Emotional Merry go Round

“When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.” ~Geneen Roth

As a teenager, I used to eat because I was lonely.  Lunch hour at school would last nine billion years. 

I acted superior but felt inferior. I was needy, or tried to impress them.  I really didn't think friendship was something people learned, I thought there was something very wrong with me and that I'd be this way forever.

I hated that I couldn't resist overeating.  I turnt to bulimia, I was body-conscious. I panicked that comfort food would make me fat. I wasn't! But I thought my thighs were big, and clenched my stomach in all day.

I embarrassed to ask anyone, especially my parents or siblings for help.  I didn't know it was called emotional eating

Going on improvised diets made things a whole new level of worse for me: binge eating, bulimia, and feeling utterly obsessed and depressed about food.

I wish I'd known how to deal with my eating back then, instead of going off on an eating disorder tangent!

It's like this: I am by yourself. That's not loneliness, that's solitude.  Sometimes the solitude is nice. 

I have learnt that if I ignore my inner self, start to believe I am worthless, and that an emotional eating crisis was a great way for my heart and soul to grab my attention.  I learnt that self worth grows through becoming self connected. 

When I was, at what I believed was my teenage rock bottom with food, my thoughts were dominated by failure, being a victim, and believing change was impossible.  I made myself lonely and made myself suffer.  Years after my schooldays I still now inside me is that person who suffered with a cripling eating disorder.  

I know it's not obvious that loneliness has advantages, but sometimes it's a way to avoid something even more scary or painful.  Loneliness excuses me from owning my introvert personality.  

The way I think of it, is that addressing loneliness is 88 percent of the solution for emotional eating from loneliness.  The point is, this, like everything isn't a quick fix. Quick fixes rarely address the underlying issues.