Should we channel our food obsession, or rid ourselves of it? (LONG)

So here’s the thing with me. In the past 22 months I have learned more about what “turns me on" about food than I ever have in my life. Before I shoveled…because that’s what I did. It was a way to pass the time, a way to drown my sorrows, a way to arm myself with so much fat that people would not/could not touch me.

 

Boy was I short changing myself!

Food is wonderful! It has texture. It has great natural flavor. It is scientific. It is art. I can make it do things that I could not make it do before. I love to smell it, to taste it, to feel it on my tongue, to chew it, to savor it, and to imagine up what I will do with it.

 

I contend that my life is richer for having become a home cook. I haven’t found a single thing yet that I craved that I couldn’t make better or even completely WLS friendly. So I feel like I have my cake and eat it too (pun intended).

 

This is not to say I am past all my food issues. But this I know for sure: I am a foodie and I think that’s ok. The entire sensory experience is appealing to me and I draw from it a lot.

Thanks for the response, Nik. I completely relate with this. I have even toyed with the idea of culinary school because I have discovered this new love for food - not like, EATING it, but being creative with it and enjoying a small amount of it.  I particularly like cooking for other people now.  I know you must too, with your Pouch Parties and blog and all! :-)

God created us with taste buds.  And to me, that means we are designed to enjoy the taste of food -- the full spectrum of food.  Savoring the flavors of food and experiencing all the different tastes and textures that God created for us to enjoy.  So to me, claiming that we should only eat for sustenance is like saying sex is only for making babies. 

Instead of trying to learn how to "hate" food, or think of it as mere fuel, I think it's more important to learn how to have a healthy relationship with food.  A relationship that nourishes our bodies and provides the important vitamins and minerals we need for survival, but also allows us to enjoy the food we eat without using food as an emotional crutch, shield or weapon. 

Unfortunately for many of us we have developed an UNhealthy relationship with food throughout our lives and use it for something other than what it was intended.  Food was never suppose to hide emotion or make us feel better when we're stressed or angry or sad.  And teaching our minds to have a different view of food, of respecting it and enjoying it for what it is -- that's where the big learning curve comes into play after WLS. 

So as part of the process of developing this healthy relationship with food, we're then faced with the question of how we handle the emotions we used to squash with food.  So instead of trying to bury our "sadness with chocolate cake" (or whatever), we need to learn how to live with our feelings, to sit with our emotions and allow ourselves to actually feel them.  It's OK to be sad (or angry or happy or stressed) and it's OK to allow yourself to feel those feelings.  We don't need to hide those feelings or channel them into some other new hobby or distraction. 

I also believe (and boy is this getting long winded!!) --- that we need to learn about moderation.  Like I said in another post today: "I can't live the rest of my life without a slice of lemon merginue pie on Thanksgiving" --- so I need to learn how to control myself enough to have a half a slice of pie instead of 3 slices.  Or 1 cinnamon roll instead of 6.  Or 1 plate of food on Thanksgiving instead of going back 3 or 4 times.  So moderation needs to also be factored in to the process of that healthy relationship with food too.

Ok, I'll stop now.
Pam

Pam, I am so happy to count you among my friends. Jus' sayin'!

Right back atcha girlie!

Hmm. This reply really got me thinking.  There's definitely a gray area or sweet spot here that you highlight (and that Shari alluded to above) between using food only as fuel and using it as an emotional crutch.  These are two extremes (that I presume would apply to sex as well!)

I think I might have mistaken what she was saying. I was trying to explain to her that I love cooking now, and she seemed to think that was detrimental. But she wasn't really listening to what I was saying.  Right now, I'm doing a decent job of not burying my emotions in food. Frankly, that's at least a little because I've been so much happier since my surgery that I haven't felt the need for that emotional crutch.  I wonder what will happen when I get back to an emotional place where I want that crutch. That will be the true test of how well I've prepared myself for moving past the NEGATIVE aspects of my relationship with food.

