Freedomain Radio

 At the moment a major goal of mine is to lose the weight I gained while depressed. One issue that I have come up against is kicking the junk food habbit. This has been fairly easy for the most part but I have found that I buy and eat total crap when I am feeling bad, and even more so as a form of self punishment, when I am angry or upset at myself for something. I am even conscious of the link but at the time I still go ahead and buy these things. It doesn't happen a huge amount but when it does it can be pretty bad, like the other day I ate a pie and chips for dinner at work rather than going for a more reasonable option.

Does anyone else have experience with bad eating habbits linked to emotional state? Or does anyone have an idea of techniques to kick this habbit?

I've found that I tend to eat badly when depressed or upset, there are ways to help prevent this impulse I think.  One is to ensure you eat often enough throughout the day, whole grain crackers like kellogg's bran crackers or 100 cal popcorn packs or sunflower seeds, trail mix (no sweets), whole grain bread like orawheat double fiber, drink a V8 with that.

ash:

 At the moment a major goal of mine is to lose the weight I gained while depressed. One issue that I have come up against is kicking the junk food habbit. This has been fairly easy for the most part but I have found that I buy and eat total crap when I am feeling bad, and even more so as a form of self punishment, when I am angry or upset at myself for something. I am even conscious of the link but at the time I still go ahead and buy these things. It doesn't happen a huge amount but when it does it can be pretty bad, like the other day I ate a pie and chips for dinner at work rather than going for a more reasonable option.

Does anyone else have experience with bad eating habbits linked to emotional state? Or does anyone have an idea of techniques to kick this habbit?

 

Self-punishing seems a very accurate term for what you are doing. Most people would describe as eating comfort food. It makes sense that people will eat comfort food when depressed as a way to combat their depression (even if temporilly).

I myself have struggled with weight issues and the first place I would look for answers is in your upbringing. What was your parents' relationship to food?

Joey:

Self-punishing seems a very accurate term for what you are doing. Most people would describe as eating comfort food. It makes sense that people will eat comfort food when depressed as a way to combat their depression (even if temporilly).

I myself have struggled with weight issues and the first place I would look for answers is in your upbringing. What was your parents' relationship to food?

I can't identify with the comfort food thing, I do have the desire to do this when I desire comfort, but eating crap always makes me feel worse, and I always know that in advance too, yet still do it.

hey ash. I quit smoking cold turkey 40 days ago and have been chewing trident gum when i get cravings. it really helps having something in my mouth; it is also nice for after meals and the chewing can be theraputic. I know it's not the same addiction as eating but thought it may be helpful. (plus it's like 3 cal a stick, not bad. my favorite is original flavor and tropical twist has the longest lasting flavor)

Hey, Ash.

Man, do I know where you're coming from. I must admit I got a little annoyed with some of the other posts on this thread... but that's my own thing to work out. Anyway...

I do the same thing that you do. Generally eating ok, but eating all kinds of crap when feeling bad or feeling like I want to punish myself. I must admit that asking myself these questions only works sometimes, but at least after I ask them of myself I'm aware of the link, and can work on getting better the next time this stuff happens. So here are the questions.

1. What do I want?

The answer isn't "pie" or "chips" or anything like that. What you want isn't food, I can guarantee. You want what originally left that hole the food is trying to fill. You want love. You want regard. You want to be cared for. You want someone to hold you. You want someone to tell you you're doing well. You want someone to support you. You want something emotional, not physical.

2. When do I want it?

The answer usually isn't "now." Sometimes it is - for example, if you've just had a row with your friends or girlfriend, or whatever. But usually, you wanted whatever you determined in #1 at the time the hole was created. You wanted love during the times your mum was screaming at you. You wanted someone to hold you, to care for you, to tell you that you were worthy of love and a good boy and that it was going to be alright then, not now.

3. How do I get it?

The answer isn't "by eating this pie." Because the pie makes it worse. It makes you feel physically bad, and emotionally bad about yourself. So how do you get love? Or regard? Or someone to care for you? Or support? By increasing in virtue, of course.

Generally, I ask myself these questions as I'm walking to the store to get my ice cream or soda or whatever else. And generally, I keep on walking right past the store, and around the corner, and around the block, and around the neighborhood back to my apartment. A nice long walk. And generally I make a recording afterwards, or journal.

I don't think it's a physical need you're expressing, and I don't think physical things will "cure" this - though they may help. Generally, if all else fails, I stall myself until the stores close and I can't go buy junk. It helps that I don't keep any in the house. Stalling myself until I can't by junk means I have no other outlet, so I HAVE to self-examine.

I hope this helps.

