What is wrong with emotional eating? I like to eat! I like how food tastes! If food calms me down, well then, good for food, and good for me because I have discovered the way to keep myself from doing something like throwing my body off a bridge or taking an assault rifle on the express bus. It's not a self-destructive behavior like shopping yourself into debt or cutting or making prank phone calls until they shut off your line and arrest you, right?
Except, of course, when you emotionally eat yourself into a nutritional black hole--when you're eating nothing but candy and cheeseburgers and putting your face into a cake because you think if you try hard enough you could possibly learn to breathe frosting and a ham--how is that healthy? I don't care what the intuitive eating movement says: If you are under a big black cloud of sadness, which leads you to intuitively eat a box of Krispy Kremes for every meal from now until your next birthday, then your intuition could use an tune-up. Therefore, emotional eating, unless it involves sobbing while you bite into a crown of broccoli, is not healthy. That is my sorrowful conclusion.
More than 6 out of 10 women are disordered eaters. Are you at risk?
It is also the easiest and most unstoppable of my automatic behaviors. It doesn't even matter what the emotion is, frankly. I eat when I'm terribly sad, terribly stressed, terribly tired, terribly happy, wonderfully excited about the world and every little thing in it. My response is a fork, or my head in a pie if I am feeling especially in need of soothing, neutralizing, redirecting my energy in some way, sedating myself. I've realized that food, for me, is a distraction. I think about food, I work to procure food, I sit and concentrate on funneling food into my body and then I don't have to think about anything else or worry about anything at all. I've already got so much going on, here, with my face and the shoveling. It's like the hunter-gatherer survivalist laser-focus kicked into high gear. Eat or die! There's no room for anything else. (How to relieve stress without heading to the fridge.)
I want there to be room for more things. I want to not be vibrating from the sugar high, feeling sick from the grease, groaning because I have stuffed myself to my pain threshold. But I also want to figure out a way to deal with my emotions, to not be overwhelmed by the necessity of them, to not find it difficult to function and experience uncomfortableness or sorrow all at the same time. Is there a cure? The Internet says that there are lots of cures. The internet wants to reach out its cyberhands and fold me into its warm digital bosoms and whisper soothing 0101010s into my ear.
There are lots of reasonable, rational-sounding ways to overcome emotional eating (the Mayo Clinic's steps seem particularly reasonable, and I believe everything I read on WikiHow), but I want a magic cure with little to no effort. I want a poof and a bang. I want to be healed and whole immediately and forever right this second, please. I want The Sweet Ayurveda Treatment to Stop Emotional Eating. The Sweet Ayurveda Treatment to Stop Emotional Eating consists of the following:
- Lie on your back with arms straight out to the sides (like you are on a cross).
- Now close your eyes, gently raise your left arm and bring your left palm toward your face. Then gently kiss the center of your left palm and whisper "I Love You" to yourself.
- Now lower your left arm and bring your right arm up and kiss the center of your right palm, again whispering "I Love You" to yourself.
- Continue for about 5 minutes.
- To end, inhale deeply, hold your breath and visualize your body exactly as you want it to be, slim and trim, then get up with a smile feeling good about yourself.
I wanted to try it. I did. I even laid down with arm straight out, like I am on a cross. I stared up at the ceiling. I realized that if I actually lifted my hand up, pressed my lips against my palm and gently whispered "I Love You," I would never, ever be able to look at myself in the mirror, ever again. Even if it cured cancer, stuttering and foot-in-mouth disease, I would not be able to bring myself to do it. Because, just, no. No. I got up and made myself a sandwich. I'll try that Mayo Clinic thing tomorrow.
Related: Gain time and lose a pound or two with this easy week's worth of tasty, low-calorie meals.
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