Getting over Overeating

I wanted more than anything to have a ‘normal’ relationship with food—meaning I wanted to stop obsessing about what I would eat next, or how bad I felt about what I had just eaten. More than anything, that’s what it felt like, as though I would give my right arm, as they say, to breakup with thinking about food, my body, what people thought of what I ate, why they got to eat and be thin, or what I weighed that morning.

When I was consciously thinking about changing my relationship to food I knew it was over, I wasn’t going back to food again. No longer would I eat food off the plates as I cleared them, never again would I be caught with my mouth full when someone walked into the kitchen, no more stops on the way home after the party to pick up Oreos. It was over.

That’s when I was conscious, but when we’re in the heat of overeating we’re not conscious, we’re distracted, numbed out, we’re momentarily disconnected from reality. That’s what we do in order to keep eating mindlessly.

You may think I’m crazy for saying this but it’s actually a form of self care. It’s what you know how to do to cope when you have a breakup with a real person, a fight with someone close, a missed deadline, an unopened bill, the unresolved past. No one taught us how to deal with the big emotions that happen in life so we find our way. Some people smoke, isolate, meditate, exercise, drink, and then there are those of us that eat. We eat and then feel guilt, shame, remorse, or maybe physically sick, which is better than feeling alone, helpless, overwhelmed, broke, you get the picture.

You’ve built the habit over a lifetime, probably without even realizing it, so be patient along the way, breaking up is hard to do—it takes patience, conscious effort and repetition to break the habit of using food as your coping technique.

Emotional triggers are part of life, no one lives without them, they are part of what make us human. When we overeat in response to a situation or emotion we are putting distance between our consciousness and the trigger. When we beat ourselves up for overeating we create more distance.

The call to food (when you’re not hungry) is a call for help from within, learning to listen and be present to that call is part of becoming an Intuitive Eater.

Aside from the ‘work’ of learning new ways to cope with stress it’s hard to break up with overeating because on some level you like it—you don’t want to not eat pizza, or ice cream or whatever your food is. I mean given the choice between processing a painful emotion and eating a burger it’s obvious which one seems more pleasurable. But when you finish the burger (and the fries, and the fries from your friends’ plate, and dessert) the emotion that triggered you is still inside calling out for your attention only you’re too distracted by the guilt and shame of eating to listen.

Intuitive Eating is about learning how to listen and answer the call from within—without food. Click here to learn more about my program What Are You Hungry For?