Food Obsession and Scarcity Mindset
I obsessed about food all of the time as a child. How could I get more Oreos? Where could I eat in peace the chocolates that I had somehow gotten my hands on?
Then I obsessed about food all of the time as an adolescent.
Later I obsessed about food all of the time as an adult.
It is said that the roots of our adult beliefs and behaviors are found in our childhoods. I know that to be true for myself.
For years, I have been governed by a scarcity mindset around food and eating, what is available and what is not.
To better understand why I’ve struggled with food obsession and compulsive eating, I’ve revisited early childhood experiences. My goal has been to have compassion for what have been, until relatively recently, my default thought, feeling, and behavior patterns, and from a place of acceptance, change them.
As a five-year-old, my unconscious thoughts were: Where could I find safety and comfort if it wasn’t forthcoming from a parent? Food was the answer.
As far back as I can remember, most likely coinciding with the Sego liquid diet when I was five, I was obsessed with food. Especially sweets. I was consumed with the pursuit of candy, cookies, cake, doughnuts, and so on. Where and when could I get it, how much could I lay my hands on, and how could I eat it without anyone noticing?
This was the paradox of my life: to be acceptable, lovable, worthy, and “normal”, I would need to forgo the things I craved in order to have a smaller body. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them. One of my goals, perhaps the only goal, was to get my hands on as much as possible, and then eat before it could be taken from me, or before I was discovered.
I became sneaky and duplicitous when it came to food.
Thus, the ongoing objective throughout my childhood was to get forbidden, difficult-to-find food: candy, cookies, ice cream, really any kind of junk food. I was obsessed.
In the early years of my obsession, I would contrive ways to get any of it and eat it without being caught:
~walking to the local gas station mini-mart for penny candy;
~sneaking off to the bathroom – at home and at school – to eat candy I’d been able to secure;
~skimming layers off containers of ice cream, eating as much as I could without it looking like I’d taken any;
~calculating how to get more Oreos from the cookie jar at Camp Fire Girl meetings
Cookies, candy, ice cream…
All I could think about was the food that I couldn’t have or could never get enough of. The cookies at my friends’ houses, the fudge my grandmother sent at Christmas time. Always – what could I get my hands on? How could I eat without anyone knowing? Well, actually, without my mother knowing.
I was myopic. Food – forbidden food – was all I could see, all I could think about. It was more important than anything. Halloween was a godsend. Easter was such an opportunity. Over and over, round and round.
But why?
Where did this obsession come from?
What was driving the intense cravings for more and more of what I couldn’t have?
I don’t think it stemmed just from the liquid diet at age five. Food became the substitute for nurturing, care, acceptance, safety, and comfort. I filled the space where those things should have been with an obsession for food and a compulsion to eat as much forbidden food as I possibly could.
Simply put, the pursuit of illicit food and secret eating were my coping mechanism. On the one hand, I learned to make myself small by not having big, scary emotions: don’t be mad, don’t be sad, don’t be lonely. Don’t ask for help… ever. Don’t be needy. Don’t need anything from adults – not love, not attention, not safety, not comfort, not care. On the other hand, I was going to get love, safety, and comfort in the most rebellious way that I could: I would eat the foods that were forbidden to me. I would plot, scheme, sneak, and lie to get the very things that would keep me from attaining the attention and love that I needed – the very things that would make my body bigger and more unacceptable, thus make me more unacceptable.
If I wasn’t acceptable, then I wasn’t lovable.
My lovability was proportional to the size of my body. And I was making sure that I would never meet the criteria for that acceptability and lovability by eating and gaining weight. It was just an untenable situation – to be lovable, I had to be smaller, to be smaller, I had to eat less and avoid the foods I craved, but eat I did, so I wasn’t smaller, and I wasn’t lovable. On and on, over and over.
So I obsessed and I ate to save myself from sadness, loneline, despair, and anger.
My pursuit of food was my pursuit of the comfort, safety, and love I craved.
I carried this pursuit into my adolescence and adult life. For decades, I rotated through the same cycle of deprivation in order to lose weight, rebellion and weight gain, and food obsession over and over and over again, all to be acceptable and lovable, to feel safe and secure, to feel cared for.
It didn’t work. It was never going to work. The only thing that would ever work was to give to myself freely and without condition the acceptance, love, safety, and security that I not only needed but deserved.
How have I done that? How have I been able to create safety and space for myself, experience all emotions as part of a healthy human experience, show myself that I am worthy of care and attention, and claim my space in the world without apology or condition?
Instead of using food for comfort, I have created space and routines for it. I’ve learned to take a break and remove myself from challenging situations, even for a few short minutes. I set up a physical space just for me. It includes candles, an essential oil diffuser, music, a buddha board, some inspirational books, a journal with a favorite pen (Yes, I am particular about pens), and some tarot cards. I pause and breathe.
I create safety by having my own back over and over again, rather than compromising my own needs out of a fear of angering others.
I create safety and comfort by giving myself time for a meditation practice where I simply focus on my breath and am present for whatever arises. I’ve learned to listen to myself without judgment. I am present for the negative thoughts. I witness them without critique. If I’m afraid, I ask myself, “Is this a real threat, or am I just reliving an old, persistent fear?” I give myself a chance to journal. I write about what I’m thinking and feeling. More often than not, the threat is perceived, but not imminent or real.
I have learned tools for identifying and experiencing emotions so that, over time, I can automatically process them rather than eat over them. When loneliness is at play, and I think the only thing for it is food and overeating, I pause. What else could I do right now? I could call a friend. I could get out and be around people. I know that loneliness is a lack of connection, and that it includes a connection with myself. Am I disconnected from myself? How can I reconnect? Through breath work? Moving my body? Writing? What do I really need right now?
With all of this, I listen without judgment. I hear my grievances without wishing that they weren’t there. I accept myself as is in any given moment. This is a gift that many of us haven’t given to ourselves.
Incrementally, slowly but steadily, I have created self-care routines and systems that help me to live a healthier life emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Over time, I have developed the skills of self-compassion and self-acceptance. I’ve let go of desiring perfection from myself. Perfection is an illusion that robs me of growth and joy. It is the never-enoughness that has plagued me for decades.
Sometimes, the work is simply the inner dialog of hearing the incessant compare and despair and gently reminding myself that I am worthy and complete as is.
The work is ongoing, a way of life. I stumble frequently, but more and more, I simply get back up and keep moving forward.