How Your Sensory Experience of an Environment Can Increase or Decrease Patterns of Emotional and Binge Eating
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Today's podcast episode is inspired by my husband, Ethan Fox. He is in Environmental Design. And we have always been fascinated by the connection between architecture, environment, and our relationship with food. So he sent me something that I'm going to read and I will put this link in the show notes just so that you can also see the pictures (HERE). So he sent me this post that reads: So I'm reading for an art history class. And Baudrillard is talking about the trends in color usage from generation to generation, mostly in interior design. But there's definite spillover into fashion, architecture, etc. And how every new color movement is a direct rebellion against the previous one. Like how the bright colors of the 60s and 70s were a direct response to the austerity and seriousness of WWII post war era. And how a shift back to organized moralistic neutrals were a direct rejection of 60s and 70s, gaudiness, etc. And that all makes sense, people find their parent's style tacky, sure, but he goes on to observe how we've now been stuck in a lull of pasty tones and naturalistic finishes for some time. And I'm thinking, yes, he's so right. But that's weird because it's been hanging around for so long. Like, what is it rebelling against anymore? What is it answering to? Well, all I had to do was be patient because lo and behold, Baudrillard provides the following sentence, which caused me to completely wig out. Except, of course, for the spheres of advertising and commerce, where colors power to corrupt enjoys full rein, and I'm like, Oh, so this colorless, minimalist wasteland of a design principle. And then there's a picture of a bunch of different rooms that are in kind of white and grays, is maybe hanging on so stubbornly, because this corporate hellscape. And then there's a bunch of pictures of, you know, McDonald's bright colors, Dunkin Donuts' bright colors. You know, there's a picture of a grocery store aisle, with a bunch of cereal boxes, and all the bright colors of that. And at the end, they state, is assaulting all of our eyes, inside and outside of our homes every waking second, and is tainting the very concept of color into something we can't relax around in our living spaces. And this blew my mind when Ethan sent this to me, because it was such a perfect example of how much our environment is potentially fueling our binge eating or emotional eating behavior by being completely overstimulated by our surroundings. And so I wanted to kind of bring him on to chat about this some more.
Ethan Fox 03:38
Hi. Thanks for having me on the pod. First time, long time.
Stephanie Mara 03:44
Yeah, I'm really excited to just actually record one of our many conversations that we have together about this topic. We were just talking about semiotics, and you're really pointing out just how much we interact with our environment. And I want to tie that, we'll tie that in eventually to how much it affects our relationship with food. And I want to start off with chatting about the interior design concept that you knew I would love which is the concept hygge.
Ethan Fox 04:17
Hygge is interesting, as far as this conversation goes, because hygge is what you're talking about in the beginning, right? Hygge is like almost like the the most extreme version of the comfortable, neutral, refuge that people seek at the end of an over, an overstimulated day.
Stephanie Mara 04:40
Hygge has stuck around for so long, because I feel like just our world is so dysregulated and uncomfortable and overwhelming that we try to bring in this sense of control and stillness and quiet and calm into our home environments.
Ethan Fox 05:05
Yeah. We like to create the thing that we need in the world based on like our life experiences. So like if you have a very cluttered mind, or you're you feel very disorganized in life, you'll tend to gravitate towards minimalism, right. Whereas you're, you're trying to reduce the amount of visual stimuli, you're trying to reduce the amount of things for you to, to distract you from, because you already have enough distracting you.
Stephanie Mara 05:33
So our home environment is kind of a response to what's going on oftentimes inside of ourselves. And I even get curious about if someone is struggling with, let's say, patterns of binge eating, or emotional eating, or overeating or just having a tough time in their relationship with food, like wanting like a really clean environment, that might feel so confusing. It's like, oh, my environment feels so calming. But I just get curious about how we're trying really hard to regulate ourselves externally, when we're feeling dysregulation internally. And so you've designed quite a bit of houses and restaurants and buildings, and what have you seen someone's desire of what they want to create in a building, kind of be representative of that person?
