Emotional eating part 2: The symbolic meaning of food

This is the Part 2 of The Emotional Eating Blog Series.

How does food represent our emotions?

Most over or under eaters feel that they lack willpower and incentive in their struggles to lose or gain weight. They must become mindful and aware that food has a representative meaning, most often hidden deep and far from conscious awareness.

Such understanding is an important trait in helping the compulsive or apathetic eater come to grips with the psychological difficulties in losing or gaining weight. 

Examine the following alternative meanings which obese persons, and others with eating disorders, have unconsciously attached to food:

• Food as a substitute for love reserved or denied.
• Food as a substitute that fills the gap of loneliness and lack of social relationships.
• Food as a substitute for the absent childhood affection by family and influential others.
• Food as part of an extended eating activity to postpone or prevent involvement in anxiety producing academic, social and professional activity. (It is used as the ultimate instrument of procrastination.)
• Food as compensation for a job well done where meaningful honors are devoid.
• Food as comfort and relief for every kind of defeat and any kind of misfortune.
• Food as a way to minimize anxiety and stress.
• Food as immediate pleasure when the realization of life’s goals seems to manifest in the far future.
• Food as a tool of vengeance and rebellion against a loved one who has enforced unreasonable pressure and high standards.
• Food as a mechanism for pushing down undesirable feelings causing the repression of either hostility, annoyance, sexuality, and bitterness, as well as the fear of death and dying.

Are you affected by emotional eating?

Emotional eating does not necessarily affect over or underweight people. Eating large amounts of food or not eating much does not always mean that you have an eating disorder.

Most of us may overeat or undereat from time to time as the pressures of daily life often direct us towards food for consolation. It’s true eating can be very accommodating!

But when does this eating emotional reaction turn from a simple enjoyment into an emotional eating problem?

Do you recognize any of these behaviors?

• You feel your eating habits are unmanageable. 
• You feel you are not worthy, that you’re unappreciated.
• You feel bored and spiritless more and more.
• You find disputes and confrontation distressing.
• You eat to bypass either work, sex, social and family obligations.
• You find intimacy, affection, and relationships in general challenging.
• You find it difficult to acknowledge and to respond in a healthy, balanced way to your feelings.
• You find it hard to turn someone down and say no.
• You are constantly dieting, but rarely losing weight.
• You have feelings of shame and guilt associated with overeating or undereating. 
• Is this you? Do you see yourself mirroring these behaviors?

Is emotional eating a concern of yours? 

Using food for self-comfort began when mom gave us our first chocolate biscuit for being well behaved.

Is it any wonder that we want to reconstruct those positive conditionings?

Food and emotions are coerced together. But when we use food to camouflage emotions, it becomes damaging, unhealthy eating.

Spiritual Hunger is feeling destitute of a sense of purpose, a lack of passion, pleasure, or bliss in one’s life. 

Do you feel like life resembles a constant chore, or there is a struggling routine to reevaluate a different life purpose after the kids are off to college or when retirement sets in after a long and prosperous career?

Are your days spent contributing to others, and by the end of the day, there is nothing left to give to yourself? 

And so you eat to self-soothe, disassociate and numb out your logical thoughts and emotions.

Regardless of the rationale, Spiritual Hunger is often a hint that something deeper is calling for your attention. 

The question you need to ask yourself is: What is really eating at you?

Take the time to dwell on this question and see what comes to the surface as the answer will help direct your strategy as you begin to chase meaning in your life rather than relying on the false sensations that food provides.

Now that we have put that into words, the idea for managing Spiritual Hunger will depend on the individual and what is responsible for the eating pattern as well as how long the pattern has been in place.

The first step is building your conscious awareness around the HOWS and WHYS of any eating behaviors that may be harming your health. 

Only through gentle self-awareness can we commence to improve our understanding of why we keep making impulsive, thoughtless food choices that clash with our health-related goals.

This is the end of part 2 of The Emotional Eating Blog Series.

Part 1: The spiritual explanation and the connection with karma
Part 2: The symbolic meaning of food (you are here)
Part 3: Using mindfulness meditation – A scientific approach
Part 4: Three key steps to heal and transform

Stay tuned for more interesting facts and strategies to help you gradually overcome these life-long patterns and behaviors.

Let me help you stop emotional eating…

If you too are wondering how to pursue a more mindful lifestyle, change your karma, and thus change your Mindset…

Might it be time you… book your appointment now online or visit me at Sacred Space here in Athens and begin your healing journey towards the inside…

Give your body, spirit, soul and mind the opportunity to finally embrace all its finest qualities… the ones blessed with from Spirit…

Always here, always yours,
KC The Greek Shaman