Emotional Eating Turns Food Into A Drug

My Own Personal Hell

“There’s talk and laughter all around, but all I can think about is what I’m about to eat. I’m sitting at the table, scanning the menu thoroughly. What’s the biggest thing I can find? It has to taste good. I am so anxious. I can’t stop fidgeting under the table. I have this knot just below my heart. It won’t go away. I hope my girlfriend doesn’t notice. After dinner, I want a tiramisu. I hope I don’t have to share. The only thing I don’t like about tiramisu is that it’s so small. I wish this place had banana splits. The gnocchi looks good…oh great, here’s the bread. This place has the best olive dip for their penne…
I can’t believe I finished my gnocchi so fast. I’m not hungry, but I want to keep eating. At least there’s still bread. Won’t everyone just hurry up and finish so we can order dessert?
Hendry is going on about the strife in Peru. He’s so passionate about the problems of his country. But I can’t stop staring at his plate of linguini. He’s just holding his fork, forgetting to eat as he goes on and on. How can he do that? He just came off a 6 hour shift at the homeless shelter and he’s not eating? How the hell does he do that? Oh good, Alex is full from his ravioli. I can have the rest of his plate. This will at least hold me ‘til Hendry finishes his dinner and we can order dessert. I really need to stop doing this. I know I’m full, but it’s never enough. Tonight is blown anyways, and I am having dessert. After all, it’s my birthday…”

-My thoughts on the weekend of my 22nd birthday at “Steps of Rome,” San Francisco

Food is the most commonly abused drug on the planet. Everyone living in a 1st or 2nd world country has at one time or another in their lives used food beyond the amount or type that they need to sooth themselves, numb their feelings, boost their energy temporarily, relieve boredom, and so on. No one can say the same about alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, or marijuana.
We can all eat too much. We go out for a big dinner, have a dessert with coffee at the end, and come home stuffed. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But for some of us, we more than enjoy the food. We live for it; and not in the way any good cook loves making delicious entrées. We just want to eat and eat. It’s not about hunger. There couldn’t be enough food. The food coma won’t stop you. The inability to sit up straight won’t stop you. Give me 90 minutes to clear this greatest level of discomfort in my gut, and I’ll be back for more pie. Or just give me chocolate now. Chocolate is so small, I can take that down and I won’t even feel it. I’ll take that down and maybe I won’t be a basket case for the rest of the night. Maybe now, the knot in my stomach will go away and I can figure out just what the hell I’m going to do about what happened today…

What I’m describing in myself and others like me is the classic mind set of binge eating. Binge eating is only an extreme form of something we all do everyday under different conditions. For some of us, we only deviate from our normal way of eating when we’re under stress, choosing meals larger in size and greater in starch or fat content. For others, we take after Bridgette Jones, downing a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s after a break up. Meanwhile, some of us get the munchies at night, and nothing sounds better than ice cream with onion rings to help us sleep.
Emotional eating affects us all in varying degrees. The problem is its insipidness. You can go days of eating well and exercising regularly, but one binge can set you back from all of your hard work. One binge can wreck everything you’ve done and blow your motivation to pieces.
Many fitness authors, including me, believe that everyone should have free day, or a few free meals, when you adopt the habit of eating what ever your heart’s desire, so that you do not pig out after going weeks of eating strict. But binge eaters or other people who practice extreme forms of emotional eating will often go over board with such a strategy.
Being an emotional eater is like never getting enough air. It’s like holding your breath ‘til your next meal and when you get there, you’re breathing so much you hyperventilate. Food is an addiction. You wouldn’t tell an addict to stay drug free for 6 days out of the week, and then they can have all the blow they want come Saturday.
And that’s what makes emotional eating so insipid. There aren’t enough good workouts at the gym or perfectly nutritious meals that can stop the fat gain from a once or twice a week 3,500 calorie binge. Still, food, albeit a drug for some, is a drug we can’t live without. It’s not cocaine. And abstinence is not a possibility. And you must learn to control your level of eating to the point that it does not hurt your fitness goals. For some, that may mean watching what they eat when under stress at the office. For others, it might mean dropping the 12 bottle beer binge every Friday. But look at it this way: life will offer you an almost unlimited number of practice sessions to get it right. Every deadline you have to meet, every time your friends invite you to a bar, is an opportunity to do adopt a new response to a familiar situation.
It took me 5 years to finally get a hold of my binge eating. Some people would say that’s light speed for a problem that’s been nurtured since childhood and grounded in genetic roots. But the only reason I stopped was because of my diabetes. And it wasn’t the thought of dying, going blind, or losing a leg that made me stop. It was the fact that I started to feel so fucking awful, so out of my mind tired and foggy headed, that I finally decided enough was enough. And it still didn’t happen over night. But it did give me the impetus to keep hacking away at the psychological and chemical reasons behind my addiction. In a way, I was blessed with diabetes. Imagine a cocaine addict getting kicked in the groin every time he came within 12 inches of a line of coke. He might eventually decide it wasn’t worth it.

Forget diabetes, syndrome X, hypoglycemia. Forget high cortisone, sluggish thyroid. Forget medications and menopause. Forget the perfect exercise program. Emotional eating will sabotage you like nothing else. You cannot name a greater saboteur of weight loss or motivation.

The next time you try to lose weight, ask yourself these questions:

- How do you eat differently when under stress, sad, or anxious?
- How do you eat differently when out with your friends or in a social setting?
- What foods are absolutely impossible for you to pass up?
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Now answer these questions:
- How will you eat differently when the above situations occur while trying to lose weight?
- When life throws a wrench in your weight loss plan, either by eliminating your exercise time that day or removing all healthy food choices, how will you avoid taking a huge step backward?

Whether your weight loss plan is high carb, low carb, low fat, or high protein, emotional eating, not the nutrient breakdown of your food, will be the reason if you fail. It took me six years to lose my last 15 pounds of fat because I wouldn’t face this, despite being a regular exerciser. You owe it to yourself to work on your mind before you work on your muscles.

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