that looks really good. But, you know, you know, making sure I do something else, pick up my, my phone, start Playing a game, start crocheting, pet the dog, whatever, for 15 minutes. Usually I quit thinking about it and I completely forget about it shortly. But if you sit there and you just keep thinking about it and keep feeding that thought, keep feeding that craving, no pun intended, it's going to continue to be there. So you need to turn your attention to something else for 15 minutes. That brings us to the end of today's prepared remarks. What questions do you guys have about the psychology of eating? Using the nutrition apps as well as using activity apps can be very helpful. And food can be, you know, a lot of us do occasionally use food for increasing serotonin and dopamine, but we do want to look at the big scheme of things. Things, for example, when we are over fat, not necessarily overweight, but when we've got too much actual adipose tissue, our estrogen levels can become too high. This is true for men and women because estrogen is made from cholesterol. You know, adipose tissue is actually involved in the creation of estrogen. So is that something that we really want to do when we are overly fat, we have excess adipose tissue. It also contributes to systemic inflammation which can increase depression. Because of the inflammation, it can also worsen autoimmune conditions. So there are reasons, you know, health reasons why you may not want to always increase your serotonin or dopamine with food. You know, I love food, don't get me wrong, I do love food. But taking time when you're eating to actually savor the food, and that's something I have to focus on when, when I eat is actually, you know, cutting food into reasonable bites and tasting each morsel instead of just shoveling it while I'm talking or refreshing Twitter or whatever I'm doing, you know, and mobile devices at the or watching television while you eat are really bad habits because they distract you from being mindful of what you're eating. And when you are mindful, you notice the sensations, you notice the tastes, and you increase that serotonin and dopamine a lot more effectively than if you just mindlessly eat. As I mentioned at the beginning of today's presentation, I'm doing this show seem to be be having a lot of people show up in the morning. So I'm going to continue to do it every Weekday morning at 9:30 on Mondays we will talk about physical aspects contributing to behavioral health. Tuesday is emotional or affective aspects, Wednesday is cognitive, Thursday is environmental. And Friday is relational or interpersonal aspects of living that contribute to our behavioral health. And happiness. Great question, Tana. In, in terms of people who are newly sober, it's important to recognize the impact of post acute withdrawal syndrome. And I do have another video on that if you want to watch it. But during that period where the brain is rebalancing itself, there are, are going to be times that you have that dopamine craving, that you have serotonin cravings, because those neurotransmitters are rebalancing. The brain is getting used to not having the floods of dopamine and norepinephrine that it got when the person was using food obviously does not increase dopamine or serotonin levels nearly to the same degree as a lot of drugs. But it is one aspect. When I worked in residential, people would regularly gain £20 in their 30 days in residential, partly because a lot of times they were malnourished to begin with, not necessarily underweight, but undernourished, and partly because we had a lot of really unhealthy foods that were available to them in the day room. So it is important to recognize that for, for some people, food can be a substitute addiction in the recovery process. I encourage people to be especially cognizant of how they're responding to distress, to fatigue, to any signs of neurochemical imbalances, anything that might have potentially triggered the use of the substance of choice. You know, making sure that they are actually eating for hunger and then coping with life on life's terms. A lot of times when people are in early recovery, they have forgotten some of the things that they used to do that made them happy. They've forgotten other things to do that increase serotonin and dopamine because they've been involved with their addiction for so long and it may be a discovery process to try to figure out other things to do. So that is the long version of I typically encourage people to avoid self soothing with food and find other ways to increase serotonin and dopamine that will become part of their long term recovery lifestyle. Easier said than done, I realize, especially with smoking. Smoking is a really hard one because you've got the combination of the neurochemical imbalances as well as the hand to mouth habit that people have when they're, when they are smoking. And it's really important for those people to do something to occupy their hands in order to not feel a lot of times not feel antsy. Great question. Alrighty everybody, again, thank you for being here this first Monday after the holidays and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. As always, feel free to ask for topics you want me to cover in the comments section, and I will add those to the upcoming shows. Have a great day.