The beginners guide to emotional eating

.A lot of people have a difficult relationship with food but mine is a bit more complicated and twisty than most. I've spent most of my life as a fussy eater, something it's been difficult to grow out of but let's just call me a work in progress and leave it there. Then there's the added component of my vegetarianism, gluten intolerance and weird thing with sugar. If all of that wasn't enough for you to digest then there's also my emotional relationship with food.
I spent many years just being weird about food but not really examining the relationship. I was awkward and picky and preferred to prepare my own food and not discuss my diet. As I have gotten older and become more of an adult and been forced to adapt my diet somewhat for health reasons, I have started to pay more attention to my disfunctional relationship with all things edible.  My bizarre love hate thing with sugar would be a prime example of this. Over the last few years I have discovered sugar is not my friend. It gets me digestive problems, makes me fatter and also sends me on some sort of weird emotional roller coaster.  Naturally I have been trying to quit it. I have made many attempts over the last two years, often getting though months sugar free and falling off the wagon in a spectacular fashion. It's like a terrible relationship that I can't help returning to. Today after many months sugar free I found myself in the chocolate aisle of m&s deliberating over buying chocolate. On some level I knew it was a really bad idea which is probably the only reason I'm not currently covered in chocolate smears. The funny thing is I couldn't have been physically craving it as it's been too long but I was feeling rather emotional today and something was telling me that was what I needed to fill the void. After wrestling with my conscience, I managed to escape empty handed and rushed to the health food shop down the road to buy some less dangerous substitutes.  That's not to say I won't find myself eating sugar again in the near future bit it does mean I've gotten through today.
In the absence of sugar I have found I'm very susceptible to buying sourdough or spelt bread 'to cheer myself up'. That's probably the saddest but most descriptive sentence I could come up with to illustrate my complicated relationship with food. The problem with eating my emotions in the form of delicious sandwiches is that not only is it not a particularly healthy way to deal with my emotional stuff but more importantly I am intolerant to gluten. That means I am usually quite ill afterwards plus lots of bread is fattening, my very squishy middle will attest to that.  It's quite a hefty price to pay for a bit of comfort. I am working on it and by that I mean I'm off to see if I can get the makings of a delicious sandwich.  If there's any takeaway from all this it would probably be try to be less like me.

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