Tagged With "Emotional Overeating"
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10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Milwaukee and the Victory Garden Initiative (transistionus.org)
The following story is the seventh installment in a new series we’re calling "10 Stories of Transition in the US." Throughout 2018, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Transition Movement here in the United States, we will explore 10 diverse and resilient Transition projects from all over the country, in the hope that they will inspire you to take similar actions in your local community. During the first two world wars, governments in the US, Europe, and Australia promoted the...
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A Different Kind of Food Trauma - Surviving Meanness
It is traumatic when your family does not share the food they have. Not because it is in short supply rather it is done out of meanness of spirit. However, as a child, you conclude you are not good enough, you do not belong. It is painful to be excluded.
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Access to Food Stamps Improves Children’s Health and Reduces Medical Spending [poverty.ucdavis.edu]
The Food Stamp Program (FSP, known since 2008 as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is one of the largest safety-net programs in the United States. It is especially important for families with children. However, the FSP eligibility of documented immigrants has shifted on multiple occasions in recent decades. When I studied the health outcomes of children in documented immigrant families affected by such shifts between 1996 and 2003, I found that just one extra year of...
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Churches Own Thousands of Acres of Land Across the U.S., and Some See That as an Opportunities for Farming Projects to Help Students and Families (NationSwell.com)
Over the past decade, there has been a push for ecological conservation within the Christian faith , motivated by concerns over how climate change might impact human welfare. That movement has coincided with an uptick in the number of faith-based farms , many of which equate divinity with sweat equity and its bountiful results. Where those two movements intersect sits Plainsong Farm & Ministry , a community-supported agriculture farm and ministry, located outside of Rockford, Michigan.
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Family Resiliency and Childhood Obesity
Abstract Background: Traditional research primarily details child obesity from a risk perspective. Risk factors are disproportionately higher in children raised in poverty, thus negatively influencing the weight status of low-income children. Borrowing from the field of family studies, the concept of family resiliency might provide a unique perspective for discussions regarding childhood obesity, by helping to identify mediating or moderating protective mechanisms that are present within the...
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Farm to Hospital Bed: This Hospital Uses it's Roof to Feed Thousands (nationswell.com)
When Boston Medical Center needed a way for patients to access healthy, fresh food, it turned to its roof. The hospital’s 2,658-square-foot rooftop farm grows fresh produce for its food-insecure patients. These patients are referred to the Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry . There, they gain access to over 25 crops and can take home fresh food for their entire household every two weeks. “The Preventive Food Pantry helps fill the gap for those who would otherwise be unable to...
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Grateful Changemakers: Karma Kitchen (dailygood.org)
Imagine a restaurant where there are no prices on the menu and where the check reads $0.00 with only this footnote: “Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. To keep the chain of gifts alive, we invite you to pay it forward for those who dine after you.” This restaurant exists, and it’s called Karma Kitchen, a self-described “volunteer-driven experiment in generosity.” Karma Kitchen was first opened in Berkeley, California in 2007 by volunteers inspired to seed the value of a...
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How Eating Real Food Combats Depression (wakeup-world.com)
The strong link between sugar and depression. A number of food ingredients can cause or aggravate depression, but one of the most significant is sugar, particularly refined sugar and processed fructose. 12 For example, in one study, men consuming more than 67 grams of sugar per day were 23 percent more likely to develop anxiety or depression over the course of five years compared to those whose sugar consumption was less than 40 grams per day (which is still far higher than the 25 grams per...
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How One Farm Saved This Tiny Town’s Survival Rate (rd.com)
By the summer of 2005, the Reverend Richard Joyner of Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church realized he was conducting funerals twice a month—a startling number given his town’s tiny population. Nearly 300 souls call Conetoe (pronounced “ka-‘nee-ta”) home. The predominantly African American hamlet is situated in North Carolina’s Edgecombe County, where a quarter of households live below the poverty line and heart disease kills more
20- to 39-year-olds than do car accidents. “I’ve closed...