Ethan Fox 06:34
I do have a very specific project that I'm thinking of with that. This was a commercial project, a restaurant that had a very solid following. And it was a, it was an iconic restaurant that existed in a major downtown area for many years. And they decided they wanted to open up a second location. But they were at a very different place in their lives. When they started, it was very, it was very community oriented, it was very much community driven as well, I don't think a professional architect was involved in the original design process. But there was a very positive energy that was created by the space, it was a nice place to be. For their second location, they had essentially made it as restauranteurs and they were probably very stressed because the owning a restaurant can be a very stressful experience from what I've seen. So I think that they felt very cluttered, I think they felt very disorganized in their lives. And they wanted a minimalist restaurant that removed a lot of the original charm that the the original location had. And it ended up failing within a couple of years. You know, there's, there's an example of where everybody's at different places in their lives. And you can't necessarily, if you're doing something as a public offering can't do it the way that you want it to be necessarily.
Stephanie Mara 08:05
Yeah, it makes me think about just when we walk into a restaurant, how it's not just that we are interacting with the food that's being placed in front of us, we're interacting with the environment while we're interacting with the food. And we're also interacting unknowingly, with the person that made that food. Even if we've never seen that person, that person made that food in a certain state in a certain environment, and then is putting it on a plate where we're eating it.
Ethan Fox 08:38
Absolutely. I mean, there's, there's a big difference between a company cultures, the owner of the restaurant, drives that a lot of time. So they drive it into the design, and then that drives it into the employees on a subconscious level.
Stephanie Mara 08:54
So people make our environments, and then we come in and we interact with that environment. And that the people who make the environments it is reflective of themselves. You know, I find that interesting, because there are a lot of food offerings in our world today from fast food restaurants to sit down restaurants to going to the grocery store, and they all produce a different experience inside of our body. So like we were just talking earlier about the difference between okay, you know, walking into even something like a Chipotle, which you actually pointed out that they have a very minimalist design, which I never really kind of realized before, as compared to like a McDonald's restaurant. And those two have very different vibes to them, which is...
Ethan Fox 09:58
Despite at one point being owned by the same people...
Stephanie Mara 10:01
Which is also true and that you have a very different eating experience based off of the environment that you are in and how you are interacting with that environment, from the colors to the noises to the sounds to the vibe. You know, at a McDonald's, there may be a very rushed, fast paced environment that has really bright overstimulating colors, where something like a Chipotle is a little bit more muted, a little bit calmer. I don't think I've ever gotten like a super overwhelming feeling from what's been happening maybe behind the kitchen at Chipotle, you know, unless it's like dinner time, and the line is out the door, which we have both experienced that before. You know, if we broaden, that's just two examples of two restaurants, if we broaden out to kind of like, yeah, fast casual or a sit down experience, which you have been in the design of both, how do you feel like, even this setup of the design of a restaurant experience affects how we're eating?
Ethan Fox 11:11
There's a program that you essentially need to follow based on what the owner wants to do. So like, if the owner is like, let's say, a coffee shop, something that I've done many of, there's two very different types of coffee shops, there's the coffee shop, where they want you to get your coffee, sit down and crank out about four hours worth of work, school or otherwise. And then there's the coffee shop that wants you to leave immediately. I remember one coffee shop was so extreme to remove all outlets, from the, from the sitting area so that people can just park their laptops and hang out all day.
Stephanie Mara 11:47
Yeah, that's really interesting, because I even wonder about if you are living in kind of a sympathetic nervous system response, and you're kind of in that go, go go go go mode, you would be very drawn to that kind of coffee shop that is going to be like in, out, I'm out of here, I can move on with my day. And that can be even information back to yourself. Why am I drawn to going to that particular restaurant and its vibe?
Ethan Fox 12:18
Yeah, and there's definitely different trends that are going on with that, like even some people going as far to remove humans from the experience completely.
