How I stopped filling the void with food
Sometime in late 2015, while tunneling down an internet rabbit hole of random clicks and searches, I happened upon Gabby Bernstein's video about her having given up sugar. I'm not particularly fond of Ms. Bernstein's saccharine-spiritual personal brand and messaging so my very first thought was, "That bitch!"Well, okay, my very first thought was "You can just quit sugar??" and my third thought was, "I have to do it."I made an official decree on my Facebook page to my thousand or so friends and acquaintances, "In 2016 I'm going to go sugar-free. No added refined sweeteners for 1 year." Starting January 1st, 2016 I posted daily my progress. "Day 1/366," I would write, "Not hard because I'm feeling amped." Days 10-50 were F%*&ING HARD. I posted about it. But surprisingly by the 2-3 month mark, it was so easy, I posted, "I'm not going to keep posting about this. It's now boring." I had quit sugar.I thought I could just coast.May of that year proved I had skipped the deep inner work needed to sustain long-term change. I was traveling in Iceland when I was sexually assaulted by my Airbnb host. This event shook me to my core. Not only was the event itself traumatizing, but it brought up negative repressed childhood memories. On the bus back to the Reykjavik airport, I was shaking. "This is about more than this thing that just happened to me," I knew.The "more-thing" that it was about was waking up to the ingrained culture of violence against women. The "me too" movement would not be a public cultural revelation for another year and a half. My own "holy shit I've just put up with so much abuse and sexual objectification my whole entire life" moment started alone on that bus ride on a tiny arctic island, literally in the middle of nowhere. [Note: I will come back to the topic of violence against women and my personal feminist revolution in a later blog post.]Back home in Austin, TX, I called the SAFE (Stop Abuse For Everyone) hotline at 512.267.7233 (SAFE) and talked to a helpful woman about my experience. I sought a therapist immediately. I knew I needed help, not just to recover from the recent traumatic incident, but also to look deeper at my distrust of men...and most other humans. "Maybe I can't even live with other humans," I thought, "Maybe I can go live with horses. Or goats. Or trees." I didn't want to be a part of humanity anymore.The therapist I saw asked me the following questions:
Do You...
1. Sometimes feel like you don’t belong when with your family or friends ?
2. Pride yourself on not relying upon others ?
3. Have difficulty asking for help ?
4. Have friends or family who complain that you are aloof or distant ?
5. Feel you have not met your potential in life ?
6. Often just want to be left alone ?
7. Secretly feel that you may be a fraud ?
8. Tend to feel uncomfortable in social situations ?
9. Often feel disappointed with, or angry at, yourself ?
10. Judge yourself more harshly than you judge others ?
11. Compare yourself to others and often find yourself sadly lacking?
12. Find it easier to love animals than people ?
13. Often feel irritable or unhappy for no apparent reason?
14. Have trouble knowing what you’re feeling ?
15. Have trouble identifying your strengths and weaknesses?
16. Sometimes feel like you’re on the outside looking in ?
17. Believe you’re one of those people who could easily live as a hermit ?
18. Have trouble calming yourself ?
19. Feel there’s something holding you back from being present in the moment?
20. At times feel empty inside ?
21. Secretly feel there’s something wrong with you ?
22. Struggle with self-discipline ?
(Take the test for yourself and see how you score here.)
Nearly every answer was a big yes for me with some of them being, "no but I used to." I'd worked with some great life coaches in NYC and healed some negative patterns. This list seemed to speak to me so clearly, that when the therapist recommended I read a book called Running on Empty by Jonice Webb, PhD, I downloaded the audiobook that night and listened to the entire thing in one go.
The problem was, after finishing the book, I couldn't stop crying. I mean LITERALLY. COULD. NOT. STOP. CRYING. AT. ALL. I cried, at a minimum, 2 full hours a day for the first few weeks, then at least once a day for the next four months. Sometimes with my head buried in my pillow, sometimes on a friends' shoulder, sometimes in the bathroom at work, and many times lying on my back in savasana after candlelight hot yoga class, which was the most healing.
What does this have to do with filling the void with food?
Well.
What I learned during my healing transformation was this: many of us, and by many of us, it's pretty much most of us, did not always receive the emotional nurturance we needed to buffer the confusing bombardment of early life experiences. Childhood is hard and weird and a lot and we need adults to say, "It's okay," pretty often and in addition, we need them to help us label our emotions. "Are you feeling disappointed you didn't make the basketball team?" etc.
There are a lot of things, normal life things, that can get in the way of parents being emotionally available on-call.
The healing process, therefore, becomes much more about giving ourselves what we needed than about blaming anyone for what we didn't get. While anger and disappointment come with the realization that all of our needs were not always met, I have found that my anger was a temporary phase needed to heal, and one that was soon replaced with compassion and even greater appreciation for what I did get.
Some abusive and neglectful parenting is never forgivable. For those of you reading who experienced severe abuse and neglect, I want you know to I'm not minimizing your experience.
Running on Empty helps explain all the nurturance that could have been there and all the reasons it might not always have shown up.
For me, and statistically speaking, in a country where 7/10 of us are overweight or obese, so...most of us, food went into the places where the emotional nurturance was needed.
Food calmed my nerves.
Food made me feel loved.
Food made my brain light-up with feel-good chemicals serotonin, dopamine, and probably even oxytocin (responsible for love and bonding).
Food was the easiest, most available way to self-soothe.
Feeling sad? "Grab a snickers," as the famous advertising campaign goes.
Feeling frustrated? Grab a box of cookies.
Feeling vaguely uncomfortable? Grab an espresso brownie from Starbucks and a Venti Mocha with whipped cream.
Sugar is the most brain-lighty-uppy of all the "foods" (I now consider sugar to be a drug, not a food). It's the best bang for your buck. I can eat a candy bar for $1 and feel high for an hour.
And this is why, no matter which fitness program I tried, I would always fail and the weight would always bounce back: no fitness coaches or meal plan writers ever talked about emotional health.
Slowly but surely, I learned how to talk to myself with love. I learned how to say, "Hey Alison, it's okay to feel angry right now. It's okay to feel stuck. It's okay to be confused about what you're exactly feeling."
Therapy once a week for a year helped me develop this new way of being with myself. Instead of running away from negative feelings, I learned to sit with them. I made friends with them. I let them be my teacher.
I learned how to have patience with myself.
After awhile food stopped being my comfort. I was filling "the void" with self-nurturance. If I have a bad day, I kindly ask myself what's up and I offer loving words to me. I ask what I need. I slow down. I breathe. I let myself know that it's all okay. I cry.
I just kept losing weight until I got to a good healthy place for my body. I eat foods that nourish me and make me feel good. I don't stuff my face. A little bit of stevia-sweetened chocolate feels like enough. I notice when I feel full.
Food is no longer love. It's just one thing that makes life enjoyable out of a range of things: exercise, nurturing close relationships, deep talks with friends, funny movies, vacations at the beach, doing fulfilling work.
I find I even taste subtle flavors much more now that food is not filling the space where emotions go.
If you would like to stop filling the void with food, my 8-week Give Up Sugar For Good program is a great place to start. Sign up here.
Some other steps you can take:+ start seeing a good-quality therapist every week+ read Running on Empty and other books on emotional neglect or emotional nurturance+ start the gentle process of examining your relationship with food. Ask yourself before eating, "how and what am I feeling right now?"
My 8-week program gives specific practices to cultivate these new healthy habits so they stick for good. I provide all the very best resources I discovered during my own healing journey.