Are you a woman who lives with a secret shame called Closet Eating? A closet eater is a person with a complex about eating in full view and in front of others. Here are some words of hope and inspiration from a fellow traveler on the road to recovery from closet eating.
Are you a woman who lives with a secret shame called Closet Eating?
A closet eater is a person with a complex about eating in full view and in front of others. For a closet eater, the idea of eating food in public creates an excessively uncomfortable feeling in their body generating fears and beliefs that people are always watching them and judging what they eat.
Closet Eating: What’s It Look Like?
Here’s an example of how closet eating might play out in your life:
You make no bones about the fact that you want to lose weight. Even though you’re not officially dieting, you do your best to eat ‘healthy’ but you still crave all those goodies that you feel that you shouldn’t be eating. You tell the family that you’re staying away from fattening foods. While eating dinner with the family, you choose all the right things, take small bites and eat like a lady. Once the fam leaves the room, you cram a secret stash oreo or two in your mouth feeling that mixture of “I got away with it! bliss and shame.
My Experience As a Closet Eater
For many years I struggled with feeling totally out of control around food, and because I believed I was, I tried to resist the foods I loved by avoiding them as much as I could. But inevitably because their allure was so much stronger than my will to avoid them, I always gave in and found a way to binge on them. I needed the comfort of having the food near me.
I used to be very strategic and clever in thinking up so many wonderful hiding places for food. I had stashes of cookies in my coat pockets, candy bars under the bed, wrapped snack cakes behind the toilet.
For years I put on a show for everyone that I was doing my best to diet and lose weight. Yet, the moment that I was left alone, or someone’s back was turned, I would desperately reach for the food that gave me the sense of peace and safety I yearned for.
During all the years that I was a dieter, I was caught in a cycle of self-abuse always feeling on the edge of desperation because I was so deprived.
Can you relate?
So many women handle stress with secret eating or closet eating. If you do, then you need to know that It’s not your fault and you’re not alone!!!
It’s just an unconscious habit that a part of you has come to accept as a way of surviving whatever overwhelming emotions you’re facing. It’s actually your body’s way of trying to protect you from getting hurt.
If you look back on your life, you may actually know when this secret eating behavior started for you or maybe not. Either way you’ll never be able to alter the behavior by just trying to think your way past it. It’s an unconscious habit which has become a part of your subconsicous programming. That means that whenever you feel you’re under stress, your body will push you to act out in this way by making you run for the safety of food away from the prying eyes of others. The key to healing this and shifting the behavior is to create feelings of safety around food and eating in the presence of others.
My personal experience with this has taught me that your unconscious urges to eat in secret will decrease in duration, intensity and frequency as you begin to fill your own personal love tank, doing more to care for yourself and open up to receiving the love of others and making that feel safe.
To be honest, I’m still in my own process of recovery and working through a lot of my own issues, but I’ve come very far from where I used to be, so in my next post, I’ll share some tips that have worked for me.