On peanut butter, emotional eating, and taking a break.
Leeeeet’s talk about emotional eating.
When people talk to me about eating disorders I am quick to let them know that I’ve had ’em all. Anorexia. Bulimia. Compulsive exercise. Body dysmorphia. General freakiness around food, numbers, and tabulations that don’t exactly have a name, but also aren’t exactly “normal”. I have struggled with food and my body in every way possible. From starving to binging, I know just exactly what it’s like.
Despite this, something I haven’t talked so much about is emotional eating. It’s not because I’m ashamed of it, or because I think it doesn’t feel important. It’s just that emotional eating is just so fucking normal, so culturally ingrained, that it feels strange to wax poetic about it. I feel that most people, in some way, eat emotionally. Holiday dinners, birthday cake celebrations, going out to dinner on a date, bringing casseroles to the gathering post-funeral. These are times when messages are directly conveyed via food and because we have been in these situations again and again and again, they are habit. Food is many things, and a conduit for feeling is definitely one of them.
While in recovery, I generally had a lot of judgements about myself and my food. I judged my inability to just “be really healthy”, instead letting various restrictions whittle me down to a bag of bones in an inconvenient husk of a body. I judged the rage I felt when I couldn’t get on an elliptical machine every single day. I judged the purging, how disgusting and violent it seemed. I was a feminist for fuck’s sake. What was my head doing in the toilet?
Paradoxically, I also had a lot of judgements around the actions that were necessary to take in order to physically recover. For every time I chastised myself for my restrictions, I also felt waves a disgust when I consumed sugar, oils, breads, or baked goods. I judged when I couldn’t deadlift more weight on a particular day. I judged overeating, even without the purging.
Slowly, I began to realize that I was truly setting myself up for failure. I was a perfectionist about my recovery, as I had been about my eating disorder, and truthfully, it was keeping me from restoring mental clarity, fixing my overtaxed immune system, restoring my metabolism, and just generally having a cool life. I was keeping myself in eating disorder jail even in my recovery, and- lucky me- I realized that in order to truly feel good and in order to completely recover, I needed to change. I let myself off the hook with occasional overeating, I took months of only walking and doing yoga. I stopped weighing myself and I stopped counting calories and I stopped generally being such a dick to myself. Basically, I unlocked my own cage.
I’d love to say it was beautiful and I felt 100% satisfied and free, but that’s just not life. It waxed and waned, as most things in life do. My body changed a lot, and very quickly. I still didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, but I did generally have a free-er and more full life, which was enough for me, even if just for a minute. (Nothing is perfect, in recovery or out. Body feels are usually constantly shifting for most people, but especially for those in recovery).
The past two years have been super transformative for me, because after loosening my reigns and staying there for awhile, I took the next step in my recovery. First, I just tried to learn to eat and to restore my weight. Next, I put effort toward learning to actually like myself, which is where I believe the big shifts happen. My goal became not only about my body, but also about my mind. I wanted to feel proud of my accomplishments and to assume that on a base level, I was a good person. The more I practiced eating enough with eating mindfully, the more I listened when my body said yes, the more I figured out about what foods actually work for my body (as opposed to what foods I thought should work for my body)- the more I felt actually good. In turn, I also started to like what I saw in the mirror. My metabolism returned to what felt normal for me (with consistency around eating enough years. This change doesn’t happen over night.) Today, I genuinely like and respect what I see in the mirror, which is nothing short of a miracle.
Despite the peace and satisfaction I feel with food and my body, I’ve felt something uncomfortable creep up in the past six months or so, and that uncomfortable thing comes from good ole’ reasonable and normal emotional eating. Peanut butter is my one true love, for reals, and I had found that the way I was eating peanut butter was making me hate it.
Let me explain: When I was restricting, I had a mortal fear of fats. I did not eat peanut butter for most of my 20’s, and when I did add it in, it was by the carefully measured teaspoon. When I finally gave up the crutch of measuring, I had a complete and total peanut butter liberation, eating it happily and with abandon. On apples, on carrots, in smoothies, whisked with some rice vinegar and tamari as peanut sauce. I loved that I felt free to eat this food that I had so feared, and let’s be real- I loved the way it tasted.
