[Haruchunja] So That Mood Does Not Turn Into Appetite <1>

Editor's NoteMood is an important factor influencing food choices. When we feel good, we can eat healthily, but when we are irritated, angry, stressed, or sad, we tend to crave sweet, salty, and spicy foods. Overeating and binge eating due to failed portion control often follow. Lee Yoo-joo, a practicing physician and author of Don't Let Your Mood Become Your Appetite, says that "stabilizing mood and appetite" is the starting point of dieting. By managing mood and consuming the right foods, one can create a body with a healthy metabolic state and a lower weight set point. This article carefully outlines which lifestyle habits and foods trigger unruly mood and appetite, how to align cravings with what should be eaten, and meal methods and daily routines to tame aggressive appetite. Word count: 975.

When stressed and feeling negative, appetite explodes, making you want to eat a lot of sweet, spicy, and stimulating foods. After eating such foods, you feel guilty and ashamed for failing to control your appetite, which worsens your mood. When your mood worsens, you seek even more stimulating foods. This vicious cycle repeats.

The body and mind are closely connected. When anxious or depressed, trying to directly confront and change these negative emotions often fails. Simply resolving "not to be anxious" does not make anxiety disappear. To change the mind, you must change the body. When signals from the body change, different inputs are sent to the brain, and accordingly, outputs change, allowing the mind to change.

Conversely, if you want to change your body, you must change your mind. Instead of just eating less and moving more to lose weight, you should first find ways to regulate mood and appetite. When mood fluctuates and stress is high, hormones related to appetite are inevitably affected. Suppressing and enduring explosive appetite to become slim is extremely painful and impossible.

To change the body, you must change the mind; to change the mind, you must change the body. So, where should you start?

The easiest way to change the signals from the body is to change the food you eat. The hormones and enzymes secreted by the body vary depending on what, when, and how you eat.

Appetite is influenced by mood but also greatly affected by what foods you eat. Eating spicy tteokbokki makes you crave sweet ice cream. The food tteokbokki triggers the appetite for ice cream.

When you consume foods that do not cause appetite to explode, your appetite calms down, and cravings for stimulating foods decrease. Cases of eating a lot of forbidden foods and falling into self-loathing decrease. As stress reduces, episodes of explosive appetite also decrease. This is when a virtuous cycle begins.

- Lee Yoo-joo, Don't Let Your Mood Become Your Appetite, Book Table, 18,800 KRW