Charlotte, thanks so much for that thoughtful response, you have given me a lot to think about, and I think you are absolutely spot on. I will definately try to be more conscious of these questions and ask them of myself when I get the urge. I'll let you all know how it goes.

So I've had several breakthroughs recently with regard to why it is I was engaging in self attack for all of my life, mostly centering around compulsions towards food and overeating and also compulsive over-exercising.  So I thought I would share these breakthroughs with everyone in hopes that you could compare notes to your own prior histories and it might be helpful.

This process started several months ago when on a trip to the kitchen to get some coffee.  I caught a glimpse through the kitchen window... through some bushes of what I thought was my mother's car traveling down the street.  It was a very subliminal moment.  I only caught a glimpse.  I wasn't sure it was her car and on closer inspection I realized that in fact it was not her car driving by, but simply one of a similar size and shape.  To further explain how I felt at that moment I was indifferent.  Didn't matter to me if my mother was stopping by or not, I just wasn't sure based on this brief glimpse of the cars shadow traveling through bushes in an obscure view. Now I had just eaten a full breakfast and was by no means hungry, so the physical impulse to eat was absolutely nonexistent-- and by physical, I mean the actual physical cravings for hunger that one feels in one's stomach.  I suddenly had the desire (not the physical sensations of hunger), but the desire to eat something. I clearly remember thinking, "You should eat something."  And in what can only be described as a unique moment in my thought process, I asked myself, "Where does this desire come from?" I wasn't physically hungry.  I only had the desire to eat.

So I asked myself, "What just happened, just now?"  The answer was at first, puzzling.  I thought I had glimpsed my mother's car driving down the street, which would have resulted in a visit from my mother.  However, that wasn't the case, as it was not her car.  She wasn't here, she wasn't about to visit me.  In fact as far as I knew she was at home.  Nevertheless, I experienced a strong desire to eat something as a result or at least in close proximity to that thought, the thought that she was near me. 

I began thinking about this desire to eat and the possibility that it was associated somehow with thoughts of my mother.  To my ever-growing horror, I realized that every time I had even a fleeting thought of my mother in any capacity, I had a desire to eat. I recognized that the desire to eat, and the physical sensations for the craving to eat-- physical hunger-- are very different.  I began to think back on the months prior to this moment and realize that without exception, I had never felt hungry.  I'd only had the desire to eat.

Now, food, and I have a long and turbulent history.  Throughout my life I have used food either for good or for bad.  By that, I mean: food was either use to self attack, and in those periods of my life I gained weight and looked poorly, or food was a weapon which fueled my physical fitness.  In those manic phases of the over exercise and mania over my physique, every gram of food was a weapon I used in order to fuel this loathing and self-hatred I had for myself.  In this phase, food was an ally which would help me build a physique that...  I don't know, somehow magically would make me a valid person, a person of worth. It never worked.  Even at my most physically fit, even at 4% body fat.  The ability to bench 300 pounds and squat 500 pounds, with a physique so monstrous that people shied away from me at the water fountain at the gym, I still felt worthless.  I briefly took steroids.  At about six weeks into an eight week shot regimen, I suddenly saw myself clearly, what I was doing: sitting naked on a toilet with hypodermic needle poised over my thigh, ready to inject myself for the sixth time with a drug, which would make me even more enormous than I was currently...  I cried, sobbed really... I threw the remainder of the drugs away and didn't touch a weight again for at least two years.  That period of my life swung wildly in a crazy oscillation towards the other end of the spectrum, towards slovenliness.  I'll have more to say about the meaning of exercise in my life and how I used it along with toxic relationships to attack myself, in another post.

It would not be an overstatement to say that fully 60 to 70% of my daily thoughts prior to this epiphany I mentioned above about my mother was filled with thoughts of food.  I either schemed and planned my nutritional regimen the way the Spartans defended the Hot Gates, or food was more like a drug, in which case I devoured endless doughnuts, sugary carbohydrates and other poisons.  Either way, food consumed me, not the other way around.

So, I had this epiphany.  Weeks went by, and I observed my reactions to my thoughts of my mother.  Inevitably, interactions with my mother, thoughts of my mother, discussions about my mother with other people, all created in me the desire to eat. I spoke to my therapist about this and told him I thought it was true--for some reason thinking about my mother caused this desire to eat food.  I said to him, and I said to others as well, "I want to eat food, I have the desire to eat food because I was neglected by my mother as a child.  My mother is physically incapable of loving me."

