Emotions Play a Role in Diabetes Control

Need to nibble when you’re angry, stressed, or happy? Skip the trip to the gym when you’ve had a bad day? This Well-being article gives you tips for those times. The article focuses on two points:

• How emotional triggers set you up for out-of-control eating or missed aerobics or exercise classes, which can compromise your diabetes control goals
• How to develop strategies to keep you in control

The Power of Emotions

Gwen was sure she was getting a promotion. In fact, one reason she was trying to lose weight was so she could fit more comfortably in her “businesswoman” clothes, as well as take better control of her glucose levels. And her program was going well.

But the position went to someone else.

When Gwen came home at 5:30 that evening, she went straight to the refrigerator and began to eat. And eat. She didn’t stop to think about her binge until bedtime. Then she felt terrible about getting so far off her plan and farther from her goals. And that thought made her even more miserable. You can see that Gwen’s disappointment triggered a series of emotions and responses that could lead to a vicious cycle and an end to her weight loss and glucose management goals.

You know how powerful emotions can be. Strong emotions can make us sick and they can help make us well, so they surely can make us eat. For many people, eating is comforting. For many people, the worse the day went, the more we want our comfort foods.

Many times, we aren’t even aware of what we’re doing. Our response to stress or disappointment is nearly automatic. (After all, we learned food is comfort early, when Mom gave us ice cream for a sore throat.) So we start eating, and suddenly we realize we’ve polished off a whole bag of chips. And if we do have a momentary thought about what we’re doing, we bury it and tell ourselves that we deserve to have all those chips after such a bad day.

You may be thinking, if emotional eating is so deeply engrained, can anything be done to change it? Yes. In fact, Gwen realized what caused her lapse and got back on track right away. But first, you need to become aware of the link between certain situations, your emotional reactions to those situations, and the unplanned, uncontrolled eating that follows.

Pinpoint Your Emotional Triggers

Experts talk about triggers to eating and engaging in physical activity. These are emotions, events, places, situations, or people that produce a reaction in us that makes us want to eat, or just sit on the couch instead of getting on the bike. Turn on the TV, haul out the chips. Emotions can be triggers, too.

Think about your emotional triggers. Do you go straight to the cookie jar when you visit your mom? Do think you have to eat something when you walk into your house at the end of the workday? Do you curl up on the couch and watch a movie after your boss has criticized your work instead of heading for the gym? Do you want to eat after an argument with your significant other? On Friday afternoon, do you begin to crave beer and bar food with your buddies? Check your journal to see if there’s a pattern to what you do. You may discover that nearly every time you and your boss have a disagreement, you overeat or miss exercising.

Write down two or three events or situations in which your emotions (negative or positive) have probably caused you to eat or skip your exercise.

Triggers:

AAA Strategies for Stemming Emotional Responses

AAA is a tool to help you remember these key strategies: Be Aware, Avoid Triggers, and Look for Alternatives. Here’s how this tool can help:

• Be Aware. You’ve already taken a crucial step in dealing with your emotional responses: You’ve identified what tends to trigger it. Now you’ll be ready the next time you have a bad day at work. Or when you get a promotion and want to celebrate. Be aware and alert in these situations and do not let the emotions of the moment make you forget your goals. Pause and ask yourself whether the short-term comfort of uncontrolled eating, or missing your planned exercise, is worth the long-term impact on your diabetes control program. Also, be aware that this way of dealing with your emotions is your way to cope. It’s something you learned somewhere in your life. Now is your opportunity to learn something new: finding new ways to cope with your emotions.
• Avoid Triggers. Obviously, you can’t avoid all situations that trigger you to compromise your goals. But you can avoid some people who push your emotional buttons and stress you out. You don’t have to take time out to listen to the department busybody who keeps you from your work to tell you the latest gossip. You don’t have to put up with the colleague who thinks he knows how to do your job better than you and criticizes your work. Also, if you’re stressed out from having too many balls in the air, let one or two drop. Learn to say no to people who ask you to take on just one more thing. Protect yourself. Carve out some downtime for yourself.
• Look for Alternatives. When you can’t avoid the situations that trigger emotional responses, you can look for better ways to respond to them. Write in your journal and describe the situation that pushed your buttons. Make a change in your physical activity — take a long walk in the park instead of going to an aerobics class. Try swimming or biking if they are not already in your exercise plan. Try meditation or some other type of relaxation technique. Even a warm bath is a healthier response to stress than beer and bar food. If your emotional state calls for food, however, be ready. Make sure you have healthy snacks in your fridge and cupboard. Eat the vegetables at the restaurant bar instead of the fried cheese and chicken wings. Ask your mom to get fresh fruit instead of chocolate chip cookies before you visit. Or eat just a small portion or bite of the food you’re craving. Protect yourself.

Tackling Triggers

Look again at your list of situations that triggered your emotional responses. Now write down a strategy for dealing with each of them if you face them again. That is, describe ways to avoid those situations, or ways to handle your emotions if you can’t avoid them.

Summary

• It’s important to identify what emotional triggers set you up for out-of-control eating or abandoning your exercise plan.
• Develop strategies to keep you in control.
  • Be aware of what kinds of experiences and situations are likely to trigger your emotional responses.
  • Avoid those situations when you can.
  • When you can’t avoid them, develop alternative ways of dealing with them.