Why Do We Eat

Maybe you know the situation ... you get angry and frustrated with yourself and your body and you just ask “WHY?”
“Why me?”
“Why can’t I stop?”
“Why do I have to eat?”

Well, the following exercise is supposed to help me find out why I eat. I’ve taken it from Doris Wolf’s book and translated it.

If you can think of other reasons, please feel free to extend the list. The more honest you are with yourself, and the more insight you have, the better for the recovery process.

I eat/ drink when ...	Yes	No
I am depressed	X
I am anxious	X
I am angry	X
I feel rejected	X
I feel lonely	X
I am bored	X
I am sad	X
I feel tense and excited	X
I don’t like myself	X
I am happy		X
I feel guilty	X
I feel jolly		X
I feel stressed	X
I had an argument with my partner	X
I don’t feel fulfilled	X
I failed at something	X
I have an unpleasant task ahead of me	X
I want to prove to someone that they can’t tell me what to do	X
I want to reward myself	X

Wow, I practically eat all the time! Funnily enough though, I don’t have to eat when there are positive feelings. It seems that I know just how to deal with positive feelings, but still use food as a strategy to deal with negative ones.

Looking at each emotion, I suppose there are better ways to deal with them. I mean, if you’re angry, you should hit a pillow or something, rather than eat. I think It might help me to do a list of emotions, and ways of dealing with them. I might stick that to my fridge door, and then I can maybe stop myself before I eat.

Mixing Food And Emotion

Usually hunger is a natural feeling to satisfy a basic need. Sometimes when we are children food is used by our parents for more than satisfying hunger. Its given as a reward, not given as a punishment, given just to shut us up or because they don’t know what else we could possibly want.

Most people, at some point, learn to go back to the natural intention of hunger and food. But some people are not able to do that and keep food as a substitute for attention or love, as consolation when they need to do something unpleasant or when they feel bad.

When I was younger there wasn’t much interaction or communication in the house. I mean, we did talk of course, but my father worked until late evening and my mother was usually withdrawn in a world of books and alcohol. The only time we always did spend together, every day, was meal times. Every now and again it was an unpleasant affair, like when my father was interrogating us regarding school, but usually it was a nice, fun time. Lots of talk and laughter. We didn’t hurry it either but took our time usually.

I think that is when I started to associate food with good, positive feelings.

From then on, occasionally at first and more frequently later, I started to eat when I had negative feelings. Over time that’s the behaviour I learned, that’s the way I learned to deal with emotions.

The important part now is to unlearn that behaviour, and to go back to the original purpose of hunger and food.

Controlling Emotions

As I mentioned in the last part, food for me is a way to cope with emotions. I also mentioned that it is time to find new ways to deal with them.

Emotions are part of a three-way-street; cognition, emotion and behaviour. They interact with each other, and influencing one can influence the others. Now, I think that the behaviour can’t change right away as it is a result of our emotions and attitudes. Emotions are a result of our attitude, so that might be difficult to change as well. Doris Wolf agrees with me that the easiest place to start changing is the attitude, the cognition. It’s sort of like the inner talk you have with yourself, the way you judge a situation.

Example:
The other day we were just sitting and watching telly when I felt like eating something. I said that I was going to make a slice of toast. When I came back from the kitchen I had two slices of toast with butter and ham on a plate. My boyfriend said “oh, two ...”. I got really angry at this. I thought “how dare he! How dare he tell me what to eat, how much to eat! I’ll show him that he can’t tell me what to do, that I’ll do just what I want.”
So, I ate the two slices of toast, was still feeling angry with my boyfriend but was also angry with myself because I knew that really he was right.

It later came to me that if I’d stopped myself at the first negative thought, the first “how dare he”, if I had stopped myself then and made a conscious effort to evaluate the situation differently, then the story would have been another.
Instead of the above, I could have thought “well, actually, he’s right. I’m not really hungry to begin with, this is just because I’m bored and want to nibble on something. Really, I don’t need anything to eat, and even if I did I could have made a better choice of food. I know that he’s just looking out for me, and when he says things like that he is thinking of my long term happiness, where as I am, at this moment, just trying to satisfy my immediate desire.”

Had I thought that, I might have felt much more peaceful and calm in the situation. I might even have been able to put the food aside and not eat it. The conversation, and in fact the rest of the evening, would have gone much happier for both of us.

