End Comfort Eating And Self-Sabotage by Carolyn Moody

You’re feeling down, upset, angry, irritable, bored, in need of a reward, lonely, stressed or anxious. Despite the fact that you aren’t really hungry, you go straight to the fridge or open a bottle of wine. You try to resist yet you feel driven. You very quickly find yourself consuming loads of food or wine that you don’t really want.

Afterwards you feel ashamed, guilty and a failure, doubting your character and your willpower. You feel physically awful from all the junk you have just consumed, and yet you know that you will do it again the next time you don’t feel good.

You may think this is a description of a serious eating disorder, but a recent study showed that 33% of women admitted to comfort eating to deal with stress, and 19% of men. I suspect the numbers are much higher than that.

What is comfort eating?

Comfort eating is the term used to describe eating for emotional reasons, in an attempt to ‘feel better’. Look at the media and comfort eating is caricatured by men ‘drowning their sorrows’, and women ‘consoling themselves’ with ice cream or chocolate. It has become an acceptable form of behaviour and the myth is perpetuated that comfort eating is an unchangeable aspect of being human.

Yet few comfort eaters are happy with their behaviour. Eating should be as natural as breathing yet most comfort eaters feel out of control. They self-sabotage without understanding why. It is exhausting, demoralising and confidence-shattering.

Food as pleasure

We are social animals so deriving pleasure from eating and socialising is part of being human. Since time immemorial food has represented pleasure and been used as a ‘social cement’, strengthening social bonds as people eat together. Comfort eaters on the other hand tend to eat excessively and alone, and gain very little pleasure from the experience.

Why we eat inappropriately

We are perfectly designed to know when we need food - we feel hungry. Yet many of us grew up out of touch with our innate appetite cues due to family and society pressures. Many experienced being forced to finish everything on our plate. We learnt to eat food when we were hurt or unhappy, to eat so as not to offend the giver, or just because it was the right time.

Comfort eaters learnt two significant lessons from their early experiences: to mistrust themselves “because others know best”, and to stuff down hard-to-deal-with emotions with food. They look to experts to tell them what to eat, how much to eat, and when to stop eating. What most people don’t realize is that they are searching outside for something that they already have within: the perfect appetite control mechanism and the wisdom to deal with emotional issues separately from food.

Self-doubt

Comfort eaters learnt to defer to the opinions of others with the result that they don’t trust themselves and must have approval from others in order to feel good. Criticism and lack of approval can become a devastating personal attack to self esteem. To get approval, comfort eaters strive to be perfect. The ‘Be perfect!’ driver allows comfort eaters to be highly successful people. The downside is that perfectionists are constantly moving the goal posts so can never enjoy their success.

Comfort eaters may also have other emotional drivers. These are Hurry up! Try hard! Please me/please others! Be strong! The problem starts when a comfort eater feels stressed or anxious and tries to relax their drivers, say by finishing work on time, being less bothered by others’ opinions, asking for help or taking time off work. Sub-conscious fears that were kept in place by the drivers start to rise to the surface. Commonly the fears include: Not good enough; Unlovable; Inadequate; Failure; Misfit; Abandoned/rejected; Unworthy; Unacceptable; Unsafe. There are many more.

Stuffing down the feelings

As these fears are usually below the level of consciousness, all that the comfort eater experiences is an inexplicable anxiety. Unaware that the anxiety is caused by a sub-conscious battle between programmed emotional reactions and relaxing their drivers, they turn to food or drink to stuff down the uncomfortable feeling. Other triggers include being unable to deal with confrontation or conflict situations, or strong emotions such as anger, sadness or grief.

Creating serenity

Through combining blood sugar balancing with understanding emotional triggers, comfort eaters can learn to take back control of their eating habits, without struggle. Most people are surprised that it can happen suddenly and easily. Body Balance mind and body coaching programmes have been designed to help put comfort eaters back in the driving seat.

Copyright 2008 Carolyn Moody, Dip ION and Body Balance. Resident in Belgium, Carolyn trained and qualified at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION) in London in 1990. She founded and established Body Balance in 2004, a person-centred approach to health, weight and life transformation through optimum nutrition and emotional coaching, within small group or one-on-one support. Her client base includes people as far away as Singapore and Australia, as well as the UK and Ireland. Carolyn is also a published author and journalist, having written many articles for a variety of magazines, and her first book, ‘Nurturing Superwoman’’ a guide to women’s health.
For more information: www.bodybalancehealth.eu | Email