Food Junkies Podcast: Lisa Feldman Barrett on the role of emotions in food addiction

What role do emotions play in food addiction? How are they constructed, and can we change them so that we have a different relationship to food? Today we speak with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett on the subject of emotions—how they are constructed and how we can alter them, especially when they relate to how we eat. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett Lisa is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior. In addition to the books "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain" and 'How Emotions are Made', Dr. Barrett has published over 275 peer-reviewed scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. She writes regularly about science in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, BBC Science Focus, Time magazine, and more. She also has a popular TED talk that has been viewed over 6.5 million times. She was president of the Association for Psychological Science in 2019–2020 and co-founded the Society for Affective Science. She is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada. Lisa Feldman Barrett's unique message about emotions is that they are not fixed or predetermined, but rather they are constructed by our brains based on a combination of sensory inputs, past experiences, and cultural influences. She challenges the classical view of emotions as distinct and automatic responses, proposing a more holistic and context-dependent perspective. By recognizing the constructed nature of emotions, we can have more control over our emotional experiences and thus be able to regulate our eating behaviour. Todays Topics: Her personal and professional story How she became THE person who would teach the world how emotions are REALLY made How emotions are made (they aren’t simply triggered reactions) She walks us through an instance of emotion (sadness or anxiety). Her thoughts on adverse childhood experiences, trauma and disordered eating How metabolic functioning effects everything and why we need to be aware when we are doing things that are metabolically expensive (uncertainty, neural processing) How people predict and experience pain It’s not our thoughts that create feelings; it's feelings that create our thoughts. Our brain writes a story that makes predictions about what will happen, and this becomes our reality. Can we teach our brains to make different predictions? How emotion concepts are taught to us by parents Actionable tools listeners can use to manage their body budget. What is next for her? Follow Lisa: Ted Talk: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/multim... Books: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/ Website: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com