I want ice cream. And Cheez-its. I just pried a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles out of my own hands and in an act of defiance threw it out, grabbed my laptop and started aggressively tapping away these words. There’s no denying it anymore. I am an emotional overeater.
My husband just told me he is going out for ice cream and asked me if I wanted any. “No,” I answered through gritted teeth. For a split second I wondered if I should throw up while he’s gone.
I battle with food and my weight EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. of my life. I’m so uncomfortable in my own skin that my reflection in the mirror catches me by surprise at times. I am not this overweight person. I’m active. I drink water. I’m a healthy cook and meal planner. I am an educated consumer, an expert calorie counter, and know the mathematics of losing weight. What I also am, however, is an emotional eater. It was only within the past few months that I could learn to admit this to myself.
The Emotions I Eat
Tonight a terrible storm ripped through the area. Tornado warnings blared from the television while trees bent horizontal in front of our windows and hail slammed against them. I identified my urge to nibble stemmed from nervousness and I fought it off, afraid to look away from the windows into the fridge. Once the storm passed was another story, unfortunately. Relief, perhaps?
There is hardly an emotion I don’t associate with eating. Happiness: celebrate with food; Frustration: you deserve some food; Anxiety/Nervousness: eat the time away; Sadness: numb it with food; Guilt: distract yourself with food; Abandonment: seek comfort from food; Shame: punish yourself with food.
My mom was an emotional eater. With her permission, I can share with you that she went to Over-eaters Anonymous (O.A.) for a time after her divorce. She’d drag me along when I was too young to stay home alone. I remember all those overweight people standing in a circle, holding hands, reciting the Serenity Prayer. My Mom shared at a meeting that she had eaten nearly a dozen donuts and in an act of desperation, threw the box in the trash. She later retrieved it from the can, had another one while crying with each bite, until she finally threw them back into the trash and dumped used coffee grinds over them for good measure.
I’ve never eaten anything out of the trash, but I will tell you that I see a lot of my mom’s behaviors in me. I don’t know how much is learned and how much is genetics, but I can’t keep living this way. I feel powerless a lot of the time; miserable. I can’t seem to go more than a week without a setback.
Beginning to Understand Why I Am an Emotional Overeater
I started reading A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever. Although I am only on the first lesson, it’s really hitting home. The goal is to reset the mind in order to reset the body. The notion being that we are perfect, but have a tendency to forget who we are. When we can’t remember who we are, we have trouble behaving like the person who in our heart we most long to be. Fear is powerful.
“[Fear] expresses itself as an imposter self, perverting your true nature and making you behave in a way that is opposite of who you truly are.”
Overeaters have a delusional relationship with food, imbuing it with power it doesn’t actually possess, while indulging in an act of self-hatred. The book refers to it as an “emotionally violent act” to which we then scold ourselves for doing, “inflicting further violence.” I know this vicious cycle all too well.
The book aims to help us replace fear with love, and it starts off with an intense emotional exercise to shed excess weight from our minds, the weight of our emotional shadows.
I will be elaborating on this exercise in my next post because I am finding it powerful and beneficial, and it would be for anyone, not just an overeater.
I’m not going to eat anything else tonight. I managed to distract myself long enough. When referring to my weight, I say all the time, “This isn’t me!” But here I am, unexpectedly announcing to all of you that I am an emotional overeater. Why? Because I suppose this is me. And I know for a fact I am not alone. But just because this is who I am now, doesn’t mean it is who I am supposed to be, or who I will remain.
Alas, this is another part of my journey to happiness. I have some serious work ahead of me as I work on getting my emotional shit together.
Thanks so much for reading.