rel="nofollow" href="#ufa0671d2-362f-58ff-8e7c-b73534cf61c7">chapter 1, I shared that my struggles with food and weight began when I was a child. What about you? As you move into this phase of your life journey, it is time for you to take a look at your history with food, diets, and weight issues. So much of our eating is unconscious that you might not be cognizant of your eating history. Do the best you can. Looking at old photos and reading old diary entries can help.
My clients often gasp when I tell them to write their eating history. When I hear the comment “Why do you need to know?” I explain that it is really about them getting honest with themselves and their need to know.
Start to think about it for yourself. Beginning with childhood, what has been your relationship with food? Did you start compulsive overeating as a youngster? Did the binge eating start in adulthood? What were the events that led up to it?
Here are excerpts from a few of my clients' eating histories:
As a child I was a picky eater and there were many battles at the dinner table. I wasn't allowed to leave until I ate everything on my plate, and sometimes I sat there for hours until my mom finally gave up and told me to go to bed. I didn't have trouble with food or weight until after I had kids. Then, never wanting to waste food, I always finished what they left on their plates. Interesting how I used to be picky, and now I eat anything rather than throwing it out.
I have always liked food, and we had big family celebrations with a lot of food. Both my parents are heavy, my grandparents, too. We just like to eat a lot.
My mom worked and I was in charge of making the family dinners starting when I was about eight. I got to be a really good cook. I love when people appreciate the food I make, and I serve big portions. I love to eat, too. But now it is out of control, I am obese, I have health problems, and I know I eat too much junk food.
I was always a normal weight until my sister died when I was twenty. We didn't have a very good relationship, and I felt bad that I wasn't nicer to her. After she died, food just seemed to taste better, so I ate more and more. That was twenty-five years ago, and I am still eating a lot.
I got pregnant as a teen and was ostracized by my family. Before that, food was just food. Being pregnant, they told me I was eating for two and I gained a lot of weight. I never lost my baby weight and my daughter is now twelve. I like eating rich foods like pasta with Alfredo sauce, big desserts, and lots of bread and butter.
My children are skinny, so I always have snack food around for them. But I eat it, they don't. When I know it is there, I can't stop myself. I think I am only going to have one or two cookies, and then I eat six, eight, ten, or more. I can't control myself.
I was a normal weight growing up, and then I got married. My husband loves to eat, and we go to buffets a lot. We get along the best when I am his eating buddy, and I have started to enjoy it. I did it for him, and now it feels like I am hooked and can't stop myself from overeating.
I started dieting when I was a preteen because I was pudgy. All through my teen years I was on one diet or another. I couldn't stay on any of them very long and soon I was back to my binge eating. I am now forty-eight, and I don't know how to stay on a diet, and I don't know how to lose weight. Please help me!
I grew up believing there was good food, like fruits and vegetables, and bad food, like candy and desserts. Our home hardly ever had any of the bad food, so whenever I went to someone else's house I ate as much of it as I could. I used to fill my pockets with the candy and then hide it in my room so I wouldn't get yelled at.
There wasn't any set mealtime at our house. We just ate whenever and whatever we wanted. I remember, night after night, fixing myself a box of macaroni and cheese and then eating the whole pot. I didn't have a problem with weight until I hit forty and then I suddenly gained about twenty pounds. That was twenty-five years ago—and fifty pounds ago!
Many clients, many stories. Yours may sound similar to some of these or totally different. It doesn't matter—it is your personal history with food and eating. You'll have the opportunity to begin contemplating how you've used food as you work on today's assignment.
Assignment
If you don't already have your notebook or your computer near you, get it now. Starting with details from as far back as you can remember, write your eating history. Discuss your relationship with food from childhood to the present. What was mealtime like with your family? When did you begin to have weight issues? When did the overeating/bingeing begin? What foods or food groups do you crave? How has food been your security blanket? Write in as much detail as you can, being as truthful as possible. What messages did you give yourself about your eating? What messages did others give you about your eating and your weight?
Day
Yesterday's assignment was about the past, and perhaps it gave you some aha moments. Today we move to the present as we begin to explore the connection between food and feelings, between stimulus and response.
It's not what you're eating; it's what's eating you. In my days of recovering from binge eating disorder, I heard this again and again. What was it that caused me to put food in my mouth when I was not physically hungry? I ate when I was sad, anxious, ashamed, and afraid. Whenever I had an unpleasant feeling, I wanted food to push it away, to sedate me. When I was angry, I often chose crunchy foods like potato chips. When I felt lonely, I chose sweets.
Many people are quite new to thinking about and identifying their feelings. Since I was very much out of touch with my emotions when I began recovery, I had a difficult time with this. I grew up in the 1950s in what was mostly a positive family. That might sound nice and enviable; however, there was no space for any feelings other than happy ones in such a family. At age four, I felt very sad and abandoned when my father changed jobs and became a traveling salesman. He was sometimes gone for weeks, but usually he left on Monday morning and returned Friday night. As a little girl, I expressed my feelings to my mother, and she would say, “Oh, no, honey, you don't feel sad.” Or, “You shouldn't feel sad—you'll be getting new toys and presents.” Or, “Here, honey, have a cookie and you'll feel better!” The message came through loud and clear: It wasn't okay to feel unhappy.
I quickly discovered that food could push away disagreeable feelings and alter my mood, and that's probably when my compulsive overeating began. Since I was so out of touch with my feelings, when I filled in any kind of food-mood chart, I often left the Feelings section blank or filled it in with the word hungry. Hungry, though, is not an emotional feeling.
When we were children, big feelings were so large and overwhelming we thought they'd kill us. Now, as adults, we might still be thinking that the big feelings will annihilate us. But they won't. They cause pain, maybe. Death, no.
Assignment
You're going to create your food-mood diary today. Write the following words across the top of a blank page:
Every time you eat anything for the next twenty-one days (yes, just one bite of something counts), fill in the chart. Below is an example of a chart for one day:
To