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How to Nourish Your Brain to Improve and Protect It (thebestbrainpossible.com)
Research shows that memory problems can begin as early as the forties and continue to increase with age. However, declining cognition is not just an inevitable part of aging. Keeping your mind sharp is entirely possible, and it’s never too late to improve your brain function. Your lifestyle habits play a large role in determining whether your mind stays robust or degrades. The foods you eat are also integral in determining whether your brain continues to function at its best . Giving your...
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Listen to ‘Dear Sugars’: Trust Your Body — With Hilary Kinavey & Dana Sturtevantbo
If you aren't already a fan of "Dear Sugars" podcast, now is the time. Billed as "radically empathic advice," this episode takes on the tricky relationship between weight, dieting, body shame, healing and self acceptance. A must listen for women. In this episode: Her doctor categorized her as overweight when she was 5 years old. Her grandmother always introduced her as the “chubby one.” As an adult, she vacillates between moderation and binge-eating, restricting food some weeks, and gorging...
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Low-Income Americans Face a Harrowing Choice: Food or Housing [psmag.com]
Between 1960 and 2016, inflation-adjusted median rents in America increased by 61 percent and median home values increased by 112 percent, according to a recent report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Median incomes, meanwhile, increased by only 5 percent for renters, and 50 percent for homeowners. In a new report , Urban Institute researchers Corianne Scally and Dulce Gonzalez look at how Americans are managing these trends. This striking divergence in the growth...
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Low-Income Americans Face a Harrowing Choice: Food or Housing [psmag.com]
Between 1960 and 2016, inflation-adjusted median rents in America increased by 61 percent and median home values increased by 112 percent, according to a recent report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Median incomes, meanwhile, increased by only 5 percent for renters, and 50 percent for homeowners. In a new report , Urban Institute researchers Corianne Scally and Dulce Gonzalez look at how Americans are managing these trends. This striking divergence in the growth...
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Pasta Primavera: HOPE Style [HOPE Garden Project blog]
Pasta Primavera: HOPE Style Pasta Perfect Last week our crew made Pasta Primavera from scratch (noodles included) and it was wonderful to watch the kids take turns digging into the dough. It was my first time to take part in the Summer Program here at (click link:) H.O.P.E . and being a part of the process was a special treat. I remember the first time I ever dug my hands into something messy. . . it was meatloaf and I was a lot more hesitant and dare I say grossed out than our crew members...
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Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness [California Community Colleges]
Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness March 7, 2019 Sacramento — More than half the students attending a California community college have trouble affording balanced meals or worry about running out of food, and nearly 1 in 5 are either homeless or do not have a stable place to live, according to a survey released today. Click HERE to read the press release and click HERE...
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Racism at Food Pantries
http://kvpr.org/post/spanish-speakers-experience-discrimination-valley-food-pantries
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School district turns unused cafeteria food into frozen, take-home meals for kids [KCTV 5]
(Meredith) – A school district in Indiana is working to provide take-home meals for students in need to ensure they have enough food to eat over the weekends. Elkhart Community Schools teamed up with a non-profit group called Cultivate to create a pilot program that will provide weekend meals for a small group of children at Woodland Elementary, WSBT reported. The district's goal is to expand the program to feed more students in neighboring schools. As part of the pilot program, 20 kids will...
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Stress Eating is Life-Affirming and Can Help Us Cope in Troubled Times
https://medium.com/@lucy.aphramor/stress-eating-is-life-affirming-and-can-help-us-cope-in-troubled-times-4a798adf1b73
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Study Analyzes Adolescents' Reactions to Weight-related Terms Used by their Parents
Conversations about weight can be particularly challenging for parents with adolescent kids, and insight into the characteristics of parent-adolescent communication about body weight is limited. Published in Childhood Obesity, this study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity interviewed 148 adolescents enrolled in a weight loss camp, asking them what words their parents typically use to talk about their weight, how those words make them feel, and what words they would most want...