Even with all the love, I noticed something unpalatable happening over the past few months. I was stressed out about work. I was stressed out about passing my personal training test (which I did!) I was stressed out about planning my wedding, getting my training in, being a good friend, recording my podcast, and the upcoming move to Portland. I was stressed about what relocation meant for my identity and my life and my finances. I was stressed out about the details of just about everything and my stress marched me, pretty much on a nightly basis, straight to a jar of peanut butter.
There is something about slicing up a nice crispy apple, spooning some peanut butter onto a saucer, and slowly enjoying the awesome goodness that plant-based snacking provides. There is also something about standing in your kitchen at 11PM in your pajamas, feeling exhausted but somehow unable to sleep, and dipping your finger again and again into a peanut butter jar, eating it really quickly. One thing is extremely pleasant, and the other feels straight up bad. I bet you can guess which is which.
The gist of this story is that I started eating so much peanut butter before bed that my stomach was hurting. I was tossing and turning with a gut ache, and returning to the peanut butter jar-thinking just a little more would help me fall to sleep. My relationship with peanut butter- something I loved!- had turned into something that was stressing me out. On top of all my other stress. When I was just trying to soothe my stress.
My body is curiously smart and curiously consistent. Although I was going through more than a whole big jar of peanut butter per week, my weight stayed the same, and my clothes continued to fit. I was uncomfortable with what peanut butter was doing to me not because it was making me gain weight (which I think is important to say given my history) but because eating it all bleary eyed until my guts ached just seemed like a punishing move on my part. Emotionally eating peanut butter wasn’t the celebration of birthday cake or even soothing like ice cream after a bullshit day. It was sad, and annoying, and taking the joy out of something I loved. And so, with great hesitation, I decided to take a break. From my beloved peanut butter. For thirty whole days.
Despite being a very even-tempered, let’s-find-the-middle-way health coach, I can still be prone to black and white thinking when it comes to myself. When I do something, I do it with enthusiasm (ahem, crossfit) and when I don’t I have tended to have a “never again!” attitude about it. Taking a break seems like a simple and obvious reaction to a scenario that was making me uncomfortable, but I have to say, I am impressed that I thought of it for myself.
I’m not having peanut butter now because it has occupied an uncomfortable role in my life, I am going to take a month to utilize some other coping tools (writing-in this blog even!, meditating, reading, etc.) , and then I will likely have peanut butter again. How novel! How simple!
So that’s what’s new lately.
Here are some things that have informed my decision:
Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days
Why I’m NOT an Intuitive Eating Coach by Isabel Foxen Duke
Is Emotional Eating Really So Bad? by Golda Poretsky
And with that:
How do you cope with stress?
Seriously, please tell me! I want to learn your skillz.
Oh, this is brilliant. And peanuts in any form is a true love of mine as well. I have peanuts in the shell almost every night, and yes, I have had to back off them when it’s felt abusive instead of nurturing, though usually it’s enough for me to take a week’s break rather than a month. Thanks for the links as well.
And how do I cope with stress? Taking deep breaths. Meditation. Prayer, big time. Journaling. Painting. Looking for beauty and goodness in my life, sometimes just in that moment. Talking to my husband about it. Writing a card to a friend. Going forward, one freaking step at a time. Listening to music.
Thanks so much for sharing. Meditation is one that I straight up KNOW works, but I never think to do it. Your comment was a good reminder!
Oh, girl, I definitely feel you here. My stress ebbs and flows, as the semester progresses it changes a lot. I really try to be gentle with myself because that’s something I’ve not been so great at in the past. I find that cooking really helps me with my stress, then curling up with a good book or maybe an episode of one of my favorite shows. Shutting off one’s brain is one of the hardest challenges that I think we face as humans, and I think that nearly all of us have the tendency to act impulsively rather than healthily when stressed out. I always take a moment to think about what my impulse is and if that’s really what is going to help me work through my stress in a healthful and productive way. Going for a walk, listening to a podcast, or sometimes just dancing around with my cat to Stevie Nicks seems to really do the trick sometimes. Hang in there lady! You’re stronger than you know!
