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I’ve come to a realization this past week. People ask me all the time about how to “improve” themselves. They want to lose weight, end emotional eating, stop bingeing and/or overeating. They want answers, cures, miracles. But they’re trying to solve the wrong problem.
This is what I’ve come to realize over the past week. Emotional eating is not the problem. Binge eating is not the problem, nor is overeating. Those pounds you’re trying to lose? Also not the problem. (Hence, why I am THROUGH with Dieting.)
I know, I know. Bear with me for a minute. So if emotional eating (I’ll just pick one for simplicity’s sake) is not the problem, then what is?
That’s a good question, and only you can answer it. Here’s the deal. Emotional eating is a coping mechanism, so is binge eating and, typically, overeating. The equation seems relatively simple on the surface: you eat too much, you gain weight, you become dissatisfied with your weight, and go on a D.I.E.T. to lose that weight.
Unfortunately, it’s never that simple. Today we are going to focus not on how to lose weight, stop emotional eating, etc., but rather we are going to focus on WHY you started emotional eating, bingeing, overeating, etc. in the first place. That right there - the reason you started - is the real problem.
So here’s my hypothesis.
1) At some point during your life – probably in childhood – you lost TOUCH with yourself, your dreams, your vision because somebody (probably an authority figure of some sort, be it a parent, older sibling, teacher, well-meaning aunt, etc.) told you your dreams were stupid – or at the very least unachievable for you.
2) You believed this nonsense and started trying to find yourself in other ways. If your purpose in life, the thing you most wanted to do was suddenly not there anymore, it likely left a fairly hefty void. So you started looking for ways to fill that void – ways to define yourself other than the way you originally had. Maybe you threw yourself into your school work or sports or a hobby – something that someone else told you was important for you to do in order to “be somebody” - even if that person wasn’t your authentic self, wasn’t who you were truly meant to be.
3) But then you hit a road block. You see, it’s really hard to be somebody else. It kind of leaves you empty inside. At some point, you probably realized that everything you had been throwing your time into and working so hard to achieve really didn’t matter to you. It wasn’t who you were.
4) Then you really freaked out, and tried to find some sort of solace, some way to escape the pain. There are a variety of ways we do this – drugs, alcohol, or in my case, food. Food became your coping mechanism and that’s when you started emotional eating, bingeing, overeating, etc.
This is why I believe that ________________ (Fill in the blank here, emotional eating or other vice) is not the problem. Food addiction is not the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem, but it is not the problem itself.
So now you have a choice to make. Are you going to hide behind your “problem” of emotional eating, binge eating, overeating, or are you going to try to figure out what the real problem is? In other words, are you going to try to figure out when and why you lost TOUCH with yourself and reconnect? It’s not easy, it’s not going to be pretty, but if you do it, you will “solve” your “problem” of emotional eating, binge eating, etc. Because if you can really figure out why you turn to food as your coping mechanism, you can re-evaluate what the real problem is. And then you can learn to effectively cope with that problem – in ways other than turning to food. Then the real healing begins.
Are you ready?