What happened next is extraordinary.  The day after my therapy session, I woke up with no desire to eat food.  This is very difficult for me to explain, but if it helps create this mental picture in your mind: Do you know those enormous buffet tables, one sees on cruise ships laden with the most gorgeous colorful foods you can imagine?  Take that picture of those groaning boards of food, and that was my lifelong perception of food, prior to that moment.  Now take that same table and make the food a black-and-white photograph.  Two-dimensional.  Cardboard cutouts of food, propped up.  That's how I feel now.  Food exists, and I know I must consume it in order to live.  But the desire to eat food is gone.  I'm not saying I don't want to eat, because that's not at all accurate.  It is not a negative desire, I do not not want to eat.  It's as if the food is no longer in any way part of the equation when it comes to figuring out what I want to do with my day.  I have never felt this way in my life.  I feel free.

It's as if some enormous reset button has been pressed.  This must be what it feels like to have lived prior to that neglect and abuse, when I existed in an undamaged state.

What an amazing story -- thanks so much for sharing it!

What was your mother's relationship to food, in particular with you? How was it do you think that you end up associating food with love?

Stefan Molyneux:

What an amazing story -- thanks so much for sharing it!

What was your mother's relationship to food, in particular with you? How was it do you think that you end up associating food with love?

Thank you Stef, for creating a safe place for me to post it.  Thanks also for all of the fantastic work you do here with regard to psychology and therapy.  I'm quite sincere when I say I could not possibly have gotten to this point without you and Christina also.

Well, of course I want to say that I don't know what my mother's relationship to food, in particular, to me was.  Although, if this were a podcast or a listener  conversation, I know the first thing you would say to me is. "yes you do!"  For almost all of my life, my mother has struggled with weight issues.  She has always been slightly overweight to  obese.

Those are questions I will really have to think about if I am to formulate a respectable answer. I have lengthy posts concerning compulsive exercise as well as compulsive relationship building and smashing--both of which are tied into issues with my mother and my father as well. I'll try to get those up in the next day or two.  Thanks again Stef,

Dave

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences/advice on this post. I find it really difficult to talk about my relationship with food (and difficult to say that I find it difficult) but it is something I'm working on and I feel really touched by the openness and honesty displayed here.

 This thread brought together a lot of thoughts in me.  Food is pretty complicated.  I think I can understand the perspective that it can be self-punishment.

A little tale from last week: I started to cut the carbs last week.  On the first day that I had decided to do it, I also decided to walk over to a local shopping center with a Publix supermarket so I could get a haircut (after over 6 months, I was, let's say, a bit shaggy).  It's about a 15 minute walk, all along streets that were filled with cars on their way home.  I went to the barber, and got my haircut.  It was when I came out that I got in the grips of my false eating self.  I experience it as a fuzzing in the head, as though my body were cutting off the knowledge of my emotions.  And then I start to get images of food that I want, chips, dip, fried chicken, Chinese honey chicken and special fried rice.  And then I thought something like, "you know, I need to pick up some stuff at Publix, don't I?"  And then I start going to Publix.  And I went in there and bought over $13 worth of junk food.

And then, I had to carry it all home.

Imagine the image, if you will: a quite overweight fellow schlepping four shopping bags worth of groceries at almost 10 pm.  And on the walk back was when the negative self-talk began.  "Look at you, waddling down the street.  Your knees hurt, your back is starting to ache, what were you thinking?  Now you're going to go home and blow all the work it took to get this stuff back home.  Good job, loser."  And my true self, whispering to me "you could just throw it all out", was drowned in a sea of bitterness, anguish, and disgust.

So I make it home.  And I put the bags down.  And then a frantic search begins for a can-opener to open up a can of baked beans I had purchased.  It was as if I was possessed, as if I would tear the room apart if I couldn't find that damn can opener!  And then I found it, and I heated my beans, ate my fried chicken, made my onion dip, put on "Coupling" on DVD and I was...I don't know.  I wasn't happy.  But I wasn't sad, either.  I was full, and the food was doing it's job.  And then I had a horrible bathroom experience and went to bed.

It's that food job, the chemical buzz that makes the pain of living a life that you know is not right seem a little more distant, that I guess makes it a circuitous kind of self-punishment: I am not worthy of esteem.  Therefore, I will engage in an activity that will lower my awareness and pain in the face of this fact while simultaneously making me esteem myself even lower.  It is a vicious circle that leads to loneliness, pain, and despair; and only serves to feed the false self within.

KevinP

Kevin,

It takes a lot of courage to make a post like that.  Thank you for doing so.I am assuming based on the way you wrote this that you were not physically hungry as you walked home from getting your hair cut. if it were me, I would spend a lot of time-- and I do mean a lot of time-- thinking about what was happening to you, emotionally, and what your thoughts were as you walked home. A thought preceded the desire to eat.

You mentioned "a fuzzing of the head", which to me rings strongly of a disassociative state.

Dave

Reading over this thread, I had a huge urge to post, so here goes. It may or may not help, but I hope it does.

