It all started because I was curious about hunger. Everyone was so afraid of hunger, afraid of awakening their hunger, offsetting their hunger with healthy snacks, just a general fear of being hungry. I knew I was eating all the time but I didn't know what hunger was. So I set out to feel my physical hunger and from that I was able to separate all my emotions from hunger. I put a little trust in my body to know what it needed and it has rewarded me with so much more than I've given it. It's only been 4 months of IE but I think I can go as far as to say that IE is curing my ED and pulling me out of a very long depression for which I've been advised to take medication several times in the past (never did though).
This is so interesting to me, because I am afraid of hunger. If I get hungry I almost always over eat. I eat fatty foods and calorie laden foods, and I eat a lot of it.
Also that whole thing about ordering a large pizza and then eating all while watching tv. I have done that. I have looked forward to doing that. Why would that even be an option to me...and yet, I can say I have made plans to zone out with excitement.
This is so interesting to me, because I am afraid of hunger. If I get hungry I almost always over eat. I eat fatty foods and calorie laden foods, and I eat a lot of it.
Also that whole thing about ordering a large pizza and then eating all while watching tv. I have done that. I have looked forward to doing that. Why would that even be an option to me...and yet, I can say I have made plans to zone out with excitement.
Zoning out with food can be pleasurable. It can also take out mind off what's really bothering us. It's even ok to do this on occasion. But for some of us this is a daily habit. That means eating alone and distracted has become anyway to cope with our anxieties and that's a pretty crappy way to live IMO. Ivendone the same thing - ordered the big pizza and the wings, are them in a stupor and then threw out the evidence in the neighbor's trash so OH wouldn't know.
Is boredom a form of emotional eating? I get so bored with doing the same menial, never ending chores and tasks...the next thing I know I'm taking a swig of juice, or stealing small pieces of cheese..and not even counting them toward my food intake....
Is boredom a form of emotional eating? I get so bored with doing the same menial, never ending chores and tasks...the next thing I know I'm taking a swig of juice, or stealing small pieces of cheese..and not even counting them toward my food intake....
Boredom is an emotion, so yes I classify it as emotional eating. Furthermore, any eating that is done in the absence of real hunger is over eating. If you're really hungry and you specifically want carrot cake then you're entitled to eat it. But if you're not hungry and you eat a carrot stick just because you're bored or it's "snack time" then you are overeating.
Sooo....reading all of this, I wonder if the terminology is all wrong. Rather than calling compulsive overeating "emotional eating," we really should be calling it "unemotional eating."
It is, after all, a way to deny your present experience. It's a way to tune out. That's antithetical to emotion! So, not only do you tune out the experience of emotions such as anger, stress, boredom, fear - but you also tune out all other experience. When you drop out, you also drop out of social interaction, pleasant sensations (i.e., tasting your food, enjoying the textures, etc), and even excited feelings (which I have found in my life to be overwhelming because for some reason joy is often disallowed).
When I eat to distract myself - I'm dropping out of reality and entering a "NO" zone...a place of non-existence. Of non-emotion. Of non-feeling. But, you can't not feel just one faction of your experience. When you want to eliminate one faction, you basically eliminate all, even the "positives."
So I wonder if the antidote, to put it more clearly - is to "engage" as much as possible. Engagement may just wake up that part of the brain that is otherwise looking for it in the form of a "fix".
Mazzy you are so right. It is unemotional. I also think that emotional eating or unemotional eating (however you eat to think of it) gets a bum wrap. It can be a distraction and often that can be exactly what's necessary. The problem arises hen the ONLY coping mechanism we have is to eat and eat and eat.
What an interesting article! I have to agree with her with the whole forbidden fruit thing. I try to see emotional eating as just generally being out of balance.
Just recently, I cut out refined sugar entirely out of my diet which worked well for about two months. Then one day I ate two kit kats and felt so satisfied. Part of me was mad and ashamed but I have to admit that the pleasure and satisfaction won me over.
I'm realising slowly that I just have to find balance. It's a hard thing to do because I still want to restrict certain foods that just don't do anything for me (kit kats, I'm looking at you). However, I don't think I'll turn down a nice crème brûlée anymore just because I don't feel it's healthy to keep food I take pleasure in eating away from me.
Oh and I think she has a point with healthy eating as being a form of emotional eating. The reward after a clean day is amazing. But sometimes it just doesn't beat a kit kat.
