Woof: Emotional Eating

Today, in a workshop, I shared a story about my dog and eating that I think says it all.

My dog, Jackie, is a little darling angel, except when she's not. Though I don't know her whole story, her body says that she had a rough life, most likely with a breeder, before she came to live with me. Like everyone who has been in a rough place, she has baggage to manage. For her, this mostly manifests positively-- she's is behind on love, so she asks/demands love from anyone with a free hand, foot, or snuggle spot on their body. Somehow, she accepts that I have to go to work most days, and is cool with that. BUT if I leave the house outside of that routine, she sometimes feels anxious and upset: who will cuddle her?! When she can't get the pets she seeks, she acts out by eating any nearby paper, and if shit gets real bad, she busts out of her room and digs in the trash.

Jackie, eating her bone, quite emotionally.

Today, when I left for my swim workout, Jackie gave me the eye: "I know you aren't going to work! You could be with me!" Indeed when I came back, she had partaken in both paper and garbage, in order to soothe herself. Because I'm crazy, I had a conversation with her about it:

"Jackie, bad!"

<blank stare>

"Let's talk about this. Mama spends all her money on a limited ingredient venison and sweet potato diet for you."

<blank stare>

"We've worked so hard to find the perfect diet for you! Why would you then turn around and eat GARBAGE?"

As my dog continued to stare at me, I had a thought. I was scolding her for eating MY P.Terry's garbage. I also invest a lot of money and time in eating for my health. While my lettuce wrapped burger with cheese isn't the worst thing I could do to myself, I didn't really eat it for the best reason. I chose to eat that more as a reaction.

As I've learned not to emotionally eat, or eat when I'm not hungry, I've picked up or magnified other self-soothing behaviors, some better than others. I wasn't particularly upset at that moment, but I was a little bored with my choice to stay home and organize my space on a Saturday night. This was in part, because I'm broke till payday. An interesting side effect of having tapped out of money early this month is that, I've never wanted to eat out more. I realized that, like a good American, I get off on consuming. Even just going and buying things I need, like razor blades or cat litter, is satisfying. Shopping often distracts me from my more inward pursuits...and in the absence of it...I wanted to eat--my old standby distraction. Just because I choose far less harmful foods in the past, doesn't mean I'm not still playing out a pattern.

In today's workshop, my nutritionist spoke about eating consciously-- eating when you need to and not for other reasons. One of her suggestions was to ask what you really need. Is it food? Or is it sleep or love or something else?

Slowly, I think I can get my dog to the place where she doesn't eat garbage emotionally. Woof, woof, baby girl-- you and me both!

Eating Outside the Boxes

Eating Outside the Boxes
As a long time fat girl, even when I wasn’t even vaguely fat, I’ve let diet advice guide my nutrition choices for most of my life. Following what I call The Science of the 90’s, like a lot of people, I ate low fat for a long time. Fat content guided all food choices. Sometimes calories, but mostly fat. Not sugar content, not amounts of crazy chemicals, not nutrient content, and certainly not taste. (Am I the only one with nightmares about non-fat cheese?)

In my household, cooking often meant Southern cuisine and a million potentially fatty choices. In between diets I ate my mom’s cooking, which can shame Paula Deen’s (tastes better, more butter, less racist), but I never learned her recipes because they weren’t low fat. And I couldn’t eat out, because I had seen the fat content of the Chili’s Old Timer burger and that was that. So…I ate a lot of frozen boxed food. I thought this was the best option, because everything was clearly labelled and portion controlled. Thanks to the guidance of an organization I’ll call…Fat Hawks, I believed that I couldn’t be trusted with choices beyond the box. I also had such a complicated relationship with food that I didn’t really want to invest time in it. So by the time I finished college and began the glamorously busy lifestyle of a teacher (jetsetting from one stack of papers to another and what not), I ate almost exclusively from boxes containing low fat frozen “food.” It was Unhealthy Choices, Fat Hawks, and Not-a-Cuisines for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and snacks.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I was unhappy: mood swings, insulin resistance, low energy, and seemingly uncontrollable cravings. And I still struggled with my weight. Over the next decade, I learned a few things and made some changes. Thanks to Atkins (oh dieting) I discovered the power of protein, particularly eggs. By choosing less carby and more protein oriented choices, I was able to reduce many of the symptoms of insulin-resistance including my mood swings, but I still feared fat and I was addicted to convenience foods. Even as I started to prepare some of my foods, I still relied on packaged snacks and desserts to help me manage eating. And I was more confused than ever at the grocery store.

In 2010, my roommate started talking about her new awesome nutritionist, Carly. I started following some of her guidelines and experimenting with crazy items containing fat, like almond butter. I felt better. When Carly visited my running group (yes, I’m a big fat runner), her advice made more sense than any advice I had ever been given as an athlete, so I scraped together my teacher pennies and made an appointment.

While I had a lot of knowledge and had already made some positive changes, Carly helped me craft a set of choices all my own, not guided by diet advice, but by my body’s own responses to the fuel I put in it. I felt terrific. Cravings did not control me. I ate for health. I still struggled with the need for convenience and my own meager cooking skills; for an embarrassingly long time, I filled up on organic turkey slices, carrots, and hummus. Sometimes I still foraged for a fast-ish food lunch because I was unprepared.

On my 37th birthday, I recommitted myself to planning and eating the best meals for me…and right after that I started a job in a relative food desert…and right after that I broke my leg. That could have been the end of my healthy eating, and the start of ordering pizzas, but with the knowledge and confidence I obtained from Carly and my own studies, along with a lot of help from my friends, I began to cook my own fresh food in batches, a few times a week. I healed my leg weeks ahead of schedule, and became even more convinced of the power of good-for-you nutrition. Never mind an occasional morning taco problem, I’ve brought a powerful lunch to work almost every day for the past two years, and I feel better for it.

My journey is far from over. On the surface, I am not one of Carly’s success stories. After extended periods of excellent nutrition, with very little fat loss, we concluded that nutrition isn’t my problem. Not anymore anyway. With this knowledge, I’ve selected a natural hormone therapist, and we have identified a problem and hopefully, a solution. The medication is just a tiny portion of repairing my relationship with food though; the real change began when I learned how to eat outside the boxes.