Emotional Eating

I always denied being an emotional eater.

But I eat all the time.

I’m usually not even hungry when I do.

I’m also sad all the time.

And angry.

And anxious.

So it can all blend together.

But honestly, I didn’t think any of it really overlapped.

Or really tied into one another.

But they definitely do.

All of it does.

It all becomes a pile of undealt with issues when I add food.

Because then I add weight gain.

And I feel even worse about myself.

I gained a little over forty pounds last year.

It was last summer.

Within a two or three month period.

More specifically, I blamed it on the Seroquel I was on at the time.

It wasn’t productive for me.

Other than figuring out what meds don’t work.

I really couldn’t feel anything when on it.

Gray.

Not good.

Not bad.

Not when I was full.

Not when I was hungry.

Not when I was uncomfortable.

Or any of it.

The more food I ate.

The better I thought I should feel.

I should feel something.

Fucking anything.

But it never has worked that way.

Regardless of what I blame my overeating on.

It’s never been positive.

Eating is rarely a positive experience for me.

I’ve been trying to separate food from everything.

Because over the years I have continued to eat and eat and eat.

When I need to figure out why I’m upset.

And attempting to cover it up.

I have struggled with excess weight my entire life.

I never thought I was that big.

Not morbidly obese, shit.

Heavy, yes.

But I’m five foot eleven.

And have a big frame.

And having this subject shoved in my face at such an early age helped me realize that people don’t get it.

Other people will never understand this darkness.

Why I do what I do.

And how that affects me.

As I became an adult, I wasn’t eating because I was hungry.

I was eating to cope.

I was eating to escape.

My weight has fluctuated up and down for decades now.

I was mainly eating just to eat in my life.

Before recently.

I was eating to do something.

To feel different than I was feeling.

To feel fucking anything.

And eating uncontrolled amounts compounds my unintended overindulgences in other areas.

Without noticing.

Like soda.

Sugar.

Caffeine.

It’s all bad in the quantities I was ingesting.

Because it’s everyday.

All day.

Treating food like a coping mechanism is just how I have to view food lately.

Keeping food at an arm’s length.

Telling myself I’m sad.

Not hungry.

That I’m bored.

Not famished.

That I’m anxious.

Not starving.

Food is an escape for me.

And it’s been that way forever.

It was my first addiction.

It’s always been the base of my physical issues.

I remember being told at the age of ten.

That I needed to lose weight.

I have always had a gut.

There are pictures of me as a kid where my belly is sticking out.

I wasn’t that overweight as a child.

I was five foot eight by this time.

And around a hundred and fifty pounds.

It made me so self conscious that these doctors were picking on me.

So I turned to food.

For comfort.

I got picked on at school too.

A lot.

Like, a lot a lot.

I was the butt of jokes more often than not.

My weight.

My height.

Teachers commented back then.

Before the days of cell phones.

Or rules against what horrible teachers can say to students.

My choir teacher.

Ms. Johnson.

Hillside Middle School in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

1996.

My class was setting up for the performance that week.

Or night.

I can’t remember which.

We were being told to bring in chairs and whatnot.

To help set everything up.

The other kids were running back and forth to the room and back into the cafeteria area.

I decided to join them and started running.

Ms Johnson yelled across the room.

“Valkner, there are no fries over there.”

Implying that I shouldn’t run or hurry.

Because there was no food available at the end of the task.

Because I was fat.

I excused myself to the bathroom a little while later.

To cry.

I still hate her for that.

Honestly, I do.

Everyone else liked her.

I still hold rage inside of me for her.

What kind of a teacher says that to an already struggling student?

A bad one.

I remember she would come to the musicals I was in in high school.

People would crowd around her and I would just walk past.

Fuck her.

I have no respect for her.

Or anyone that comments on someone else’s weight like that.

Especially at that age.

You never know what the main issue of the struggle is.

You never know how someone feels.

What their home life is like.

And piping in to give unconstructed two cent opinions on someone’s body is fucking wrong.

Especially as a middle school teacher.

Anyway.

I could bitch about her for a while.

So I’ll stop now.

People don’t know how they affect someone else.

What will stick in the brain like a thorn, twenty five, thrity years later.

And when talking about weight, people should be more understanding.

It’s easy to gain weight.

And I never notice until it’s already on.

Which means it’s too late and now I have to work on losing it.

The weight gain I had last summer opened my eyes.

Well, once they switched my meds to my injection.

Then my eyes were open.

That food doesn’t control me.

It’s actually the other way around.

And I don’t have to give it any power.

Just like Ms. Johnson.

Just like my emotional ache for a different feeling.

It’s a painful process.

But is becoming more habitual every day that passes.

I’m glad food is losing its control over me.

It’s nice to not have my days revolve around it anymore.

I still get into my obsessive thinking with it.

But I am slowly understanding that I don’t have to act on everything that crosses my mind.

– Keren