What is Your Disordered Eating Covering Up?
If you’re feeling controlling, chaotic, or obsessive around food and would like to stop and get to a place where you feel normal, then at some point you’re going to need to look deeper than the food.
Yes, we live in an obesogenic environment. Blaming our food troubles on hyper-palatable foods, the increase in portion sizes, or other environmental factors is easy.
But that is by no means the full story, because not everyone has a strained, difficult, or complicated relationship with food. In the same exact environment, there are also so-called “normative eaters.”
And you can learn to become one of them.
But first, you’re going to have to stop attributing your eating habits to the temptations of the food around you.
As I like to say: it’s never about the food.
Let me give you a few examples:
Allie the Overachiever
Allie is a classic over-performer. She puts in long hours at work, answers emails after hours, and stays up late when a deadline is looming. Because her family and friends are also important to her, she always makes an effort to say yes when someone requests her time, and cherishes eating meals together with loved ones.
Allie turns to food when she’s particularly stressed about work—when there’s a project she feels anxious about getting feedback on, when she loses sleep to get things in on time, or when she feels frustrated with colleagues. She also comforts herself with food as a release when she has a moment to herself, and tells herself “she deserves it.”
Allie doesn’t have a problem with food. She is using food to cover up her lack of self-worth. Her low self-worth is manifesting as a need to perform in order to please others, both at work and in her relationships with friends and family. Additionally, she is using food to self-soothe when she feels energetically drained.
Janelle the Survivor
In her late teens, Janelle was a victim of sexual assault. Ever since then, she has felt like a stranger in her body. She has felt resentful and mistrusting, both of herself and others.
After the attack, she began binge eating and rapidly gaining weight. Subconsciously, she feels safer in her larger body, because she feels that if she’s “too big”, she’ll be less attractive to men and therefore prevent another assault. Lately, Janelle has been attempting weight loss, but she always yo-yo’s back up.
Janelle doesn’t have a problem with food. She has a problem with unprocessed trauma.
Sam the Self-Conscious
Sam has been single for a number of years and finally decided, with the support of his therapist, to actively seek out dating partners. Sam met someone he likes, and is faced with the prospect of meeting his new boyfriend’s friend group.
He’s been counting calories and making an effort to go to the gym more often, but it seems like any time he goes out, the food and drinks he has on the weekends always negate his dieting efforts from the previous week.
Sam is terrified of not being accepted by his boyfriend’s friends, and has been self-sabotaging by overeating; if the guys don’t like him, he can blame it on his weight.
Sam doesn’t have a problem with food. He has a debilitating fear of being rejected.
Lucy the Rebel
Lucy has vivid childhood memories of her mother criticizing her weight and anyone in larger bodies. Her mother was a chronic dieter herself, and restricted Lucy’s food in an attempt to get her to lose weight, too. She remembers her mother’s warnings about “junk food” making her fat.
As an adult, Lucy feels a sense of rebellious freedom in being able to buy and eat whatever she wants, whenever she wants, in the quantities she wants. She shops at different stores because she fears being “caught” buying large quantities of chips and sweets too often. She experiences secretive binge eating sessions, as she also doesn’t want her husband to ever find out how much she eats in one sitting.
At the same time, Lucy chastises herself for how much she eats, unknowingly using many of the same words her mother used.
Lucy doesn’t have a problem with food. She has a problem with chronic restriction and internalized weight stigma.
These are just a few examples of the numerous and varied ways in which our underlying problems can manifest in our disordered relationships with food. And, of course, this doesn’t just appear as overeating, but as chronic undereating as well.
I’ve never coached a student who struggled with their relationship with food without talking in-depth about what was going on outside of their eating habits. That’s why Food Body Self™ coaching is founded on mindset and mindfulness, and why we learn how to process emotions, heal old wounds, and face our fears with courage.
That’s also why, if you feel preoccupied or obsessed with food, out of control, have a love-hate relationship, or any other difficult or strained feelings around eating, I’m leaving you with the following question to ponder on:
What is your relationship with food covering up?