Emotional eating

LegacyUser

For all my teens I struggled with my weight, and let my fixation consume me, I ended up depressed and fell into bizarre eating patterns. Any time something didn't go my way I turned to food in vast quantities. Afterwards I'd confine myself to my house embarassed by what I'd done. I recognised it was a vicious cycle, but failed to see any light at the end of the tunnel.

That was until June this year, when I decided to cop on to myself and join a gym. My eating habits still weren't the best, but as the weight came off I cut out all junk and starchy carbs, and felt and looked soo much better. It was the happiest period I'd had perhaps ever.

Thing is since I've returned to college, the stress to the system left me turning back to my emotional eating, then in the last weeks a blow to my love life left me spending the last two weeks binging on all the foods I thought I'd left behind me forever. I can't face the mirror...

Basically I'm looking for advice on how to stop trying to solve my emotions through food. I find it hard to talk to people when I'm upset and tend to isolate myself.

thefeatheredcat

You have a great opportunity to turn things around for yourself again. You've already done the hard work in going to the gym and getting stress out that way - so give yourself time to grieve the end of the relationship, dust yourself down and head to the gym. Exercise does wonders for the mind as well as for the body. And you should be proud of this achievement btw!

As for the cycle of emotional eating - you can change this if you really have the tough as nails determination to. My sister and I both are comfort eaters at times and it's something we both talked about recently as we've both hit stumbling blocks and resorted to eating crap - it's not taboo and once you stop treating it as something that is taboo, you'll feel less guilty about it.

If it's junk food that you fall to, think of the cost financially and the cost to your body. Comfort eating is fine when you know there's a limit and a line so you need to know when you absolutely have to stop. But if you feel that it's not possible to just stop by your own means, then you need to resolve the emotional issues with yourself or perhaps through counselling. If it's the case you bottle up your problems rather than talking them out, maybe you just need to find the right way to deal with the problems? Maybe counselling or a good listening friend may be able to help, but you will need to discipline yourself with the eating. Just don't further guilt yourself should you resort to emotional eating - identify that you're unhappy with it, recognise the behaviour, realise how the behaviour itself makes you feel about yourself and how you actually feel and just have those feelings conscious to the front of your mind and know that you have the power in yourself to change it.

I've struggled with weight issues from a young age but have managed to resolve it over time. A few years ago I was on the verge of hitting a size 20 when only a few years before that I was a size 10. I've since worked my way down back to a size 12 and annoyingly since ballooned a bit for varying reasons. But I was ok about it overall because I know that I have it in me to lose the weight when I'm ready to. But that also means there's always a healthy challenge to maintain my body and my weight and to look after myself physically, psychologically and emotionally and these 3 have to function together in harmony.

Strangely one of the motivators some years ago when I was near a size 20 were tv shows like 'you are what you eat' and so on. I recently watched 'fat families' and that again, gave me the reminder. I always think of myself in 10 years time - do I want to be that big? NO!! Do I want to have those medical conditions or issues because of how and what I eat and my attitude to things? NO!! And I know that I have the determination to strive to rebalance the harmony of the 3 factors of my physical, psychological and emotional self.

Setting discipline with eating patterns especially when in college takes time. Go easy on yourself, don't guilt yourself over it all and have patience. But know as well when to get tough on yourself and get motivated! You joined the gym and lost weight so you know you have it in you to do so. You've made effort and you will do so again. Even if it seems like a small achievement, it's something you should still be proud of!

beks101

Hi OP, I feel your pain...I've been on that train!

I'm a classic emotional eater and it's landed me in serious situations before and I experienced mild depression for years because of it.

It doesn't get better overnight as you've basically learnt over the years to use food as a drug, in the same way that an alcoholic uses booze or a smoker uses cigarettes...but getting into a series of healthy habits and replacing food as a coping mechanism with something new, can have a massive impact over time. You just need to be strong and patient!

What I've found helps is to take the pragmatic approach - sugar sets me off in a big way, as do most of the bad carbs...I mean one cookie and I feel the urge to binge, so I make sure I keep the house free of all those trigger foods.

Also, you'd be amazed how fast your body adapts to clean eating after a few days...if you manage to white knuckle it through the cravings for a few days, the physical cravings will diminish and you'll only have to deal with the emotional cravings. Which are a lot more manageable when your body isn't screaming out for sugar!

I'd suggest planning each meal and giving yourself enough time to properly prepare and enjoy it - sit down every time, give yourself a good half hour at least and engage in mindful eating. It helps to journal every eating experience in the beginning - even the binges. Write down how you're feeling - are you hungry? If you're not hungry, what's causing you to eat? What happened to make you upset / depressed / bored / cave to the urge to binge?

Here's a good starting point:

http://www.indi.ie/docs/20_food_diary.pdf

Print out seven copies of this and monitor everything for a week, both good and bad. By the end of the week you'll be able to look back and see what your triggers were and you can figure out suitable 'replacements' for food to cope with those triggers from there - going for a walk or calling a friend when you're bored; going to the gym and working your a55 off when you're angry; going to bed with a book when you're tired; preparing meals in advance instead of grabbing the nearest thing because you're over-hungry etc...

Anyway this is fixable, you just have to put in the work. At the end of the day, it's your health and happiness at stake here and you've let it control your life for long enough - now is the time to put that work in.

Best of luck! xx

LegacyUser

Hi OP,

Im working on this at the moment too, i have had a lot of changes in my life recently and when i do i tend to put on weight. i have put on 2 stone in the last few years, im also getting wrinkles and really beating myself up when i look in the mirror!! Arrrrr!!

I just got a new book called WOMEN, FOOD AND GOD by Geneen Roth, Oprah had her on and thats where i heard of it, its quite enlightening im just going to quote a bit from it because i really related to this....

" We think we're miserable because of what we weigh...... But if we've spent the last five, twenty, or fifty years obsessing about the same ten or twenty pounds, something else is going on..... And the truth is that it's not about the weight. Its never been about the weight.... if we found a pill that cured our weight the feelings and situations we turned to food to avoid will still be there and we will still find ways to numb ourselves..... you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is the only middle man, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Of making yourself numb. Of creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable..... accepting the situation. Dropping the resistance to doing grunt work. Understanding that this is the way things are for now and being vigilant about bringing your attention to the present moment again and again.... postponing your life and your ability to be happy to a future date when then, oh then, you will finally get what you want and life and your ability and life will be good.... Its not about the weight, its not about the goal its not about being thin or being someone special or getting there. Those are fantasies."

Basically i got from it that how we deal with our emotions is really why we reach for the food, if we are going through a tough emotional time then we reach for food to numb the pain, we don't eat consciously, we are eating our emotions. Thats why when the change happened in my life i needed comfort and i took it in food. Likewise you have just gone through loads of emotional stuff and to deal with it you seek something you know will comfort you-food. We are not taught the right way to process emotions, if we are more tuned in with our bodies then we can be aware that all the emotions are a normal reactions to situations, we just have to deal with the emotions differently.

Dunno if that helped at all, i am working on living more in the moment, and making changes in my life that are strong foundations for a more fulfilled me, i have just moved to the country, and im working from home, i figure that the more i can fulfill myself the more my life will not be about morning, lunch, dinner, supper, sleep, instead of morning, fun! serving a purpose, lunch, creating/working in fun job! romantic dinner aka Oysters! :L dancing, relaxing, sleep. The more we fulfill our deepest needs the more food will just be about nourishing us.