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Wellness Coach Deborah Kesten explains the differing types of overeating.
Deborah Kesten:
The two that are familiar is one, fast foodism, which is eating lots of our mostly processed food and lots of fast food and lots of junk food, call it whatever you’d like. The second overeating style is emotional eating, which is eating mostly out of negative emotions, stress, anger, anxiety, loneliness, negative emotions, but it can also be celebratory, finding an excuse to eat because you are feeling joyful, happy, and want to celebrate something. Always eating out of emotional purposes.
The five others are brand new and they really surprised us, and one is what we call food-fretting, which is people, again, very normal in America, people who diet consistently, who fret about the best way to eat, the way you should eat, the optimal way to eat, who judge themselves, judge others around food. All normal in this culture. That’s food-fretting; obsessing obsessively about the best way to eat.
The other overeating style is task-snacking, eating while you are driving in your car, walking down the street, at your computer, watching television, reading, very normal in this culture. You are not eating while you are eating.
We also discovered another overeating style called unappetizing atmosphere, and that has two levels. And one is eating in a psychologically unpleasant atmosphere where, I don’t know, somebody might be scolding you while you are having dinner or the child may be screaming or something and it may be very noisy, but also aesthetically unpleasant where there may be lots of fluorescent lights and acid rock music blasting. Where it’s just kind of jarring aesthetically and psychologically. And also sensory disregard, not tasting the food, not taking time to taste flavors. And the final one is solo dining, which is eating by yourself more often than not. All these overeating styles, typical and normal in this country.
And what’s stunning to us is we discovered that these affect the way in eating this way, in a hectic, unpleasant environment, fast food, processed food, affects the way in which you metabolize food and it contributes to weight gain that way.
About Deborah Kesten, M.P.H.:
Deborah Kesten, M.P.H., is an international nutrition and lifestyle researcher and educator, with a specialty in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. She was the nutritionist on Dr. Dean Ornish’s first clinical trial for reversing heart disease through lifestyle changes, and Director of Nutrition on similar research at cardiovascular clinics in Europe. More recently, she has created the pioneering Enlightened Diet, a “whole person” optimal eating and weight loss program, the results of which were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. With more than 200 published health articles, she is the award-winning author of The Enlightened Diet, Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul and The Healing Secrets of Food, a comprehensive, evidence-based nutrition program about the power of food to heal physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.
Visit Deborah Kesten at her website