Emotional Eating
Response to the article “Are you carrying emotional fat” by Helen Foster in
issue 37 of "Grazia" magazine
I’ve read recently an article in your magazine in which I
am quoted saying “If you spend all you time worrying what is wrong with your
body, you do not have time to worry what’s wrong with your relationship”. It is
not exactly what I said, and the whole article is not necessary where I would
like to be quoted. The article narrows emotional eating to the emotions arising
in relationships. This is a bit dangerous approach, because it again swaps under
the carpet the real issues and reasons for emotional eating.
Emotional eating (or comfort eating), or e-fat as Helen
calls it is caused by any emotions and feelings which are difficult to face. It
does not necessary apply to the emotions caused by relationship. In fact, very
often emotions and difficulties in relationships are secondary issues and they
have deeper roots. There are lots of emotions which could be the source of
emotional eating. Most common are feeling lonely, feeling not good enough,
guilt, anger, frustration, being overstressed at work, all kinds of anxiety,
insecurity and fears, especially fear of death with all its forms, like
obsession about health, somebody in the family very ill. The other very common
fear is fear of rejection. We usually carry these fears as traits of our
personality from childhood or from teenage years, but they can form at any time,
especially when we are exposed to some traumatic events.
And yes, it is easier to worry about the body, be obsessed
with food and dieting, and keep going through the cycles of stuffing ourselves
quickly with food to feel the temporary relief, and then discomfort of being too
full and guilt of eating too much. It keeps us occupied and protects us from
other emotions and fears, which seem too difficult not only to deal with, but
even to acknowledge. This is the natural defence mechanism; some people overeat
to cope and others cope differently, they may drink, smoke, they can even slip
into physical illness. Our culture is very focused on the body, on looking slim
so it favours the obsession with dieting and eating. The vicious cycle forms; we
could start eating emotionally because we felt not good enough, but now we feel
even worse because we do not look good.
I’ve been helping hundreds of people with emotional eating
issues, and not two cases were the same. Troubled relationship could be the
reason of emotional eating, especially when the partner is violent, abusive or
jealous. But very often the causes are deeper; it is our insecurity and fears we
carry within ourselves. In relationship we became vulnerable, emotional intimacy
is difficult. When we do not feel good enough, then what if other person finds
out that we are not that good? If we do not love ourselves, then how can we
trust that our partner loves us? Sometimes it seems that the fear of real love
is the deepest fear ever, it is almost like fear of death, because with the real
love “me” and “you” disappears and becomes “us”. And funny thing, it seems to be
culture too, because we are even afraid of the word “love”, we say
“relationship” instead…
Emotional eating can be caused by troubles in relationship,
and it can be caused by the troubles with physical intimacy. It can be also the
other way; troubles in intimacy are caused by the emotional eating, obsession
with body and look, because when we hate our body, how we can enjoy sex? If we
are feeling insecure, if we are obsessed with the need of having perfect body,
we feel exposed during physical intimacy, and anything partner does or says is
very easily interpreted as forms of rejection. We also tend to ignore our
partners when they say compliments, because we do not believe them. Vicious
cycle again.
When we leave the relationship, all those insecurities
shift. Sometimes. And sometimes could be the opposite. We may be feeling lonely
and eat to overcome the lonely, worthless feeling. It could be grief over lost
love, we feel lost and worthless, and we eat to compensate. And sometimes we are
furious for being used and dumped, so there is even more eating. There is
nothing wrong with leaving the relationship when it does not work. When there is
violence or abuse it is really empowering to leave. But do we need to close our
heart forever?
The point is that emotional eating is the eating caused
by difficult emotions from all sorts of situations. To deal with emotional
eating we need to have the courage to face those emotions and to solve them, and
it means mostly to change the way we perceive ourselves and others. We cannot
change the facts, we cannot change others, but we can change the way we
interpret them and react to them, and this is the real freedom. This way we do
not need to run away form the situations, including relationships. We have one
mind, one body and one life, to enjoy and to be happy in every situation. It
works better when we have the courage to open our heart and to look inside.