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The Value of Eating with Gratitude (wakeup-world.com)
Mindful eating offers potential complementary therapy to help people overcome compulsive overeating and other disordered habits. It also promises to help those who don’t have an identified disorder to exercise more control over their diets. Mindful eating simply entails paying more attention to what you’re putting into your body. It means avoiding behaviors such as emotional eating , like when you’re feeling bored or lonely. It also advises that you eliminate multitasking while you nosh.
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Trauma Affects Your Relationship with Food & Your Body [huffingtonpost.com]
When I was invited to deliver the Keynote Speech on Trauma, Food and the Body at the “9th” Annual SCTC Conference in October I immediately pinpointed my biggest area of trauma, sexual abuse. I wrote about my sexual abuse and how it contributed to me developing an eating disorder in my memoir so this was a no brainer for me. Then I began to create my power point presentation. I decided to revisit the ACES test, (adverse childhood experiences), that not only identifies trauma but also...
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Trauma and Nutrition: The FST Nutrition Strategy
Despite the advances of nutritional therapy over the last 30 years, there is often limited to no inclusion of nutrition as part of the trauma treatment for children and families with PTSD. However, diet and nutrition can serve as powerful tools to influence change in both the body and brain of a child and/or family member experiencing trauma.
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Understanding How Trauma Impacts Eating Can Help Us Cope With The Covid-19 Crisis
https://medium.com/@lucy.aphramor/understanding-how-trauma-impacts-eating-can-help-us-cope-with-the-covid-19-crisis-a2f73c60c723
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Weight Stigma is Harmful to Health and Can Heighten Obesity Risk
In this Opinion article, we review compelling evidence that weight stigma is harmful to health, over and above objective body mass index. Weight stigma is prospectively related to heightened mortality and other chronic diseases and conditions. Most ironically, it actually begets heightened risk of obesity through multiple obesogenic pathways. Weight stigma is particularly prevalent and detrimental in healthcare settings, with documented high levels of ‘anti-fat’ bias in healthcare providers,...
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What Children understand about Food Insecurity
https://civileats.com/2018/03/26/what-children-understand-about-food-insecurity/
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Why Emotional Eating Can Be a Consequence of Trauma
Research suggests that trauma can be a cause of emotional eating, or the drive to consume “comfort foods,” to manage the negative emotions directly related to past negative events.
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Re: Understanding How Trauma Impacts Eating Can Help Us Cope With The Covid-19 Crisis
Brilliant Lucy. I love the phrase, "don’t teach me to think of my body, my glorious messy desiring self, or yours, as a machine."
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Re: Students Test Scores Rise a Few Weeks After Families Get Food Stamps
“[Students] may be less able to learn because of temporarily lowered cognitive functioning or less ability to pay attention,” the researchers write. “Even if these periods represent only a few days each SNAP benefit cycle, these consequences of these ‘lowered learning’ days over the course of the school year may accumulate over the course of the academic year.” The lack of consistent access to quality food is a key issue. A few bad days at school add up to serious consequences for a child's ...
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Re: Stress Eating is Life-Affirming and Can Help Us Cope in Troubled Times
I always love reading your perspective Lucy, thank you for this thought provoking article!
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Re: Stress Eating is Life-Affirming and Can Help Us Cope in Troubled Times
I am so excited to find your prospective and website.
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Re: Why Emotional Eating Can Be a Consequence of Trauma
Besides the absolute need for physical touch to allow babies to stay alive, they need food. I’ve seen so many babies with failure to thrive.... they have experienced a lack of everything that nurtures an infant from birth. It’s no surprise we have a complicated relationship with food. Great write up, Thanks....
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‘Building Wealth and Health Network’ Reduces Food Insecurity Without Providing Food [drexel.edu]
As the coronavirus pandemic forces so many to reckon with growing food insecurity and increased health challenges, the Building Wealth and Health Network program of Drexel University’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities is reducing food insecurity and improving mental health – without distributing any food or medicine. How? By focusing on group experiences that promote healing and help people save money and take control over their own finances. Parents of young children, who completed the...