Anyway, I appreciate the insight.  You may have helped make a breakthrough here! :-)

it's really interesting to me to see this question posed.  and i will have to reveal more about my history than i normally do.

twenty years ago i showed up at a very addiction-modelled treatment center with massive major depression and rampant drug and alcohol addiction.  i was 25.  i was hospitalized for the depression and addiction issues because i couldn't do outpatient because i was non-functional.  that got me together enough to be able to hold a job and go to intensive outpatient treatment.  i did a therapeutic community for a good seven years.  that's right, seven years of intensive group and individual therapy and community living.  i was the six million dollar woman; they rebuilt me from the ground up, from a mass of quivering, non-functioning parts into a moody (granted) but reasonably functional human being, or a reasonable proximation of a human being anyway.

they were black and white. they were abstinence oriented.  i needed that.  i needed black and white lines, like i needed a body cast.  i was broken at every level.  i did it 100%.  drugs, alcohol, food, sex, money, you name it, all on the addiction abstinence-only model.  everything was either functional in my life, or it had to go.  no emotional ties.  i self-identified as bulimic in treatment because at the time, i had been binging and then purging by starving myself for days.  but the truth is every single behavior i had was highly dysfunctional and extreme.  my spending, my relationships, all of it.  so i lived as a food addict in recovery for many years.  i had a black-and-white food plan and i stuck to it.  no sugar, no flour, weighed and measured every bite.  i did that for 7-8 years.

in that time i adhered to the mindset that if i had an emotional attachment to anything, it had to go.  we were purists.  if i enjoyed it, i didn't do it.  i'm dead serious.  it might sound miserable and truthfully, i left because i finally reached a point where it just wasn't working for me, but the truth is also for a long time, i was far happier living that way than i had ever been before.  so i didn't miss it that much.  the problem came when i started to branch out from the community and live on my own.  life outside the commune had a way of challenging my assumptions and making me question my faith.

what i learned since then is that i am no longer a compulsive eater.  i love food.  i LOVE food.  i enjoy it thoroughly.  but it does not rule me.  drugs, alcohol, those are things i know i can't imbibe without consequences i don't want.  i cannot drink or drug in safety.  there is no social use for me.  i am addicted thoroughly to mood altering substances and i know if i start, i won't stop until potentially i'm dead.  i don't have anything like that kiind of compulsion with food (or sex, or money).  i can be *compulsive* - sure.   but addicted?  there's a line there i don't cross.  hell, i can even smoke the occasional cigarette without relapsing now.  am i fooling myself?  well, only time will tell.  I can tell you i've been living this way for many years and i haven't fallen off the wagon yet.  whether i make it to the day i die, is that the only test?  maybe.  is my thinking addled?  welll, probably, but that's just me!   i didn't get to obesity by overeating - not really.  after i gave up, at a certain point, i probably had my moments.  but in general, i've had pretty healthy eating habits.  i enjoy my food.  i do have an extremely slow metabolism and some other things that are screwed up, like my ability to achieve satiety, which RNY has helped enormously.  if i eat certain types of food, i am liable to fall into "mindless" snacking, but i consider that a far cry from addiction.

a few years ago i went to school to become a counselor.  and i figured something out.  psychotherapy is born of northen european origins.  think about it.  Freud, Jung.  The culture and sensibility of northern europe is one of austerity.  Look at the Dutch rennaissance and compare it to Italy.  Look at German food, or Irish  or English food, and compare it to spain, italy, greece.  It's completely different character.  Now look at American and European culture where psychoanalysis developed.  It's all basically Anglo-Saxon Teutonic (that's changing, but i'm talking about origins here).  It's based on a stoic view of reality.  Passion is not respected.  Control is respected.  It's a masculine, northern-european mindset that informs the whole theory.

My therapists were uniformly Irish, English, and German.  The addictions model is formulated from Jungian psychology in a psychoanalytic culture where control and restriction are valued. 

