Eating for Pleasure

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Good article on emotional eating from Harper's Bazaar:

One Woman's Battle With Emotional Eating

After years of fighting emotional eating, Elizabeth Bard finally learned to separate food from feelings in the culinary capital of the world.

By Elizabeth Bard

The summer I turned 17, I fell for a boy at camp. Though we spent every spare moment gazing and groping in the clubhouse, I was certain we were too young to be in love. We considered our options. I can't remember who blurted it out first: "I rhubarb you." That was my introduction to emotional eating: food that embodied -- even substituted for -- feelings.

Most emotional eating, however, is not quite so warm and fuzzy. It's something we do to compensate. Boss is a bitch? Have a cupcake. He didn't call? Get in line at Ben & Jerry's. It says a lot about the harried relationship Americans have with food. We use it like gas: If your tank is running low in one area, fill it up in another. I knew it well. My favorite method to ease the stress of final exams was with a tub of Pillsbury vanilla frosting and a plastic spoon.

I was familiar with the phenomenon through my family. My parents divorced when I was seven. The day my father left, my mother took a bag of potato chips off the top of the refrigerator and reached in. She caught herself and shoved the bag into the garbage. She was not going to be divorced and fat. Then she went back to the garbage can and emptied the chips over coffee grounds. You can never be too careful.

We've all focused on food when we shouldn't have or made it mean something it didn't. My father died of a sudden heart attack when I was 23. He was alone in his apartment, eating a turkey sandwich. More than his body, which I never saw, or his absence, which I could not yet feel, I obsessed over that turkey sandwich. I dreamed about the stale rye bread crawling with roaches, taking over the building. It got so bad that I demanded that a police escort take me to the apartment so I could throw the sandwich away. I didn't overeat when my dad died; I found myself a 40-year-old boyfriend instead -- another obvious attempt to fill the void.

Paradoxically, all the weight I packed on after college was gained in England, where there is little good to eat. I consumed endless slices of white toast slathered with lemon curd to keep warm in my London flat. The chill was not simply a matter of the weather. The toast and preserves were a perfect match; England and I were not. I understood the books, not the people. As a result, I drank tons of vodka tonics in my attempt to figure out the English system of dating by intoxication.

When I moved to France, where I now live with my husband and baby son, there were times early on when I used food to hide out. When sitting through a dinner party in French still made my head hurt, it was easier to excuse myself to check on what was cooking in the kitchen than to say "This exhausts me" or "I feel invisible." Food was my first language in Paris. My husband's friends didn't know if I was witty or accomplished, but they knew that I made a mean celery-root purée. But as time went by, I discovered a different kind of emotional eating, a happy strain resulting from tarts so gorgeous that they can genuinely make your day and meals lingered over with friends or lovers. I'd go so far as to say that in France, all eating is emotional. It's a celebration -- ritual, not fuel. The French don't worry about food. They enjoy it.

When I finally quelled my shame at feeling like a size 10 Michelin Man in a city where women who have borne several children look as if they just graduated from high school, I noticed that naturally moderate eating habits were all around me. Smaller portions, no snacking, lots of water, and cleansing herbal teas prevent the yo-yo of excess and starvation that has become the reality of many American women -- including my own family and friends. If you never go overboard, you never have to struggle back to shore.

Eating for pleasure -- as opposed to solace -- yields great results. I haven't gained a single pound living in France. I eat everything: cheese, pastry, bread, chocolate. But I do it the French way. Instead of buying a package of cookies, which my American self would devour while procrastinating on a deadline, if I'm craving a chocolate éclair, I make myself walk to the boulangerie to get one (and only one). Now emotional eating means browsing the outdoor market for glistening whole fish or oozy Vacherin cheese. It makes me happy just thinking about it. Pillsbury vanilla frosting has gone the way of the dodo.