Food, Fear & Feeling Better

Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Roxanne Hawn as my guest blogger. Roxanne is a fellow freelance writer who writes frequently about pets and other topics for a variety of newspapers and national magazines. She also blogs about her adventures in training her dog, Lilly. Today, you'll find my post on what I learned about healthy eating from my dog, Colby, over at Roxanne's blog. Here, she shares what she's learned about emotional eating through training Lilly. Welcome, Roxanne!

I come from a big Italian family, so food represents far more than sustenance. Weddings, funerals, holidays, birthdays, Saturday breakfast, Sunday dinner and other occasions were intricately linked with food growing up. Food has been one of very few constants in my life. No big surprise then...I'm an emotional eater. I've read many magazine articles and books that make me feel pretty bad about that fact. Emotional eating is not good, not right, doesn't work.

Considering that many members of my family are morbidly obese, I'm pretty proud that my body mass index is 23.6, which is considered in the normal range. But, honestly, I'm a little flabbier than I'd like to be, and/or I'm carrying five to 10 pounds more than I'd like on my five-foot-one-inch frame.

Now and again, I try to reform myself. A friend, who's a personal trainer by profession, recently recommend Laurel Mellin's book, The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health & Happiness. The process is also known as The Solution, but essentially, you check in with yourself throughout the day and process your emotions until you no longer feel like eating (or whatever).

Recent events, however, have changed my perspective on eating as an "external solution."

A couple of weeks ago, I met with an animal behaviorist at the Colorado State Veterinary Teaching Hospital about my fearful, anxious border collie, Lilly. In addition to some serious medications (like the ones covered in this recent New York Times Magazine article), the behaviorist gave me a 26-page behavior modification plan.

For the last four years, I've been trying to help Lilly deal with her emotions through another of my favorite coping strategies -- taking action, doing something, just to burn off the jitters. Where I might clean out a closet to give me a sense of control, I trained Lilly to do agility (that doggie obstacle course sport). Where I might get very chatty and funny, I taught Lilly to do tricks to mask her fear. I thought, if she can work through the emotion, then she's "fine."

It turns out that's the wrong strategy for a dog like Lilly. I'd been doing far too much operant conditioning, and not enough classical conditioning.

A quick classical conditioning lesson: You've heard of Pavlov's dogs -- the ones that salivated when they heard a bell because the bell always rang right before they were fed? Well, that's classical conditioning. The sound (a neutral thing) got paired with food (a good thing) through repetition. Eventually, the bell solicited the same physical response as food.

So, Lilly gets food, but she doesn't have to DO anything for it. I simply feed her in response to certain situations. The goal is to pair potentially scary things (people, other dogs, noises, new places) with food, so that deep down in her brain, she links those things with "good." Whereas training her to DO things was voluntary, classical conditioning works on an involuntary level.

Over time, the idea is that these "scary" things will also elicit the same response as food -- a relaxed one. I'd always understood the concept, but when I read the following statement in her behavior plan, I began thinking about both of our relationships with food a bit differently:

"Food changes how a dog feels emotionally about a situation."

That's not so different from what I do for myself.

If you're feeling skeptical now or if you'd like to read more about how dogs' brains and emotions are similar to ours, I highly recommend For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend by Patricia O'Connell or Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin.

So, while our society tells us there is nothing to be gained (except weight and declining health) from food as emotional comfort, science of the brain tells us otherwise. While dogs eat, while we eat, our brain chemistry changes. It DOES make us feel better, if only for a bit. Suddenly, I feel redeemed.

But, here's where my logic cart derails:

I'm using food to help Lilly feel better long enough to develop more independent coping strategies. If it goes well, the use of food at this deliberate and high level will be temporary. What happens with people is that they just keep eating, chasing the horizon on the end of their fork, in hopes of feeling better.

So maybe while I'm doing all this hard work to help Lilly learn to feel better, she'll teach me to cope better, too. In the meantime, we're both logging miles up the mountain and back. And I'm trying to pick healthier foods for my pity parties and celebrations. She may be the Champion of My Heart, but I'm only human...and chocolate really helps.

Comments

[Alyssa]

AMEN!!!! I tried The Solution a couple of years ago and got a lot out of it.
But I absolutely agree; food is more than just "fuel." Food nourishes us, and we use it to nourish the people we love, as well. It is a celebration and an expression of creativity. It's social. If it was merely fuel, it probably wouldn't taste so good, lol!
Eating as a way to avoid feeling anything is not helpful, but eating and cooking as a way to celebrate and connect? that's beautiful!

[Sagan]

Great post! Pets are such wonderful companions for learning how to cope and everything.

[Roxanne]

Thanks, gals. What's interesting is that much of the work I'm doing with Lilly rewards her for simply sitting still (no matter what happens around her), for keeping a relaxed body and face, and for maintaining even breathing. Sound familiar to any stress strategies you know?

So,for the 10-15 minutes a day I work on getting her to calm down and sit still, I'm trying to do the same. I measure my own breathing, etc.

My trainer believes we get the dogs we get for a reason. Maybe Lilly is here to teach me a thing or two. Let's hope I learn as fast as she does.

Thanks again, Dara, for the chance to swap.

Together, we're quite a pair of sensitive beings. Her moods affect me. Mine influence her.

[Dara Chadwick]

Alyssa, I hadn't heard of the Solution until Roxanne mentioned it, so I'm off to find out more about it.

Sagan, I agree. I've learned a lot from my dog.

Roxanne, thanks for the swap. It was a lot of fun. And I love the idea that we get the dogs we get for a reason. Remind me to tell you about the day I got my dog sometime.