SO if you’ve been reading my blog for any stretch of time you might have noticed that I am the queen of emotional eating. In general I am an emotional person anyway, but I am also not very good at expressing myself and so I tend to turn to food for the comfort that I wish I could find in so many other places. Having been on this weight loss journey for a while now I know that in the long run food never satisfies….in fact usually after a binge all I end up feeling is eaters remorse on top of whatever unidentifiable emotion I was feeling before I turned to food. And I’m an extreme case when it comes to binging. I’m not the girl who eats a bag of chips and feels bad…..no I’m the girl who when on a binge will eat a bag of chips, popcorn, cookies, donuts, and then wash that down with ice cream, pie, and endless amounts of caloric drinks….the whole time knowing I’m making the wrong choice but choosing also in the moment not to care! So the question remains…why do I keep doing this?!?!
Well for one I think it has a lot to do with the fact I already mentioned… I don’t know how to express myself very well. It seems that on top of being the queen of emotional eating I am also the queen of wanting other people to really like me….and so I’ve grown accustomed to being the person who shares what I think other people will accept of me and keeps the rest bottled in (in turn basically telling myself that I don’t even truly believe the whole me is good enough). Those left over emotions eventually build up over time to the point where I can no longer figure out where they are coming from or how to address them…so I do what I know how to do…EAT! Sure in the end it doesn’t change anything….but for a brief moment I can satisfy one of my needs….I can figure out what I am craving…and I can have it. In a very twisted way it makes me feel like I can at least do something right for myself (well maybe it’s not “right” but you know what I mean)!
So where does that leave me? I know what I do…I have ideas why I do it…but yet I have no plans on how to STOP. I don’t want to be this type of person the rest of my life. I know there are much better alternatives out there in terms of satisfaction. In fact one place I find myself turning to more and more is my faith. For me…faith isn’t this flighty concept with a distant God. To me…my relationship with God is the realist thing I know. God is the only person who knows EVERYTHING about me and is still there…He hasn’t turned His back on me…and that amazes me every moment of every day! So why is it that I don’t invite God into my weight loss journey?!?! Not that God can keep me from eating cupcake after cupcake, but I know He is the only thing that can ever truly satisfy…so instead of food maybe I need to learn to turn to him…with not just my life but my emotions (as if the two are truly separate).
Anyway…I guess this is more of a “sort things out in my own mind” kind of blog….but it’s reality….. These are the things I struggle with…day in and day out….without ever really talking about it. Time to open up ….open up the possibility that things can and will be different!
Jess
I enjoyed reading your article and learned a few things about myself. My goals for 2010 is to better understand my emotional eating triggers and deal with them. To help my sort them out, I picked up a book called "Obesity Free Forever-Losing Weight from the Inside Out" as I could relate to"...the inside out" part. It has really helped me to sort things out.
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