The Truth About Comfort Food

The TRUTH About Comfort Food

Comfort food is actually about the need or the wish to be comforted by another person.  If nobody is available to provide comfort, or if the people in your life are not able to respond in a way that feels good, that’s painful.  The good news is that you can learn to give yourself what you need to feel better.

If you’re turning to food for comfort, the primary challenge is learning to respond to yourself with language instead of action (eating).

If you turn away from food as a way of feeling better, you’ve learned to respond to your needs by ignoring, denying or judging them.  It’s humiliating to have unmet needs, and you may have turned against your need for comfort as a way to feel powerful, turning passive to active. 

You cannot stuff down your feelings, nor can you starve them away or purge them.  Cultivating an ability to recognize, value and respond to yourself without bingeing, restricting or purging will help you overcome eating disorder behavior, no matter what your struggle with food.

Keep in mind the acronym VARY as a guide to providing comfort:

Validate:  Recognize that your feelings and thoughts are reactions to a particular situation, and you have an absolute right to feel the way you feel. 

For example:  I got passed over for a promotion at work and my co-worker got it instead. I feel hurt, unappreciated and upset.  Of course I feel that way.  How else could I feel given, this situation? 

Acknowledge:  Accept the existence and truth of what you’re feeling.

This is a painful, upsetting, and humiliation situation. I also realize that some of my sibling issues might have gotten stirred up, since my brother was always getting special treatment.

Reassure:  Encourage and inspire yourself by remembering that this situation will pass, and you will feel better.  Keep in mind past situations in which you were able to overcome difficulty.  You will this time, too!

I’ve overcome a lot of challenges in my life (recall them specifically) and I’m going to get past this, too.  I feel awful now, but I’m not going to be stuck in this horrible feeling.  I will feel better

Yourself!

When you are consistently respond to yourself in a supportive way, you feel better.  You may even feel good.  When that happens, you don’t use food to comfort, numb or distract yourself.  That’s how you make peace with food for good!   

Is food your best friend and your worst enemy?

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Top 3 Holiday Tips

#1 - Be a social anthropologist

There's nothing worse than feeling self-conscious over the holidays.  You feel as if you've got a giant spotlight on you and everyone is looking at you, thinking critical thoughts about your weight, appearance or life choices.   Yuck.

The key is to switch the focus.  Consider what YOU think of other people, instead of imagining what they are thinking about you.

When you're observing others, you will be much less self-conscious and feel better overall.   And, when you feel good, you won't use food to escape, soothe or distract yourself.

#2 - Don't "should" on yourself

If you constantly say things like, "I shouldn't have eaten that" or, "I should exercise more" then you're "shoulding" on yourself.   You might eat just to escape your own critical voice!

Instead, acknowledge yourself for what you ARE doing.  Say, "I'm proud that I realize why I ate those Christmas cookies, instead of only focusing on the fact that I ate them."

Be curious, not critical.  Ask yourself, "I wonder what's going on with me?  Am I upset about something or anxious?  What would I say to a friend in the same situation?"

Being nice to yourself feels good.  When you feel good, you won't eat for comfort or distraction!

#3 - Toss the scale

How many mornings have you weighed yourself - and whatever that number is, it ruins your whole day?

The bathroom scale is not your friend.  It does not know you and it cannot measure your value.
Do not let a piece of metal and plastic have that much control over your self esteem!  Toss that scale in the trash, where it belongs.  Or do what I did in this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKbtHooceZI

Please comment on which of these tips resonates the most with you.

Wishing you a happy, healthy (and enjoyable) holiday season!!

Dr. Nina