WICHITA, Kan. - For years, when Sandy Beck felt hurt or stressed out, she turned to food for comfort. She kept candy in her desk at work and stocked her kitchen with chocolate, cookies, chips and salsa. "There were times when I'd be upset and I'd sit here and eat a bag of chips or a bag of cookies or candy and think that was going to make the world right, but it never did," she says. "It just made me bigger and bigger."
Like millions of Americans, Beck struggled with emotional eating - using food to soothe feelings instead of hunger pangs. Some experts estimate that emotions spark 75 percent of overeating.
Stress, sadness, anxiety, boredom and guilt are some of the common feelings that can trigger emotional eating, says Kathryn Minick, a licensed psychologist.
"It's really easy to comfort yourself with food," says Elisabetta Politi, nutrition manager at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. "Food is always available, it's not expensive, you can have it at 3 a.m. ... (Y)ou probably can't call a friend at 3 a.m. when you're not feeling well."
Many emotional eaters don't binge, but even if you're not consuming large amounts of food, feeding feelings instead of hunger can become an unhealthy habit.
If you have a half-cup of chocolate mint ice cream after dinner every night to relieve tension, not hunger, those 300 extra calories a day could make you 31 pounds heavier in a year.
And extra pounds aren't the only problem.
"When you use food to manage your stress, you lose the ability to see food as fuel," Politi says.
Stress was no stranger to Beck, who lives in Wichita, Kan. Working two jobs, she was also dealing with the deaths of her mother and father and the aftermath of a divorce.
"I would just be upset, and the first thing I would think about is getting something to eat_just going to the kitchen and grabbing something," Beck says."... Sometimes even when things were going good, it was like it was a reward."
Every January, she resolved to lose weight, but that goal stayed out of her reach.
Until last year, that is.
"I decided I needed to do something for my health and for my son's sake," she says.
In 2006, she accomplished her New Year's resolution. Since last January, Beck has lost 91 pounds and reached a healthy weight of 156 pounds.
"I find comfort in food," she says. "I've had to change my entire thinking over the past year."
Beck says one key to her success was the support she found at Taking Off Pounds Sensibly, a weight-loss group that offers many meetings in the Wichita area and nationwide.
Once a week, Beck goes to a TOPS meeting at a nearby church. The group helps her stay on track with new coping strategies and the accountability that comes with weekly weigh-ins.
"We have a saying in TOPS: `I have control of my emotions and I will not let my emotions control me,'" Beck says. She often repeats that to herself when times get tough.
Also, instead of using food to soothe her stress, Beck now turns to exercise. She usually walks a little more than a mile every day. Or she jogs on a mini-trampoline for about 10 minutes.
"It's amazing how good you feel after doing that," Beck says. "Once you get through doing something like that, you don't really think about eating."
These days, she's striking a balance in her diet. Healthier eating habits help quiet those urges to eat when her stress level spikes, Beck says.
"I still allow myself those cookies and candy when I get upset, but I don't eat the whole bag," she says."... If I want a candy bar, I don't eat a big candy bar. I've cut it back to a snack one."
Beck thinks she has her emotional eating under control now, thanks to her support group, perseverance and new habits.
"I think I've stayed focused that eating all of that stuff is not going to solve the problem and it's not going to make me feel any better," she says.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're actually hungry, so here's an exercise that Politi uses to help Duke Diet and Fitness Center clients distinguish between emotional hunger and physical hunger.
She suggests thinking of a food that's neither appealing or unappealing - maybe an apple. Then every time you feel that you're hungry, ask yourself if you would eat an apple. If the answer is yes, you're physically hungry.
If an apple wouldn't satisfy you but you want one of your favorite foods instead, that's emotional hunger.
In addition, some experts say physical hunger builds gradually but emotional hunger can strike suddenly.
To break the habit of emotional eating, the first step is to recognize the emotions and stressful situations that make you want to reach for food.
"A good way to learn to identify triggers is to practice being aware, or mindful, of your feelings," says Kathryn Minick, a licensed psychologist in Kansas. "Develop a habit of simply asking yourself, `How do I feel right now?' and `Am I hungry?' If you notice yourself feeling emotionally uncomfortable, then ask yourself, `What do I need?'"
When you're emotionally hungry, you need something other than food. Maybe you really need sleep, a laugh, a talk with a friend, some fresh air, a little exercise or a good cry.
Minick says remembering situations and feelings that drove you to eat emotionally in the past can also help you get a good idea of what your triggers are.
"Once you learn to identify patterns in your feelings and eating habits, anything you can do to alter those patterns will help," Minick says.
When should someone seek professional help for emotional eating?
