Many high-achieving, successful people often face the challenge of overeating and emotional eating, even though they excel in other areas of their lives. In this blog post, I introduce the W.I.S.E.R. model as a tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers.
From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers
You’re driven by ambition, you are a successful self-made person but often find yourself struggling when it comes to managing your relationship with food. The pressure of your demanding career, your relentless pursuit of goals, and the constant juggling of responsibilities can lead to heightened stress and overwhelming emotions. Turning to food as a means to numb or distract yourself became your go-to coping mechanism.
However, as you recognize the detrimental effects of emotional eating on your overall well-being, you want to find healthier ways to navigate intense emotions and stress.
In this blog post, I’ll introduce and dissect the W.I.S.E.R. model, offering step-by-step guidance on how to apply it when confronted with intense emotions and the urge to turn to food for comfort. It’s a great tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers. By the end of this blog post, you will have actionable insights and practical tools to help you navigate challenging moments and cultivate a healthier approach to emotional well-being and eating habits.
Why high-achievers are triggered to eat emotionally
Meet Mariah, a highly successful executive who constantly faces immense work pressure; demanding workloads, high expectations, and tight deadlines. Her tendency to strive for perfection further increases her stress level.
Additionally, due to her drive for success, she neglects self-care, she has limited time for relaxation, and she has difficulty finding healthy stress-releasing outlets. Turning to food as a coping mechanism became a fast, simple, easily available option.
The instant gratification and temporary relief provided by food serve as a quick escape from stress and emotional turmoil. This pattern became ingrained over time and developed into a habitual response to stress and emotional triggers.
Moreover, as a high-achiever, she experiences a strong need for control in her life. When faced with overwhelming emotions or situations, she may resort to diets as a means to regain a sense of control. But diets only worsen her overeating habit.
Relying on food to manage her emotions led to weight gain, poor nutrition, and a strained relationship with food. Her overeating habit has also created a cycle of guilt, shame, and self-judgment, further perpetuating her emotional distress. So she comforts herself with more food.
Let’s see a typical evening
One evening, after a particularly demanding day at the office, Mariah finds herself overwhelmed with stress and intense emotions. She arrives home feeling exhausted and emotionally drained.
She starts to make dinner. Takes the ingredients out, opens a bag of tortilla chips and places them on the counter next to where she’s cooking.
Instantly, thoughts flood her mind, telling her that indulging in a few chips will help her feel better.
“It’s been a long day, I deserve my favourite snack.”
The chips represent a temporary escape from the stress and provide a momentary sense of relief. She puts a portion of chips on a napkin but doesn’t put the bag away. It remains open on the counter.
She thinks: “I don’t want to be in the kitchen cooking, I just want to relax. I wish I could just eat the chips and be done but I need to feed my family too.”
Mariah’s emotions are heightened, and the urge to overeat becomes stronger with each passing second.
While cooking she mindlessly refills her napkin and eats for comfort until she feels full. But she thinks “Those few chips couldn’t really fill me up. I should eat with my family too.”
So she eats dinner with her family. After dinner she feels stuffed and lethargic, her reflux flares up again, and she needs to take an antacid.
She feels guilty and starts to judge herself for overeating again. “I’m broken, I’m doomed to be like this forever, I’ll be overweight forever so might as well enjoy my TV time with a bowl of ice cream. What does it even matter anyway? It’s a losing battle.”
So she eats a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV.
She repeats the whole process again another day.
She also plans her next diet to compensate for the overeating not realising that with these diets she makes herself even more prone to overeating in the future.
In this overeating situation, Mariah’s emotions and triggers are intertwined. The stress from work acts as the primary trigger, creating a strong emotional response that fuels the desire to seek solace in food. Additionally, exhaustion and a lack of time for self-care further contribute to her vulnerability to emotional eating.
She needs a technique to help her slow down her reactions, be mindful of her emotions, and devise a strategy best suited for the situation. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, the current director and associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, respectively, have a great technique that can be adapted to this situation. They call it the W.I.S.E.R. model.
