Food As An Emotional Modifier

Some people eat when they’re in a bad mood. Most people, actually. Comfort food is a well known concept and we all have foods that are associated with home, safety, and good feelings. Some people don’t eat anything at all when they’re in a bad mood. Oftentimes depression can come with loss of appetite, and restrictive eating disorders are the extreme of “I feel bad I won’t eat”. Human beings use food to adjust and react to their moods.

For the most part this is considered unhealthy. Emotional eating is often at the heart of eating disorders, and many dieticians find that working with their clients to come to a healthy place with their emotions leads to a stabilization of diet. (FIND LINK) When we call someone an emotional eater, we don’t mean it as a compliment. Our thoughts/feelings are supposed to be radically separate from our bodies, and it’s unhealthy to seek out a physical solution to an emotional problem.

Except for the times when it’s not. Recently, I’ve started to try to regulate my emotions using food. “EATING DISORDER!” I hear you cry (or so I assume, I always cry out in distress when reading blogs). Well, not exactly. I’ve been trying to regulate my emotions using food by eating on a regular schedule, listening to what my body is craving, and eating until I am full. In addition to regular mealtimes, I’ve also been trying to notice when I’m getting cranky, anxious, sad, or otherwise unstable in some fashion and whether it has any correlation to how long it’s been since I’ve eaten. Guess what? It often does. I’m low energy and low happiness first thing in the morning, and I hit a low in the afternoon before dinner. Guess what these two time periods have in common? It’s been a while since I’ve eaten anything and I’m probably low on calories. Not having enough calories will make anyone more emotionally vulnerable.

Secret knowledge dropping time: our emotions are highly dependent on our bodies. Being tired, hungry, thirsty, cold, or sick will affect how you process what’s going on around you and what your reaction to the world is. Not all of these are things we can adjust immediately. If I’m having a bad day at work I can’t simply take a nap and feel more rested and thus stable. But I can go grab a snack or put on an extra sweater. I can use my body in a positive manner to influence how I’m feeling.

More often than not, things that are unhealthy for us are that way because they are extreme in some fashion. This doesn’t apply to anything (please do not go take moderate doses of arsenic), but for many things, we can use them positively if we understand how they actually interact with our bodies and minds. Exercise is another great example of this: too much or too little can throw us out of whack, but a moderate amount of exercise on a regular basis, and strategically applied exercise during times of stress can do wonders.

I don’t necessarily promote the view of the body that sees it as a machine (I think we’re far more integrated into our bodies than we will ever be with machines), but it can be a helpful metaphor when thinking of how to modulate your emotions. What kinds of things might this machine need to function better? Have I been getting too much or too little of any of the necessities? How can I make a small change right now to bring things back into balance. It’s not magic, but it is certainly a helpful framework for in the moment actions.

Wealth and Health: More Complicated?

It’s no secret that the wealthy in America have better health outcomes than the poor. The disparities can be shocking. It affects quality of healthcare, food, lifespan, and can even affect whether someone will contract an illness after being exposed. There are many conclusions we can draw from this fact (the extreme wealth disparity in our country is not only unethical but is in fact contributing to illness and death, we need universal healthcare, America sucks), but the picture may not be as simple as some articles prefer to paint it as. In fact, the reason that the wealthy are healthier may not simply be because they have access to better healthcare and healthier food, safer environments and less violence, but it may in fact reflect the fact that our society is set up at every level to cater to their needs.

Those who are poor are most often those who are discriminated against for race, gender, sexuality, or disability, things which all contribute to poor health outcomes. Police brutality and the prison industrial complex come down most harshly on people of color. Oddly enough being beaten by the cops and sent to prison aren’t too good for your health. The mentally ill often have their diseases dismissed as “all in your head”, which can lead to loss of jobs, healthcare, housing etc. and bad physical health outcomes. These intersections get ignored when we simply look at class without reminding ourselves that class is affected by other identities.

One article points out that the marshmallow test is associated with positive outcomes later in life, and that those who tend to do poorly on the marshmallow test tend to be poor. But the marshmallow test has been criticized as measuring the skills that make you successful in a white, upper class world, rather than the skills that make you successful in a world where you can’t necessarily trust authority. Most of these studies seem to be indicating that the wealthy are taught the successful ways to navigate the world while the poor are hurt by the way society is set up.

So for those who are poor, you have every right to be pissed off. Society is set up to shorten your life span by creating food deserts, making organic and healthy food more expensive and more time consuming to prepare, by increasing your stress by taking away your choices, by housing you in neighborhoods that are more dangerous and houses that are less healthy, by making gym memberships expensive, and by continuing to not educate or miseducate the poor on what it means to be healthy.

But what can we do? If society is set up to see us fail, how do we take our lives into our own hands and decide WE WILL BE HEALTHY? One of the first things that I’ve found helpful is to reconfigure our conception of our own health: being healthy isn’t just a choice we can make for ourselves personally, it can also be a political statement. I’m sure I’ve posted my favorite Audre Lorde quote here before, but if I haven’t, here it is:

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

I didn’t mean to put that in big ol’ letters, but I’m going to leave it that way because I think it’s that important. When the poor and oppressed among us live longer and healthier, we actively resist the society that wants us to be so downtrodden we can’t resist. The more we can see our choice to be healthy as a gigantic middle finger to a shitty system, the easier it is to make good choices (or at least I think so). A big part of this is forming communities. Cooking takes time and energy as well as money. If you get together with friends and each cook something, then do a big swap so you have a variety of foods for the week, you’ve saved time, probably money (because bulk is awesome), and you’ve provided yourself with the added benefit of social interaction (shown to be good for your health!).

We can also inform ourselves: information is powerful. Know what kinds of foods make you feel good, understand what a balanced and healthy diet looks like (protip: it does in fact involve some fat and sugar), and understand what healthy exercising habits are (regular, but not compulsive). Share information with each other. If you find something awesome and healthy, tell other people about it (Rock climbing! Fun! Exercise! Woot!). Share resources like low cost clinics for physical and mental healthcare. Support those places! Spend some time volunteering for Planned Parenthood or a local clinic that provides similar low income care.

None of this can change the fact that your environment is out of your hands. But we can look out for each other: if one of us spots mold in another’s apartment, we can research how to get rid of it and the potential health risks. If one person works from home and has tons of friends who don’t have time to cook, maybe their friends can throw a few bucks their way and ask them to cook in bulk. Share EVERYTHING (ok maybe not everything, but recipes, tips, exercises, doctors, good apartments, job leads…your community will give back to you if you give to it).

Remember that statistics don’t mean all of us are doomed. They point towards trends but they can’t predict your individual life. If you want to fight those statistics, here are some resources for low-income healthiness.

1. Fitness resources for low cost

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/fitness/in-depth/fitness/art-20047989?pg=1

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/6-ways-build-better-body-budget

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/beautyhealthcare/tp/Frugal_Exercise.htm

2. Healthy food for lower costs

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/cheap-healthy-15-nutritious-foods-about-2-dollars

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/12/27/cheap-and-healthy-food/

3.  Low cost healthcare (this should be easier with Obamacare!). I’m going to put Minnesota resources since that’s what I know.

http://www.health.state.mn.us/clearinghouse/public.htm

http://mn.bridgetobenefits.org/MN_Low_Cost_Health_Care_Directory.html

If anyone is interested, I am willing to host resources here and connect others who are interested in improving their health at a low cost. We can build our own communities that provide the same benefits that having lots of money does for the wealthy.