Breaking Free from the Comfort Eating Cycle
“Comfort” Eating
For many, many years I stuffed my feelings. Feelings of inadequacy, feelings of failure, feeling lost & overwhelmed had me reaching for any food rather than talking about it.
My first year of teaching was not a safe place to be a first-year teacher. I was ridiculed, belittled, marginalized, hurt… by a principal who did not want me to succeed. I did succeed in the classroom. My students blossomed in my classroom but outside the classroom, I could do nothing right. Being a first-year teacher, I naively relied on my principal’s opinion of me to define my level of ability to teach. I should have quit at Thanksgiving. I should have moved on at Christmas. Instead, I suffered under an abusive principal for an entire school year. I walked out of there a shell. My self-confidence was close to zero. I couldn’t understand why this principal hated me so much or wanted to ruin my career. Surely, a principal knows a good teacher when they see one. I must not be a good teacher then.
The following summer break found me wandering from my bedroom to the kitchen to the tv. I remember feeling very numb. I couldn’t talk about the school year without crying so I quit talking about it altogether. I remember having the epiphany that I had survived an abusive relationship (as well as an abuse of power).
I think that’s when I can remember turning to food for comfort. My journey of emotionally eating began. That was in 2007.
Eventually, I did find a job at a small private Christian classical school where they welcomed me and praised me. But I always had a fear that they would find out the “truth”: I wasn’t a good teacher. The truth would be confirmed and they would fire me.
After gaining my trust, I told my new principal my history where she listened in disbelief. I think it helped explain so many of my insecurities. I’m so thankful that they were patient with me. That school and staff helped me heal so many wounds from a really traumatic event in my life. I will ever be grateful for God putting me at that school.
Despite some wounds healing, some confidence being built, I still couldn’t shake the shame that I was bad, a bad teacher, a bad person. I was a mess.
I would come home and binge eat before my husband came home and then ask him what he wanted for dinner and we’d go out to eat because I was too tired to cook. I did this for years and years resulting in gaining 100 pounds.
“As a man thinks, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7
I believed the lies.
All the shame led me to believe that I was a bad person. (guilt is I did something wrong. shame is I am something wrong, it becomes part of your identity) Until just recently, I have been saying things to myself that would result in a punch in the face if everyone else said them. I became stuck in this vicious cycle that I couldn’t get free of.
The eating became a result of my thinking.
Fast forward, past the awfulness that was 2020 where I gained 15 more pounds which means I’m at my all-time heaviest. More shame. More guilt.
2021 came around and I told y’all about my resolution to be more intentional about my thinking. I wasn’t going to focus on exercise this time. I’ve got to reign in this stinkin’ thinkin’! I knew all the scriptures but it’s like there was a blockade stopping them from entering my heart. I needed help.
Why Am I eating that?
At the beginning of 2021, I completed an online 4-day course “The Meditation Initiative for Junk Food” by Jason Seib. By the end of it, I was fried, my head hurt and my house was a mess. There was so much good information that I wanted to learn every bit of it I could.
The challenge, if you wish to accept it is, to ask myself the question every time I went to put food in my mouth: “why do I want this?”. I can’t tell you how many times I would pick up food, put it in my mouth and eat it without a second thought before this course. Accepting the challenge meant I had to be more mindful. I’d pick up food, and stop myself, ask the question and “engage with those thoughts in a logical and unemotional way”.
I was startled to realize just how often I ate because I was anxious, stressed, mad, sad, or any other emotion. I knew I was a comfort eater, I didn’t realize to what extent. I was eating – a lot.
I walked out of that course with a script and a ton of notes to help me combat the way I had been thinking in order to reprogram the brain. It was time to turn the auto-pilot switch off.
“If you run from the thoughts that are causing you to suffer rather than addressing them, you are saying, “I’m not happy right now, so I am going to alter my brain chemistry with a quick dopamine hit by eating this junk food. My problems will stay exactly the same, I will regret this choice later, AND I will miss an opportunity to work on my thoughts so that I guarantee that I will feel this way again very soon.”
Jason Seib, The Meditation Initiative Junk Food Script
We skip the thoughts and go straight to the feeling it creates without questioning the thought! When we continue to turn to food for comfort, it just perpetuates the shame and self-loathing. It feeds into the self-deprecation. I became trapped in a vicious, soul shredding cycle of self-loathing & self-deprecation and comfort eating. I would say and think terrible things about myself and my body, I would eat to help myself feel better, gain weight, and say & think terrible things about myself and body all over again.
“You are suffering ONLY from your own thoughts. And you were about to do something that seems like relief, but it’s actually just fuel for more suffering.” (Jason Seib, The Meditation Initiative Junk Food Script)
So if I don’t eat for comfort, what do I do?
I will feel my feelings, not feed them.
It’s not about the food. It’s about the thoughts.
What are you thinking when you want that food? (please don’t ask this like someone just dumped red wine on your new white rug but in a tone that is curious and open to listening to any answer)
I am feeling….
Why do I feel…?
Example: Because my kids are driving me crazy and it’s been a stressful day and I just want to feel better.
Will eating that solve my problem? (No. it will only come with a side of bitter shame)
What can I do instead? (walk away, take a deep breath, drink some water, meditate, take a walk – alone, journal…)
It’s about turning off the auto-pilot setting in your brain. You’re brain has convinced you that food is the answer to every life’s problem. You are taking control of what you think and how you process those thoughts. Eating food like a zombie is not going to make your problems magically go away, right?
It may be hard. It may be painful but feeling the feelings is worth it. If it ever feels too much or too hard, reach out to a therapist. There is no shame in getting help. Don’t give up. You are worth it.
I hope in sharing my journey of becoming baggage free inspires you to become so too. We all have our own journeys to get there and what works for me may not work for you and vice versa but the destination is the same. We are not meant to carry around such heavy, cumbersome, debilitating, emotional baggage, that, for some, manifests itself physically through weight gain. If we could see each other’s soul wounds, I’d hope we’d be a lot more compassionate with each other.
If you’re interested in reading more about how to change you’re thoughts, you can read more on my post.