Exams; countless hours spent learning a semester’s worth of material in one night, usually accompanied with some sort of convenient, comfort food. Although this stressful and demanding period of time requires a lot of focus, hard work and determination, there are periods of time where most students procrastinate and deviate from their work material. For some, this may include binge watching a new television series, but somehow I always find myself browsing random websites to further expand my knowledge.
After learning about Dr.Phil in one of my previous psychology courses, my curiosity led me to his website. Instantly, my eyes were drawn to an alarming fact that over 50 percent of all people use food as a coping strategy with depression, anger, stress, and other emotions. Although I acknowledged my sweet tooth and late night food orders, I had never really given my eating habits much consideration. I decided to take his quiz “Are You An Emotional Eater.” The questionnaire consisted of 25 reasons to eat on various occasions; each statement was ranked as a ‘frequent cause,’ ‘occasional reason’ or ‘never served as a cause to eat.’ The questions appeared equally relevant to the construct of emotional eating. However, there could be a chance that a variable such as mood or time of day could have influenced the results, leading to a misclassification of behaviour. After completing the quiz, I clicked submit. Little did I realize that the results of this quiz would give me a completely new perspective, and tie this project to me personally.
Immediately, my mind was clouded with guilt, denial and shock. I didn’t realize there was a self-defeating nature to my emotions. This initial form of procrastination shed light on a much bigger issue.
I never thought that Dr. Phil’s work would trickle all the way down into helping ME. After carefully reading the results of the quiz, I decided to take action and analyze my eating habits. I realized that in fact, during stressful periods, particularly exams, my emotional eating habits are most prominent. I never realized how much comfort I sought from ‘comfort foods,’ such as decadent cookies, warm buttery popcorn and delicious pasta.
I decided I needed to take action in order to prevent further emotional eating. The most efficient method would be to minimize the stressors that cause emotional eating. Therefore, I began going to the gym more, doing yoga and ensuring I had enough sleep every night.
After only a few days, I had noticed sufficient improvement with my emotional eating habits. My decreased stress had decreased my emotional eating. Occasionally, I still treat myself to a decadent cookie, or warm buttery popcorn, but in moderate amounts and not as a form of emotional eating. On my second try, my score on the quiz went down to a 13; a clear indication of my improvement. I am grateful for taking Dr.Phil.’s psychological test, as it truly changed my outlook on my eating habits and reiterated the effect of lifestyle choices on physical and emotional aspects of my body.
