Food is Not Love

It's ok to hurt sometimes.

The media messages we receive daily imply or clearly state that tolerating pain is optional. The central message is, if we can only make good purchasing decisions, our pain may be fully ameliorated.

I am interested in the way we are asked to use food -- in particular starchy, sugary foods -- to handle our pain. Paying careful attention to fast food ads, one sees the addictive process demonstrated unashamedly. "I can't believe I ate it all," "It's a guilty pleasure," "Taste the extreme," each of these ties in emotion and feelings with nutrition.

For many who suffer from some form of food addiction or compulsive behavior concerning food, the idea of being still and feeling badly is unthinkable. Of course pain avoidance is a universal human quality; nobody likes to suffer. But for those who tend to love themselves with food, the sensitivity to pain is somehow heightened. It's sometimes referred to as low resilience - small slights and mild discomforts are too much to bear, unless accompanied by the love we felt we needed and deserved. Especially as children, when the most readily available drug available to us was in the refrigerator, we hunted for a way to change our mood and find the extra love we craved. Many of us turned to food.

Fantasy coping schemes are not unique to overeaters. In fact, one could scroll through a long list of compulsions that are perhaps more deadly in the short term, more risky, less socially acceptable. Yet are any of these as insidious as the desire to eat for love? This desire is so attractive, yet ultimately the harm done meets or exceeds the harm experienced by those who abuse drugs, alcohol, or sex.

When it becomes necessary, in life, to eat to cover our feelings, we have lost control. When we cannot be still and cope with our pain in a manner that does not hurt ourselves or others, we are in the highest state of selfishness. With those first bites, we anticipate that feeling good is an option; that good feeling is just around the corner, about to happen to us (never within us). That next bite will surely provide the locking mechanism that snaps us into place with the good life. It will surely make us feel loved.

Sugar-starchy combinations of food seem to work best for such an eating strategy. A personality change becomes evident when the bolus of various sugars reaches our blood and, very quickly, our brains (even rats show addictive behavior to sugar according to Princeton researchers). Increased heart rate accompanied by rapid palpitations, light sweating, bloating discomfort, gas, and subsequent drowsiness and lethargy -- "sugar crash" -- substantially altered our moods and put us in a twilight state of dullness, and the pain was forgotten momentarily.

The reasons for the pain were inconsequential at the time of that first bite. Low esteem, guilt, shame, cynicism, debts, fear, anxiety, him or her -- any of these provided reasons for us to escape into food. Once again, we loved ourselves with food. Yet we continued to love ourselves with a substance and an event...the preparing (or procuring) and eating are what we looked to for love and relief. For a few minutes, we found it.