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New Transforming Trauma Episode: Complex Trauma, Self-Sabotage, Diet Culture, and Eating Disorder Recovery with Iris McAlpin
T ransforming Trauma Episode 030: Complex Trauma, Self-Sabotage, Diet Culture, and Eating Disorder Recovery with Iris McAlpin In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino interviews NARM Practitioner and coach Iris McAlpin. Iris specializes in eating disorder recovery, complex trauma, and self-sabotage. Iris also hosts a podcast called Pure Curiosity which seeks to facilitate nuanced conversations about the human experience and de-stigmatize mental health challenges. Iris...
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Doctor's Orders: Program Prescribes Fresh Fruits, Vegetables to Idahoans [publicnewsservice.org]
Eric Tegethoff, Public News Service (12/10/2020) BOISE, Idaho -- A pilot program that prescribes a trip to the produce aisle has been a success in Idaho. The Nebraska-based Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition evaluated the Idaho Hunger Relief Task Force's (IHRTF) Prescription for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables program, which offers vouchers to food-insecure patients with diabetes and prediabetes. It found significant improvements in participants' health; Julie Walker, manager of diabetes...
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How adverse childhood experiences influence eating disorders
People who have eating disorders frequently have a history of adverse childhood experiences and trauma. Find out what parents need to know
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Moving Beyond the Scarcity Mindset (nonprofitquarterly.org)
Excerpted from Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries: New Tools to End Hunger by Katie Martin. Copyright © 2021 by Katie Martin. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, DC. The following section draws from portions of Chapter 3, “A Paradigm Shift in How We Talk about Hunger,” pp. 46–50, 52–53. Scarcity Mentality: How to Move from Deficit-Based to Strength-Based Language A key issue that is holding us back from really tackling and ending hunger is the focus on not having enough.
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I Grew Up With the Shame of Food Insecurity. Decades Later, I Still Obsess Over What I Eat
"I remember watching my mother stand at the supermarket register, anxiously tugging at her shaggy dark blonde hair, repeatedly tucking it behind an ear. Her green eyes, amplified by thick glasses with rose-tinted plastic frames, scanned the running total. She’d hold an envelope open with one hand and whip out coupons like a blackjack dealer, placing them on each corresponding item to make sure the cashier scanned them together...." https://www.bonappetit.com/story/childhood-food-insecurity
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How ACEs Impact Unconscious Eating
If you suffer from unconscious eating, your ACEs may be impacting your ability to lose weight. Unfortunately, a simple diet or exercise program won’t work because it doesn’t address the WHY behind your unconscious eating patterns in the first place. Learn the link between ACEs and unconcious eating.
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Emotional Eating as a Way to Cope With ACEs
When we engage in emotional eating, we’re using food as our coping mechanism of choice to deal with whatever is inside. After all, it’s easy, accessible, and gives a perceived sense of relief—at least for a little while. The problem is, we never actually deal with the deeper emotion, sometimes rooted in ACEs. It just gets stuffed down and repressed. Then, there's the weight gain...
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Phthalates on the fast-food menu: Chemicals linked to health problems found at McDonalds, Taco Bell (usatoday.com)
A new study shows that chemicals known as phthalates, which have been linked to health problems, have been detected in food from popular chains like McDonald’s, Chipotle and more. The peer-reviewed analysis was published this week in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology by researchers from George Washington University, the Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, Texas), Boston University and Harvard University. The research includes items from McDonald’s,...
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Nourishing the Brain Wounded by Childhood Adversity
The right mix of nutrients revitalizes the brain that's been wounded by ACEs. Good nutrition can quickly improve mood and functioning in the present, while improving the potential to rewire disturbing memories imprinted in childhood.
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When eating is traumatic and what parents can do to help
Sometimes eating can be traumatic. Traumatic sensations and memories of eating can lead to an eating disorder. Parents must work hard to understand which foods and eating environments are triggering. It also helps to know why they are triggering and learn how to make eating less stressful. Why is eating traumatic? There can be many reasons why food becomes traumatic. A combination of sensory issues, beliefs, and experiences can come together to create a stressful eating environment for some...
