When Food is Love

[Uniquely_Ambi]

This is out of my journal. It was recommended that I post it here for others, so here goes.

I've started reading When Food is Love again. The book is by Geneen Roth. She writes on emotional eating and about a week ago I said I'd start writing things from her book that touched me me.

I know that food is an emotional thing for me and I have the mentality of the world will be perfect once I lose weight. Once I lose weight and I'm thin everything will just be great. I feel that this puts things in perspective. Geneen writes:

"Someone once came to a workshop after she has lost 75 lbs. on a diet. She stood up in front of 150 people and, with her voice shaking, said, "I feel like I've been robbed. My best dream has been taken away. I really thought that losing weight was going to change my life. But it only changed the outside of me. The inside is still the same. My mother is still dead and my father still beat me when I was growing up. I'm still angry and lonely and now I don't have getting thin to look forward to."

[Uniquely_Ambi]

This quote here explains exactly how I feel and role of food in my life throughout the years. I was an anorexic, then a binge eater, then I kept going between the two until one day I woke up 250 lbs. and hypoglycemic.

"Compulsion is despair on the emotional level. Compulsion is the feeling that there is no one home. We become compulsive to put someone home.
All we ever wanted was love.
We didn't want to become compulsive about anything. We did it to survive. We did it to keep from going crazy. Good for us.
Food was our love; eating was our way of being loved. Food was available when our parents weren't. Food didn't get up and walk away when our fathers did. Food didn't hurt us. Food didn't say no. Food didn't hit. Food didn't get drunk. Food was always there. Food tasted good. Food was warm when we were cold and cold when we were hot. Food become the closest thing we knew of love.
But it is only a substitute for love. Food is not, nor was it ever, love.

Many of us have been using food to replace love for so many years that we no longer know the difference between turning to food for love and turning to love for love. We wouldn't recognize love if it knocked us over.
Not because we are ignorant but because if we've never been loved well, we don't know what love feels like, what love is like. And it follows that if we have not been loved well, we cannot love ourselves well. Compulsive behavior, at its most fundamental, is a lack of self-love; it is an expression of a belief that we are not good enough."

[Piasabird]

Originally Posted by Uniquely_Ambi

Compulsive behavior, at its most fundamental, is a lack of self-love; it is an expression of a belief that we are not good enough."

I might have had that attitude at one point of my life. Like, I'm not good enough. I've had low self esteem in the past. But, I don't feel like that anymore. Only, I still find myself bingeing at times. ensive