Lynn, a 45-year-old teacher, had always struggled with weight. She'd kept it off for years at a time, though. She knew what worked for her body. She even liked doing it. A psychologically savvy person, she'd identified a distinct pattern to her ups and downs over two decades. When she had a boyfriend, she put on weight. When she was single, she kept it off. She spent a lot time trying to figure out how this worked. It wasn't about caring less, looking good for dates, and then stopping trying. She felt sure of that. She didn't have kids, so she couldn't blame pregnancies. She didn't think she ate out any more or less when coupled.
"I figured it had to do with intimacy, you know, with needing to not get too close," Lynn recalls. Though this insight, and consciously working toward better intimacy with her partner, didn't seem to change much. She'd do well for a few weeks, then find herself eating indiscriminately, sometimes with no apparent trigger. "I'd just stop paying attention. I wouldn't even know things were changing, but there I'd be, loading up on sugar, hitting the machines at work."
A whole new door opened when she and her partner began to revamp their diets together. This seemed like a great idea. But that's when Lynn noticed how defensive she was of certain ways, how much she didn't want anyone else interfering or "helping" her stop certain complained-about habits. "And then I finally started to realize that this wasn't so much about my relationship at all. I'd hid out with my food stash since I was a kid." She meant that, growing up with an alcoholic parent and an angry, rebellious sister, she spent a lot of time eating goodies by herself. She enjoyed this-she'd look forward to starting in on the Cheetos, to walking to the store for candy bars.
It's not that she'd never known about these early habits. It's just that she'd never realized how thoroughly connected they were to her inner emotional balance. What she figured out in therapy was that being in a relationship stirred emotions first felt in her stressful early family life. Living alone, she didn't feel the same anxious undercurrents: will things stay peaceful? Will anyone get angry? Am I doing anything wrong? So she didn't need her own private comfort zone-eating salty, sweet, crunchy, and lots of it.
Using food as a balm in this way is what many people mean when they report "self-medicating" with food, or being food addicts. Today's food supply in fact contains ingredients engineered to trigger our appetites. So, many of us have to watch the pull toward more and more. But some, like Lynn, find it hard to leave these foods alone even after stretches of easier healthier eating. They return to them as a way to induce certain feeling states, or to avoid certain feeling states. They overdo even when the consequences are uncomfortable. And they take care to "protect their stash", as Lynn found herself doing.
This all sure sounds like addiction. And groups like Overeaters Anonymous or Food Addicts Anonymous do help many stop their harmful overeating. As countless clients remind me, though: "You can quit alcohol altogether, but with food, you have to keep eating." For this reason, many find changing eating patterns hardest of all. And many find 12-step philosophies hard to relate to their eating. In fact, while these models can help, they just don't fit for everyone.
For Lynn, working to stay more conscious helped. Returning to keeping a food log, and treating a skipped day as a warning signal helped her start to ask "What's going on?" before turning to food. Some can learn to eat their binge or "stuffing" foods (the Cheetos, candy bars) in smaller, manageable quantities as they learn to cope more effectively with emotional discomfort. Lynn is not alone, though, in finding that some foods, often sweets, remain problematic. For her, managing her eating and her weight has meant no sweets, even if that occasionally leads to feeling deprived or left out of the fun. "It's just too easy to keep it up once I start," she says.
When overeating functions as emotional regulator it puts health and self-esteem at risk. Labeling it as addiction can help keep you cognizant of the role that overeating plays and can direct your attention to how and how not to eat. With or without the label, though, your challenge is the same. You've got to see and then stay more aware of how the overeating modulates your emotions. And you've got to learn new ways of caring for your emotional self that free you to leave the binge foods alone. Challenging, yes, but with the potential for a new freedom and peace of mind.
