My Mind My Body

In the past, I always saw hunger as a physiological need. It was simple: hunger signals meant that I needed food.¹ But there were times when my desire for food wasn’t accompanied by physical hunger. Determining that my hunger came from an emotional source rather than a physical source was not too difficult, but coming to terms with emotional eating and that it could somehow even apply to me was complicated. I have this desire to be strong and tough, so eating emotionally seemed too touchy-feely for me. Once I accepted the fact that I did eat emotionally, I thought to myself “Now what?” and began a quest of figuring out how to deal with this new challenge. …

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As children we constantly observe the adults in our lives and learn from their modeled behavior. These observations provide us with information about a variety of life topics including how to act in social situations. When I was young, I learned the social rule of always mentioning someone’s weight loss, so every time I’d see someone looking a little slimmer, I’d smile and say, “You’ve lost weight!” This social rule wasn’t limited to compliments about weight. It extended to other areas of appearance as well. When I think about it though, these aren’t genuine compliments. Sure, people mean well, but is it really a good thing to offer such high praise for outward appearance? …

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