Food Won't Fix It

The food part of Take Shape for Life's 5:1 program is the easy part.  In fact, it couldn't be easier!  The hard part of this program is the head and heart part - learning to redefine our relationship with food and learning to not view food as anything more than nutrition for our bodies (nutrition we can enjoy, of course!).

For those of us who were or are emotional eaters, learning how to establish a healthy and proper relationship with food is hard work.  Some of us spent decades of our lives enmeshed in a very unhealthy, love/hate relationship with food.  We ran to it whenever there was a blip on our emotional radar, somehow expecting that food would fix the problem or at least make us feel better.  The problem was that we never ended up feeling better.  My own experience was that even while I was doing my emotional eating thing, I kept mentally telling myself that I shouldn't be doing this and reminding myself that I was cheating on whatever diet I was currently on.  Of course, those thoughts didn't keep me from eating the food, but they did make me feel guilty while I was eating it.  Once the last bite was swallowed, the comfort I had been seeking was replaced by more guilt and self-recrimination, sending me deeper into whatever funk had prompted the eating to begin with.  The problem that I'd tried to salve with food was still there, of course, and I'd added a nice layer of guilt and regret on top of it.

Can anybody relate to this?  Honestly ask yourself:  when did food ever fix the problem?  Food can help to bury the feelings for a moment or two, but the problem never was solved with a fork.  Never.

Learning to deal with problems and the emotions that accompany them in a healthy way is such an important thing to learn if we want to not only reach a healthy weight but also maintain a healthy weight for the long term.

For me, part of this process was really learning to turn to my Heavenly Father in a new and deeper way.  I made a commitment to stay on plan and not cheat, so when the stuff of life bubbled up (as it always does), I realized I couldn't resort to old habits and run for the nearest chocolate.  Out of desperation I cried out to the Lord and asked for His strength to get me through the moment, and as I did that, I found Him to be faithful to provide what I needed in that moment.  Every time I turned to the Lord and made the choice to draw on His strength, there was enough strength to get me through that particular moment.

As I continued to do that, I realized that food never did truly comfort me, that it really wouldn't - and couldn't - fix anything in my life.  And that realization finally set me free from years of emotional eating.

This holiday season evokes lots of memories and emotions.  Some of them are good, but other emotions are difficult.  We may feel a lot of stress as we try to get through a long list of things to be done.  This is the time of year when some people give in to the emotion of the moment and toss aside their good intentions to eat healthy and stay on plan.  But food won't fix it.  Eating stuff that will get in the way of goal won't make us feel better.  We'll end up feeling sluggish, guilty, and frustrated.  And eating more to deal with THOSE feelings will only make us feel even worse!

Choosing to walk away from emotional eating isn't easy, especially during this time of year.  But making the choice to do so is incredibly freeing.  The choice is yours . . . choose wisely :-)