food

For many people food is one of the greatest comfort blankets. I am not talking about the necessity of eating to stay alive: this is entirely natural and nothing to worry about. But people take great delight in eating exotic food, food with exquisite taste. Most people have their favourite foods and it’s a pleasure to eat that favourite food. More than just a pleasure, deep down we feel, from that familiarity, a sense of security. We are nourished psychologically, or so it would seem. And then in a more extreme form, some people go on an eating binge whenever they feel stressed. For example, if a relationship comes to an end, some people just start eating chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. It’s comfort food. The eating is purely to escape the suffering, the psychological pain that one is in. And of course this sort of eating can lead to all sorts of health problems, for it’s rarely healthy food that we turn to as comfort food. We eat things with too much sugar or too much fat. And we grow fat by binging in this way. Or others develop eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia. All of these are indicating that we have psychologically linked our feeling of self-worth and wholeness to food, one way or another. And until we break that link, our eating habits will not be healthy. We will turn to food or turn away from it in times of stress. Any crisis can trigger it.

So to explore this link between food and self-esteem, try eating a very simple diet of healthy food for a while, and see when the cravings come up. What triggers the cravings? What are the events in life? What are the stresses causing one to want to eat that unhealthy food, or to eat a lot of food? Watching all this, we can bring it into the light of awareness, and in that place it will begin to lose its power over us. It is not easy to let go of this particular comfort blanket, and yet I urge you to do so.