Emotional Eating: Why We Crave More

Words by Anna Lee

Photography by Geordanna Cordero, via Unsplash 

It’s nasty; always hungry. No matter what you feed it, it will cry for more. Deep-fried stuff, not vegetables. Cigarettes, not a walk in the park. Entertainment, not education. It’s a longing for something. A craving for I-don’t-know-what. Usually something I cannot reach at the time. Constantly discontented, the need to stuff it up is inevitable.

Opinions differ about why it is we crave the unhealthy stuff. Some biologists say it’s due the bacteria that live in our digestive system; we’ve trained them to want sugar, fat and all the inexplicable chemicals in our food. Others say it’s down to behaviour and routine. That it’s down to the weaker self; the laziness in every one of us. Maybe. But I think it’s much more than that.

I call it the void. And the void is always hungry. The void is never happy. The void is never full. The void is a vacuum which we normally try to avoid because it makes us nervous. How many people can enjoy a bus ride without watching constantly on their phone? How many can enjoy the same bus ride without complaining silently with passengers they dislike? Or the traffic? Or the noise? Or how the driver drives? How many of us can enjoy something without distracting ourselves?

Silence is the void. But there is no silence. Not in me. Not around me. Can you stand the silence? Is it ever silent in your head? We live in a loud world. And all the coffee. The noise. The stress. The schedules. The goals. The tasks. The do-lists, the expectations – all of that gets us hyper-wired to adrenaline which keeps our bodies tense. Alert. 24 hours. 7 days a week.

I learned that relaxation is not the absence of thoughts or feelings in my body but the acceptance of what is present right now. If I could only relax when it’s quiet in and around me I would never be able to find peace at all.

I can stop the restlessness in me with too much chocolate, junk-food, too much coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, too much sports, too much banter, too much of too much – fill in your blanks. A lot of unhealthy things temporarily soothe the longing. But that kind of peace is short. Then the void wants more. A vicious circle. Binging of any kind lacks a very important quality – it never made me happy, never gave me what I really needed.

After a while I figured out what the void wanted after a lot of crying and grieving about all the times I had stepped over myself, had ignored myself, had hurt myself. Not a fun process, but worthwhile.

Inspiration fills and quenches the void, I figure. If I’m fully present in an activity, then there is no longing, no craving. The hard part is to distinguish between my motivations. Why I want something is often hard to answer. As hard as it is to learn happiness again. Happiness makes me resilient to the ensnarements of the void. But happiness is hard to get if I am constantly stressed out, tired, high on adrenaline.

I guess it’s not our fault. It started in school or much earlier in the nursery or kindergarten, back home with mum and dad we learned what to do to gain their attention and appreciation. Go for the good grades, be the best, reach your goals. Long ago we were taught that happiness lies out there in the world, not within us. We learned that we have to reach society’s goals to fit in, not reach our own. And society means here family, friends, neighbourhood, our gang whoever we adopted as an idol or role model. This will set our frame. Maybe it’s because we look outside with our eyes not inside. I don’t know. But we were such good students we almost forgot what we wanted here in the first place.

Mass media constantly beats the drum of self-motivation and self-development on one hand and meditation and de-stressor relaxation on the other. It’s exhausting. Mankind, it feels, is lazy and has to be pushed all the time to get off the couch. The truth is, nobody I ever met is really lazy. We are not born lazy. We are born curious and inspired and then we lose it. We get disenchanted. We get told what we can dream and what we should reach for. The limiting frame is our upbringing especially when we never question it.

The void reminds us of the truth in us and the truth around us. It shows us that we long for something else. That we crave more. That we are curious. If we’d only dare to listen. And when we finally stop distracting it with food, entertainment, shopping, exercise, traveling, TV, booze, sex or anything else we are leaning on then we’ll realise that, sometimes, this feeling is guiding us back to ourselves again. To what we have lost on our way. When we realise what we are missing then we will be our own best friend again; someone whom we can trust with our heart.