Emotional Eating

What do you lack in your life? What do you not have control over? Lack -- or perceived lack -- often drives our food choices. This comes in two flavors (tee hee) the types and quantities of food we choose.

Some people who crave love tend to overeat sweets. The sugar high and/or some of the chemicals in chocolate can mimic what happens in our body, physiologically, from joy.

Some people who crave control tend to overeat salt. Salt has the same geometrical properties as sunlight, which controls all life. Our blood and every cell in our body relies on a proper balance of salt. If that isn't power, I don't know what is! And remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely, so it's not about having all the power (or none), it's about having an appropriate amount of control over appropriate issues.

Some people who crave control tend to starve themselves. If they can't have control over people and situations, well controlling what they eat is something over which they usually do have control.

Most of us have a memory - real or imagined - about a perfect relationship. It might have been with a person or a pet or a make believe friend or a blanket or a stuffed animal. This perfect relationship no longer exists but the memory breeds desire to have that again. And the desire breeds action. However, we have the responsibility to choose which action might bring us closer to what will fulfill our desire in a healthy, lasting manner. Instead, what usually happens is that we feel loneliness or out of control (or we might feel anxiety , depression or anger if we can't yet name control as the underlying issue) and then try to fill that lack with candy, cake, chips or our favorite snack. Then, we may focus on the food or on the guilt or shame we feel for eating the snack or knowing that we're doing something that will make us fatter or unhealthy.

If we had a healthy process for feeling our emotions and letting them flow, then we would experience our loneliness without indulging in self-destructive eating. Since we don't have that process now we have multiple problems because there are feelings of loneliness to process AND feelings of guilt or shame. Most people who can't process feelings simply never learned the differences between thoughts and feelings and were taught to live in the world of thoughts. They detach more and more from feelings and buy more and more into thoughts. They buy into everyone's thoughts and internalize thoughts which resonate for them - which are the messages of guilt and shame.

This month, as you reach for snacks, begin to notice which snacks you reach for and what you are feeling. See if you can identify what you might be telling yourself about lack in your life. Notice if that message is true or not. Notice if it might be someone else's judgment.

In the end, we usually need to give ourselves love and appropriate control. We can control our actions and our thoughts and our responses to situations. That's it. Everything else really is beyond our control. There is tremendous freedom and a huge gain in energy when we stop trying to control everything and take proper responsibility for our own lives. There is joy and immeasurable happiness when we give ourselves love and stop looking to others to make us feel valuable.

Today...look in the mirror and know that the person looking back is the one who will love you for as long as you let her/him. This person can invest energy in situations and not bother trying to control situations which are only draining.

Fill your lack from inside yourself.