The W.I.S.E.R. model to help high-achievers manage emotional eating
The Harvard Study of Adult Development
The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the lives of two generations of individuals from the same families for more than eighty years. The extraordinary scientific endeavour began in 1938 and is still going strong today. The aim of the study is to find the answer to the question: What makes us happy in life?
Over 85 years they’ve found two big factors: taking care of our health and having good relationships. “The part that surprised us was that the people who were happiest, who stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people.” – says Robert Waldinger.
The W.I.S.E.R. model
Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz introduce the W.I.S.E.R. model in their book “The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness“.
(Enjoy 60 days of unlimited reading from my favourite spot. I’ve found this book here too.)
The main focus in the book is on relationships but the model can be applied to all kinds of emotionally challenging situations, including emotional eating.
“If we take any emotional sequence — a stressor that evokes a feeling that elicits a reaction and its aftermath —and we zoom in and slow the sequence way down, a new hidden level of processing is revealed. Just as medical researchers find treatments for illness by looking at the smallest processes in the body, some surprising possibilities become available to us when we examine our emotional experience at a more microscopic level.”
The W.I.S.E.R. model provides a way for you to slow your reactions and put them under a microscope.
Now, let’s see the steps of the model and explore how Mariah can implement each step to effectively manage her emotional eating tendencies.
W for Watch (Curiosity Cures the Cat)
Our initial impressions of a situation are often incomplete. We tend to focus on the familiar, therefore we may ignore important information. Whenever you have the urge to overeat or you have already eaten more than your body needs, some curiosity can always help if you want to overcome emotional eating.
Watch refers to the entire situation: the environment, the person you’re interacting with, and you.
Is the situation unusual or common? What typically happens next? What have I not considered that might be an important part of what is unfolding?
Mariah’s example:
If she asks herself these questions she realizes that coming home tired and stressed and having to make dinner for her family is a common situation. Triggered by this situation she typically overeats. What she hasn’t considered and it’s important is that she is actually truly and overly hungry when she gets home.
I for Interpret (Naming The Stake)
Perception
Our perceptions and interpretations of a situation differ from person to person, so our version of “reality” may not align with others’.
To understand our emotional reactions better, it helps to ask, “Why am I getting emotional?”
We should reflect on why we feel this way, the origins of our emotions, and what truly matters to us in this situation.
During the interpretation stage, it is crucial to expand our understanding beyond our initial perception. This involves considering multiple perspectives, even if they make us uncomfortable. It’s important to ask ourselves, “What might I be overlooking here?”
Mariah’s example:
She felt tired at the end of the day and she just wanted to rest and have some time for herself. You remember her thoughts:
“I don’t want to be in the kitchen cooking, I just want to relax. I wish I could just eat the chips and be done but I need to feed my family too.”
She might have also felt that she had to do this all alone and nobody helped her.
She probably overlooks the fact that she perceives chips as a reward after a hard day: “It’s been a long day, I deserve my favourite snack.” But is it really a reward if she feels miserable after eating too much? Could she find a better reward or comfort?
Filling the gap
Ambiguity often allows us to project various ideas onto a situation. However, filling in the gaps can sometimes lead us to exaggerate the negative aspects and blow things out of proportion.
By questioning our assumptions and asking, “What am I assuming here?”, we can align the perceived magnitude of a problem with its actual reality. Assumptions are a significant source of misunderstanding, and it’s best to avoid them, as they can lead to unnecessary complications.
Mariah’s example:
After dinner, she felt hopeless and helpless because she felt she could never change her behaviour.
“I’m broken, I’m doomed to be like this forever, I’ll be overweight forever so might as well enjoy my TV time with a bowl of ice cream too. What does it even matter anyway? It’s a losing battle.”
If she stops to interpret the situation she realizes that these were all assumptions not facts. These assumptions made her eat even more. Are these assumptions helpful? No.
S for Select (Choosing From The Options)
Under stress, it’s common to react hastily without considering our available options.
