Amanda Workman, counsellor at the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre has helped co-ordinate the Emotional Eating: Food and Your Mood series focusing on establishing a healthy body weight through diet and exercise as well as learning how emotions, good or bad, can influence appetite and in turn, lifestyle. (Debbie Johnson photo)

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Food. It plays a big role in everyone’s lives. For some food and emotions can be battling against each other.
Called emotional eating it could be best described as an epidemic in western society.
Bombarded with images of thin celebrities along with a barrage of food ads, women, and especially young girls, feel pressured to attain a body ideal in their mind.
For those whose eating behaviours are driven by emotions, high or frequent stress event, overeating and weight problems can be the reverse side of emotional eating. Either way, this pressure can be unhealthy or in some cases, deadly.
Today’s generation of young adults in Canada are expected to have a lower life expectancy than their parents based on poor diet, lack of physical activity and emotional stressors driving teens and young adults to overeat. According to StatsCan data a quarter of Canadian teens are considered obese.
Amanda Workman, a counsellor with the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre (AWRC) is helping deliver a series around the theme of healthy living at any size, a model borrowed from Francie M. Berg, an internationally-known authority on weight and eating. The series at the Lindsay’s Health Centre for Women (LHCW) team is based around respecting one’s body, mental and physical well being, healthy eating, exercise and body self-worth.
The team includes staff of the AWRC, public and mental health, addiction services, a doctor, nurse practitioner and midwives from St.Martha’s Regional Hospital.
“We are talking about healthy lifestyle and bodies and not about weight,” Workman said, noting that focusing on weight loss and having unhealthy body self image isn’t effective in trying to adopt healthier habits involving food.
Co-facilitator Jean Crosby, clinical social worker through Guysborough-Antigonish Strait Health Authority (GASHA) mental health services; will illustrate the connection between the mental and physical side.
“The group is about choice and self management but there may be a point where someone would need outside help,” Crosby said.
She added the premise of LHCW is to provide a multiple of resources in the same setting. The goal of the six week series that started in January is to help participants develop a model of self-acceptance regardless of differences in size, shape and weight. The physical fitness component will centre on the enjoyment of physical movement and social activity, making exercise fun instead of a chore.
The workshop will focus on “normalized eating” which will emphasize a peaceful relationship to food based on physical hunger cues instead of emotionally-reactive eating. Once these goals are in place the workshop will help participants sustain healthy habits.
Workman said this program, adapted by Jon Robison, a leading American nutrition and exercise specialist, centres on how strong emotions are when it comes to managing your triggers and feelings.
“The program is also being offered in Port Hawkesbury by the Strait Area’s Women’s Place, the newest women’s centre in the province,” Workman added.
The series is going into its third session and has been steadily growing in popularity.
This year the maximum capacity of 15 participants was met and will continue to run if the interest is there.
“We all do emotional eating at some point in our lives.  Being aware of our behaviors and making small, sustainable changes to our lifestyle over time is the key to being healthy,” she said.