People eat for a number of reasons, the obvious being to … duh … survive.  But when does the need for food cross over from a basic biological necessity to an actual psychological problem?  For me, I have straddled the line between healthy habits and disordered eating for years.  Why?

Because food has become an escape from my emotions.

For many people the link between food and feeling stops at grief and celebration.  At holiday parties or sports events or birthdays or even funerals, food is what bonds us.  We come together, break bread, and enjoy one another’s company.  Then everyone goes home and continuestheir life, unconcerned with what their next meal is.  But for some people (including myself) food is also a means to an end.  Feeling down?  Reach for processed food.  Feeling tired?  Reach for sugar.  Feeling overwhelmed?  Reach for the carbiest of carbs.  The need to eat becomes less about balance and more about gratification.  For me, if I am feeling unfulfilled in the areas of my life that I cannot control then I will seek fulfillment in the areas that I can.  And then I spiral.  My emotional insecurities combined with exerting an extreme amount of control over food and exercise has led to unhealthy patterns for me.  I have been food restrictive.  I have binged.  I have purged.  I have over-exercised.  I have refused to exercise.  I have taken diet pills.  The fluctuations in my habits have been as unpredictable and damaging as the fluctuations in my actual weight.  In short, I am food addicted.

Addiction often manifests in ways that do not involve alcohol or drugs.  In ways that we don’t normally identify as addiction.

Attention, food, exercise, coffee, social media.

While there is a ton of controversy surrounding this subject, from my own personal experiences and the information I have been able to gather over time I firmly believe that addiction has both a biological and a psychological component.  It is nature and nurture.  As children, we hope to develop a strong sense of self to build on so we can become a full, complete human being.  We want to be raised to know we can do anything, be anything, and are loved unconditionally.  We want to mess up without fear of ridicule.  We want to explore our fashion and hairstyle and music tastes without fear of criticism.  We want to be free to make decisions about our body and social circle.  We want to have parents who provide us with gentle guidance and unwavering support, not passionate interference.  But the fact is, most people do not grow up in such an idyllic situation.  So when our mental growth is stunted for whatever reason, we will compensate…

…because we feel like we missed out.

If you had emotionally unavailable parents, or emotionally unavailable partners, or an absentee parent, or helicopter parents, or no parents at all it is not uncommon to feel that something is missing from your life.  In my case, as the child of divorce I grew up for the most part in two separate households.  While one was structured and clean the other was chaotic and careless.  And in trying to reconcile those two very different existences, I developed some patters of thinking that I now know are unhealthy.

As a child I did not understand which way of living was best; I just assumed they were both normal and I had to build a life that melded the two, which is actually impossible.  I loved the organization and stability I had in one home because it made me feel safe and supported, but I also longed to be spontaneous and accepted by those in the other house.  I grew up conflicted, and my strange need to appease both households turned into an even stranger need to please everyone around me.  And in the end, I became a person who expected entirely too much from myself.  In school I excelled, pushing myself to perform.  I felt most at home when I was successful because it meant I was in full control.  But I had spent my formative years trying to people-please in two starkly different environments, so my social growth was a disaster.  Sure, I had friends.  But I was never confident about who I was to them.  Not knowing what I had to offer others, I ran the whole gamut from being overbearing and downright rude (to be a clique leader) to overly sensitive and needy (to be a clique follower) as I worked to find a balance that worked.  And during all of this, I ate.  A lot.  My weight slowly crept up through high school as I came home and binged on frozen chicken fingers and homemade frenchfries, and I hardly noticed it.  Back then there wasn’t as intense of a focus on body image because it was just the beginning of the social media explosion.  So as I continued to fill the voids in my emotions with fatty, carby, processed foods my body followed suit.  And it made me feel better emotionally, even if I looked and felt worse physically.

Later on, like many teenagers do I searched for whatever the key was to be accepted.  As a result, I created relationships that were not based on compatibility, but codependency.  The social media eruption began and I became very conscious of how I looked.  I learned that if I looked good I would get noticed, and that became an obsession for me just as I left high school and began my college career.  Enter stage left:  2-hour workouts per day, 7 days per week.

I needed attention, because attention felt like admiration and admiration felt like acceptance.

If I felt needed or desired, I felt complete.  No matter how toxic the relationship was to my actual growth as a person, I was seeking a certainlevel of nonjudgmental attention that I had missed while I searched for myself between two homes.  What I found was lust or infatuation. Looking back, I recognize my pattern now.  I would accept any version of love I could get because I never learned to love me first.  I did not care enough about myself to reject what damaged me because I didn’t know how to.

Recognize your pattern and think of it as an opportunity to fix something, not hate something.