Taking a moment to slow down allows us to explore possibilities and assess the likelihood of success. We can ask ourselves:
What actions can I take in this situation? What outcome would be desirable? What are the chances of success with different approaches?
In the Select stage, we clarify our goals and identify the resources at our disposal. It’s important to determine what we want to achieve and how to best accomplish that goal.
Mariah’s options:
Mariah’s goal is to stop the evening overeating habit and prove to herself that her assumptions are incorrect. She CAN have a healthier relationship with food and herself.
It’s crucial to remember that one response alone is unlikely to solve all the challenges in a complex situation. Mariah may need to experiment with multiple strategies in the coming months to effectively address the situation.
In this stage, she makes plans for how to act differently in the future and figures out solutions to prevent this from happening again.
She probably can’t do this when she has the overeating urge yet so she’ll make these plans another time (maybe straight after overeating).
For example:
- She makes sure she’s not overly hungry before dinner by adding a nutritious snack mid-afternoon.
- She puts the bag of snacks away after taking out a portion.
- She drinks a nice cup of tea while cooking.
- She does something relaxing and fun while cooking, e.g. listens to her favourite music, or an interesting podcast or watches YouTube videos or Netflix while cooking.
- She may ask a family member to help her.
- When the urge to eat more snacks appears she reminds herself how awful she felt last time after eating too much.
- She reminds herself that she still wants to eat with her family and that she will be overly full if she fills up on chips before dinner.
- When she has some free time, she searches for easy, simple recipes so she can make dinner quickly. She prints them out, has them easily available in the kitchen, and puts the ingredients on the weekly shopping list.
- She makes larger portions so they can have leftovers when she has a long, busy day.
- When the leftover is not needed, she freezes it so she will have a quick meal available when she’s short on time.
Engage (Implementing With Care)
Now it’s time to engage in the planned activity and put your chosen strategy into action.
If you’ve dedicated time to observe and interpret the situation, and you’ve taken the effort to assess the possibilities and their likelihood of success, your response is more likely to yield positive results.
However, the true test lies in execution. Even the most logical response can falter if the implementation is lacking.
Additionally, reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses prior to taking action can increase your chances of success.
If cooking and finding recipes is not your strength (or interest) you can buy Recipe Kits. You just choose your menu and all the ingredients and recipes are delivered to you so you can prepare dinner very quickly. Or you can order healthy food a few times a week too.
What are your strengths and weaknesses? How can you use them to your advantage?
Reflect (Monday Morning Quarterbacking)
After your new activities, you will reflect on the results.
What were the results of my actions? Did they improve or worsen the situation? Did I gain new insights about the challenge I’m facing and the most effective response?
Engaging in reflection regarding our response to a challenge can have long-term benefits. True wisdom comes from learning from our experiences and “failures”.
Reflecting is a very crucial step in the process of learning to manage emotional eating for high-achievers. Looking at the results rationally and adjusting your actions accordingly like you would in any other area of your life.
Special challenges
Applying the model as a framework for responding to a stressor can present challenges in certain situations. Sometimes, the stressor arises rapidly, leaving little time to pause and think before responding.
For these situations, I teach special techniques to my private clients in my 1 on 1 coaching program.
Additionally, the source of stress may persist and transform over time, necessitating a reevaluation of the stages as the situation evolves. The essential aspect is to strive for moments of slowdown, to zoom in, and to transition from purely instinctive reactions to intentional and thoughtful responses that align with your values and goals.
If you need help with managing emotional eating as a high achiever you might want to consider booking a free call with me.
It’s a no-pressure call. You’ll tell me what you need help with, I’ll let you know how I see your problem and how I can help you and if you’re interested, we can talk about my coaching program. If you’re not interested, I’ll wish you good luck and you’ll leave with a better understanding of what triggers your overeating habit. You have nothing to lose.
If you want to learn a bit more about my coaching method I recommend you this free training about the 6-step strategy to overcome emotional eating and stress eating.
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