Tag Archive | Depression

Self-Medicating With Food

Feb17

Stress is everywhere in our lives today. The digital age has us moving at the speed of light with our bodies trying desperately to keep up.

Growing up, I hardly remember hearing about stress. In fact, women were thought to have it so easy that for decades we were not even considered to be at risk for things like heart attack. What did we have to be stressed about? What, indeed?

The cost of going to a doctor has risen to the point that many will not seek medical help unless they believe they are dying. Fear is a big motivator.

And why should they go to the doctor when they can go to a local drugstore and get pills for just about anything? They take the pills and if the symptoms subside, they’re happy.

Food addicts self-medicate too. When you are lonely or feeling depressed, the stress of that loneliness or depression might send you off frantically in the direction of the refrigerator or a nearby store.

While food addicts sometimes have a stash, it’s not like the person who hides the bottle of Scotch in the clothes hamper.

Sometimes we have only healthy food in the house. When stress strikes, we might have to go out and buy something less healthy.

The stress of the moment and the use of food as a coping mechanism are joined but not in a planned way.

Like other addictions, no one wakes up in the morning and says, “I think I’ll be an addict today”. Stress makes it happen.

Unbridled, uncontrollable stress–even if it’s just for a short time–is the driving force behind self-medicating with food. You self-medicate long enough and you become an addict.

You break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you stress, you eat. The experience causes you to recall similar emotional predicaments and you feel like a real loser. You eat some more.

“Why does this always happen to me”? More crying, more stress, more eating. Sometimes you have to eat a lot before the feelings of loss, anger, failure, worthlessness, depression, and so on, disappear. They do eventually disappear and you stop eating.

That’s how it is for the person with a food addiction. It’s better than some things, or so we tell ourselves, but it isn’t really.

Eventually, it would be nice if our hearts would heal and the symptoms would go away.

“Self-medicating” is a label that somehow makes stuffing down our feelings with food okay because it has a name and therefore a legitimacy.

Unfortunately, it’s just a mental stopover on the journey to uncovering the source of the problem that put you on the path to food addiction in the first place.

Once you can identify that starting point, you can embrace self-discovery and learn to let things be what they are.

You will be able to release yourself from the stress of the past and there will be no further reason to self-medicate with food.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great!

Depression and Food Addiction

Nov19

Here we are closing in on the holidays which should be a happy time. Unfortunately, the holiday season can be one of the most depressing times of year, and is for many people.

Why? Loneliness. Isolation. Overindulgence in under-appreciation. Just plain sadness. I know there shouldn’t be periods after these words and phrases. They are not, after all, actual sentences.

And yet they feel like sentences, the kind a judge imposes on you for doing something wrong. Would there be depression without judgment?

For all our technological advances, we are more isolated than ever. And no matter what people say, virtual relationships are virtually impossible. People need to interact, not interface.

No wonder so many people turn to food when they need comforting. Food addicts are born every day out of isolation and neglect. Depression is so common today that many people accept it as a natural part of everyday life.

But depression is the result of long denied feelings, unaddressed emotions, and a chemical imbalance in the body that is often a result of deeply rooted emotional trauma. Once it moves in, depression is hard to evict.

Emotional eating when you are depressed is fuel on the fire. Eating and overeating can become an absent-minded activity. Before you know it, you’re 20, 30, or 40 pounds overweight.

Add panic to emotional eating and you are heading into the food addiction arena. You stuff down the feelings without evening thinking, because depression makes you numb.

What can you do to break the cycle? During the holidays, there are plenty of things to get you out of the house. First, think of someone other than yourself. Doing something for someone else gets your mind off you and your troubles.

As for activities, there’s ice skating, snowboarding, skiing, and football, hiking, visiting friends and family, football, going to Christmas and New Year’s parties, and football.

There are holiday celebrations, church services, Midnight Mass, caroling, winter festivals, and even the beach if you live here in Florida.

Don’t forget all the volunteering positions available, like feeding the homeless, or helping a community service organization deliver meals to people who otherwise would have a Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner.

Don’t be absent from the joyful activities the holidays have to offer. Just worry about which ones you’re going to take advantage of, and make healthy eating part of the holiday.