From the age 20 to now at 30 I've been everything from a size 0 to a size 12. Right now I'm nearly in the middle, at a size 8. Of course, I would love to lose another 15 or 20 pounds because then, finally I will fit into nicer cloths and my face will look less round and puffy. But, will weight loss (being skinny) really do anything to make me happier or more contentful as a person?
I've been thin - many times. When I think back on those times I was absolutely happy. Though, I was happy about my weight. I was happy because I was thin. The same things that made me sad overweight, made me sad thin. I realize, I would like to lose weight and be thin for better health BUT I need to create a better relationship with food.
Dieting and denying and allowing and monitoring food intake does little to fix the problem. In truth, the problem is me. The problem is needing to search outside of myself for something to make me happy. The problem is stuffing my face with food to stuff my fears. But also the problem is recognizing that there is a problem - before its eaten.
A few weeks ago, I made 60 electric-blue iced cupcakes to bring to an event. When I got there, I had 18 cupcakes. I'm not quite sure how 42 cupcakes wound up in my stomach that day, but it did indeed happen.
Then, I found this study by Professor Joseph Schroeder and his students at Connecticut College and now I think of my relationship with food in a whole new way. The group wanted to shed light onto the addictiveness of high-fat and high-sugar foods by giving lab rats cocaine and oreo cookies. What they found was that the number of rats who were addicted to cocaine was the same number of rats who kept going for oreo cookies. Meaning: the rats were just as addicted to high-fat, high-sugar foods as they were addicted to a highly addictive substance.
To me, this study proves that stuffing our faces makes us feel good. Not just in the surfacy, superficial sense like reading a poem makes us smile. Eating foods that are bad for us, makes our brains happy by triggering dopamine and endorphines and all of those other feel good chemicals. When we are feeling bad, all we want to do is feel good. So we will continue to stuff and stuff and stuff our faces with oreo cookies and chips ahoy and cheetos and whatever is going to make our endorphines multiply.
A day after hearing about this study on National Public Radio, I went to the Bayport-Blue Point Library and purchased a twenty-five cent book: Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. I love when things happen like that - you want to know more about something and the universe finds its way to explain it to you. In the book, Roth explians: "The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is only the middleman, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Of making yourself numb. Of creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable."
Obviously, this theory can't always be right. Sometimes we eat because we are just hungry. Sometimes we like the food. But when we find ourselves opening up a bag of chips and mindlessly eating, don't wait until the bag is nearly done. Put the chip down and ask yourself what's really going on.
I am going to try and understand my relationship with food by asking myself why I am eating things. As for cupcakes, I'm just going to stay far, far away.
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