Food has always been the way I dealt, or didn’t deal, with how I felt about what was happening in my life.  Someone made me angry and I didn’t get mad, I got pizza.  I was happy and needed to celebrate so I went out to dinner.  There was chips and dip when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in, chocolate when I was sad or tense, and cheesy, gooey nachos drowned in sour cream when I felt completely unloved, even by myself.   Although I may give voice to my feelings on occasion, it’s far more likely that I’ll stuff them away, and stuff myself with food to keep them from coming out.

I would guess that I’m not the first overweight person that uses food as a coping mechanism.  Food has always been easy for me, especially when emotions were hard.  Food never let me down, was always reliable and was always there, in easy reach, often before I asked for it.  When personal relationships were rocky, when jobs or education or romance didn’t work out,  when I felt stressed or when the world just felt too demanding, food was a comfort, something simple  that seemed to soothe the rough edges.

Dealing with the rest of the world could be hard.  Food was easy.

One of the thing that I’m trying to do as I work toward getting healthy, both physically and mentally, is to figure out why I do what I do.  Some may argue that this leads me to some excessive naval gazing, but I find it helpful.  I’ve started to stop and think before I pick up that phone and order a pizza or before I eat that whole bag of chips.  I stop now and ask myself why I want to eat what I think I want to eat, and often the answer isn’t hunger.  Often the answer is I’m mad, or I’m sad, or I’m lonely.  Very rarely is the answer I’m achieving things or I’m content or I’m happy.

I’m starting to discover that part of the answer I’m seeking isn’t stuffing my feelings by stuffing myself.  I need to let myself feel what I feel and I need to express those feelings when appropriate.  That’s a hard thing for me to do, but I’m working on doing it more often.

And that, surprisingly enough, feels good.