Once you recognize your triggers, the ones that drive you to overeat or under-eat, or over-exercise or under-exercise, or the reasons you are lacking self-worth, then you have identified your unhealthy pattern.  The great news is (as the old adage says) the first step in defeating a problem is recognizing that you have one.  However, it is important that you know how to identify a pattern versus a bad day.  We all have them – days when nothing goes right.  You wake up late, you hit traffic and are late to work, you spill coffee on yourself, or whatever the case may be and your immediate reaction is to reach for that donut in the breakroom or treat yourself to a soda from the vending machine.  NEWSFLASH!  That’s fine.  There is no harm in doing something to make yourself feel good when you’re stressed or to indulge a bit after a bad day, as long as it is in moderation.  We all have an “oops!” moment and have to do a reset.  Butwhen this response to stress becomes too frequent, that’s the red flag that you’ve developed an unhealthy pattern of behavior (binge eating ‘bad’ foods) to fight off an unhealthy pattern of thinking (“I need this to feel good”).  If it is persistent and consistent, then you need to change it.  So what do you do when you notice that you have an unhealthy pattern going?

Give yourself permission to work on it!

Reflecting on yourself and taking steps to fix problems is very, very hard work.  It takes a lot of introspection, sometimes on memories that are difficult, and exploring those feelings can require a tremendous amount of strength.  So do your due diligence and carve out the time for it.  Do not avoid working on these issues because you’ve got other things to do.  This is important, too.  Give yourself permission to take the time, seek help if you need it, build a stronger social circle, and yes – give yourself permission to make mistakes.  The fact of the matter is you can change.  As cliché as it sounds, you do not have to be stuck if you don’t want to be.

Stop the cycle that you’ve become comfortable being uncomfortable in.

You can change every single part of your life if you want, and that’s fine. The people who judge you will voice their criticism, and then move on with their own lives.  Do not give it any more thought than they do.  At the end of the day you have to live with the choices you make and the person you are.  So many people develop binge eating habits because they feel in control when deciding what and how much to eat, but start thinking generally and you’ll realize quickly that you’re in control of a lot more than that.  You are in control of how you respond to stress, how much it affects you, and what you do about it.  So channel that power into healthier habits and change your outcome.

On the other side of that same coin, if you are going to take control over your physical health then take control over your mental health too.  As biological beings our brain seeks out threat in order to keep us safe.  In this day and age, reaching for the closest sugary or carby thing is an easy solution to feeling bad.  For goodness sake there is an entire food service industry dedicated to serving cheap, unhealthy food and then a totally separate nutrition and fitness industry to undo the damage that the first industry did! The one thing that they have in common is that they prey on people who are susceptible to criticism and are looking for a quick fix to the perfect body.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone is critical and in the social media age, everything hurts.  So what can you do?

Put yourself and your health first.

When you feel judged it is important to realize when it is a true threat, a heartless insult, or actual constructive criticism.  We are all very sensitive to feedback (especially surrounding our bodies), but we need to consciously decide how to respond to it.  You can internalize their words and let it become part of you or you can brush it off, step forward, and decide not to let it land.

If you are a binge eater because you are trying to fill whatever void is leftover from childhood, then making a change is going to be incredibly hard.  But one of the first steps of taking control over your mental health is to stay positive.  Easier said than done, but dwelling on the negative will get you nowhere.  Start with small changes, and you will notice the difference.  If you can’t start by doing a complete diet overhaul, then start with one meal.  Promise yourself that you won’t have any bread during breakfast and lunch, and you’ll only have it during dinner.  Resolve not to take any of the donuts in the work break room, and go for a ten minutewalk instead.  Buy yourself an activity tracker and get 7,000 steps per day.  Small changes that are manageable will ensure you start taking steps in the right direction, but that you aren’t so burned out with self-care that you are overwhelmed.

After a little time, reflect back on the smaller changes you’ve made and how they have helped you.  It will not happen all at once, but if you have worked on your eating and exercise habits and improving your mental health then chances are you’ve become more adaptive to change, more able to process and deflect negativity, and a little healthier physically too.  But my last, and perhaps most important point…

Don’t take up valuable space in your brain by keeping score.

You are not competing with anyone but the ‘old’ you.  If the girl next to you on the treadmill at the gym has been jogging continuously for 30 minutes but you’re on minute 4 and feel like keeling over, don’t worry about it!  Maybe she took some breaks before you came over.  Or maybe she has been training for a 5K over the last 6 months, and she has improved.  You cannot compare yourself to people when you don’t know their story.  All you need to think about is that you jogged 11 minutes today when you could only do 9 minutes two days ago.  Keep working on you and you will see the results.  Mentally and physically.  That will make you feel far better than the instant (but short-lived) gratification that a binge session will.