My relationship with junk food – an unhealthy way I try (and fail) to make myself feel better

What do you turn to when the Universe deals you a crappy hand? Maybe you crack open a bottle of wine. Perhaps you repeatedly pick fights with your partner. Maybe you go shopping and do your credit card some serious damage. For me, when the chips are down, I turn to… chips.

Also other junk food, but mostly snacks of the salty and savoury variety than chocolate or sugary morsels. Right now, my life is a giant puddle of dementor vomit, and I’ve noticed that I’m turning to a familiar vice with alarming regularity.

At first glance, this doesn’t present as a serious problem. The quantity I’m eating is not huge, and I’m eating well 85 per cent of the time. And of course there’s nothing wrong with me treating myself. But what I’m talking about here is not just an occasional treat, it’s a daily ritual of me using food as an emotional crutch. To rephrase an old New Zealand health campaign around alcohol dependency: it’s not what I’m eating, it’s how I’m eating. This is not an addiction but it is a dependency, which means there’s an underlying issue that I need to address.

Whenever I try to understand an unhealthy behaviour, I look at when it first began. As with most people, I suspect, my emotional attachment to food stems from childhood. My well-meaning mother gave us a plate of chips, biscuits and lollies for afternoon tea each day after school, so I grew up seeing these foods as a staple rather than a treat, and it’s probably no great stretch to say that when I reach for junk food now, at a time when my life is in turmoil, I’m looking for the feelings of comfort and safety that I associate with my childhood. I want to make it clear here that I’m not blaming my mother for my poor choices in adulthood – the responsibility for how I treat my body falls on me alone. Neither can I blame society for conditioning me to regard the act of something unhealthy – rather than taking an evening walk, painting my nails, Skyping a cherished friend or sinking into a sumptuous book – as the most satisfying way to treat myself. The best way for me to get to the bottom of why I consistently make poor food choices is to understand what my body is really crying out for in challenging times, and how I can meet its needs in a healthy way. Which could best be summed up like this: I feel crap about myself and my life, and I delude myself that this will make me feel better (because I don’t have any more appealing solutions right now).

Here’s the situation I’m in right now. I have no work, and haven’t for almost a month. My industry is struggling, and demand for my services is falling away. I have been self-employed for seven years, but never before have I struggled for work to this extent. Occasionally there have been a few days I’ve been unable to fill with projects, but generally it’s been fairly consistent. But to go this long without income is crippling to my lifestyle and my ideas about who I am. On top of that hit to my primary source of income, my secondary business has failed to fire and that’s resulted in bills I am unable to pay. I spend my days scouring job sites, watching British game shows and sending photos of dead cockroaches to my housemate (we had the house fumigated; every dead-insect discovery is a cause for celebration).

So while I cope with the upheaval of starting again and process the associated feelings of failure and inadequacy (there are few experiences more soul-destroying than being a grown-up who is unable to provide for yourself at a material level), you can bet I’m looking for something to make me feel better. And you can bet that those choices will not best serve my needs. Because even though I know that after I scoff a bag of S&V (that’s salt and vinegar, BTW), I will not feel any happier, I do it anyway.

At the heart of the problem is the struggle to make myself feel better. I don’t know how to comfort myself and make myself feel like a valuable human being who is contributing to the world. I still don’t know how to reassure myself on a soul level that I matter and are worthy of respect. And although I do know that gorging on fatty foods is not going to alleviate this pain, the temporary mood lift is a welcome reprieve from my despondency.

I don’t know the answer to this problem (and it IS a problem, because it’s giving me yet another reason to feel like a failure) but I have made a resolution to quit admonishing myself for my unhealthy food choices, and to instead try to extend myself some self-compassion. Right now, everything is not alright. But it will be, eventually (everything always is). I know my desire to seek comfort in confectionery will be something I can overcome, but right now I’m got too much on my plate (pun intended) to do much more than simply be kind to myself. Maybe one day that kindness will result in good food choices but right now it’s more about not beating myself up for trying to cope with trying situations in whatever way I can. For now, that will have to be enough. 

The Self-Appreciation Project

I want to tell you about a little project I’m working on. Actually that was a lie – I don’t want to tell you about it at all. But my angels told me I had to, that it would help me to write about it… and, just like the husband who had warned you earlier in the evening that those stilettos would hurt your feet, they are always right (it’s very annoying). So here goes.

My self-esteem is ridiculously low. Not just I-hate-trying-on-bathing-suits low, or even I’m-too-chicken-to-ask-my-boss-for-a-raise low, but cruelly self-sabotaging-on-the-reg low – without even realising it. It’s only now, in my mid-30s, that I’ve decided I’m not willing to live like this anymore. 

I'm not looking to achieve Kanye-level self-love status, just a way of maybe being my own best friend. I’m no longer willing to avoid eye contact at parties from a belief that no one would find me interesting. I’m not willing to bail out of dates because of a belief that I’m lovable. I’m not willing to avoid pitching work projects out of a belief that they aren’t good enough (which really means: a belief that I’M not good enough).

It’s not easy to turn around decades of negative self-talk – especially when you hadn’t been aware you’d been treating yourself so shabbily. I’m not exactly sure it’s entirely possible, but I know that I have to try, with everything I’ve got. If I don’t, I will continue to push people away and live a lacklustre life. I want to live in the light now. 

That’s why I’ve embarked on something called the Self-Appreciation Project. Every night, I reflect on the day just passed and write down two things I loved about myself. Here’s the thing: it’s REALLY hard. Initially I wanted to list five things but I couldn’t. Even getting to two is a struggle. And in the spirit of absolute frankness I can tell you there have been days when I could not find a single thing. Not one. (I’m trying not to beat myself up when that happens, because self-compassion is another attribute I really want to foster. I’m also determined not to use those days as an excuse to give up.)

The Self-Appreciation Project, which shall henceforth be known as SAP, is bringing up a lot of dark stuff that’s been buried in my subconscious, which is unpleasant at best and downright terrifying at worst. But I know that I need to go through all that to get to the other side. Like Louise Hay once declared: “Honey, if you want to clean your house, you’ve gotta see where the dirt is.” (That woman is always slaying me with her wisdom.)

I hope that telling you about SAP will help keep me honest, and committed. I don’t know whether it will actually change anything, but I know that I have to do it. This may be the most important thing I do in my entire life. I can’t fail at it – it’s too important. I am too important. And I hope one day to truly believe that with every fibre of my being.