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Eating Works
12/10/07
The Emotional and Psychological Side of Weight Control
By Colleen Laing
My husband and I argue—I eat.
I'm drained from others' demands on me—I eat.
I feel slighted, left out, my feelings get hurt—I eat.
I'm tired, need energy—I eat.
Dinner doesn't turn out, a work project goes less than perfectly, abrasive people get under my skin, you got it—I eat.
I eat to calm myself, stop feeling upset, escape, and make hurt feelings go away.
There are two problems with eating to anesthetize my feelings. First, it's fattening. Second, it works all too well. So well, in fact, that I forget the hurt rather than look underneath it to discover why things get to me.
Sure, there are lots of ways people calm themselves. Some people are secure; they're hard to upset. Others have lots of strategies and coping skills. Heck, some people even do healthy things like work out when they're in turmoil.
But learning new behaviors is HARD! And calming myself without anesthetizing my feelings is painful. I have to sit with the hurt, experience it, mull it over, make friends with it. And who wants friends like that?
I like the big fuzzy hug of oblivion. The familiar insensate satisfaction of being over-full. The droning buzz of tryptophan like a river of warm milk carrying me away from emotional pain.
Food is the easy out. Not only can I interrupt whatever unpleasant feeling I'm having, I can also reinforce my beliefs that I'm weak, hopeless, and lacking self-control. How could I possibly be accountable emotionally if I can't even resist a stale brownie or leftover Cinnabon?
I could journal, meditate, or get psychotherapy I suppose. According to Dr. Daniel Siegel (author, speaker, and neuropsychobiologist), these are the activities that heal hurts, integrate personalities, and move a person along in their emotional development. I could take a deeper look at my feelings. Or, I could eat a bunch of chocolate, watch TV, momentarily feel better (until I feel guilty or get hurt again, whichever comes first), and tackle that beast another day.
If overeating weren't fattening, I would likely never consider learning new behaviors. Even desperate to lose weight, I am having a hard time substituting something that might soothe me less for overeating. Something that would calm me a little but not anesthetize me so thoroughly that I don't try to find out why I'm upset to make it less overwhelming the next time.
OK, feelings, just shuddup and hand me the chocolate bar already, wouldya?
Colleen Laing is a Seattle-based freelance writer and principal in Laing Communications, producing writing solutions for Northwest public, nonprofit, and education agencies. Ms. Laing’s work has appeared in Seattle Magazine, ParentMap and Multilingual Family, and she is an invited reader blogger for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
