Are you an emotional eater? How to stop manipulating food

“Change happens when you understand that you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own best interest.  When you begin to inhabit your body from the inside, … any other option except taking care of it is unthinkable.”    ~ Geneen Roth, Women Food and God p. 121

Friends, I’ve finally gotten to that place.  I want to take care of my body, love it unconditionally, and give it what it needs to best do its job.

Why do we reach for food when we are not hungry for food? We are craving something, looking for a connection that we can’t seem to find.  Something is missing and we are filling the gap with food (or alcohol, or gambling, or just fill in another obsession here).

I read two very powerful books in December that I’m still thinking about.  I may need to read them again a second time, which should tell you something because one of my mottos is, “so many books; so little time” and I just don’t do that!

I’ve written here about what an amazing book The Untethered Soul is, but I haven’t yet told you about Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth.  Interestingly, both books touch on our need to fill an inner emptiness with food.  Singer suggests seeing what happens when you don’t reach for food and you just sit with the feeling without stuffing it away:

“We are constantly trying to hold it all together.  If you really want to see why you do things, then don’t do them and see what happens… There’s a reason for everything we do.  If you want to see why you care so much about what you wear and what your hair is like, then just don’t do it one day.  Wake up in the morning and go somewhere disheveled with your hair a mess, and see what happens to the energies inside of you.  See what happens to you when you don’t do the things that make you comfortable.  What you’ll see is why you’re doing them… You are constantly trying to stay within your comfort zone.” from The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer

Interesting, right? I read Women Food and God because Liv Lane recommended it, and because she mentioned that Oprah swears by it.  Since I trust both of them, and since I have been mindlessly munching a lot lately, I wanted to see what Roth had to say about emotional eating.  She is gentle as a guide in explaining how we turn to food when we don’t understand ourselves as well as we could.  We can learn to listen to our bodies and therefore stop manipulating food.

“The most challenging part of any system that addresses weight-related issues is that unless it also addresses the part of you that wants something you can’t name, … it won’t work… Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name.”

Woah! This is good stuff, right? As much as I have been wanting to lose the pounds I’ve lately added, I didn’t have any idea what the real issue at hand actually was.  Since I have been eating up spiritual books as if they were chocolate, I’m finally coming around to an awakening.

“The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat when you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, trapping with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection.  Food is only the middleman, the means to an end.  Of altering your emotions.  Of making yourself numb.  Of creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable.” p. 52

“Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away.  When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop.  When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.” p. 80

For me, this turns any judgmental thought into one of compassion and love when I see someone who is overweight.  Turning that compassion toward myself was much harder though.  I knew I could do it if I chose to.  I just didn’t want to.  Then I read this:

“Freedom from obsession is not about something you do; it’s about knowing who you are.  It’s about recognizing what sustains you and what exhausts you.  What you love and what you think you love because you believe you can’t have it.” p. 163

“The writer Natalie Goldberg says that we are always practicing something and most of us practice suffering.  Why not practice ending your suffering instead of perpetuating it? Since you are eating anyway, moving around in your body anyway, being aware of something anyway, why not spend that time waking yourself up instead of deadening yourself? Is there anything better to do with a life?” p. 197

“Food has a direct effect on our appetite and willingness to inquire, to discern what is true, to do the work of returning ourselves to what we love.  Food — as matter turned to spirit — is the direct connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what we put in our mouths and what we feel in our hearts.  Passion, strength, joy cannot take root in exhausted, burdened, half-dead bodies.” p. 177

Well I want passion, strength, and joy!

The similarity in the two books is that they both talk about observing the mind, quieting it, and finding a stillness there that is the real you.  “You begin to love that which is not caught up in the hysteria.  Love the stillness.  Love the spaciousness.  Love the peace… you were so caught up in your mind that you didn’t realize there was anything else there.” p. 112

I know that my life is one giant blessing and that I am living it for some divine purpose.  In order to best carry that out, whatever it may be, I need to be physically lighter.  I need to be able to run up and down a hill with my daughter, laughing all the way.  I need to stop the joint aches that I  know are caused by extra weight.  Bottom line, this simply is not the best I can be.  Now I see that.  And, like Geneen Roth writes, why wouldn’t I want what’s best for myself?

“Of this I am certain: something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are… And it feels like relief.  It feels like infinite goodness.  Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every heart-stopping beauty, every haunting melody you’ve ever heard.  It feels like the essence of tenderness, compassion, joy, peace.  Like love itself.  And in the moment you feel it you recognize that you are it and that you’ve been here all along, waiting for your return.” p. 74

Yes.  My return.  Here is the true Naomi emerging once more.