CuddlePaws
Full Member
I've been doing alot of thought recently, about my weight, why I eat the things I do? What causes my emotional compulsions to overeat at a whim?
So I sat at a cafe recently and watched the thin girl on the other table eating her meal. I observed these things:
a) She ate without looking at her food much at all, (she was chatting too, but you could see that getting the food down was not the priority!)
b) She ate slowly and left some food on her plate ! (Something I only do if I dislike what I'm eating, and I generally wolf my food down whilst staring at it the whole time). I even feel disappointment when the plate is almost empty!
Then I thought to myself, 'Has she always been like this?' Could she have been like me and changed her lifestyle? Or was she raised to think about food like that?
This brought me to think about how I was raised and how my parents fed me as a child. I was horrified to recall that my dad used to take me to the bakery after school each day and I would buy TWO (not one!) but TWO cakes. I even remember that they were a chocolate eclair and a jam doughnut! (Probably because I loved them both and didn't want to choose.) And my dad let me do this! Why? It's as if greed was acceptable.
I also recall eating a whole packet of biscuits once in front of the TV. I must have been about 12 years old. Again, I;m thinking why did they let me do this?
I become angry when I think about this sometimes. This is why I cannot view food the way the girl in the cafe does! This is why I have an emotional attachment to food. I have been raised to overeat! Food = happiness (the end of bad feelings!)
How many of you can recall overeating as a child or being given junk food as treats?
Is this why we run to food/binges when we can't cope with adult problems? To re-visit that inner child?
Yes, I definitely think my parents are to blame for my lifetime of a bad relationship with food, but I am old enough now to be wise about it and to choose differently.
So I sat at a cafe recently and watched the thin girl on the other table eating her meal. I observed these things:
a) She ate without looking at her food much at all, (she was chatting too, but you could see that getting the food down was not the priority!)
b) She ate slowly and left some food on her plate ! (Something I only do if I dislike what I'm eating, and I generally wolf my food down whilst staring at it the whole time). I even feel disappointment when the plate is almost empty!
Then I thought to myself, 'Has she always been like this?' Could she have been like me and changed her lifestyle? Or was she raised to think about food like that?
This brought me to think about how I was raised and how my parents fed me as a child. I was horrified to recall that my dad used to take me to the bakery after school each day and I would buy TWO (not one!) but TWO cakes. I even remember that they were a chocolate eclair and a jam doughnut! (Probably because I loved them both and didn't want to choose.) And my dad let me do this! Why? It's as if greed was acceptable.
I also recall eating a whole packet of biscuits once in front of the TV. I must have been about 12 years old. Again, I;m thinking why did they let me do this?
I become angry when I think about this sometimes. This is why I cannot view food the way the girl in the cafe does! This is why I have an emotional attachment to food. I have been raised to overeat! Food = happiness (the end of bad feelings!)
How many of you can recall overeating as a child or being given junk food as treats?
Is this why we run to food/binges when we can't cope with adult problems? To re-visit that inner child?
Yes, I definitely think my parents are to blame for my lifetime of a bad relationship with food, but I am old enough now to be wise about it and to choose differently.