Stephanie Mara 12:28
Which again, can be information back to yourself of why would I be drawn to going to an environment where I have no human connection at all. And I often find when we're feeling really shut down, or, you know, I remember on the days where kind of I was in maybe the middle of a binge eating experience, and I had to kind of go out in the world, I didn't want to be seen, I didn't want anyone to notice me. I already felt like in a freeze shutdown response that going out into the world, yeah, if I could go to an environment where I didn't have to interact with anybody and a machine, you know, for the example, like, give me my coffee. But that was information also back to myself of the state that I was in, and also kind of perpetuates this state that we're in too. You know, that if, if what I really needed was coregulation, and I go to an environment that further dysregulates me because I'm not interacting with a human being, you know, it kind of pushes you further into, okay, now I went out into the world, oh, my gosh, I feel so lonely. I didn't even interact with anyone. Well, now, let me just go and eat some more, because even my environment didn't kind of give me what I was looking for either.
Ethan Fox 13:56
You're saying it's essentially enabling that type of behavior? Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 14:00
And is the person creating that building potentially, in that state, too. I know, you've told me a lot about, you know, different people are designing different types of buildings also as just a reflection of themselves. And if you're working with someone who's creating a building that, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, is kind of like you you experience them as constantly in a fight or flight response is what they create in the world, either representative of that, or are they trying to create things that are super pristine, and like clean because they're trying to create the cleanness in the world that they want inside of themselves?
Ethan Fox 14:45
Yeah. The people that own buildings and own businesses are just people who have positive and negative traits and are potentially inflicting their positive and negative traits on to the public.
Stephanie Mara 14:59
I always find it in Interesting how you infuse architecture with humanity.
Ethan Fox 15:04
Well I mean, who sits in architecture?
Stephanie Mara 15:08
You know, you explained once the concept of desired paths.
Ethan Fox 15:16
Yes. The Desire Path.
Stephanie Mara 15:17
It's one of my favorite architectural concepts, because I think it just shows how we're... Okay, so what we're talking about is how our environment shapes how we are in it. But also we, as human beings interact with our environment, and unknowingly sometimes if we sense something is in the wrong place, we will try to change it.
Ethan Fox 15:46
I don't know if I would say the wrong place. I would say, people express themselves the way that they want to express themselves to a point. So the desire path is a great example of that, because it's a very low risk expression of yourself, right? I want to go from point A to point B, the sidewalk, or I want to go from point A to point C, right, and the sidewalk goes A to B and then B to C, I don't want to do that I want to go A to C, I want to skip point B and go straight. I want to go the straightest distance possible, because I don't want to walk. Right? So that's a very low risk, high reward expression of yourself, you know, there's a chance that it's going to be muddy, because it's not paved. But you're going to take that risk, because you want to get to I don't know, it's very common on college campuses, so I assume like the lunch hall, or your the class that you're running late for.
Stephanie Mara 16:48
And if you can imagine this, what we're talking about is if you've ever seen, you know, you have your sidewalk. And then if you've seen kind of like the the grass is kind of matted down...
Ethan Fox 17:00
Cut the corner.
Stephanie Mara 17:00
Yeah, there's a path that you can see in the grass that people have walked over and over and over again, instead of the sidewalk, they've walked through the grass to cut across back to the sidewalk again. And I kind of want to connect this with just our human nature of I really see even emotional eating or binge eating as a similar experience where it's just like, Okay, I'm feeling this uncomfortable feeling. I want you to feel better now. Can I cut a corner and just kind of choose food to support myself in feeling better, but the emotion is still there afterwards, still wanting to be felt? You know that, okay, yeah, you can cut that corner through the grass. But, you know, doesn't really get you there any faster? And what if you're stuck in the mud, and then you've got really muddy shoes the rest of the day, because you didn't want to walk on the sidewalk?
Ethan Fox 17:55
Well no it absolutely gets you there faster, you might have muddy shoes, that kind of brings it back the expression, right? It has limits. You don't see people like I've personally never seen anyone stand or like crouch on a table eating a hamburger. Right? Maybe somebody wants to do that? I don't know. But I've never seen that happen. So the behaviors are more common when the environment lends themselves to them. So talking about the automatic diner, right? Originally known as the automat, in the 1960s. Very cool stuff. But the behavior is that I want to have this humanless experience, right? But there is nowhere to have a humanless experience, right? Because that doesn't exist. So okay, I can't express myself in that way. So I'm gonna go have to enter myself into the environment and have a human experience if I want to get food or my needs met, essentially. So the built environment can encourage behaviors, you know, positive or negatively.