Now look at me (stands higher on soapbox). I'm an italian american female.  My very GENES are screaming with passion about the beauty of a drop of olive oil.  I'm ALL ABOUT excitement, pleasure, and passion.  My family history is fraught with it, my culture is fraught with it, and my genetic background is (more or less) fraught with it - except the scott in me, that's another story.  ANd what happens - my ancestors move to New England, moreover Boston, the most emotional repressed region in the United States.  It was a disaster in the making.

So i get sober in Florida, in treatment, divorced from my family roots, in the hands of germanic-irish therapists with an abstinence model.  And i'm told that my instinct are all screwed up, andi must be addicted to food because i love it too much.    ANd hell - maybe i'm in complete denial and this is all bull****  but you know, the big thing in human services now is cultural awareness.  i can assure you twenty years ago, this was not the case where i was living.  i never considered for a minute how my therapist's cultural background might impact their view of me, or how mine might impact my view or needs or personality or values.  And i'm pretty sure they never did either.  We took it in a family context, sure.  But cultural?  nope, never considered.  ANd i think more and more how the very cognitive processes that formulate addictions theory and psychology in general are very culturally based. 

So this is my long way of expressing my response to your question.  I personaslly believe it is possible to love food without being an addict.  But, I also believe that when you are truly addicted to something, regardless of whatever legitimizes your interest in it, that you have to abstain, there is no half-measuring it.  I don't regret the years i spent abstaining from food.  I think they gave me the inner strength i needed to recover, as i needed to, on every level.  I was fully committed to my process and that helped me, a lot.  but today i'm not in the same place, and i refuse to pathologize every single aspect of my life. i am having a blast develping my culinary talent, and until there are some indications that it is a problem, i'm not going to treat it like one.  i'm not a black and white thinker anymore.  for now, having a vice or two makes me human, not sick.

Thank you for sharing your story.  I'm proud of how far you've come and the attitude you have about your history and the outlook you have for the future.  Good job!

Channel it positively!!! Channel it positively!!!!

To become indifferent to food is sooooo NOT NECESSARY. You have to work on getting to the point where you don't use and abuse food, not be indifferent to it! I was a boring eater pre-op. I ate Twinkies and Little Debbies and McDonald milk shakes. What a waste of taste buds!!! I have become a food snob and recipe hunting and cooking fool! And because I still get enjoyment from food (even off plan things occasionally) I have no desire to go back to the madness. Being indifferent would give it more power than it deserves in my opinion. I think talking about fun food and reading recipes and experimenting makes me happier in my brain because there's a normalness there. I don't know why - it just works for me.  

And just so you know, my naturally thin hubby LOVES food. He just doesn't gorge himself on it because he allows himself anything he wants whenever he wants. This makes him not want it all the frickin' time. I've really learned from him over the last couple years.  I think really LOVING food makes you appreciate it for what it is. Indifference leads to boredom (and bored taste buds!) and boredom leads to eating off plan for many.

Best wishes to you honey! Do you own thang. You've got a long time left to live with whatever will work for you. Don't adapt to someone else philosophy. It just won't work for the long haul.
 
Jenny

I'm going to share my experience because that's all I can do.  I see already that you've gotten several responses against it but that's the way I've lived my life since surgery.  I HAD to change my relationship with food because it got me in so much trouble.  I also had to learn not to self medicate and numb my pain with food and learn not to just switch to something else either.  My suggestion would be to ask successful long term post-ops and see what they say.  If you find several that still get that feeling from food, only changed the actual food they ate, and are successful...then you'll know it can be done.  I can't do it.  I think it's great that you are eating right!  I'm just saying that I do see food as fuel and it's because I discovered a whole new world out there that didn't revolve around food. 

How important is it for you to get to a particular weight? Here's a suggestion... you could see if your method is working when you get to where you want to be but "if" you have difficulty in maintaining, you may want to revisit this again.  Could I have imagined this at under a year out?  No way.  I figured it out a little at a time until I realized that I could unlearn cravings and literally find a new life without food being so important.  It has worked perfectly for me and it is why I succeeded but it is something that you would have to work out for yourself.  I am happy to answer any questions about it if I can be of help.