Emotional eating topic of discussion

Friday, August 27, 2010

Courtesy photo, Tracey Tullis Certified hypnotherapist and health educator Tracey Letitia Tullis

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Courtesy photo, Tracey Tullis Certified hypnotherapist and health educator Tracey Letitia Tullis

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Courtesy photo, Tracey Tullis Certified hypnotherapist and health educator Tracey Letitia Tullis

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BEDFORD – For hypnotherapist and health educator Tracey Letitia Tullis, eating healthily involves more than that age-old adage “You are what you eat.”

What people don’t realize, Tullis says, is we eat how we feel.

“People really just rush all over the place and go to this diet and that diet, the carbs diet, the no-protein diet, the grapefruit diet,” said Tullis, who offers weight-loss workshops at Elliot Hospital in Manchester. “I remember drinking protein for a protein diet, Slim Fast, you name it – there are over 33,000 diets now.

“People don’t realize when they go on all these diets, you tend to gain weight. The more you diet, the slower your metabolism. You get really hungry because you’re denying yourself foods you probably can’t have, then all of a sudden you’re eating it every time you see that food.”

On Sept. 9, Tullis will host a free discussion for “emotional overeaters,” “closet eaters,” “stress eaters” and “yo-yo dieters” at the Bedford Public Library from 7:30-9 p.m.

“People don’t realize they’re not eating out of hunger, they’re eating usually because of stress,” Tullis said. “It’s not what they’re eating, it’s what’s eating them.”

Tullis, who said she has battled weight issues in the past, aims to educate people about the latest “drug of choice” that people abuse to handle anxiety: food.

The body responds to stress with the secretion of cortisol, Tullis said. The hormone corresponds with the hard-wired “fight or flight” mechanisms humans have possessed as a means of defense since the Stone Age, she said.

“Humans used to use ‘fight or flight’ when they were being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger,” Tullis said. “They had to run or fight. What happens is their brain starts to tell the adrenal glands to start to secrete cortisol, you get the adrenaline, that rush.

“But we no longer have a life-or-death threat in our life. For the most part, we’re not chased by a saber-toothed tiger. The mind doesn’t know the difference. As far as the mind is concerned, we are taking ourselves into the stress effect and it becomes a life-or-death situation.”

The cortisol that was used as the body’s defense response is now involved with the depositing of calories in our bodies, Tullis said.

“There are ways to reduce this cortisol level,” Tullis said. “For the ‘fight or flight,’ when cortisol rises, the blood sugar increases. That’s a good thing if you’ve got a saber-toothed tiger chasing you – blood pressure rises, pulse rises, muscle protein breaks down. Now we need sugar for energy, then the insulin rises because we’re taking all the fat in the body and turning it into sugar.

“Today, you have all this sugar in your system and you’re not fighting, you’re not running. … Now the body says, ‘What am I going to do with all this sugar?’ To simplify it, it now lays down these extra calories around your middle.”

Tullis says the food industryonly adds insult to our biological injury.

“When you lower the stress response, you also increase in your brain serotonin, which is what’s in antidepressants,” Tullis said. “Sugary foods and fatty foods raise serotonin in your brain, and after you eat something, you feel much better, much calmer. …

“But you just increased sugar – not complex sugar, a simple sugar – so then the body breaks it down really fast. What happens? You drop. You get the blues. What do you reach for? Sugar, or something with fat in it, which raises a different kind of neurotransmitter in your brain.”

The fats, sugars and artificial sweeteners in food today can be just as addictive and dangerous as nicotine in the tobacco industry in their ability to create a conditioned response of reaching for sugary foods, Tullis said.

“Look what people do. They reach for the candy bar,” Tullis said. “They stuff down their emotions. They’re not even aware of how they feel anymore because food now takes the focus off the anger, the resentment, the fear, the anxiety – all the emotions we’d rather not feel because humans move toward pleasure and away from pain.

Tullis leads therapy sessions and workshops through interactive exercises that help people recognize how everything we do is based on what we’ve learned and developed on a subconscious level, including the unhealthy eating habits that lead to weight gain.

“You want to lose weight, but you want to know why it’s so hard? You’ve learned it,” Tullis said. “You need to unlearn what you’ve taught your mind and body, and what people also need to learn is to stop beating themselves up. They need to stop saying, ‘I’m so fat. I’m so ugly.’ That makes them feel depressed and stressed.

“We think food does control us and we say, ‘I can’t say no,’ but you can. It doesn’t matter what the compulsion is. It could be shopping, television watching, compulsive anything, if you break the pattern of compulsive behavior, then you can still go shopping or eat cake once in a while. You just don’t need it all the time because you tell yourself you don’t really need it.”

At the Elliot, she hosts an eight-week program of hour-and-a-half sessions called “Food for the Soul: A Workshop for Emotional Eaters.” The course costs $150; the next program will kick off Sept. 20.

“I want people to realize that they need to be aware of how they are feeling before they eat,” Tullis said. “I want them to be aware and to learn a simple stress-relief method, and to use the power of words to realize that their words become actions.

“Watch how you talk to yourself; watch what you say, because if you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right. Words have power.”

Maryalice Gill can be reached at 594-6490 or mgill@nashuatelegraph.com.