Stephanie Mara 19:14
Yes, I think that is such an excellent point that whenever we try to take the human out, especially when it comes to our eating experiences, we are still a human interacting in that environment and a human created that humanless environment. You literally cannot take out the human in our environment because we're infused within it. And we express ourselves in it as well.
Ethan Fox 19:47
Yeah. And there comes I guess, the final point of semiotics, right. What is the designer? Who is the designer? You know, you don't you walk into a restaurant you don't see the designer on the wall. You know, they're a nameless person who had thoughts about things, you know. And they decided that they wanted to encourage this thing. They decided they wanted to interject, you know, a political point. They, they are just humans who decided to design this a certain way. And now we have to deal with it.
Stephanie Mara 20:26
Yeah, that is an excellent point. And I think, really, for you spend a day potentially getting really curious about how your body feels when you get into a car, someone designed that car, you know, when you walk into a grocery store. Currently, where Ethan and I are, we are right outside of Bozeman, Montana. And the first Whole Foods just opened here. And I, I went the the weekend after it opened, it was so incredibly packed. But the interesting thing was they tried to build this Whole Foods in a somewhat small building. Whereas I have this very spacious experience of most Whole Foods, it's usually in a pretty large building that Ethan and I laugh for those who know, we have an Airstream, and we have traveled to the East Coast back to the West about three times and whenever I'm feeling kind of a little dysregulated, overwhelmed. You know, the interesting thing that can be kind of funny to reflect on is some of these places that we've talked about, Chipotle's, think of Target's, think of for me, it's Whole Foods, every time sure there's like some differences from Whole Foods to Whole Foods, I know that the design of the Whole Foods is going to feel familiar to my body, and whatever is known can feel regulating. So I know that you have all heard me talk about, for example, that on some level emotional eating and binge eating, overeating, even under eating, that if it's something that we know, on some level, it can feel comforting and regulating, because we know, we know what that is going to be like, we know what's going to happen afterwards, we know how we're going to respond to ourselves. Well, it's the same thing with our environments as well. If you think that there's a certain restaurant or a certain store that you constantly go to, for me, it's been kind of walking into Whole Foods across the country. And immediately I it's not even about like what I can get there, it's just Oh, I know that I'm going to feel comfortable in this environment, because the design of it is pretty similar from store to store. And for Ethan, that's Starbucks for him. So we have stopped at many...
Ethan Fox 23:04
Or Target...
Stephanie Mara 23:05
Or Target. Yes. Actually, one of our first dates that we had was walking through a Target. So you know, it's this experience of, oh, this design experience, I can feel comfortable and relaxing in because I know what to expect here, especially when you're in an unknown environment. Or if you even find yourself, like after maybe a really hard day of work and you're exhausted and you're stressed out, and you find yourself at a similar restaurant or store, you know, you might not be going there necessarily for the food, but also because of the environment feels comfortable to be in, because you know, maybe you know the people behind the desk of that place. Again, bringing in the human element of going to a particular location. You know how things are going to be placed. You know where the tables are going to be, on some level, your entire embodied experience in that restaurant, that store, that place can feel relaxing. And so I was walking through this Whole Foods, and they tried to put it in a much smaller building. And you can barely fit two carts next to each other side by side walking through an aisle. And I walked out of that experience feeling so overwhelmed that all I wanted to do when I got home was like sit on the couch and just stare at the ceiling for a little bit. And it really makes me think about how often our experiences out in the world affect our relationship with food. If that was a me from potentially a decade ago, and Ethan knew me at this time as well, I might have gotten home and reached for food to try to help me reground at this this point in time, I know so much more what dysregulation feels like in my body that I knew I had to get home and take a pause. And so I think this is just really something interesting to just bring awareness to of what environments feel like home to you, what kind of actually puts your body into a fight, flight, or freeze response. And then how is then your subsequent reaction with food, whether that is emotional eating, or binge eating, or whatever your food behavior might be, it's actually information of how those environments are affecting you. I would even bring this into your own experience of your home environment. And, you know, look at the different rooms of your home, and how do they make you feel, you know, I know that I've had a lot of explorations with those I work with about their kitchens. And Ethan and I spend a lot of time in different kitchens, just kind of experiencing how the flow of that kitchen can make you want to be in there and want to kind of cook and interact with your food, and others where it kind of lends itself of you just want to reach for something and get out of there really quickly.
