Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Emotional Eating
Eating is probably our most emotionally-laden activity, especially today and especially if someone, such as mother, has done the cooking. Whether we want to or not, we feel emotionally obliged to eat.
We all need to eat but what we eat and how much we eat varies enormously. Few of us only eat when we are hungry and only what we need rather than what we want. As explained in Your Body Speaks Your Mind, Deb's award-winning book, we binge, diet, pig out, indulge, fast; we eat junk food, healthy food, only fruit, high protein, low fat, raw food, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic. We use food as a substitute for love, as a way to win love, to fulfill desire, as a means of punishment through deprivation, or as a reward through treats. In every woman's magazine there are articles on the ultimate diet, recipes for a lover's meal, how to feed hungry teenagers, the contents of a celebrity's refrigerator, and what foods will cure arthritis. In other words, food is an issue.
Perhaps this is not surprising. From the very beginning we are focused on food, crying when our stomachs are empty and being rewarded with warm milk, which is accompanied by either a breast or a bottle and, usually, the familiar soothing voice of mother. Our needs are extremely basic--we want milk, dry clothes, a warm place to sleep, lots of love, and a few friendly faces to look at. At this early stage there is little separation between food, mother and love--they all tend to come at the same time and they all do much the same thing, which is make us feel good.
As we grow older these needs do not change much, they just get bigger--we want more food, drawers full of clothes, a whole house with a big bed to sleep in, and some loved ones to have fun with. But the three basics of mother, food and love begin to get separated. Food does not always come form mother, mother does not always love, and food is given in place of love. Food remains an issue: mother cooks it and makes us feel guilty if we do not like it. We get sent to bed without food if we misbehave. Or parents are absent and we are placated with special food treats. Even worse is when we are in need of being held or loved and we get candy instead, simply reinforcing the belief that food and love are not only connected but also inter-changeable.
For instance, Deb remembers: I was at boarding school in England from the age of eight. All of us would look forward each week to getting 'tuck parcels' sent from home: boxes of chocolate and candy. Such parcels were how our parents told us that we were loved.
Later in life we use food in much the same way by giving a box of chocolates as a sign of our affection, such as on Valentine's Day, or to assuage our guilt for not having visited sooner. We binge after a relationship upset. Sweet food is a universal replacement for love, but where love is nurturing and makes us feel good, sweet food rots our teeth, makes us fat, and lowers our immunity.
Eating represents the taking in of nourishment. Our eating habits and relationship to food are indicative of our relationship to ourselves and to what extent our needs for nourishment are being met. Do we obtain nourishment through food or through love? If we feel emotionally uncared for or rejected, do we turn to food for comfort? And to what extent does our digestive system reflect this relationship?
Food Review
The easiest way to do become aware of your relationship to food is to keep a diary of: a) how you are feeling and, b) what and when you are eating.
* Do you only eat when you are hungry? Or do you eat when you think you are meant to, even if you are not hungry?
* Does what you eat depend on how you are feeling? Do you eat the same food when you are happy as when you are sad?
*Do you get cravings for certain foods at particularly emotional times or when you are around a certain person?
* Does eating make you feel emotionally fulfilled?
* Do you deny yourself food or nourishment in the same way you deny yourself emotional nourishment?
Have a Happy Holiday!
Ed and Deb Shapiro are authors of over 15 books, and lead meditation retreats and workshops. Deb is the author of the award-winning book Your Body Speaks Your Mind. They are corporate consultants, and the creators of Chillout daily inspirational text messages on Sprint cell phones. See their website: www.EdandDebShapiro.com.
Follow Ed and Deb Shapiro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/edanddebshapiro
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I recommended this article about Emotional Eating! It offers a gentle look at how food is so important to us and how emotional eating starts from childhood.
Yikes!!!! Now what do I do ???? I've been inundated with all that "stuff"...cookies...candy...cookies...candy...and more cookies and candy...help!!!!
I think I'll give some away to my neighbors!!!
Seriously, you've given us a mouthful to think about.
Great info! Thanks!
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AndiG- You can always give the cookies to me. It must be that you are such a sweet person.
Keep loving and having fun,
Ed
GIVE ME FRIED THINGS NOW!!!!
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Eating can be emotional, sure, but the floodgate is more likely to open with a diet rich in starches and sugars - cut down all the white stuff, and you will soon start noticing a change. The cravings will disappear, and you will no longer be tempted to fill up, whenever you're feeling down. Also, it's good for your health. A win-win. So simple, that I don't understand why not more people follow. Remember - anything but white flour, sugar, potatoes, bananas, white rice, white pasta. Whole grains are ok.
The American diet is so wrong. We read that the childhood Diabetes is epidemic.
Get the kids off Nintendo and Gameboy, rip there phones out of their hands to stop them from talking and texting then kick their butts outdoors to get some excercise. While your at it stop feeding them all those carbs in their meals and snacks.
O, hostility. Rip, kick? Are you so hostile to slender kids? if not, have you thought about how you allocate your hostility? It can seem so normal to use images of abuse toward the fat.
Yes, well Christmas dinner was very good, wasn't it?
Somewhere between deprivation and overindlulgence there is a sane middle ground of mindful eating - at least, that is what I have heard!!
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Lizzypie that sounds like something the Buddha would say. I guess the middle way is the best route.
Deb and my dinner was also something to remember. I may not have been that disciplined.
May the Holiday season bring you many surprises and food for thought,
Jolly be,
Ed
Wow, I think you really are opening up the proverbial "can of worms" with this subject during holiday season. Not that what you wrote is incorrect--it's totally on the mark. But now what am I supposed to do with all the cookies and candy that we have been gifted with????
Couldn't you wait until after the New Year to spring this relevation on us?
