In the Age of Trump, We’re All Eating Our Feelings
The Washington doyenne Sally Quinn was recalling with horror one of the nights following the 2016 election. It wasn't the results that had shaken her, not really. “I ate nine huge chocolate chip cookies when I got home from a party,” she says, still reeling. “I may have gained 15 pounds in the six months following the election.”
And, she added, stress eating isn’t limited to one side of the political aisle. “I’m not just talking about Democrats. Republicans too. No one is happy here in DC.”
The election of Donald Trump triggered all manner of controversial sociopolitical developments around the world, but it also ushered in a sort of emotional and physical bloat that comes from consuming an increasingly crippling news cycle: North Korea, immigration, healthcare, Russian hacking. It’s enough turmoil to make even the most diehard clean eater consider the dessert menu. Call it the Trump Bump.
Pants are feeling tighter beyond the Beltway, too. Barbra Streisand has blamed Trump for making her put on a few pounds. Last spring she tweeted, “I start the day with liquids, but after the morning news I eat pancakes smothered in maple syrup!”
Stephen Colbert told a reporter last fall that Trump-and a lot of bourbon-had made him gain 15 pounds. Judd Apatow and Jane Krakowski have also talked of their stress-related weight fluctuations. One exception: Lena Dunham told Howard Stern that her weight loss was a result of postelection “soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness.”
Trump is himself a victim of the Trump Bump. According to Rear Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician, President Trump is six foot three inches tall and weighs 239 pounds, just one pound away from what the Centers for Disease Control considers obese. After his annual physical’s results were published in January, many dissenters pointed to photos of the president in golf shorts or boarding Air Force One as evidence that his diet of Big Macs and well-done steaks was failing him. The MSNBC host Chris Hayes suggested that skeptics who believed he was lying about his weight call themselves “girthers.” The president has since tweaked his diet, trading the cheeseburgers for more greens, "at least some of the time," according to Bloomberg.
Dr. Erika Schwartz, the so-called Park Avenue hormone concierge, whose specialty treatments often involve diet, confesses that many of her high-profile patients who work in media, business, and politics are feeling the worst brunt of the Bump. “They suffer with sleep issues, weight gain, irritability, inability to disconnect from politics. They experience general low-grade sadness or loss of optimism and a social malaise,” she says, before listing a few case studies.
Blind item: There’s the attractive forty-something woman of high visibility and previously exemplary lifestyle who finds herself eating potato chips and chicken fingers with her kids. She gained a couple of pounds, which distressed her so much that instead of quitting while she was ahead, she just gave up. She stopped exercising and stays up late at night watching romantic comedies just to feel better.
There’s also the high-profile couple experiencing marital difficulties. He’s more conservative and sees the political situation as a potential opportunity, while she has become quite involved in the #MeToo movement. They used to work out together, but for the past six months neither has gone to the gym, and they now have three-hour dinners and heated political discussions while their sex life dwindles.
And there’s the 50-year-old entertainer who can’t focus on his work, is overcome with anger and despair, and keeps leaving the country, hoping that when he returns things will be different. “He has gained weight, drinks heavily, and is talking about moving away permanently, something he never said before in the past 10 years I’ve cared for him,” Schwartz says.
At the private Upper East Side gyms owned by the trainer Dennis Remorca, the atmosphere is similar to that in the aftermath of the ’08 financial crisis. Remorca has noticed clients coming more often to battle stress (and the bulge). “It’s one time they don’t have to think for themselves. They can unwind and trust in the trainer,” he says. Plus, they can tune out the news for a bit: “We have a TV, and I usually just leave it on NY1 [the local news channel], which feels like a neutral station. I have more politically driven clients, and for them I’ll put on a Netflix show.”
He’s not the only fitness professional making executive decisions about his clients’ viewing habits-Life Time, a chain of gyms with 130 locations, banished all cable news channels from its large screen televisions in January.
But is ignorance of world events the only way to avoid health detriments like the Trump Bump? Those who are not resigned to spending the next election cycle wallowing in a diet of comfort food, wine, and news blackouts have come up with some alternatives.
Deepak Chopra warns that stress is actually quite useless in light of current events. “Stress pushes us out of equilibrium, affecting the whole system, because every mental ‘Hell no!’ sends a message to your cells in biochemical form,” he says. “Trump isn’t a saber-toothed tiger, and there’s no way to flee or fight against the craziness being stirred up. Equally useless is fighting imaginary battles, reliving the past, and trying to adopt a fixed attitude of indifference, mockery, anger, or irony.”
Osteopath Habib Sadeghi, who specializes in emotional healing and is the author of the Gwyneth Paltrow–approved book The Clarity Cleanse, woke up to 135 SOS messages from his patients the day after the election. Meanwhile, Julie Macklowe, founder of the skincare line Vbeauté and wife of William Macklowe Company president Billy Macklowe, has begun to listen to the meditation app Headspace daily. “I only read the paper in the morning and try to not pay attention until the next day. I turned off my news alerts, and I stopped using Twitter, and I sleep with my cell phone in a different room,” she says.
Quinn, meanwhile, likes to go somewhere warm for a spell in the winter. Usually her friends’ busy Capitol Hill schedules keep them from joining her. This year, on the other hand: “Everyone is coming to Barbados.” Will spending money replace consuming calories as the coping mechanism of choice?
Disconnecting, though, has its limits. Sooner or later you have to come back to reality. The sweet spot seems to be a healthy combination of both frames of mind. Thrive Global media magnate and author of The Sleep Revolution Arianna Huffington relies on her “cherished habits”: a news detox, followed by a full night’s sleep, a bath, meditation, dinner with friends, or a sanity-restoring call with her daughters.
“Trust me, you won’t miss anything,” she says. “While I can’t control what the president-or anyone else, for that matter-says and does, I can control how I react and what productive things I can do with my energy. Living in a state of perpetual outrage isn’t good for us. So take care of yourself, and then you’ll be more effective in whatever form your civic engagement takes. It’s like what they say on airplanes: Secure your own mask first before helping others.”
The point, Huffington adds, is to engage with the world but to be selective in how you do it. A diet of MSNBC may make you feel as addled as living on chocolate bars. “I’m not at all saying to ignore what’s going on-precisely the opposite. Be engaged, but be productively engaged. This means being deliberate about making the time to step out of the storm, into the eye of the hurricane,” Huffington says. When we do this, she argues, we’re more effective, resilient, and creative in rising to the challenge.
Chopra, predictably, takes the longview: “Staying well, in this case, is the best revenge.”
This article appears in the May 2018 issue of Town & Country. Subscribe Now
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