I, like most females in the Orange County area, have had a long standing and turbulent history with food. Instead of consuming unhealthy things, tho, I completely restricted any intake. This was not at all uncommon. In an area obsessed with body image, it only made sense that teens would conform to the life that everyone was leading. Most girls didnt take it to the extreme. My friends and I did, tho.

For us, food was used to punish. Punish ourselves for not being worthy of this unattainable ideal of perfection. Excercise was used as well, but I remember most of it was around food. There were things that you could and could not eat. Rituals you had to preform to eat. Like breaking things down, or scrubbing them spottless, ect. And we all dragged ourselves further and further down. It was competition, in a way. Who could punish themselves the most. Its twisted, I know, but thats what it was. And the worst punishment we could ever do to ourselves, was allow the consumption of some junk food. Like, you knew it was bad. You knew you would hate doing it, but you did it anyways. Because you deserved it, but not in a good sort of way.

It wasnt until I was almost 17 that I stopped this torment. I had gotten treatment before, but, honestly, it wont help if you dont want it to. I wasnt losing weight because I knew Id have to go back to the doctor, but that punishment sense of food was still there.

I remember the very moment that it clicked in my brain that it was wrong, too. I dont think its something youll ever forget. I was sitting in a restaurant with my friends eating sushi. I love sushi. And I remember us looking and comparing who had eaten the least plates of it. And it was like, "Why am I doing this? What do I need to punish so terribly? What did I do so wrong?" And there was that voice in the back of my brain that was screaming everything that wasnt 'right' with myself. Every lie I had told. Every person I hadnt been an angel to, ect. But, it just... it clicked.

If what makes me a bad person and deserving of punishment are some actions that every normal human being would commit, why were they so horrendous? Who had ever looked at me and told me I was horrible? No one that had loved me. No one that even remotely cared about me. Only ever people who hated me. Who hurt me. Who were worse than I could ever be.

It wasnt like the problems that I had around food were gone in that moment, mind. That involves a process. And I still have to check myself today, because those thoughts and feelings around food are still there. I feel like they always will be in the back of my mind because they were so ingrained into who I was. But the moment that clicked, I was ready to go down that path towards becoming freed from those compulsions.

I worked towards a healthy attitude towards food step by step. There were alot of neurotic compulsions and obsessions around it that I had to break down. So, on a weekly basis (unless I had given in to the obesessions instead of conquering them), I tackled one part of my problem. The first step was portion sizes. I had to go up from step one, basically. And each step that I took, I had to have a constant repetior in my brain of, "Dont let them win. Dont let them beat you down again. Do it to be healthy. Prove to them that you can be. Be the healthy girl thats in there somewhere." Im still taking the steps. Friday I ate my first slice of birthday cake in, 9 years, I think. It helped that I had made it myself from scratch, so I could make sure that it was as healthy as I knew how to get it, but still. And with each bite, I had to keep up the mantra. "You cannot let them win. You are so much better. They are the ones who deserve to be punished. Youre winning, youre winning, youre winning."

And, well, I am. Slowly (very slowly), Im beating that control they had over me. And Im winning. Because their control over how I view food, how I handle myself, is going away. Because I am good. I may not be perfect, but Im good. And thats more than a hell of alot of people can say about themselves.

Like I said, I dont know if that will help. But, I feel like it might help someone, so, um, there.

Dave Bockman:

I said to him, and I said to others as well, "I want to eat food, I have the desire to eat food because I was neglected by my mother as a child.  My mother is physically incapable of loving me."

Thank you so much for this post, I got one of those feelings you get when you listen to these podcasts and I felt a big connection and rush of insights when you said that last line. I had not even had too much of a problem with food and overeating because until recently I would use video games, movies, smoking, and drinking instead to deal with those feelings of not being loved and to fill that void. I have even heard it said many times too that people just do these things to fill an emptiness inside of them, and now after having recently confronted my parents on some major issues, I think this overeating I've been doing is a direct reaction to realizing that my father never knew or loved me at all and that I have to accept that there is really nothing I can do about that. Also, this seems even more clear given the fact that I quit smoking a year ago, for the past month and a half I haven't been drinking at all, I am away from all of my games, and I've watched 3 movies in the past 4 months. Beginning to accept that this is the case with my father is extremely hard for me because I think we always want to have that small glimmer of hope that they will change when it has been the same for 20 years (for me). I guess just hearing it in the context of your story and also with the timing of my present situation it just clicked for me, and I'm definitely going to explore this topic more and see if I can't "understand" these urges away like much of my introspection has granted me in terms of clarity and the ceasing of abusive habits. Just letting you know your post helped someone, thanks a lot.