Thanks so much Rachel. All of your suggestions are basically perfect! Things are waning in ye olden stress department these days, and somehow I am miraculously almost 3 weeks peanut butter free. Turns out I have a variety of other coping mechanisms that I just wasn’t using. WHO KNEW!?
Peanut butter is definitely a thing for me, too. When I was married & in couples counseling with my husband, we literally spent 2 entire therapy sessions just talking about peanut butter… no joke! I couldn’t have it in the house, he didn’t want to give it up. It’s a thing, for sure!!
To cope with stress, I rock the DBT skills, big time! Just the basics seem to be most effective for me: Observe & Describe. What am I doing RIGHT NOW? – I am sitting in traffic.
What am I thinking? – I am going to be late because there is too much traffic
What am I feeling? – I am noticing judgement (I should have left earlier), anxiety (I am afraid to be late), frustration (why are so many people moving to Portland? They’re turning the city into San Francisco!! ARGH!!!).
By naming the thoughts & emotions, I allow them space to be & they diminish in intensity. Then I breath, and continue naming what’s going on around me.
Generally speaking, if I am stressed about something, it’s not ultimately about what is happening in my life, but my *thoughts* about what is happening in my life. I’m having some kind of judgment about what’s going on (I can’t handle this, this is too much, I’ll never make it, I’m not good enough), and it’s those thoughts that are creating the feeling of stress. When I can see those thoughts, then I can question them (Is that true?) and choose whether or not to keep thinking them (Why am I freaking out about something that isn’t happening right now? Perhaps I’ll feel better if I just focus on this moment. I’ll deal with the future moments when they become the present moment!).
Byron Katie has an excellent process for questioning distressing thoughts:
http://thework.com/
Lots of excellent info on DBT skills can be found here:
http://psychology.tools/dbt.html
Scroll down to the “Other Resources” section for links to worksheets & handouts.
Oh, and when all else fails, I watch cute animal videos on YouTube. Perfect stress buster for me :)
I LOL’d sooooo hard thinking about therapy sessions devoted to peanut butter because Kett and I go through THE EXACT SAME THING. There have been times when I ask him to just not keep it around me, but he just doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal, why i can’t have a little peanut butter, or why i can’t just keep my mits out of his jar if i don’t want to. I love the dude so, so much, but he will never understand the weird ways I can feel fucked up around food. So glad I am not the only one that has dealt with this! <3
I clicked on this link from Facebook right after eating my fifth overloaded spoonful of peanut butter today and almost started crying. Every time I take a bite, I come down hard on myself, and I have been doing the same thing on and off for several years. I have to make a change, and I’m going to stop with the emotional eating for 30 days like you. It’s time. Thank you very much for your great blog and for this perfectly-timed post. Good luck with your own self improvement, and keep up the awesome work. You’ve inspired me!
you got this! I believe in you!
I have no brilliant coping tools to share, nor do I have much to add about emotional eating. I just enjoyed this post so much, and found it so relateable. Kudos on doing what’s best for you, and for having the self awareness to do so <3!
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I think you are handling things pretty well all things considered. These are some major life changes you’re going through – a few all at once! I think you should pat yourself on the back for how you are handling things. I’m totally guilty of overeating when I’m stressed (pb cups are my vice), I think it’s a fairly normal reaction. And the way you caught yourself in a cycle is a good thing. And you are already turning things around so quickly. I do that 30-day break thing too, works like a charm. I find it really helps me get away from a repeat craving and enjoy something more than just eating it for the sake of eating it.
“Slowly, I began to realize that I was truly setting myself up for failure. I was a perfectionist about my recovery, as I had been about my eating disorder”
I can totally identify with this. I still feel really stuck in my recovery… I feel like I’m very back and forth and I’m having a hard time fighting with the perfectionist in me and wanting to just be fully recovered right this second. Your thoughts remind me to take things slow and not set myself up for failure =)
Such a wise woman!
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