I don’t think it is easy to change the way we judge situations. But I think that over time we first start to realise that we have judged a situation in one way and that it might have been more helpful if we had judged it in another way. Then, after a while, we start to realise that we ARE judging a situation in a certain way, and we start changing the thought process that is going on. This is a slow process and takes a lot of effort, but it gets easier with time. And then, one day we might not even have to pay attention to it anymore because our inner attitudes have changed.

The changed attitude results in changed emotions, making life (I think) less negative and much easier to deal with if I can talk myself out of a negative feeling or behaviour.

Accepting Responsibility

Along with accepting yourself and the way you are also comes the need to accept responsibility.

I didn’t gain 60kg over night, it wasn’t some curse that someone put on me. No, I ate those 60kg all by myself. I did it knowing that it wasn’t good for me. I needed that behaviour, and maybe I even needed that weight to help me, to protect me.

Doris Wolf, a German author, said that we have behaved in a way that was necessary for us, and that therefore we also have exactly the body that we needed; that we consciously or unconsciously did everything to shape the body that we have now. Whether we like it or not (the fact as well as the body), it was necessary for us to have this body.

However, even though I do accept that I am responsible for looking the way I do, I also know that it was the only way I knew how to cope. I used food as a coping mechanism to deal with situations and emotions that otherwise might have become too much for me at the time. Should I condemn myself for that? No, I need to forgive myself for that.

I CAN forgive myself for that. Everybody has different ways of coping. Some people work excessively, some people drink, some people eat. This was my way of dealing with the challenges that my life threw at me. I created my body, every kg of it. But now I am finding new ways to cope with challenges. I am finding another way to deal, so I don’t need to use food anymore. And that will give me the chance to change my body along with my frame of mind.

Accepting Yourself

The first thing I was told at the clinic is that I need to accept myself. Now, even before I change. That the constant self rejection only keeps on triggering the negative feelings and therefore the binges.

Now, I don’t know if this is specific to binge eating and compulsive overeating, but I don’t think it can harm even sufferers from anorexia or bulimia to accept themselves just the way they are, as a person and a personality.
What I want to say is that we need to accept our inner strengths and weaknesses, and our outer form with all pretty and not so pretty bits.

An exercise that I was given at the clinic is to stand in front of the biggest mirror you can find, stark naked, and look at yourself. Now I know what you are thinking. HORROR!! But try it. And try to look at your body objectively. Maybe it helps to describe it. Don’t judge it, just describe it. What colour does your hair have? What is the shape of your nose? How long are your toes? But try to stay objective. Say something like “My toes are 3cm long. I wear size 6 shoes.” rather than “My toes are all deformed and not pretty.”

At first you might only manage to have negative thoughts, but after a while you might just look at your body in a neutral way, and later you will find good and beautiful things. I was told to do this exercise every day, for at least 10 minutes. I felt silly at first, standing there looking at myself. But I do hope it helps me feel more neutral or even more positive about my body, and not repulsed or disgusted.

So, here goes ... this is me.

I am a compassionate person, always willing to help others. I am smart.

I can be extremely moody sometimes and then I am not so generous with my good will. I am extremely lazy. 

I have a pretty face, and very pretty eyes. 

Over the weekend I had visitors, which meant way too much food, and a lot of unhealthy stuff as well. I did keep a diary, but I am only posting Sunday here.

Why An Eating Disorder Develops

There are many theories regarding the development of eating disorders, and different theories apply to different eating disorders. So will for example anorexic people have other reasons than people with a binge eating disorder.

Some theories don’t start with the person who has the eating disorder, but they rather look at society as a whole. Anita Johnston, for example, says that problems, particularly for women, started when society changed from a matriarchy to a patriarchy. That the feminine attributes like emotion, intuition and softness were once held high, allowing women to express themselves. But once this changed women had to adapt to the power and success driven world, ruled by logic and rationality. The feminine is often ridiculed and women can no longer express their true nature.
Anita Johnston approaches the subject of eating disorders in a spiritual way, I think. If you think this might help you then check out her book “Eating in the light of the moon”

I do believe that overall necessity and pressure for women to be like men contributes to the development of an eating disorder. Likewise do I believe that pressures coming from society to be glamorous and thin contribute to a mental susceptibility for eating disorders. However, these are only contributing factors, and the actual reasons for ‘choosing’ an eating disorder as a coping mechanism are embedded within the person individually.

