Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Confessions of an Emotional Eater

I have mentioned several times before in this blog that I am an emotional eater.  This is a condition that I fully realize I have, and I am well aware of my triggers.  But the unfortunate reality is that I don't have it beat just yet.  Actually, at this moment I am so far from beating this affliction that I can hardly stand it.  If you read my blog with any regularity, you will know I have been struggling emotionally for the past few months over various things.  And every time I struggle, it seems like the first thing I go to for comfort is food.  Maybe I think if I am stressing about what and how much I am eating, I won't have time or room to stress about the really important things in my life.  I don't know.  But I know this has got to stop.

I am going to be 100% truthful here.  I am so out of control right now that I am having a very difficult time reigning it back in.  My eating is reflecting my lack of control in my circumstances - it mirrors my daily struggle with the fact that I just can't seem to make enough money, or have enough time, or do enough of the things I should be doing.  I am compensating for all of the things I lack right now by eating far too much.  No word of a lie.  I am not exaggerating in the slightest here.  Yesterday I ate two chocolate cupcakes for lunch - and that was just the appetizer.  I eat everything in sight, and when I finally feel full, the guilt sets in.  I want to throw up all the awful stuff in my stomach (that goodness I don't have an eating disorder!).  I mentally beat myself up and hate myself for not being able to resist that first, second, third cupcake.  Even though I know exactly what I am doing when I open the package and take that first fateful bite, I do it anyway.  I know that I'm going to feel guilty.  I know I'm going to feel sick.  I know I'm going to hate myself for it.  And I do it anyway!  Talk about self-sabotage!  This kind of thinking is going give me back that old fat-armor I used to wear.  Man, I so don't want to be that girl again!  But the sad thing is that if I don't make a change, that's exactly where I'm going to end up.

The worst part of all of this is that I am looking so hard for some satisfaction that when I no longer feel full (but I'm not even remotely hungry yet), I have a sick compulsion to eat again.  And on top of that, I don't want people to catch me eating.  I feel ashamed and I want to hide it.  It's at a point right now where I don't really know what to do with myself.  I am my own enemy at the moment and it makes me kind of sick!  Don't I love myself enough to put a stop to this?

The roots of this symptom are where I need to go in order to get this under control.  I have been really feeling my mortality this last few months, and though I joke about turning thirty and going gray, these things are concrete signs that I am not going to live forever.  It scares me to death that there is a possibility with each passing day that I could die and leave my kids here without me.  This is my deepest, darkest fear - there it is, for everyone to see.  My mother died when I was fourteen, and my sister was only six.  My daughter is six right now, and let me tell you, it hit me like a ton a bricks what it must have been like growing up from such from young age without a mother!  I have so much admiration for my sister that there are actually no words to express it.  I am so ridiculously scared of missing a single moment with my children that I want to throw up.  I have repressed this fear for a long, long time, but now it is right there at the surface, picking away at me.  There's also the fact that I find myself in a situation, once again, where I have to choose between groceries and rent.  And so, I eat.  Naturally.

I have to find a better way to deal with all of this.  I am erasing all of my hard work, and losing control of myself again.  I am falling back into old patterns, and I so don't want to.  I do not want this for myself.  I deserve more that what I am giving myself.  I am worth more than cupcakes for lunch and making myself sick with the fear of things I cannot control.

End confession.  There it is.  Now that it's out there, hopefully I can deal with it better.

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