cynosure

Cookie Monster is addicted to carbs.

This post addresses negative body image as a result of emotional eating, and the effects of using any other activity, addiction or compulsion to try to escape ourselves and our feelings– drinking, smoking, the computer, video games, even compulsive exercising.

I write based on my own experience and observations, which may or may not coincide with your situation. But if they do, I hope it helps you in any way.

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Regardless of what I ate yesterday or a year ago, and regardless of what my body looks like today, when I make healthy choices, when I’m “being healthy”, when I’m eating only when I’m hungry and stopping when I am satisfied– I feel wonderful, I feel alive.

When do I feel negative about myself, about my body image? When I eat something or sometime even though I know it’ll make me feel bad, or sick, or worst of all, disappointed with myself. When I feel too full and bloated because I knew I ate more than my body needed at that moment, and when I continue to make choices that are unhealthy.

More and more I realize that in the end, it’s not about how much I weigh or what I look like or even if I gained enough for there to be two of me that affects my mood.

It’s not because I don’t love and cherish my body that I feel negatively when I eat to the point of sickness. It’s because I know binging and overeating is a way of self-abuse, of not giving myself the respect I know I deserve.

(However, I know I’m not perfect, and even though I’ve recovered from my eating disorder, there are still moments that I will not eat “perfectly”, that I will binge. The most important thing to do in that time is to forgive myself, and realize that instead of being distraught that I still do it occasionally despite recovering, know that it might be a sign from my body or heart that I need to be paying more attention, taking more care, and really finding out what I’m feeling and how to feel better constructively.)

The irony is that oftentimes it’s hard to love our bodies when we have negative body image, but the solution to solving negative body image is loving ourselves. By loving ourselves, we begin taking care of ourselves and our health– which means instead of binging or overeating, we will naturally begin to gravitate towards healthier choices and have a healthier body image.

Emotional eating or binging has nothing to do with willpower or self-control. When you are stressed or bored, it’s not because of lack of willpower that you might reach for food to comfort you– it’s because gosh darn it you’re having a hard time, and the only thing you can think of right now that’ll calm you is a great heaping portion of your food of choice.

For me, I’ve worked out that I reach for food as comfort because when I am truly hungry, eating fills what is otherwise empty. Eating is a way to “fill” myself, for me to feel fulfilled.

But we can fulfill ourselves, we can deal with our stress, boredom, sadness, depression, and any other emotion– including happiness– much more constructively. And much more healthily.

We can make a list of things we enjoy that doesn’t involve eating. Taking a walk, for instance. Treating ourselves in other ways, such as taking time every day just to relax, read, watch a movie, enjoy a bath, wind down or simply not do anything and be silent in the present moment. Slow, mindful breathing. Meditation. Talking to a friend. What about? Just about anything. Write out our emotions when we feel them, instead of eating them.

Because eating our feelings (or getting drunk or smoking or anything else to try to feel differently) won’t make them go away. On the contrary, by eating them we make them a part of us. But instead of a part that we can eventually get over and let go, after crying or being absolutely antsy or realizing how we really feel, we push it down, we make our feelings collapse under the weight of unhealthy choices, and we think we’ve exterminated them when instead we’ve ignored ourselves when we needed to be there the most.

And then as more and more of our feelings get buried under whatever we stuff ourselves with, they will band together, and they will revolt against us for ignoring them in their time of need.

If we don’t let ourselves feel our feelings, they will never go away. And we become numb, anesthetized things, not vibrant and feeling human beings.

Anesthetic only numbs the pain temporarily. It does not destroy it. Anesthetic is a temporary “solution”, and the pain returns later, tenfold as a result of trying not to feel it earlier.

Going numb is not fun. It doesn’t solve any problems and it does not make pain go away. It is a way of coping, but it is also a way of running away from ourselves, from our heart that so desperately wishes to be heard and taken care of.

The only real answer is to let ourselves feel what we feel, regardless of how painful (or even not painful) it might be. To let ourselves feel until, slowly, we naturally heal from having gone through the course of our emotions.

And then we can perhaps feel something else as a result of taking care of ourselves and continually loving ourselves– subtle and quiet, only found within ourselves. Not within anything or anyone else. Not within materialism or appearances or the superficial.

What is that feeling, that state, that journey?

You already know.

“Happiness comes from within your heart, not from your surroundings.”

Or your food, or your weight, or your body type, or validation from others.

In a dramatic, announcer-worthy voice:
Next time(s), on cynosure: The weighty issues of weight.
Losing weight won’t “make you happy” either.
(In fact, nothing can make you truly happy except yourself. But you know that already.)

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tags: addiction and escape, emotional eating

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 15:46 and is filed under article, body image, food and eating, loving yourself. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.