Emotional Eating!

“I’m an emotional eater!” That’s a quote I hear every day–in emails, on the message boards, and directly from those I talk to about transformation athletics and dieting. In fact, I hear it so often, and observe it in most people I know, that I think it to be a universal thing among humans.

Now, I know that when one uses that phrase, they don’t mean emotional eating as a good thing. Indeed, they regard what they do as a bad thing. But, I just wanted to first set the table so that we realize that we are all emotional eaters. I think we were created that way. Some of the most memorable events in life are built around “emotional eating.” The wedding feast; funeral luncheons; graduation banquets; our lives are built around the “high points” of achievements accompanied by eating with friends and family!

BUT, when most of us proclaim ourselves as emotional eaters, we’re talking about a dark thing–eating alone, eating in stress or unhappiness, and eating far beyond our needs–usually heavy carbs or fatty foods that have the capacity to calm us and sedate us before they commence to destroy us!

First, the bad news. There’s absolutely no easy way out of an emotional eating problem. The good news? There IS a way!

The way out of the “dark type” of emotional eating is part discipline, part self-led psycho-therapy, and part being willing to suffer and feel instead of cutting and running by downing a quart of ice cream! Here’s where you start:

1. Make sure you eat the six small, balanced meals a day that are part of your regular transformation athletics program. Include foods you like, but DO NOT cheat on portions or types of food. Never eat in your car, and never, ever buy food wrong for you except on the free day that you will consume it.

2. When the “moment” comes up that makes you want to binge, own up to it. Say to yourself–and even to another if you are in the company of people who won’t belittle you or laugh at you–”I just really feel like eating right now because I’m having trouble dealing with……..” (Here insert the exact thing that is bothering you, not a glossed over or biased summary.) This is a critical step because if you lie to yourself and say that you are going to eat because you’re “bored” when in fact you’re sitting up worried to death that your husband is going to come home drunk again, you are simply continuing a pattern of deception. That pattern extends not only to others to but to yourself as well. One of the main elements of emotional eating happens to be self-deception, and that is because self-deception keeps you from having to deal with the truth.

3. Do your inventory. H.A.L.T. “Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?” Often, one of these last three is the problem rather than hunger, but often feels just like hunger to you.

4. Make a contract with yourself. No cheating until you’ve written in your journal, and disclosed everything you need to about how you feel, who hurt you, why you’re worried or whatever it is that piqued this strong desire to overeat.

5. Phone a friend! One of the same sex, one who won’t betray your confidence, who will listen to you without judgment or interruption, and who will try to answer your questions. This is perhaps the most effective of all these steps and I want you to work them in the order I’ve given you, because if you have to call a friend you will at least know what it is that you want to do and why, and you will then use this as only an extraordinary remedy, which it is. I don’t want to see phone a friend develop into just another easy ritual before you pronounce yourself hopeless and go eat into oblivion once again!

The other thing most emotional eaters need badly is inside work. Many have had major upheavals in their lives. Childhood sexual inappropriateness, absent or emotionally absent parents–especially fathers, nightly turmoil and even danger in the home where they were raised. These things fuel the eating disorders later in life. These things have to be dealt with and they often take counseling. At the very least, they take being willing to buy a workbook on the topic of eating addictions and becoming completely willing to get to the bottom of what is eating you that makes you want to eat.

I’m guessing some of you have gotten to this point with tears brimming in your eyes and strange feelings in your insides. You don’t know whether to read on or just go somewhere and cry! If you’re up to it, a quick way to start is to just leave a quick note at the end of this blog and let us all know you’re going to do something–beginning today! If you want no one to know now, but need more help, drop me an email and I promise I won’t betray your confidence. I’ll try to answer your questions and see that you can get some help. I may even know someone I can put you in touch with. I’m at miketharris@comcast.net. 

Lest you need to be reminded, I’m NOT a counselor; I’m not a doctor, and I’m not certified as an expert in this area at all. But I do know it; I lost a sister to an eating disorder; this syndrome runs in my family; and I’ve served in recovery groups and other organizations, taken seminars and studied this stuff forever. I hope you believe in a power greater than yourself. It certainly takes that, because if you had it just within your own power to get and stay free of this issue, you never would have gotten it! Through all of this, stay in touch with that Power, the one I call God.  Thanks for reading this.