Confessions of an Emotional Eater

I eat my feelings. All the time.

When I'm sad, when I'm angry, when I'm hurt, when I'm tired, when I am stressed, and especially when I'm bored - I eat. Hungry or not, I eat. I am not even sure if I fully know what it means to actually be 'hungry', because really, I'm always hungry.

I have been this away for as long as I can remember. Since I was a child, I have loved to eat, which is a little ironic since my mother was and still is a below average cook - but she could bake like non other. My doctor father was often on call, and therefore was almost always late to dinner when I was growing up - which in turn made my mother angry, which then led us to frequently order in or go out to eat. And when my mother went back to school to get a psychology degree, family dinner was completely non-existent. We only ate out. MacDonald's and Burger King were a dinner staple. We always had easy-to-prepare food in the house; mac and cheese, pasta, frozen pizzas, as well as Hostess cupcakes and cookies,  you know....typical 'American' junk food. If my friends wanted to binge on junk food after school, my house was the place to be.

My parents also rewarded my bothers and I with food. If we got good grades, we got a blizzard from Dairy Queen. If I practiced the piano (which I hated to do) I got a Twix bar. What's funny about this is that neither of my parents ate this food themselves, and neither of them were heavy or overweight. My mother was always active. She played sports as a kid and has a degree in physical education. She was a gym teacher in the late seventies and a track coach who even led an all girls track team to a state victory. My dad has struggled with weight more then my mom, but he has always been a jogger. Even now in his mid-sixties, he exercises everyday before work.

I never had a body like my mother's. I dislike being physically active. She also doesn't sweat, which is not the case for me. She is of average height, lean, and fairly petite when she was my age. I have always been tall, busty, with broad shoulders - I carried more weight then she ever did. When I see photos of her when she was in her twenties I am envious. She had an amazing sense of fashion - she was cool - she was thin and lean. She was so incredibly beautiful in her twenties...in my twenties, I ranged from a size 10-14, tall, with tummy rolls, embarrassed of my body...and I couldn't stop eating, which was a problem no one else in my family had. In fact, no one in my family has ever had an issue with eating the way I have.

My mother very rarely made me feel bad about what I ate. She let me eat almost whatever I wanted to - until I became clinically depressed in high school, which is where my eating started to get out of control. I was so unbelievably sad and felt completely alone - so I ate, and it made me feel better. It distracted me from what I was really feeling. I was taking a strong antidepressant at the time (one of the many that Jennifer Lawrence's character lists off in "Silver Linings Playbook"). This medication made me gain a lot of weight and with my eating on top of that....well, I was a big girl and I felt utterly repulsive. And the more repulsive I felt, the more I would eat....it was a never ending cycle of destruction and self loathing.

I wanted to look like all the lovely, pretty girls in my high school, wearing fitted baby-tees and low rise flares. Instead, I wore baggy sweaters, and not even that could cover what I wanted to hide. I felt ashamed every single day.

Over the years, I have been of many diets; The South Beach Diet, The Sonoma Diet, Weight Watchers, and of course, good old-fashioned calorie counting. I have come to loathe diets. Not only do they not work, but they stop you from living. I have thought about my weight for over ten years now, and when you are on a diet, nothing else can occupy your mind...

I'm SO over that.

I don't want my weight to occupy 40% of my daily thoughts any longer. I want to be free of them - and I want to be free of the compulsive eating.

I often wonder if I would have struggled as much with my weight and my body image if I weren't an actor. Having a weight issue, and being a woman - and an actor - well, that's just a recipe for feeling like shit about yourself a lot of the time, and not to mention, it completely destroys your creative process. My insecurity has made it virtually impossible for me to grow as an artist.
I have been the victim of sexism more then once in the theatre, particularly when I was told I needed to loose weight or an artistic director "wouldn't know where to put me" in his season. I dropped about 25 pounds. I was a size 4/6. Did I get the job? Did I get decent casting? Not exactly. Was I commended for my weight loss? Absolutely not. My weight issue was never addressed again by the 'big man upstairs', which led me to the conclusion that I had failed. I hadn't lost enough - I wasn't the actor they wanted, instead, I was tolerated as I was. I developed a terrible body complex and even worse restricted eating habits. I worked out hard, ate 800 calories a day, and fasted one day a week.

So, jump to five years later, and I'm back to a size 10 (occasionally bordering on a 12), back to eating whatever is in sight, wondering why, WHY I am still eating when I'm not hungry. Granted, I been through so much, so I can understand how my body wants to revert back to old habits that are more manageable and pleasurable. But why is it so terribly hard to stop the urge to reach for that red velvet donut...and then another...and then another....until I make myself sick?

I had three donuts this morning. I just stuffed them in my mouth, without thinking, not even really paying attention to the taste. I felt glorious for about 3.4 seconds. Now I feel defeated, nausous, and guilty.

But there is a correlation between it all - I eat when something is bothering me, when I am in distress, when I don't know what to do. Right now, I am worried about so much -

My weight
My career
Money
Moving to NYC

Why is it so difficult to take care of my body? To stay healthy?

I don't want to be skinny, truly - I've done that already, and it's not who I am. I am meant to be curvy, to have hips and large breasts. I am meant to have love handles, to be solid and strong -  but I still want to be healthy. I want to honor my body.

I wish it wasn't so difficult sometimes.

Uh.