When you think about it, what are the times that you overeat now? Write down a small list, and see if there is a common theme. (And start tapping!)
Here is a list of the common themes that Dr Peta Stapleton found when she did research on why people ate. See which ones resonate for you. The first one is physiological hunger. Eating when we are hungry is a normal human response. The other reasons are: celebrations, boredom, reward, deprivation, fear of missing out, wastage, and emotional response.
Celebration
On the positive side, celebrations almost always include food. If we pay attention, it is possible to seriously enjoy the food as part of the celebration, without feeling overwhelmed or forced, or left out.
When I think about the negative side of celebrations, I think about the typical wedding cake, and how awful it is (unless my talented brother Kevin made it!). I realize that some people can take the piece of cake that is pushed on them, hold it for a while, perhaps take a bite in hopes that it is better than the last time, realize it is not, and then put the almost intact piece of cake down someplace and leave it. Other people, myself included for a long time, felt that I had to eat the whole piece of cake, or at least most of it! I certainly didn’t pay close attention to the piece of cake on my plate, even though I might have admired the artistry of the cake as a whole.
Sometimes we get to a celebration, and feel left out, because the organizers did not pay any attention to whether there were foods that their loved ones could not eat. Sometimes this is a sign of revolt on the organizers who are angry about people asking for gluten-free food, sometimes people are afraid to ask for what they need, sometimes the organizers simply don’t know any better. When I started work as the priest in a new position, the first week we had coffee hour there happened to be something I could eat, but the second week, there was nothing on the table that I could eat. I was hungry and they were embarrassed. I should have told them that I needed something gluten-free. It never happened again.
Another aspect of celebrations is that food is offered as a sign of love. In certain cultures, it simply is not possible to put the plate down, you are watched. And if you finish the food, more is put on your plate, with admonishments to eat, eat!
If any of these hit home, start tapping. Pick a specific memory, see if you can identify the emotion attached to it, and tap for everything you can think of connected to it.
Boredom
I don’t even want to think about the number of times I have wandered through the kitchen and absent-mindedly picked something up and eaten it, not because I was hungry, but because I was bored. Until I saw this on the list as a reason that people eat, I had not identified it as an issue. Now I think about it: Am I bored or hungry? If I’m not sure, I test: “hungry?”
Reward
This one is tricky, because how often is it a beloved grandparent that is offering something special, something that a parent does not give (sometimes knowing that the kid will in fact get it from the grandparent’s house!). We equate the thing that is often sweet with the love that is offered, and the child-mind is reluctant to let go of that sweet because it means letting go of the love as well. In addition, the grandparents are just doing what they were taught, not thinking about the nutritional issues, just thinking about the love they want to offer, and not knowing other ways to do it. What happens if you go back into that memory, tapping all the way, and ask the grandparent to sit down and spend time reading with you as a child, or taking you to the zoo, or some other wonderful and special thing. Can you also give the grandparent a better alternative food-wise to offer?
Deprivation or Fear of Missing Out
These are similar but not the same. We get caught in fear of deprivation if there have been times when we have not had what we needed or wanted, and because of those times do not trust that what we want or need will be there another time. So we eat the whole box of chocolates, the whole bag of cookies, the whole plate of food, because down deep, we really do not know that there will be more.
In a similar vein, we may eat something now that we’re really not hungry for because if we don’t eat it now, we know it won’t be there later. This comes up when there are lots of children, and/or lack of boundaries. There were five children in my family, and frequently guests as well at the dinner table. If you didn’t eat quickly, you might well not get seconds, and if you didn’t eat your dessert, it would not be saved for you. Therefore, we ate fast, not paying attention to whether we were hungry or not, and we ate as much as we were allowed. My mother made sure everyone got at least one serving, and not too much after that. However, by the time she was no longer in charge of the food supply, I was already very oriented to eating fast, and as much as I could have. I still have to work at paying attention to what my body wants, and I still tap for the fear of not getting what I want, and for the fear that when I get there, it will all be gone.
Wastage
The Clean Plate Club ruled at my house. We did not get dessert if we didn’t clean our plates – so we cleaned our plates! We were told that the children in China were starving, so we should eat everything we were given. I remember thinking that was very faulty logic, but I didn’t argue. After all, I wanted my dessert!
Fundamentally, I have a huge issue with wasting food. It falls into the camp of being sinful, something that separates us. The problem is, I have conflated two totally different things, and the result is devastating. Perhaps you will relate.
On the one hand, we should not waste food. We should pay attention to how much food we buy, what we will need, what we will not need. We should give others the food we cannot or will not use before it goes bad. Sometimes we need to be creative about how we do this, that’s not a bad thing!
On the other hand, when we think about the last three bites of food on the plate, and we think, “well the rule is that we should not waste food, so we have to eat it,” we have made a faulty jump in logic. There is a fundamental difference between the half piece of lasagna that we can put away in the fridge for tomorrow, and the three bites that are now left on our plates.
Here’s the deal: If we don’t eat the three bites, they will go into the compost bin or the waste bin. If we eat them, we are telling ourselves that we are the waste bin. A friend told me that weight loss is about making very small good choices, over and over and over again. This would be one of those kinds of choices. One kind of choice is the choice of food. Another kind of choice is the choice to not see ourselves as the waste bin. It is ok to throw away the last three bites of food. It may even be imperative for a while, to begin to show honor for ourselves, by showing ourselves that we are not the waste bin. Again, tapping while looking at all of these things will lower the intensity, and allow us to change patterns when we are ready.
Emotional Response
The other reason that we eat badly is because it is an emotional response that we know that makes us feel better, at least while we’re doing it. For some of us, the pain of childhood was too much, and is still too much, and so we eat too much, too often. If this strikes a bell with you, start tapping as you read this. Please know that it is not your fault, and that there are people out there who can help. Like any emotional response that is based on childhood hurt, our willpower simply cannot stand up against it. The hurt needs to be healed, and then the response can begin to change, gently and gradually.
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