Hands up if you’ve ever had a tough day at work and ended up reaching for a quick fix for dinner or craving a less ‘healthy’ option for a meal, that’s if you even choose to have meal that is!
Emotional eating is a term familiar to many of us- and its true to say there is science behind it. If we think of emotions as being the influence on the maintenance of our homeostatic balance and thus of our well-being- when we emotionally eat we are thus striving to achieve an emotional balance – either consciously or unconsciously.
Our gut produces 90% of our serotonin as well as 50% of our dopamine levels. Unless you have been living under a rock we all know that serotonin is that feel good chemical produced from the essential amino acid tryptophan. This amino acid must enter your body through your diet and is commonly found in foods such as nuts, cheese, and red meat. Dopamine, maybe less commonly known, is the neurotransmitter (chemical messenger) that stimulates the motivation and reward feed-back loop and is produced from the non essential amino acid tyrosine.
If we are struggling in the area of emotional awareness and regulation both personally and socially we may seek this emotional balance through our relationship with food – as it’s the one area we can receive instant control and reward. Daniel Goldman’s study of Emotional intelligence depicts four domains in how we handle ourselves and our relationships – they are:
Self awareness – Knowing what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it – Using good intuition and good decision making – In other words, it’s our moral compass.
Self management – Handling your distressing emotions in effective ways so that they don’t cripple you or get in the way of what you’re doing and yet tuning into them when you must so that you can learn from them
Social awareness – Using empathy to know what someone else is feeling
Relationship management – Putting it all together to foster healthy thriving relationships
When we have low levels of emotional intelligence we tend to make decisions from the emotional side of our brain and through repeated experience . When acting on cravings, the brain gets a reward — a feeling of pleasure associated with the release of dopamine. The reward is what cravings and food addiction are all about. Acting off emotions all the time desensitizes the dopamine receptors and grows the emotional end of our brain so that we prevent our prefrontal cortex from making rational, logical decisions. Eating never solves the problem. The only thing it does is temporarily distract you from the problem, and then it leaves you with even more problems. Emotional eating helps us move out of uncomfortable situations albeit temporarily to give us a quick reward (dopamine) when times are tough
Our relationship with food often mirrors our discomfort in other areas of our lives. Feeling overwhelmed, out of control in your social emotional environment or undervalued and unappreciated, again we turn to a quick release of rewarding dopamine from food.
When we consume foods containing high levels of sugar, we get a huge surge in dopamine, which is then quickly depleted soon after (That ‘I shouldn’t have had that’ mentality). However when we choose to eat healthful meals we get double the dopamine release both through the conscious decision (motivation) to eat a healthy meal and the reward feeling of actually eating the meal itself (That ‘I feel great’ mentality). Again designing your life to support emotionally supportive habits such as the following helps give you that stable production of dopamine, that is sustained-
- Boost your diet with dopamine-filled foods. For an extra kick, make sure you’re eating food with plenty of natural probiotics, like yogurt and sauerkraut, and natural glucose, which occurs in raw fruits and nuts. Six great foods for increasing dopamine levels naturally include Bananas, Nuts, Dark chocolate, Apples, Beetroot and Leafy greens
- Take a 10-minute nap. Research shows that 10 minutes is the optimal length. After that, “sleep inertia” can set in, making you sluggish and unproductive.
- Make a right brain/left brain switch. Anecdotal evidence shows that being able to flex both muscles — creative and analytical — can make you a more well-rounded worker. Take time to move between Excel and an art project or a creative brainstorming session and more straightforward quantitative tasks in order to build both sides of your brain and feel productive on many fronts.
- Get moving at midday. Even a 20-minute walk will yield positive results. And if you opt for a short, high-intensity workout, it can propel your dopamine to new heights.
These are all self management strategies to improve your EQ whilst supporting your health. However, tying the four other quadrants into the picture you can see, dopamine will flow as a result of your brain’s positive reinforcement every time you complete a step and meet a challenge.
Here’s how to get your dopamine flowing through social awareness and relationship management techniques:
- Record small accomplishments. A to-do list (or a “digital done list”) reinforces how you’re chipping away at your goals. As you feel yourself making more progress, you’ll feel the greater effects of dopamine.
- Share results with your team. Communicating about your results (whether they’re positive or negative) means that others will recognize your work, resulting in more positive feedback. Praising and recognizing the work of your colleagues can also increase your dopamine.
- Stay on task with micro-deadlines. Staying entirely focused on one task at a time will force you to sit down and get work done. The more you do that, the more you’ll see positive feedback (via your work getting done), which will increase your dopamine.
- Focus on how great you’ll feel when your project is complete. A study by University of Michigan professors found that results-driven focus motivated people to complete their work.
- Test out new productivity tools to make overwhelming tasks more doable. Whether it’s an overflowing inbox, missed communications with teammates, juggling time zones, or trying to better connect with your customers, these tools can help you check things off your list faster, leading to a higher flow of dopamine.
Regulating your hormonal environment by balancing your blood sugar levels with a healthy diet, helps prevent low energy, low motivation, feeling burnt out and over whelmed whilst preventing unnecessary quarrels from occurring and lack of empathy and understanding in the space of relationship management.
Improve your health, and you’ll improve your capacity to achieve — and reap the rewards.
By Leah Headon
Leah Headon is the founder of Haeloo Nutrition – The health-happiness link.
Working in the area of nutrition and lifestyle coaching, Leah is a qualified nutrition coach, performance nutritionist, EMCC accredited life coach and personal trainer. She has been nominated for awards in Nutrition 3 years in a row for the Irish Fitness Industry Awards and has successfully coached over 100 individuals through her ‘Lean in 12 weeks’ coaching programme.
Instagram – Haeloo_nutrition
LinkedIn – Leah_Headon
Web- Www.haeloonutrition.com
