Comfort Undereating, Anyone?

By , SparkPeople Blogger
Here's a concept that could make losing weight a lot easier: comfort undereating.

We all know how easy and tempting it is to reach for something to eat--especially something that's sweet, rich, or salty--in times of stress. "Comfort" eating and "emotional" eating are two of the biggest problems for most people who struggle with their weight.

But one of the odd things about comfort eating has always been that it rarely actually makes us feel good for more than a couple of minutes. After that, we quickly end up feeling guilty or upset--especially if we're trying to eat healthy or lose weight. But still we do it, even though we know how bad we're going to feel as soon as we're done. That immediate reward we get from it really conditions us to reach for the food, and before you know it, you've got an automatic habit on your hands that's very hard to break.

Wouldn't it be nice if NOT reaching for something to eat in times of stress produced that same kind of feel-good reward? It sure would make it easier to break the habit of comfort/emotional eating.

Well, guess what? According to some recent research, those good feelings may be just what you can experience if you can manage to get past that first impulse to eat something when you need a little comfort.

Nutrition scientists have known for a while that, when our bodies notice we need more calories, levels of a hormone called ghrelin increase. Rising ghrelin levels produce hunger, but new research suggests this may be a side effect of its primary job as a stress-buster and feel-good chemical.

In this study, researchers manipulated ghrelin levels in mice through prolonged calorie restriction, ghrelin injection and a genetic modification rendering the mice numb to ghrelin’s effect, in order to observe the effects. What they found was the the mice with low ghrelin levels (ie, those who had eaten recently) seemed depressed. If pushed into deep water they made no effort to swim. When introduced to a maze, they clung to the entryway. And when placed with other mice, they tended to keep to themselves. (These behaviors were reversed when the mice were given a low-dose antidepressant commonly prescribed to humans.)

In contrast, mice with high levels of ghrelin swam energetically in deep water, looking for escape. They eagerly explored new environments. And they were much more social.

As the article describing this study says, this makes a lot of practical sense. The time when we most need a lot of energy, ambition, and high expectations of success is when we're hungry and need food--that's what gets us off our duffs and out looking for food.

Now, mice aren't people, and it's not clear yet how much these effects of higher ghrelin levels will transfer to people. And the researchers say that these postive effects of high ghrelin levels may not occur until someone has lost about 10-15% of their excess body weight.

But, if you struggle with emotional eating, it just might pay to give this experiment a little try yourself. If you can manage to get comfortable with mild hunger long enough to get your weight down 10% or so, you might find that eating less actually makes you feel pretty good, gives you more energy, and makes it a lot easier to avoid the autopilot eating associated with emotional and comfort eating. It's certainly true that many people who learn to eat "clean" and to do without much comfort eating report that they get a lot of positive feelings from this.

You don't want to go too far with this, of course, to the point that you're half-starving yourself in order to get those good feelings. Down that road there be monsters--like anorexia. This isn't about not eating--it's about learning to stop soon enough to leave just a little bit of hungriness. And to sit with those urges to do some comfort eating for long enough to see how you might feel if you skip the comfort eating.

Try approaching this the way those people in Okinawa, Japan (the ones who live to be 115) do it--push yourself away from the table when your about 80% full. And if you struggle with impulse eating or too-frequent snacking, try just postponing the decision to eat for 5 minutes at a time, instead of telling yourself you're not going to eat at all. You can read a little more about this here.

What do you think? Does it make any sense to you that trying to stay just a "little bit hungry" could actually feel as good as eating? Are you willing to give it a try?