136 The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
REDuCING YOuR PHYSICAL vuLNERABILITY
TO OvERWHELMING EMOTIONS
In addition to recognizing how your thoughts and behaviors can influence your emotions, it’s also
important that you recognize how other health-related issues influence how you feel. Here are
some examples.
food
Your body needs the nutrients it gets from food in order to keep functioning properly, just
as a car depends on gasoline to keep running. As a result, the food you eat affects how you feel
directly, both emotionally and physically.
Different foods can affect the way you feel as can the amount of food you eat. For example,
foods with a lot of fat in them, like ice cream and pastries, can temporarily make you feel pleased
and satisfied. But if you eat too much of them, you might start to feel heavy and sluggish. Over
time, if you eat an excessive amount of food with high levels of fat or sugar, you’ll also gain weight.
This often makes people feel sad or unhappy about themselves, and it can also lead to health prob-
lems like diabetes and heart disease. Other foods with high sugar content, like candy and soda,
can quickly make you feel energized. But as the effect wears off, these foods can leave you feeling
very tired or even depressed.
Just as eating too much of certain foods can make you feel ill, eating too little food can also
make you feel unhealthy. Getting too few nutrients in your diet can make you feel dizzy or light-
headed since you’re not getting the energy you need to keep functioning.
It’s recommended that you eat a moderate amount of a wide variety of healthy foods every
day, including fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins. If you are curious about your diet or need help
creating a healthy diet, contact a medical professional or a certified dietician for advice. Or visit
a reputable nutrition Web site, such as the site for the United States Department of Agriculture
at http://www.mypyramid.gov where you can find recommendations and guidelines for eating a healthy,
well-balanced diet.
In the space below, record any thoughts you have about how your own eating habits affect
how you feel, and then write at least two ways you can improve your eating habits in order to feel
better.
My eating habits affect how I feel because