Whenever anyone talks about “emotional eating” they will inevitably say something about a “relationship with food.” If you have a weight problem, that is supposed to mean you treat food like it’s the best friend you desperately need to lean on and you’re hangin’ out together constantly. We’re told that we subconsciously invest food with symbolism. We’re told that we use it to fulfill needs that are not being met by other means. I’ve been told that I was overweight because I longed for the days of when my beloved Nana would cook for me and I was mourning for her by eating. Another time I was told that I considered drinking Pepsi to be my “personal trademark.”
Yeah, um. No.
I was never buying into any of this. But I had a problem. I won’t argue with something unless I have a rational counter-argument and for a long time I simply wasn’t sure how to respond. I spent many years feeling insulted by the paradigm that shamed fat people as being weak, out of control emotional eaters. I certainly found myself being “analyzed” plenty of times throughout my young life to determine what was so wrong with me that I would be THE FAT GIRL in my class. I have since figured out why I was the Fat Girl. It was because I spent my childhood thinking that the best part about being a grown up would be getting to eat whatever I wanted. Where would I get an idea like that? Did somebody teach me that? Was there something in the 1960s media that was urging me to indulge my greatest food fantasies? Come on, we didn’t even have Doritos until 1966.
I looked at it this way: First, I’ve never hated myself in my entire life. I’ve hated being fat and sure I’ve dealt with the same life’s ups and downs as everyone but the worst thing I ever dealt with was being fat. I was not fat because I was depressed but being fat was depressing.
If emotions determined what I ate, I’d need something to be struggling and worrying over, every day, all the time. But when I seriously examined what I was eating, I could see so many patterns and none of them really had much to do with emotions. EVERYONE indulges in emotional eating now and then but if you’re 100lbs overweight because you think you’re an emotional eater, do you really have nearly constant daily stress that you can’t handle, all day, all the time? Really? Are you sure? You get up in the morning and you’re filled with such anxiety that you have to eat chocolate chip muffins for breakfast? I used to do that. BECAUSE I LIKED THEM.
The “emotional eating” paradigm is rooted in weight bias and the assumption that if you are fat and you’re not working hard to lose weight, there must be something wrong with you. You must be suffering. You must be in pain. You must have all kinds of problems to make yourself so ugly and keep yourself that way, right? Don’t you want to get healthy and look great? What’s wrong with you???
Or maybe like me, you have a brain that loves to think about food and a body that manages fuel with great efficiency. And living in a culture that’s immersed in indulgent food with addictive properties makes your life pretty tough. That’s the way I am. I’ve needed glasses from a young age, I have my Nana’s thick ankles, and my brain can become overwhelmed with thoughts of food. I don’t need fixing. I’m not broken. I’m not diseased. I know who I am.
When I realized that I could flatly REJECT the whole emotional eating paradigm and instead accept that I’m a naturally larger person and I deal with cravings, I could start to focus my energy and efforts on taking steps that would really work for me. Instead of trying to figure out what food “meant” to me in my life and what my “relationship with food” should be, I accepted that food doesn’t have to “mean” anything. I don’t need to have a “relationship” with it.
And that’s when I could let go of it.
