Occasional overeating to soothe and comfort

If you cannot tolerate your feelings or let yourself be aware of unpleasant reality or believe you must present yourself to others in a way that does not match your genuine self, you can reach for food to soothe or numb yourself or help to present a false face to others.

Overeating as a way of life

But if you lack the ability to care well for yourself when you are stressed or threatened, either because of personal deficits or because the forces in your external world overwhelm you, you will use eating on a regular basis to maintain your equilibrium.

You can't feel what you feel. You can't face what is before you to face. You can't act to make your situation better. So you eat to compensate and to keep yourself on as even a keel as possible.

Anyone who has crammed for an imminent final exam while eating pizza or peanut butter sandwiches understands the kind of groundedness high calorie and dense food can provide when you are feeling stress. But when unrelenting stress permeates your life and there is no "other side," eating for groundedness becomes a way of ordinary life.

Stress oblivion

You may not even know you are doing this. You are living as you "must live." You are living "the way all women live." You are "doing what is expected of you." You "don't have options." And in the back of your mind or what actually comes out of your mouth is the statement, "Don't mess with my food!" This is a survival issue.

Whatever your personal and unique reasons are, you are eating for more reasons than to satisfy body hunger. You may not be hungry at all. And yet, you are taking in more calories than your body needs for healthy functioning.

But you may be taking in exactly the calories you need to create bulk that serves as a needed barricade between your sensitive being and a harshness in the world that you can't deal with.

If eating more than your body needs is your way of caring for yourself, then you will continue to eat more than your body needs. And this is my answer to your question, "Why can't I stop eating when I am so overweight?"

You eat in an attempt to care for yourself emotionally, psychologically and physically. You may maintain an obese state or continually gain more weight as you live your life because without overeating you can't continue to live the life you know.

Weight loss diets and weight loss programs won't help you, and will only make you feel badly about yourself for failing. This is especially true if you lose weight and then, inevitably, gain it back. The diets will work for a short time to help you take your weight off.  But then you are left unrprotected by food or fat and have no tools or practice or know how to care for yourself in this lighter and more vulnerable state. Without internal psychological development your only survival option is to eat and gain that weight back, and more.

Your way out of your obesity and overeating is to find a way to your healing path so you can develop the psychological and emotional - perhaps political and economical - resources to care for yourself in a way that makes your overeating unnecessary.

Perhaps the first step is to awaken your hope to the possibility that a different way of living is possible for you. If you can do that you can let yourself be a little more aware of opportunities that suggest to you a new way of living.

Even a tiny bit of awareness that leads to a tiny new step can be the beginning of a genuinely new, healthier and more satisfying life.

Sites that may be of help

Mindfulness - the key to avoiding overeating
Overeating triggers overeating
Stop overeating when you feel bad
Drinks may contribute more to obesity than food
What's codependence got to do with overeating?

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