Food and Emotion

I have had the worst food week and have been plagued with self doubt for the last two days about whether or not I’m backsliding and if so, why? And can I stop it? I was feeling so good two weeks ago when I hit the 20 pounds lost mark and was so motivated last week. I came home after the gym everyday and fixed us both a healthy breakfast and then for dinner we munched on salad and veggies and low-fat meats, not even ordering our usualy Thursday night pizza.

And then, like turning off a faucet, all of my enthusiasm is gone and has been replaced by an overwhelming need to eat and drink everything I can lay my hands on.

I’ll confess to being a little down about work lately. A co-worker of mine said the other day, “you know what they say about depression don’t you? It’s just anger without enthusiasm.” And I think that at least in terms of how I’m feeling right now, that’s a pretty accurate statement.

And so I guess I’m doing that thing that us fat folk do when the shit starts to hit the fan or the emotional stress builds up. I’m eating it. Eating it in big greasy spoonfuls.

This is the kind of entry that will most likely set my mother off into a spin of worry and will generate e-mails and phone calls about my mental state. Fear not, I am in no danger of having a psychotic break or anything.

I don’t do a lot of introspection when it comes to my eating habits. I don’t examine every food choice I make in emotional terms. I don’t really think of myself as an emotional eater, and yet this week I don’t think I can explain my choices in any other terms. Part of this fitness process has involved making healthy choices about food. The thing where you ask yourself, “is this food helping or hurting me?” If the answer is hurting, then you have to ask yourself, “then why am I eating it?”

Occasionally, “because I want to” is an okay answer to that question. But sometimes, in a week like this for instance, the answer is more complicated and more painful. The answer this week seems to be that despite all of my hard physical work and the shift I’ve been making in my eating habits, food is still a source of comfort to me when I’m having a week like this. Erin just wrote a great blog about this over at Lose the Buddha. She says:

“So much of our identity as people who either are or who have been overweight is tangled up within our relationship with food. We know it’s not healthy — please don’t ever try and tell a Fat Chick that she needs to find something else to use as a tool for dealing with her emotions, as she may stab you. I’ll give her the fork.”

I’ve got other outlets. The gym is a great source of stress relief for me, as is music and reading and talking with friends. And I’m doing all of those things. The killer here for me is that eating healthy and staying focused on good choices, planning meals, shopping, cooking, etc.–all of these things require enthusiasm. My funk is such that the enthusiasm is gone at the moment.

And let me just note here for the record that for me this week’s eating has involved choosing fast food over a salad, eating fried things at the mexican buffet instead of the grilled chicken, ordering pizza last night and using the garlic dipping sauce. I’m not sitting at home in the dark hovering over a quart of ice cream or an entire pie.

And yet while I sit here and defend myself against charges like that I realize again the amount of shame and embarrassment that a person’s relationship with food can engender. That any of you might carry away a vision of me as “THAT fat chick” from reading this entry causes me to jump all over the place clarifying myself. And that, in and of itself, is a problem. I’m doing the same thing THAT person does for the same reasons, but hey! In my case “it’s not as bad!” Bullshit.

So while I don’t think I’m seriously in danger of blowing this whole diet thing off and going back to my old slovenly ways, I think it was worth a little time spent evaluating what’s going on in my head right now and figuring out ways to solve the problems that are bugging me at work so that I can get over my anger without enthusiasm. I need that enthusiasm in the gym and in my kitchen.