A Child of An Emotional Eater
Posted on January 5, 2008
Filed Under Diet |
This is difficult to write because of my deep loyalty to my mother. I do it anyway in the hopes that it helps someone.
To tell of my mother’s sad and difficult life, I have to go back in time when she was a child. She was born in 1932 in Thessaloniki Greece to a poor, single mother. She didn’t know her father, except seeing him once when she was 3 years old. Shortly thereafter, she, her mother, and her grandparents moved to Athens.
At 10 years old, during WW2, she remembers the Nazi tanks entering Athens. She recalls the dead bodies in the streets; some executed, some dead from starvation. Her own family was poor but luckily had jewelry to sell for bread. Like other children, she could not continue her education beyond grade school because they couldn’t afford it. Because they had no money for rent, she lived in a dirt-floored basement for many years, until she got married.
By 12 years old, she had to earn money for her family. She did so by working alongside her mother, sewing button holes.
At 15 years old, my mother met her prince charming, my father. Despite the disapproval of my father’s family, they eventually married in 1950 when she was 18 years old. She should have listened to her instincts and the warning of her uncle, but love blinded her. Indeed my father was handsome, charming, funny, and very intelligent but proved to be a womanizer and an abuser, both physically and emotionally. After 34 years of loyal service (and I do mean service because my mother waited on my father hand and foot), he eventually “dumped” her in 1984 for his first love. It was hard times for all us, especially for my mom who was 52 years old, in a foreign land, not educated, and non-proficient in English. I’ll tell you, she’s one tough woman. Although we suffered financially (my dad was the bread-winner), she was too proud to ask or receive a cent from my father.
When I think back to my childhood, my mother was never at a healthy weight or even remotely close to it. However, she did start off thin when she dated my father. Over the following years, she kept gaining more and more weight, drowning her sorrows with food. First she was 1X, then 2X, then 3X, and now she’s a 4X. She knows what to do to lose weight. She also knows losing weight quickly is not healthy. The problem is that she can’t control herself with food. She is a self-confessed emotional eater. She admits that she eats when she’s depressed, stressed out, bored or upset. That’s basically all the time. In my opinion, she has lost the physical sense of real hunger. Now, you might be thinking that it’s normal to gain weight over the years. Yes, you’re right, but in my mom’s case, her weight has TRIPLED with no end in sight!! She refuses to seek counseling because she says the memories are too painful. She also refuses to go to Overeaters Anonymous because she’s embarrassed. She prefers to live in denial, keeping her painful past locked deep inside. It’s not working nor has it ever. I feel that I’ve been slowly losing my mother for decades.
Just this past holiday season, my daughter and I made gingerbread cookies. They were in the kitchen when I saw my mother pop an entire cookie in her mouth hoping no one saw her. Another time, before I could clean off the table, my mother stole a bite of my daughter’s left-over lunch after she had finished the very same meal. I saw the bite of pasta fall out of my mother’s mouth. I asked her if she was still hungry to which she replied, “No.” These are just two examples of an endless list.
Without knowing it, my mother taught me that eating was consolation for my emotional turmoil. My weight was usually around 125 pounds; until I became depressed then it fluctuated upwards. For many years, I had an eating disorder, an unhealthy relationship with food. I didn’t realize that I too had a pattern until recently (In my previous posts, I talked about how to overcome emotional eating.) I love my mother, but I don’t want to be her. I have too much at stake to lose if I continued this pattern; my health, my marriage, and my two little girls. What would I be teaching them if I didn’t resolve it? I certainly wanted to stop this destructive cycle with me. I believe I finally have for the most part. It takes awhile to undo a learned behavior.
My mother never had a great life. There are others who have experienced far worse. However, my mother’s inability or desire to deal with her emotions has made her into a food addict, an uncontrolled emotional eater. Unfortunately, the cost has been great to her and to all of us. It has robbed her of good health; she’s diabetic, too heavy for her synthetic knees, and has heart trouble. It’s also deprived me of many mother-daughter experiences, like taking a stroll, going shopping or anything that requires walking. My children have been robbed of their grandmother. My daughter says to her, “You just sit, sit and sit.” It makes me sad to realize that my mother has deprived herself of many wonderful experiences; the kind of experiences that make you smile in the golden years. It didn’t have to be like this. She deserved a better quality of life than she allowed herself to have.
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WOW, what a powerful story. If this post doesn’t alert people to the damages that emotional eating can cause nothing will.
Your openess and sharing is very encouraging. Never stop encouraging your mother to make a change. She can still do it.