Are you an emotional under-eater?

I’m feeling a little emotionally broken today and my health is suffering for it. When I’m feeling upset or broken I lose my appetite. When I eat, what I eat and the quantity change completely.

Happy Frances snacks throughout the day on healthy foods like sourdough toast, nuts, fruit and organic muesli bars with three large meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I don’t have to put any effort into what I eat, I choose to eat well, regularly and often because I love eating and I love eating healthy foods.

When I’m feeling broken or upset, eating becomes more of a chore. I lose my appetite, occasionally even skipping meals to eat snack foods instead. My sugar intake increases considerably and for some reason I eat a lot of white bread toast. I guess that’s my comfort food.

I’m not broken enough today to completely lose my appetite but in the past I’ve lost a lot of weight because of emotional stuff. In the weeks after I found out my boyfriend of eight years had found someone else, I felt so nauseous, constantly, that I hardly ate at all. I remember returning to work the following week and having to force myself to eat lunch. I’d delay it for as long as possible because I just didn’t enjoy eating food anymore. Even when I did eat, just about all I could stomach was very plain foods.

It got to the point where the weight was just falling off me and I started to worry that I was becoming overly thin. When I’m unhappy I also get gut problems which means the food I was eating wasn’t getting absorbed properly. I was also exercising for at least an hour every day because I always up my exercise routine when I’m unhappy to help clear my mind. So, essentially I was eating nothing, doing a heap of exercise and my digestion system was constantly out of whack. My family started making comments about my weight and I was having trouble fitting into my clothes because they’d become too loose and baggy. Although I was happy I could now fit into those new skinny jeans that are in fashion at the moment, I didn’t like the idea of being any thinner than what I’d become.

When we think of ‘emotional eating’ we usually think of over eating but under eating is a huge problem as well. I felt enormous stress and frustration that I just couldn’t eat. Not having any fuel in my body also made me feel tired and rundown and probably played a bit of havoc on my immune system. The idea of losing more weight also made me feel quite panicked because I didn’t feel like I had much left on me to lose.

I was lucky that I have a fantastic Chinese Herbalist who was able to give me some herbs and teach me a few meditations to help calm my stomach down. My appetite didn’t take long to return and I dropped back to my normal exercise routine. Five months down the track I’ve put the weight I lost back on and am feeling much healthier for it.

Unfortunately there are a lot of depression sufferers who have to deal with this under-eating problem more long term. If you’re one of these people, please speak to your Chinese Herbalist or Naturopath.

Frances Kerr