First, "The Far Reach of Fast Food", by Hara Estroff Marano (October, 2010), describes how we're affected by the very the existence of fast food in our world. For, studies are revealing that even if you don't eat it, the constant surround of fast food-the signs, the advertising--lead to rushing, stress, impatience, and impulsive decision-making. This increased pressure pervades our culture and has us gobbling not just unhealthy food, but other types of experience as well.
In this scenario, we're not stopping to think or take perspective, much less attend to our emotions. And here's where a line from another October PT article, Stanton Peele's "Blinded by Chemistry", relates. Peele argues that the scientific focus on various addictions' biochemistry obscures a key fact: that addiction is foremost a "search for emotional satisfaction-for a sense of security, a sense of being loved, even a sense of control over life." Which is all very hard to attain when rushed, stressed, impatient, and impulse-prone.
Tuning into one's emotional life occurs in some way, always, when settling into a healthier way of eating, supporting a good weight. In certain cases, the "slowing down" aspect stands out particularly clearly, however. Take Jana. She'd worked for several years in a business requiring constant motion-meetings, supervising people and projects for ten or more hours a day. She made a lot of money. People envied that. She felt proud of her abilities. But she became more and more distressed. There was never time for her, or for her family. She couldn't budge the 70 pounds she'd accumulated.
Finally, she made a radical decision. She left her job for a much less stressful part-time one. Her partner worked more to make up some difference, plus she had some savings. She knows she was fortunate to have the option of taking this "breather" in the form of a year off.
"A lot of family issues I'd been ignoring came to a head, but we got through them," she says. She took extra time for her kids, for the gym, for yoga, for cooking good meals. She lost all of the weight and has kept it off a year beyond, even with a move back to full-time work. "It took that break for me to learn about balance, and to figure out what I really needed. I'll never ignore myself in that way again."
Not everyone, of course, has the ability to leave a stressful job or slow down for a whole year. But the slowing down to care for personal well-being can occur in less dramatic ways that still help. In Tim's case, for instance, this meant attending meditation class. He'd drastically reduced his drinking, then found his compulsive eating on the rise, along with his weight. He started to visit a class with a friend. He found the meditation helped him notice and cope with feelings he'd experienced before as restlessness, vague pulls toward grazing, drinks, going out-doing something. Now he rides those out more easily. He finds it difficult to practice the meditation on his own, but the class structure works for him, and he's been sticking with it.
Finding that way of "checking in" with oneself can be challenging. In a life that's busy in ways hard to change, Lorrie juggles kids, carpooling, work, dog-walking, and more. She doesn't see a way of settling all this down for at least a couple of years. She's added a small antidote. She walks to work now, which in the past would have seemed like a daily wasted hour. She takes 10 minutes to meditate each morning before she leaves, too, no matter what. "I want to get back that sense of being able to ground myself," she says, which had gotten lost in the compulsory bustle. She believes it will help her scale back on snacking, and feel less stressed generally.
So a conscious slowing down can be a dramatic or a small step. Awareness of the pull to rush past our experience starts the process. Then comes a commitment to slow down and check in with ourselves, however and wherever we can manage that in our lives. Maybe just noticing the pull and strain is all you can do at first. Or purposely eating more slowly, perhaps. Maybe a bigger step involving a class or some therapy or a vow to eat dinners at home will seem right. Then the possibility of caring for yourself, and feeding yourself, in tune with your needs can begin. The search for emotional satisfaction may not lead as automatically to the drive-through anymore.