I know that the extremely high standards I set for myself and the subsequent continuous feeling of failure drove me into trying to hold on to the reins very tightly all the time, and the only time I let go was with food. Also, meal times at my home were a family affair, and usually a very happy time. I think that I tried to recreate this happy time with my family whenever I ate because I was feeling low self esteem due to failing to achieve my standards. And then I used food to cope with just about any negative feeling.

I will go further into the reasons for developing an eating disorder at a later time. But first there are some basics that I need to cover to get back on track.

The Food Diary

One of the most important tools is a food diary. Now this won’t help me straight away, but I know it will come into play at a later point, and it will be good if I don’t have to start from scratch then, which is why I am starting it today. TODAY, Nicky!

The food diary is not there to give me guilt, but it will help me see in what situations I eat and why. It reveals the reasons for my eating and lays the base for changing behaviour.

Here is a table which I find useful to analyse the situation. I know it will take a few minutes each time I’ve eaten something, but really investing that time will be worth it when it helps me deal with my eating disorder.

Here is my food diary. I'm sure you will be fascinated   ;-)

 





































The tricky part is to write things down right away. I tend to, intentionally or not, forget half the stuff I’ve eaten, especially the snacks and things that just wander into my mouth in passing. So I really have to force myself to keep the diary or a little notepad at hand and write everything down right away.
And another tricky bit ... to be truthful. I tend to leave out the bad days, and only write down the days that I’ve been good. But the good days don’t tell me why I eat, its especially the bad days that reveal the reasons behind my behaviour.

Introducing Myself

My name is Nicola Sue Hall, I’m 28 years old and I have an eating disorder. I suffer from binge eating and compulsive overeating.

The main reasons why I decided to battle with my eating disorder publicly are firstly that I need to be honest with myself and the people around me and secondly, that it might help others deal with their eating disorder.
It is my belief that in order to move forward you have to know where you came from. Any eating disorder is a behaviour which is triggered by certain situations or thoughts and can be changed. Just taking that behaviour and changing it is a good start, but I think that understanding why you behave in a particular way is even more important, so that other, more effective ways of dealing with the triggers can be found.

To understand my behaviour I had to start at the beginning, looking back at the story of my life. Here it is:

My childhood, although generally happy, was clouded by issues such as a teacher who would humiliate me in front of my peers and an expectation of extremely high achievement from my father. This conditioned me to expect more than perfection from myself, setting extremely high standards which aren't ever achievable. This has had effect on my self esteem and later helped contribute to my use of food and alcohol to help me cope.
At 16 I went abroad for a year. Left to my own devices, I started eating what I wanted (all unhealthy stuff obviously) and as much as I wanted. No wonder that during the course of that year I gained 20kg (over 3 stone). After my return to Germany I was able to rein things in a little, but it was usual for me to eat just because I wanted something, not because I was hungry.
At 20 I moved to Scotland, and I ended up doing my degree there. Things became much worse during my second and third year at university. My parents got divorced during that time, the workload was stressful and my relationship started going seriously wrong. My portion sizes grew to massive amounts, the food choices became increasingly unhealthy. Worst of all, during that time I started eating in secret, sneaking food into the house or gobbling it down before I got to the door. I hit absolute rock bottom in fourth year, when I was practically constantly drunk and always at bursting point. I hid in my bed or in my room, spent ridiculous amounts of money on food and was eating constantly. If it wasn’t a blackout binge then it was an overeating binge, but there was always food going into my mouth. I was physically and mentally finished at the end of fourth year, with 123kg (over 19.5 stone) at my heaviest and it was then that I realised that this behaviour wasn’t normal and that I needed to do something about it.
Once I figured out that I had an unhealthy relationship with food I went back to Germany, away from where it got so out of control, away from the people who where there when it got out of control, away from the situation and into a new start to try to deal with it. I accessed therapy for my depression and eating difficulties which even over two years sadly did not do much for me at all.
Then I was given the opportunity to attend a six week intensive therapy at a rehab clinic in the middle of 2009. This was the turning point for me. It seemed like the penny had dropped, like I was finally able to see through the behaviour and change it. Currently I weigh in at 96kg (just over 15 stone). However, life has now got complicated and very, very frustrating again, and I have, over the last 6 months, been slipping back into the old coping mechanisms and need to address this before it goes completely out of hand again. 

I invite you to take the journey with me.

I will be using the same tools that helped me so much during and after the rehab, and hope they help someone else too.