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Nicole Taylor’s Juneteenth cookbook celebrates Black joy amid sorrow [washingtonpost.com]
By Aaron Hutcherson, Photo: Lynsey Weatherspoon/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, June 8, 2022 After I exit the highway heading to my hotel, the first business I notice is a lunch spot called Plantation Buffet. The sign slaps me in the face with irony, as I’ve traveled here to meet with Nicole A. Taylor, the author of the recently released “ Watermelon and Red Birds ,” the first major cookbook honoring the Juneteenth holiday . The restaurant served as a harsh reminder of Black pain,...
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Two Young Leaders Address Food Insecurity (nonprofitquarterly.org)
Image Credit: ShonEjai on pixabay.com To read more of Isaiah Thompson's article, please click here. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, two brothers from Sudbury, MA, Camden and Colton Francis, then 16 and 12, respectively, were, like other kids around the country, stuck at home. All the while, they noticed signs of distress around them—including a stark rise in food insecurity exacerbated by the pandemic. “We saw news reports which were showing people waiting in very long lines...
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Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms [smithsonianmag.com]
Vertical farming can produce as much as traditional farming while using less water and less energy—if executed correctly. Area 2 Farms By Ciara O'Brien, Smithsonian Magazine, July 11, 2023 In an old paper company and warehouse building, machines are whirring again. But instead of reams of paper pressed and cut, this warehouse is home to Area 2 Farms , which now pumps out greens, herbs and root vegetables. There’s even a weekly CSA serving customers year round, all in an effort to bring...
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Why a food addiction many Americans say they struggle with is one experts can’t agree on
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/health/food-addiction-help-symptoms-wellness/index.html CNN — "About 1 in 8 Americans over 50 struggle with an unhealthy relationship with highly processed food that goes well beyond the occasional binge or midnight snack, according to a recent poll. Known as food addiction, the condition isn’t limited to older adults — previous food addiction data had primarily centered around young- to middle-age adults up to around 50, said Ashley Gearhardt, lead author of...
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Paradox of Listening to Our Bodies
The Paradox of Listening to Our Bodies Interoception—the inner sense linking our bodies and minds—can confuse as much as it can reveal. By Jessica Wapner July 6, 2023 "My husband worries a lot about his heart. “I feel something right here,” he’ll say, pointing to a spot on his chest. I have a hard time knowing how to respond to these reports; unless I’m doing cardio, I’m never aware of my heartbeat, and even then I can’t really feel it. After my husband’s cardiologist told him that there was...
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They Rejected Diet Culture 30 Years Ago. Then They Went Mainstream.
It’s 6 p.m. on the patio at Il Moro, a twinkly-lit Italian gastro pub in West Los Angeles, and Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole are intuitively eating their dinner. They start with warm, crusty bread, liberally dipped in olive oil, and then move on to salad, branzino and the penne tossed with little pillows of burrata that Ms. Resch ordered for the table. In accordance with one of intuitive eating’s 10 principles — “challenge the food police” — neither woman moralizes about the carbs. “The...
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The Link Between Highly Processed Foods and Brain Health
Roughly 60 percent of the calories in the average American diet come from highly processed foods. We’ve known for decades that eating such packaged products — like some breakfast cereals, snack bars, frozen meals and virtually all packaged sweets, among many other things — is linked to unwelcome health outcomes, like an increased risk of diabetes, obesity and even cancer. But more recent studies point to another major downside to these often delicious, always convenient foods: They appear to...
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The Surprisingly Dramatic Role of Nutrition in Mental Health | Julia Rucklidge
To listen to Julia Rucklidge TedTalk, please click here. "In 1847, a physician by the name of Semmelweis advised that all physicians wash their hands before touching a pregnant woman in order to prevent childbed fever. His research showed that you could reduce the mortality rates from septicemia from 18%, down to 2% simply through washing your hands with chlorinated lime. His medical colleagues refused to accept that they themselves were responsible for spreading infection. Semmelweis was...