Concerning Emotional Hunger

This room seems so empty sometimes,
Just me and all my dreams, which are nothingness.
Sometimes all the dreams
Close in around me
And laugh in my face--
At my ridiculous faith in them;
At my trust.

And in my empty room
The Hunger, which is Me,
Upon finding no substance on which to feed,
Begins to gnaw away at me
Until all I am
is a hole
in an empty room.
            - October 4, 1986

I wrote that poem 28 years ago, at 17. I found it the other day & the 2nd stanza really encapsulated something I've wrestled with all my life: Emotional Hunger. I was talking to a friend on the boards this morning & began thinking about it again.

I define Emotional Hunger as hunger brought about by emotions, usually anxiety, sadness, or anger. Feelings that I used to squash by eating. Hunger where I never feel full. I’ll eat a decent amount (or more) and still feel famished. When I’m Emotionally Hungry, I have eaten until I was physically ill. I would never get Physically Hungry, because the moment I was capable of eating again, I generally was.

Emotional Hunger became indistinguishable from physical hunger & the more I fed it, the worse it got. Eating to feel better made me sick and sad later, which made me want to eat again.
The biggest challenge I face now is dealing with Emotional Hunger. Learning to distinguish it from Physical Hunger is a rough task. When you’re used to eating the way I am, Emotional Hunger feels the same as Physical Hunger. My habits were so bad, I’d broken my body’s ability to tell my brain I’m full.

When I started WW I knew I had to retrain my system. I combined WW with an herbal detox I’d read about. I stayed on mostly WW Power Foods & chose to stay beneath my initial WW point limit by almost half: 26 points a day. I cut my food in small pieces, chewing 20x a bite, even for soft foods when I could manage it. I focused on the feeling of the food going down my esophagus into my tummy. I put meals on salad plates to make it look like more. After meals I’d wait. I wasn't looking for “fullness.” I was looking for “the absence of hunger.”

After a few days I began to feel that absence of physical hunger. I left at least 2 and up to 4 hours between meals. I started to be able to tell when I was Physically Hungry again. I also started to feel strangely alive. I mentioned this, in an earlier post. I now describe it as feeling un-sedated. So strange. So awesome.

Until.

We had a difficult personal situation come up that put my family under extreme pressure. Suddenly, even though the detox was over & I was eating more food, I was famished afterwards. I was HUNGRY ALL THE TIME. But it wasn't Physical Hunger. It was Emotional Hunger.

I battened down the hatches. I ate even slower. The longer I could make my portion last, the better. I ate soy nuts one at a time & chewed scrambled eggs. It sucked. BUT the exhilaration of fighting my Emotional Hunger & winning – can’t be described. My husband & I don’t often fight. We've argued more in the past few months than we have in several years. But we know we’re fighting Emotional Hunger. All the anxiety & feelings of “unsafety” & sedating with food – well hell, that doesn't just vanish in the wind because we decided to make healthy changes.

So we’re giving each other a LOT of support. A LOT of room. A LOT of LOVE. We’re trying to be quick to forgive one another for everything right now, because we have to re-learn how to deal with a lot that we used to hide in food. It is NOT EASY. And it is NOT OVER. It is a daily challenge. A daily struggle. But the rewards are massive. Wish us well. I wish you well. I know a lot of you are struggling with the same stuff. If you have supportive people around, prepare them for the fact that you may be more emotional than usual. I know a lot of you don’t have the great fortune of having support around you. Be gentle with yourselves as you fight this one out. Forgive yourself when you struggle. Give yourselves A LOT of support. A LOT of room. A LOT of LOVE.

Peace.