"I think when it becomes really disruptive to their quality of life," Politi says. If you're isolating yourself or if emotional eating is making you lose confidence in your ability to eat healthy, consider calling your doctor, a registered dietitian or a mental health professional.
HERE ARE MORE TIPS AND RESOURCES
When negative feelings lead you to the refrigerator, there are lots of weapons you can use to win the battle against emotional eating.
Distraction is your first line of defense, experts say.
Kathryn Minick, a licensed psychologist in Kansas, suggests brainstorming to find activities you can do when you feel like eating. Write your ideas on scraps of paper and put them in a jar in the kitchen. For example: Do 10 sit-ups. Send an e-mail to a friend. Write a page about what I did today and how I feel. Play a game with the kids.
Then when you're tempted to eat emotionally, draw a piece of paper out of the jar and do whatever it says.
"Doing this will interrupt the pattern and often helps to prevent the emotional eating," Minick says. "Even if you still eat something, at least you've delayed the eating and that is a step in the right direction."
When her clients get an urge to eat, Duke Diet and Fitness Center nutrition manager Elisabetta Politi advises them to wait 10 or 20 minutes and then decide if they still need food.
"The waiting period helps them realize they're not really hungry but they're feeling something else," she says.
Here are more tips:
_Have a structured meal plan where you map out your meals and snacks ahead of time. The Duke Diet and Fitness Center has its clients turn in their menus at the beginning of the week, and they must stick to that.
"Planning really sets up your mind to follow a certain regimen," Politi says. She suggests counting calories or using the food pyramid and counting servings of different food groups.
_Don't deny yourself your favorite foods. Deprivation sparks cravings and can lead to emotional eating, Politi says.
The key is to set in stone the amount you're going to eat and then really enjoy it.
That amount varies from person to person. "Some people can include their favorite food every day and still do really well, and some people have to be aware that if they have their favorite food every day, they're not going to lose weight," Politi says.
_Relaxation exercises can help emotional eaters cope with stress in a healthy way. Minick has her clients practice deep breathing. Or try seeing an image in your mind of your favorite place and imagine yourself there for a little while. "Yoga is excellent for physical and mental relaxation," Minick says. "For some, having a simple prayer to recite can be very helpful in moments of stress."
_If you use food to reward yourself, look for alternatives that don't have calories. Buy yourself some new shoes, take a bubble bath, get a massage or treat yourself to a movie. "If you find ways to reward yourself that aren't food-related, I think you find a healthier rapport with food," Politi says.
_Meals are often a time of emotional eating, so Minick suggests fixing a plate with healthy-sized portions on it, then removing other food from the table so it's not at your fingertips.
_Try keeping a food diary to track what and when you eat as well as any emotions or stressors that triggered you to eat.
If you find that something in your schedule is likely to be a trigger for you to want to eat, make a plan to do something else at that time, Minick says.
_Make sure you keep some healthy snacks at work that you can eat when you're hungry. Maybe some fresh fruit, unbuttered popcorn or low-fat, lower-calorie versions of your favorite foods.
_Drink plenty of water. It's a good idea to keep a bottle of it with you. "It's possible that drinking a glass of water could help a person avoid an unhealthy binge," Minick says.
What if I slip up?
Be kind to yourself when you give in to emotional eating, Minick says. "Give yourself credit for your efforts and figure out what to try next," she says. "The trick is to not submerge yourself in feelings of guilt about overeating because that very guilt can become the trigger for another binge."
Your goal should be to decrease the times you eat emotionally, not to be perfect, Politi says. "Know and admit that you're going to relapse," she says. "The important thing is to be able to get back on track."
After a relapse, have confidence that you can make healthy choices, get back to a meal plan and try new ways to manage your emotions and decrease stress.
Resources and support
Here are some support groups, Web sites and books that can help emotional eaters:
_Overeaters Anonymous. For meeting times, locations and more information, visit the group's Web site at www.oa.org.
_Taking Off Pounds Sensibly costs $24 a year to join. For meeting times, locations and more information, visit the group's Web site at www.tops.org
_Geneen Roth won her struggle with emotional eating and now writes books and leads workshops on the subject. Her Web site is www.geneenroth.com.
Roth's books include: "Breaking Free From Emotional Eating," "When Food is Love," "Feeding the Hungry Heart" and "When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair."
_"Life Is Hard, Food Is Easy: The 5-Step Plan to Overcome Emotional Eating and Lose Weight on Any Diet" by Linda Spangle
_"Eat By Choice, Not by Habit: Practical Skills for Creating a Healthy Relationship with your Body and Food" by Sylvia Haskvitz
_"Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food" by Susan Albers
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