Ethan Fox 26:12
The nature of the kitchen is actually kind of a recent phenomenon. It's really only been 50 or 60 years that the kitchen was an egalitarian space. Where men and women are equal, all people are equal. Everybody's just cooking their own food. So the the symbolism that's been put in those places, you know, is potentially still there from a past where the kitchen was a place of servitude, you know, where people were being oppressed.
Stephanie Mara 26:45
It's an interesting thought to bring in of the history of your home. And I even get curious about why that might be that many individuals if they can financially do so kind of gut their home, you know, because there is history in these homes, you know, even getting curious about like, when was your home built? And what was....
Ethan Fox 27:07
It's only very recently that the, the the nomenclature, master bedroom was changed. Master of the house, you know, that's, that's a loaded...
Stephanie Mara 27:20
Yeah, yeah. Like getting curious about when was your home built, and even the flow of your home, what does it feel like? And, you know, there are, you know, for a long time, Ethan and I lived in Denver, Colorado, and there's like a new apartment complex that pops up about every week there. And, you know, even if you're living in more of an apartment experience, of how different it might be from an apartment complex that was built 50, 60 years ago to one that's kind of popping up today, because we've kind of lived in both experiences.
Ethan Fox 28:00
And regionally as well, like, if you look at apartments in New York City, you know, having a countertop to place your convection cooktop is a luxury in a lot of circumstances, you know, no, really no kitchen whatsoever, just a mini fridge and a convection cook top, and no vent fan, so you have to deal with your food gases.
Stephanie Mara 28:24
Right, and how that can affect your experience of wanting to cook food for yourself or want to be around food or want to spend time with food. And so, yeah, you know, I think this has been just a fascinating conversation. And I really appreciate Ethan coming on today and just having this dialogue about this intersection between architecture and our food, because as he kind of beautifully stated that we cannot take ourselves out of our environment, because we are the ones who co-create it. And that just like the desire path, that if there is something in your environment that isn't working for you, you can cut a corner. You know, you can redesign, you can put in different colors, you can, you know, say okay, you know, are there different things that I can place in this environment that would facilitate me feeling more of a relaxation response in my body, especially if, you know, like, we started with that post that Ethan sent me that our world can be sensorily overstimulating. And so if you get to make your home, your space, where it can feel relaxing, and calming and regulating, I just get curious what might happen in your relationship with food.
Ethan Fox 29:47
And don't forget, you know, you can always go outside and take a walk or a tree bath as they're now called. Does a lot of good.
Stephanie Mara 29:54
Yeah. Also, specifically, putting yourself into environments that you notice also help you get into a relaxation response and further support you and feeling safe in your body. So sometimes that might even be if your pattern is you are in environments that feel overstimulating all day long and your go to is well I just go home and I immediately get support from food. And as I like to normalize, you always get to choose food, that is always an option for you. You might get curious, okay, before I stop at home, is there anywhere in my environment, a park, a woodsy area, someplace that feels relaxing to you that you could go to first that might even change your experience when you walk into your home. So thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate your time. And to all who are listening, if you have any questions about anything that we chatted about today, you know, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime. Just so you all also know the next Somatic Eating® Program class is going to be coming up in April, and we do actually talk about your eating environment in the program. So if you're curious about diving into this deeper for you personally, go to somaticeating.com and join the waitlist for the class and you will be the first individuals to hear when the door opens in April. So I hope you all have a beautiful rest of your day and I will talk to you all again real soon. Bye!