Scary Territory

The idea of intuitive/mindful eating (paying conscious attention to what and how you're eating) is so incredibly frightening to me. I'd rather be on a restrictive diet than eat mindfully. I literally hear the words, "But the whole point of eating is to not think about it." That line of thought just conjures itself up naturally, but when I really listen to what I'm telling myself or type it here I realize how bizarre that sounds.

I spend a lot of time trying to avoid thinking about my food when I eat. I watch TV. I read. I work. On the rare occasion we're all at the table together with the TV off or NPR not going I will ask my husband and kids to just talk. I just want to listen. I can't even listen to music when I eat in the car, because it's not stimulating enough to distract me from thinking about my food, so I'll switch to talk radio. I will choose Glenn Beck (I'm a diehard liberal) over thinking about my food.

When I eat, whether for emotional or physical reasons, I want to eat mindlessly. On the face of it, I feel it's because I'm bored. I don't like just sitting there, eating. I want to listen to something, to unfocus, to let my mind go somewhere where I am not. I guess this is why eating is an escape for me. The eating fills me up, physically and emotionally while I also get to escape my reality for a little while. I cannot express the calm and joy and I feel in parking somewhere with food, turning on my radio or pulling open a book, and eating in my car.

Thinking about it now makes me feel that is really strange. Like, really fucked up.

My absolute biggest challenge in life is learning how to cope appropriately with negative emotion. I don't have healthy coping mechanisms for stress and depression, clearly, and I also don't have them when it comes to handling my anger, but that, as an issue, is somewhat separate from this one. I don't eat when I'm angry or anxious, at least when I'm not in the midst of it.

I feel like if I could just find a better way to destress, a better way to make myself feel as calm and good as eating while tuning out does, then I could get a handle on this. And I know that I need to start eating without anything else going on, when possible, but I just don't want to. I'd rather eat plain salad for the rest of my life if it also meant getting watch Real Housewives or read Outlander at the same time.