Tag Archive | Emotional Eating

Sadness and Food Addiction

Apr3

Lately, I’ve met quite a few people who admit that they binge when they get lonely. They aren’t angry. they just don’t want to be alone and so they eat.

But it isn’t just loneliness. It’s sadness. Regardless of what is making you sad–and usually it’s something that’s happened in the past–there is an absent-minded eating pattern going on.

Sadness is depressing. It saps your strength and steals your energy. When your energy is low and you’re a food addict or an  emotional eater,  you probably turn to food.

Yes, food addiction triggers are many and sometimes they surprise you. I wouldn’t have thought of sadness as a trigger, but it is.

One thing I’ve learned is that you have to be in touch with your feelings at all times if you’re going to beat a food addiction.

Stay away from people who make you feel sad, and stay close to those who make you feel good about yourself.

Choose people who accept you as you are so you won’t always be guessing about how to act when you’re around them. The more you can feel comfortable in social situations, the less likely you are to resort to food when sadness sets in.

In other words, don’t worry, be happy.

Another Name for Fat People

Mar23

Today I went with a friend to the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. We went to see an art exhibit titled “The Baroque World of Fernando Botero”.

The docent who led the first part of our tour said that Botero painted “fat people”. I believe she said those were Botero’s words.

In that museum with 100 pictures of gigantic people, animals and musical instruments painted by a world famous, living artist, I was forced to see fat in a different light.

When we look at art, it’s hard not to make judgments since our perceptions are influenced by our preferences, prejudices, and paradigms. When we see art, we tend to see life as we know it.

Think for a moment about fat people, what those words mean to you, how you feel when you hear the term. What would it take to change your perception about fat people?

I thought about that today when the docent said the most extraordinary thing–that the people in Botero’s paintings weren’t really fat people, but people of “heroic proportions”.

When I heard “heroic proportions “the label “fat people” instantly disappeared. A paradigm shift occurred and I will never see large people as fat people again.

Even as I struggle with my own food addictions and emotional eating challenges, I know the power of words when it comes to food and labels.

Today, I got to take a different look, a new picture, and I liked what I saw.

Boredom Can Lead to Emotional Eating

Mar20

While we may not think of boredom as an emotion, it is definitely a feeling. In our busy techno-lives, the way we communicate has changed dramatically.

There is less interaction and more interfacing. The only problem with that is that we’re not computers. We’re people. People need to talk and to see each other face-to-face now and then.

Interpersonal communication can be very gratifying. Friendships fill in the gaps we feel in our own lives. Being with others allows us to enjoy our alone time. That keeps us from getting bored.

Emotional eaters sometimes start out as bored eaters. There’s nothing to do so they eat. If their life feels dull, they choose spicy foods. If things are a bit rocky, they choose smooth foods like ice cream or pudding. There’s a pattern.

Eating when you’re feeling bored can start a person down a tough road. It’s not like a food addiction, and emotional pain or trauma isn’t gnawing at you.

It’s plain old boredom. It’s like turning on the TV for the company. You may not even have any junk food in the house but you start opening and closing the refrigerator or cabinet doors until you find something to eat.

Emotions change when the extra pounds start to make you feel uncomfortable. There’s a kind of nervousness, then anxiety when your clothes don’t fit the same and your friends start to comment.

Panic is next when it isn’t so easy to take off the pounds. The cycle begins, and behold, an emotional eater is born.

Who knows what the turning point will be? You never know until you get there. If you already are an emotional eater or have struggled with food addiction in the past, then boredom can really be the kiss of death.

Boredom makes you numb. You feel like a lump on a log. It’s the feeling of having no feeling. There is no motivation to eat, just an unconscious act of putting food in your mouth.

I know it’s a brand new world where texting rules and reading is considered outdated. I know that friendships tend to be more shallow, more distant, and more fleeting.

No wonder people get bored. Expectations of being entertained constantly, not being able to look into someone’s eyes when you talk with them, not knowing how to spend time with yourself.

It’s funny how everything seems to come back to food. Food is such a big deal nowadays. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize that what we need is not food, but love.

Nourishment is not just for the body. It is for the spirit too. And when boredom sets in, food just doesn’t cut it.

Food Addictions and Additives

Mar18

They don’t make food like they used to. That’s because “they” didn’t make it. We did. Where were the food addictions when food came from a backyard garden or a local farm or meat locker?

Where did we turn when stress set in? There was a choice, and usually it was a physical activity like shooting hoops or taking a walk around the block.

No one went to their room and watched TV or turned up the music or video game. If that were to have happened, you’d get a different kind of exercise like running to escape a possible “whupping” as it was called in the old days.

No one thought of eating to combat stress.  What possible emotional relief could be gained from shoving a bunch of radishes or a couple of ears of corn in your face? Now, if there was ham in the smoke house, that was a different story.

The thing is, when we ate food when I was growing up, it was real food. And maybe that’s why we didn’t see so many food addictions and so much emotional eating. We had real stress but we also had real food.

Added sugars, fats, salt, corn syrup, and all kinds of dyes and preservatives change the nature of food. Those additives may have something to do with food addictions, just as additives in cigarettes have been proved to have addictive properties.

One of the best things a person can do to get off the treadmill of food addiction and emotional eating is to start cooking. Prepare meals that don’t come from a box, bag, or can. Use natural ingredients to concoct your own creative dinner.

In other words, know what is in the food you are eating. And what better way to know than to cook it yourself?

To some, that may sound drastic, and it does take a little more work, but it is definitely worth it. Make some homemade soup with a few chunks of lean beef, a couple of stalks of celery, a can of whole tomatoes–they tend to do well in soups–a couple of onions, a carrot or two chopped up to sweeten the pot, and one or two potatoes cut into chunks.

All you need to season soup is an herb salt like Herb-a-Mare, some fresh ground pepper, and a little Mrs. Dash seasoning. You can add a small amount of balsamic vinegar or wine to enhance the taste, if you like.

If you eat this healthy, delicious soup alternately with whatever else you eat, you will notice a difference in the way you feel.

So, today’s tip is know what’s in your food. Don’t allow someone else to make every food decision for you. When you eat only processed foods, candy, sweets, chips, and heat-and-eat meals, that’s what you’re doing.

Do what you can to cut down on the additives in your food. It may help you to get rid of your food addictions and it will certainly be better for your health.