For this assignment, the habit that I wanted to change was emotional eating. I tend to feel the need to eat certain foods when I am experiencing strong emotions. Eating serves as a means of comforting myself. I wanted to change this habit because eating comfort foods doesn’t actually address the underlying problems that make me feel distressed. Also, I want to be more thoughtful about what and when I eat for my own health.
Over the long weekend, I tracked what I was doing and how I felt every thirty minutes on Saturday and Monday. I wasn’t surprised to find that I tended to emotionally eat as a coping mechanism for mentally draining tasks like long sprints of homework or making an expensive purchase. However, I didn’t expect to find that I was emotionally eating in response to positive emotions. For example, I would eat to celebrate the completion of an assignment, spending time with friends, or going on a walk outside.
If I could do this experiment again, I would like to additionally log what thoughts, if any, I had against emotionally eating. That way, I could later ideate reasons why those reluctant thoughts weren’t enough to stop me from engaging in the behavior. Since emotional eating is a reaction to strong emotion, it is dependent on all of the factors that shape my mood. I decided to capture some of these influences and dynamics in a connection circle and fishbone diagram.
