V-Log: Stuffing your Face or Facing your Stuff?
Stress Eating & Comfort Foods
Over the weekend Harper and I had a video call to check in on how we were doing and he questioned the difference between stress eating and comfort eating. This became the inspiration of today’s video. On a side note, there is no product in my hair. This is the way my hair air dries after a shower. Don’t be jelly!
Food, or even talking about food, can be a trigger for many people who may or may not be aware of their own past or trauma. Or it may be what causes some people to use sarcasm or humor to deflect their feelings about food, about their eating habits, or about their bodies. I am not addressing any of these topics here today for others, only sharing my own views about myself.
Today is not the time to share the origin story of my complicated relationship with food, in the midst of this isolation and viral pandemic fears. Or why my body maintains a baseline weight at homeostasis which is much higher than recommended by any medical practitioner. Today I want to tell you how much my emotional healing has helped my ability to be present to my own eating and to my body. It has. A lot. There: I’ve said it all and it’s All Done. ✅
Actually by the time I had discovered that I was misdiagnosed as a diabetic, my body had already become accustomed to producing less insulin than it needed. So technically I’m still an insulin dependent diabetic. I am keenly aware of my intake of sweets and carbs but not stringent about it. At over sixty five years of age, I’d rather live a fulfilling and happy life than prolong it at the cost of my still healing younger selves, leaving a skinny corpse. So maybe a piece of Andrea’s cake would come really handy right now, but thanks to the quarantine I don’t have very much say getting it even though she lives only five houses away!
The difference between stress eating and comfort eating for me has been about knowing my own power. Not forced control that feels like a whip held in someone else’s hands, but agency that comes from a place of love and compassion for myself. When I find myself in a situation that feels stressful, even when I reach for a bag of potato chips (yup, still in my snack cabinet!) I tend to take out a few (10–12 chips) and create a lovely presentation that satiates my eyes as well. I’m not using buzz words that are part of the diet industry lingo like portion control, low carb, high fat. I’m not talking about the keto, paleo, vegan or pescatarian diets. For personal reasons, I don’t eat meat. So the burden of filling me up falls on fruits, which have to be limited because of diabetic recommendations. Indian mangoes are my forever favorite fruit so I eat them all summer, which defeats the purpose every summer! Vegemables, which I’m really good at making being an Indian vegetarian, thank goodness, and also a really creative cook. None of those sadly boiled or steamed greens that used to be served in restaurants in the Midwest when I moved to the USA 40 years ago will be found in my kitchen! Legumes and lentils, rice and breads. See, I left my favorite till the end. Fresh oven baked white bread still tops the list.
Do you know how many kinds of breads there are in world cuisines? I can’t even count the kinds of breads there are from India! I love them all!!!
How I have learned to listen to my body has been taught within these food parameters. When this shelter-in-place is over perhaps you’d like to try food from other countries that offer wonderful vegetarian options like the cuisines of Thailand, or Taiwan, or Ethiopia. Or the holy grail of vegetarian excellence from over thirty communities: India. No, I am not biased at all.
Circling back to the video, upon review I find that it might be misleading to believe that I eat a half piece of toast for dessert: sometimes I eat an entire slice of toast. There are many Indian sweets to which I am partial, so I keep them at home and ration them out to myself. Therefore I was already ready for the rationing that has become necessary during the staying home phase of this emergency. There are certain cookies I like so I keep them handy on a rotating basis, doling them out two at a time with my nightly after dinner cup of tea. My chocolates and insulin live in the same drawer in my fridge, learning to get along, which is why my fridge is so interesting, Sherry.
I eats what I likes, and I likes what I eats.
How much do I care what other people think about me? How much am I embarrassed to share about myself? How do other people’s opinions effect me? Zero, zilch, nada.
I used to be 5 feet and a 1/2 inch tall, but now I’m down to an even 5 feet. The least I weighed as an adult was 121 pounds when I was hospitalized in India during college, diagnosed with Paratyphoid at the age of 21. The most I ever weighed was 280 pounds the day I went into the hospital in 2014, dying of a broken heart and a defective cardiac valve. Three months later I came home weighing 180 pounds. I was a 100 pounds lighter because of the fluid that had been drained from my body for weeks in preparation for cardiac surgery. Although I have fairly small (juvenile sized) meal portions since that year, my body continued to gain weight after my return home over the next four years, eventually stabilizing at 224 pounds. That is where it continues to stay today.
Here is the reason I mention my mom in the video. She was a big part of my home life. My mom passed into another realm in 2016, but still hangs around my kitchen sometimes, offering unsolicited advice just as she had done in life.
History of the v-log.
You can email me at goodnewsdaily.medium@gmail.com or leave your contact info in comments or in a private note. Let me know if you’d like to book a day/time on the one-on-one video call calendar. I will try to get back to everyone as rapidly as I possibly can. Let me know if you would rather not be tagged in future vlogs otherwise you will continue seeing your name in this sea of green. 😊
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