Now, excuse me while I go off to the gym so I can burn off some of those extra carbs I've put on during the last few days. Then if's off to some binge eating for me.
After January 1st, I will continue my career as a breatharian!
Lots of Humor and Blessings of Love & Light through Sound to you and all your readers!
Jonathan
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Jonathan I know what you can do -- you can give those cookies to me.
Happy Sounds, happy New Year,
Ed
Thanks, Ed and Deb! You managed to singlehandedly ruin dinner at my mother-in-law's house with this reminder of how and way we eat for the wrong reasons. If I'm not eating her atrocious cooking to:
a) be universally loved and adored (as well as seen as a martyr to acid reflux);
b) get through the meal without having to talk about what her priest said about why two men REALLY can't get married;;
c) prove that i'm a man and men can eat rodents if they have to; or
d) consume her give courses of drek as an act of repentance for the meals my almost-died-in-the-Holocaust grandfather missed on the shtetl;
then how exactly do you smarty-pantses suggest i sit through her next banquet from hell? (LOL)
Sincerely,
Bloated in Brooklyn
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Markmatousek I suggest you
a- let her know you have been a fan of her food for years (a lie is ok if you prevent suffering)
b- you can tell her you know a priest who is more liberal
c- become a breatharian, possibly a vegetarian
d- jewish guilt has never worked as it causes ulcers
Oh, you may actually enjoy suffering in that case, as Bette Davis says, enjoy your 'din din.'
Remember Life is a sweet dream hopefully not a nightmare, It's up to you! Ed
Hi, Ed and Deb,
Happy holidays.
I totally agree with you about emotional eating, but there is another thing I am reminded of as I find myself eating more and more through the month of December. We humans, like many animals, are predisposed to adding fat to keep us warm in the cold winter months. Though, most of us have warm clothes and homes to keep us warm, our ancient ancestors didn't. The more fat we carried on our bodies during the winter months, the warmer we were. If you've ever noticed it's much more difficult to maintain a low calorie low fat diet during mid-winter than it is in the spring and summer. I've found that if I let myself eat more during December, and let go of the angst around it, I am able to return to a more healthy way of eating for the new year, which is when the days begin to become longer and we see once again the promise of the end of the cold. Well, it helps me stay off my case for a month. I'm actually beginning my return to healthy eating today. Dec. 26. And I'm sticking to it!! :)
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Bwildone- Great insight. I know that in the summer I tend to crave and eat plenty of fruit, drink more smoothies and eat veggies. If we listen to our bodies then it will tell us so much.
Eat well and be well
.May you have a Happy 2009.
Ed
I was recently considering how the things we tend to obsess and overindulge in - like food, sex and drugs - are used because we are so disconnected from feeling comfortable and happy in our bodies. Perhaps the more we learn to honor the bodies needs and desires, the less we create unhealthy obsessions and addictions.
The body is always asking us to be present, at ease and in balance with life - it's worth listening to.
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yoginilizzi said like a true yogini.
I first came to yoga in the 60's when the Beatles brought the Maharishi and yoga into the awareness of so many westerners. Yoga is a great art and science of health. There is so much people can learn about their bodies.
Your comment is spot on and we all can certainly benefit if only we would listen.
In the Joy of Yoga and Health,
Yogi Ed
Another aspect of this problem is our Culture of Health.
We, more than most other cultures, are consumers ... coached from Day-1 to know that Volume is Value and Quantity is Quality. The meal you purchased at a restaurant is better if the plate is fuller; you loved the holiday meal more if you ate more; and you show your appreciation for the food by gobbling in huge bites.
Love, for us, tends to become consumption itself. More love equals more consumption. And that may be great for Tub-n-Tile cleaner purchased at Costco, but it is terrible for our weight and health problems.
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willclower- couldn't agree more
Happy New Year 2009
Ed & Deb
Dear Ed and Deb, when i was in the military years ago our group would share the "Care Packages" each would get for birthdays and Christmas - food was love from home and it didn't matter which home it seems.
A way to get kids to clean their plates in the US was to remind them of "all the starving kids in China" - although i wasn't sure how that really connected. But now, living in Asia with a Chinese daughter that line does not work as she just looks at me like i went bonkers.
May all have a prosperous 2009 - the turnaround has already started with the cleaning up being done in the highest office in the land.
Blessings
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Thisok - Funny you should say that as I grew up in the Bronx. When I was little and I won't eat my mother would say, "you must eat, people are starving in Europe." It was a long time ago when Europe seemed so far away.
I have been to India and Sri Lanka and it is heart wrenching to see poverty as vivid as I have.
Deb and I have given financial aid to Tibetan children. It is a wonderful feeling for them and us. They are so grateful.
Happy New Year,
Ed
I at an huge bag of Sun Chips because I was depressed after so many overcast days. But it had no effect.
That picture is from the booming prosperity of the 50's -I hope we can someday get back to that kind of prosperity despite neo cons hating peace and prosperity, they want 3 classes of americans: dirt poor, poor and ultra rich.
Thanks for this! It's so important! I was praised for enjoying food, and put on diets for being a chunky kid, seems like a double whammy! :-)
Have wonderful holidays!!
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Jason-me too Deb
May this day be full of wonderful surprises- Ed
Dear Ed and Deb, Happy holidays.
Wow this is so true no wonder I am always cooking it feels so good to hear people say how good the meal I made was. When I am low I cook when I want to make friends I cook. What is wrong with this picture. I guess I was told the way to the heart is through the stomach.I cant wait to make you both a meal
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yoyo22
How about tonight? oh that wouldn't be easy as we are far away. But thanks and we will take a rain check. May all those that eat your food be happy and nourished by your love and your cooking.
Thanks for your kindness,
Ed
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