Causes of Emotional Eating

While attending the Woodstock Fruit Festival, Tim was asked by Yulia Tarbath of http://rawsomehealthy.com to discuss his thoughts on emotional eating (see video at bottom of post). One of the reasons that so many people fail on a vegetarian, vegan or raw diet is that we haven’t learned how to ‘deal’ with cravings and stuffing down our emotions with food. At some point, everyone on any kind of diet is going to have to deal with food cravings and a successful strategy for doing so can make or break your diet.

Tim talks about how the primitive layering of the brain sets us up to use food to calm our emotional pains and needs. Tim also mentions the role of the epithelial cells in the small intestine and their ability to produce oxytocin, which comforts us when these cells are ‘massaged’. Viewed from this angle, emotional eating really does provide comfort and sense of bonding.

Tim suggests that rather than getting angry with our cravings and labeling them as negative, we should treat our cravings the way we treat a small child – with love and acceptance. We do this by listening to the emotional needs of our more primitive aspects of mind and offering emotional comfort rather (which is what is really desired) than substituting food to satisfy these cravings. In other words, don’t yell at your inner child, or give in to it’s tantrums by emotionally eating, give it love instead.

By accepting our imperfections we can satisfy our cravings in healthier ways.

You can view the interview here:

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