There are as many reasons why you have eaten as there are minutes in a day. Storm clouds do it for me. They trigger a memory of when I lived in Florida and went deep sea fishing in Key West. When a storm was imminent, we would take our boat to a nearby atoll and wait for the storm to pass while eating fresh fish sandwiches and drinking cold beer. Sandwiches are snacks, which I now steer clear of, and I don’t drink beer anymore, but the smell of a storm can be a huge hindrance for me. I don’t act on it, but memory is a tempting trigger nonetheless.
A splash of red wine on white pants cannot trigger an episode of overeating or the car won’t start, a flat tire, and your cell phone loses signal at 4:58 p.m. when you need to contact someone before 5: 00 pm But these things have a cumulative effect, and all mini-annoyances have the potential to turn into maxi-eating responses at the end of the day.
You may stumble because you saw your favorite dessert on a restaurant menu. Or a celebration can turn a no attempt into a resounding yes as soon as you hear a champagne cork pop out of a bottle.
“I could resist anything but temptation,” said Oscar Wilde.
Consider the reasons you are tempted to eat. Highlight or circle those you respond to. There are many and varied.
Do you eat because you are hungry? Do you even know what hunger is? Or are you eating because you feel lonely, tired, angry, or bored?
Think of all the reasons you eat that have nothing to do with hunger.
Perhaps you eat because you are awake: it is your birthday, my birthday, our anniversary or Groundhog Day; or because you are depressed: sad or grieving. You can eat because you are there, or someone else is eating, why not you? Is food readily available in your office, in your home? Do you eat in your car?
Are you eating for good news? Bad news? No news? One man said he eats on the news.
You may find yourself eating some foods because they came with dinner at a restaurant or others because they came for free with your airline ticket or hotel room. There’s bread on a restaurant table, peanuts on the plane, chocolates on your pillow, and you think: I’ll never come through here again.
For some, the food is seen as a reward: I have been very good all day. Do not eat breakfast. I did not take my lunch. I’ll take this side of the meat for dinner. Of course, if you feel full, bloated, and not so good about yourself, then overeating is not a reward. It is a punishment.
When a young woman used the excuse of overeating before going to the ballet, I asked her, did you dance? Unless you were dancing on that stage, you ate too much for dinner. He ate more than he could burn.
For many, food has become a socially acceptable drug. It seems to numb the tensions and stresses in your life. You may use food to suppress feelings and thoughts you don’t want to feel or think, or to escape.
Do you eat when you are frustrated, disappointed, or angry? A colleague told me that he took away a box of cookies and a pint of ice cream when the courts awarded his ex-wife a large divorce settlement. He wanted to know if she had returned the alimony check when she realized he was hurting himself.
Although eating doesn’t change the outcome of anything other than your waistline and self-esteem, you may still eat to cheer yourself up when you’re depressed. Or not feel so alone when you are without company. Or to socialize: you don’t want to be left out. You may continue to eat even though your clothing is too tight and you are panting and puffing when you walk. That’s part of the addiction: you keep doing what you do even though there are negative consequences.
Perhaps you eat because you are bored or have to occupy unstructured time, such as nights and weekends, or because you experience pressure from family, business, money or peer group: (“Come on. We all go for pizza and we want you to come. “) You don’t want to be left out. You can use food to avoid intimacy or sex. Maybe he uses food to avoid feeding himself or being nourished. He’s procrastinating: (“I’ll have lunch first and then I’ll work on that report”).
You can eat during food preparation and storage. Maybe because once you start you can’t stop. You might think, what the heck, I screwed it up anyway. Maybe food is used as a reward because you did something wonderful, or as punishment because you already overeat and imagine. What the heck, it won’t make any difference. When you smell coffee in your office or popcorn in a movie, or fresh donuts in a bakery, do you stand in line? Do you use food as a meal extender? You’re having such a good time and you don’t want the night to end, so you order another cup of coffee, a cocktail, a dessert. You are entertaining the guests. There’s a lot of extra food and all those leftovers.
Going home to family is difficult for some. You may feel guilty that your family and friends have been cooking since last Thursday, and you have to try (and comment on) everything that is offered. Is the cook offended if you don’t have seconds and thirds?
We eat differently when we are in the company of two people, three people, four people, more people. A recent study said that people who eat with six or more people consume 78% more than they would consume if they ate alone. The more people there are, the more food is offered.
The longer the food stays on the table, the longer you will be tempted to eat.
Are you too tired to cook, so you choose to choose and convince yourself that you did not eat anything?
A point to remember:
If it’s not water, it’s food.
And this too:
If you swallowed it, you ate it. It all adds up.
It doesn’t matter if you overeat due to genetics, ethnicity, religion, circumstances, or emotions. You may eat for any of these reasons or for all of these reasons. Every person gets into the habit of using food inappropriately by eating for reasons why they tell themselves that it is okay to eat, even if they are not hungry. Having followed these habits for so long, sometimes decades, they have turned into involuntary conditioned responses. Like Pavlov’s dogs, when a stimulus appears, can a yes be far behind, thank you? The smart you thinks you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, but you can’t stop. That’s the sneaky part of addiction, like making a decision is going to work when it never has before. This might be the time to make a list of the reasons you eat. Put down the breadstick and grab a pencil.
After looking at my list, a middle-aged woman told me, “According to your show, I haven’t been hungry since 1963.” She was correct. She and you may have misidentified these situations, circumstances, and emotions as hunger for so long that you’ve lost your innate ability to identify this most basic feeling.
If you’re trying to satisfy a physical hunger, your body doesn’t need a lot of food. If you are trying to satisfy an emotional hunger, you could bring a truckload of food to your home or office, and it would never, ever contain enough food. “Alright guys, put the Mallomars in the cabinet, the Häagen-Dazs in the freezer. The Twinkerdoodles go to bed.”
If you’re feeling so overwhelmed, confused, and paralyzed by not knowing what to do about this multi-faceted and multi-faceted topic of weight management that you can’t stop eating once it starts, chances are you won’t do anything.
If you are hungry, you need to nourish the body. If, on the road, it also tastes good, looks good, and smells good, you’ve got a bonus. But you shouldn’t eat because it looks, smells and tastes good. Almost everything fits that criteria.
If you are thirsty, drink water.
If you are responding to one of the above stimuli, change habits by creating new and constructive responses to replace old and destructive ones. This is called remodeling.
I may have missed one of its Potential Pitfalls, but you get the idea. Add yours if it’s not here. Watch how you eat when you are up or down, alone or with friends. We even eat differently with men, differently with women, and differently with children. These mistakes can be due to emotions, circumstances, or simply because you are there or you are there, in the neighborhood where your favorite something is prepared like nowhere else in the world. Traps can be any of these things or all of these things.
None of the pitfalls I have described above is hunger. And if it is not hunger, it is not a reason to eat.
What are your possible difficulties?
