Comfort Eating? The Ultimate Discomfort!

Mary Dallman, Ph.D., professor of exercise physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that “comfort eating” is validated by… sciences.
Truly, we have all discovered the fact that food comforts us. Hunger is stressful, and eating responds to this problem by calming this stress. I'm not talking about eating for hunger but eating for self-medication. A little self-treatment never hurt anyone, and when my husband, Walt, is away at a meeting or out with his buddies for dinner, I enjoy reaching for delicious “Chinese Chicken Salad” from a local restaurant, which he calls “Convenience.” Worse still, By food police standards, I like to associate it with some trashy TV Life is meant to be enjoyed!
However, with 74% of Americans overweight or obese, perhaps it's time to take a fresh look at rest through a neurophysiological lens.
Redefining comfort
Before we knew that anyone six years or older could use their brain's plasticity pathways to happily reach Brain State 1 (EBT was discovered in 2007), we had to make do with “average-average” brain states.
They are brain states 2 through 4, each with biochemistry, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, productivity, spiritual connection, and health at risk. Yet this is the norm in America. Primarily, we are conditioned to be drugged, addicted, isolated, anxious, depressed, or nervous, and this is socially reinforced. Giving ourselves an external source of comfort chemicals through food seems reasonable.
Am I in one? If not, energize circuit 5 and reconnect it
When we live in average mediocre brain states, we stabilize. They feel uninspired, disconnected and somewhat unrewarded, so we don't expect much from life. Raising the brain's physiological state from 4 to 3 or 2 with some potato chips or a cookie or two seems perfectly reasonable.
The problem is that when we do this, we go beyond rewiring our brain to be in Brain State 1. That wire that activates the stress chemical and inflammation smiles and says, “Don't worry!” He is happy because he can return to his daily task of automatic activation and, according to the rules of neuroplasticity, he becomes more dominant and more willing to activate a comfort eating bout.
The New Comfort: Be Emotionally Radical
Since the discovery of cognitive behavioral therapy (EBT), all this comfort eating has come to seem like a dysfunction – rather than a “disease” that is a little behind the times.
Neuroscience gives us the 5-point EBT system, so we're always just a few clicks on our app away from deactivating the stress response, activating reward chemicals, and feeding our true hunger: to be in Brain State 1.
In EBT, we suggest that each of us become emotionally radicalized. We do not tolerate mediocre states that invite us to find all the temptations of modern life so attractive. It is so tempting because, in those humble states, we are not joyful enough. The chemicals associated with spiritual connection, falling in love with nature, and spiraling out of control disappear as we realize we are alive.
What is reasonable, even though it may seem improbable, to try to live this way? Tell yourself to make Brain State 1 your standard. why not? With EBT it is completely achievable. Certainly, we can settle for a prolonged, still homogeneous brain state 2, and not the frightening stability of brain states 3, 4, and 5 with their biochemical toxicity. However, if our starting point is joy, even brain state 2 has a biochemical backfield of endorphins and dopamine that roughly qualifies as 1.5.
Enhancing our emotional wealth as a daily practice
However, our policy is to be united, and if not, we face some seizures. It's neuroscience-friendly, and only takes a minute or two. This strategy involves using EBT when we notice that we are not on the same page, doing our best to activate the Circle of Five, and then crushing it soundly. Demolish it!
Our emotional poverty emerges, just as we emerge from mediocrity. This is comfort food. . . Well, we know we can always have it, because deprivation prevents happiness. . . But food feels like food, anything, and our dopamine and endorphins flow freely from Brain State 1. And eating comfort foods feels rather like it. . . uncomfortable.
We would rather spend time in Brain State 1 and get those delicious chemicals anytime and anywhere, fulfilling our deeper needs to connect with nature, collect more moments of purpose, and continue to live naturally and. . . Very well.