I sometimes think I have this weight problem thing backwards. From what I’ve seen in the movies, on TV and in books, it seems to me that women are most prone to eating tubs of Ben & Jerry’s followed by a dozen Jolly Pirates following a breakup of a relationship, a bad job review, a fight with a friend or a nagging phone call from mom. In essence, drowning their sorrows in a box of Twinkies.
Not me. I have the exact opposite problem. Bad news sends me into a welcomed tailspin of appetite suppression. Not even a fistful of Dexatrim has the same effect as finding out bad news or being publicly castigated or humiliated. When I fail at something, I succeed at losing weight. I just don’t care enough about food to eat.
On the flip side, when things are going well–like getting good news about a trip or selling an article to an editor or hearing from an old friend or having an earth-shattering conversation with someone important–I tend to run for the Ho-Ho Hills. I can’t find enough junk to stuff in the piehole (as my friend Lewis would say). These are the rare days I would make myself stop at the corner UDF or CVS or Walgreens and actually buy a candy bar, Coke and cupcakes (the holy trinity of sugar) to eat on the way home if I still did things like that. Now, I just scrounge around my writing reward shelf and scarf squares of raspberry dark chocolate.
Still, doesn’t this seem totally ass-backwards? If I’m depressed, shouldn’t I want to eat to bolster my confidence, my belief in mankind, my sinking heart? And if I’m happy, shouldn’t I just feel like dancing around in all that good energy? Of course I should but somewhere along the line my synaptic connections got all messed up. Maybe when I ate that box of cake mix as a teenager or when my sister and I made a secret donut run to the Valley General when the parents were gone.
It’s hard to tell why I’m backwards on this. What’s interesting is that the whole happy/depressed continuum is not a normal thing for me, food or not. If I’m happy about something, I’m reservedly happy. I have a very difficult time believing something is as good as I think, and I hold back in my celebration, knowing the other shoe will eventually drop. But if I’m depressed, nothing can stop me from sinking to the lowest of lows. When I’m sad, in other words, I hit a sort of low-high. Why is it easier to believe the bad stuff instead of the good?
Over the last few months I’ve hit, quite possibly, the lowest of the lows. The absolute low was on my son’s 18th birthday (not the birthday, the low just ironically happened on that day) and I truthfully think I lost about three pounds that week. I sustained myself on water and soup. Maybe a little bit of cereal and milk. I could barely even stomach those. Think about this: the kid wanted Golden Corral for his birthday dinner and I spent almost 50 bucks on the three of us and stomached half a plate of salad and a chicken wing. And I only ate a bite of the wing. If I could bottle that feeling of food hatred and revulsion, I’d be a bazillionaire.
I mention this because I notice my life (in regards to that issue) is improving and I notice myself unconsciously picking up bits and pieces of the junk that repulsed me for most of the last two months. While the pain those two incidents caused in the overall scheme of my life, by limiting my desire to eat, they also granted me some odd perspective I haven’t had before. I took the time to notice what was going in the piehole, and in many cases, ate only because I had to–which led me to make better choices. I don’t think there was a fast food day in there at all. Not even the interest of one, which doesn’t say much because I’m not a fast-food type of girl anymore. I wasn’t really an any-food kind of girl.
So now it’s back to pitting the mind against the urges. Sounds much more perverted than it is. All it comes down to is eliminating the junky garbagey-type stuff: a handful of jelly beans (which I don’t even like!) on my teaching assistant’s desk, a cookie in the teacher’s lounge, a bite of this or that while I’m making dinner. These are the little things that wrecked me in the past and got my ass into, at one time, size 18 jeans.
Never again. As God (and WordPress) is my witness, I’ll never inhale Ho-Hos again.
What is your emotional eating cycle? I’m really curious to know if anyone out there is a happy eater like me or if I’m just out in left field (not the first time nor the last). What sends you over the edge into a binge eating everything in sight? Happiness, sadness or a combination? A certain emotional trigger issue? A certain person or situation? I’m just curious here…