The Emotional Energy Food Connection

Eating is an emotional activity for most people, both those who eat "normally" and those who suffer from disordered eating. People who eat "normally" occasionally eat for emotional reasons. They sometimes choose foods based on how the specific foods make them feel. The term "comfort food" wasn't invented entirely by those who suffer from so-called disordered eating.

While the intuitive eating/no-diet approach demands that we shift our eating more toward eating to fuel our bodies it is like most everything else related to the approach. Nothing is all black or all white. There are shades of gray. While we need to time our eating to coincide with hunger and satiety there is no reason that we need to ignore the emotional reasons that we choose certain foods over others.

Like other emotions, those connected to food can offer a great deal of insight.

One of the great benefits of the intuitive eating/no-diet approach is flexibility and freedom to choose from among all the foods on the planet and to derive both physical and emotional pleasure from the choices we make. The goal is to eat when hungry, stop when satisfied so that whatever food we choose it benefits us rather than harming us.

I find that my food choices are often emotionally driven. Many foods have connotations, memories, and emotional energy surrounding them. For some people, Twinkies are very highly emotional...maybe because they were denied them as a child...or maybe because they were a favorite summer time treat.

I cannot eat oatmeal, a favorite winter comfort food, without thinking of my grandparent's home, the way it sat in the darkness of early morning when my mother would drop me off on her way to work. The darkness of the rest of the house and the warm and beckoning light of the kitchen, the security of my grandmother's presence as she served up a bowl of oatmeal and a piece of toast are memories that go back at least to the year I started kindergarten...over 35 years ago...

Before I began my no-diet process I was oblivious to the connection between food and emotion. I didn't realize that there even was a connection. I realized that I liked oatmeal...that I particularly liked it on cold blustery days and on days when I needed to calm or center myself. I didn't realize then that it was connected emotionally to my grandparents and the memory of their kitchen and the safety I felt there.

Nowadays I pay attention to the emotional energy associated with my food choices. I try to hear what the food says to me...what emotions a given food triggers. Does it remind me of celebration, safety, being denied? In understanding why I seek out one food over another, the food choices themselves can indicate that I need to provide myself a more serene space...or a moment of quiet...or I need to remind myself that there is enough...that I don't have to eat everything I want to eat in my lifetime on this one day. There will be more available tomorrow...and if there isn't I can go to the store or restaurant where it is sold and acquire more.