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Body Clutter Mission: Food
By Cindy | December 17, 2007
Marla Cilley and Leanne Ely in Body Clutter: Love Your Body, Love Yourself
Look back for your first memory of comfort food. Is it a certain food or any food?
I’ve been thinking about this for several days now and I can’t pinpoint any one food that I need for comfort. I like all foods. If it’s in front of me, then I’m going to try it. I like the textures, flavors, smells and colors. I find all food comforting! My parents talk about the time they scrapped food together to make sure we had something to eat. They would stretch a burger between three of us. Chicken thighs and rice were a large part of our diet, but I can’t recall these days. I must have been 3 or 4. Food was always an important indicator of our well-being. We ate everything on our plates and were told how lucky we were to have food on the table. We weren’t allowed to waste food. I am just breaking myself of this habit. I try not to finish my children’s plates when they don’t eat it all.
What is your favorite food when you need comforting?
Ice cream is my favorite food. I remember thinking one night when I put Asher and Stephanie to bed, “Thank goodness, I can now go and enjoy eating ice cream by myself.” I was definitely using ice cream for comfort. I was stressed. I do not enjoy eating dessert after dinner because there is too much commotion and I can’t enjoy ice cream in peace. I found myself eating more ice cream each night after the babies went to bed.
Now, can you look back in your past to figure out why you love it so much?
When we lived in Florida, my parents would take us to this outdoor ice cream parlor. We walked up and got ice cream cones. It was a special treat. As I grew older, in Texas, it was the Dairy Queen visits. Any Texan knows that Dairy Queen is a main stay of any town. The Dairy Queen stop sign! We would order the banana split and blizzards when they came out. As I grew older, Dad and I would share a lunch together at the park. With Subway sandwiches and TCBY Floats, we spent time together talking. At the Academy, my friends and I would go down to Dahlgren (student hall with a food bar) and grab pints of Ben and Jerry’s to escape the stresses of our lives. During pregnancy, I lived off of Baskin Robins smoothies ice cream drinks. When we returned from Japan, Blue Bell entered the Nashville Market. A reminder of home, Texas Homemade Ice Cream (the Best in the Country!), was exciting and wonderful news. On top of being pregnant through another hot summer, I was attached to anything ice cream.
Write down your first memory of using food to comfort yourself and what was happening to you and how you felt at the time.
I really can’t remember. When I returned home for Thanksgiving, “Plebe (freshman) year,” I devoured all my parents home cooking. It was so nice to be able to eat all the foods that I hadn’t had over a full semester. I ate everything. Food has always been a social affair in my family. Eat til you’re stuffed. Snack. Eat some more.
Recently, the evening ice cream treat after the babies go to bed is the indulgence that I’ve labeled as “earned me time.” I find a TV show, movie or surf the web and sit there dumbfounded and mindless. I noticed this pattern when I started writing Go Workout Mom. I eat less ice cream now, but I still find myself looking for something around 8/9 PM when I’m not even feeling hungry. I focus on not eating a treat every night. I’m doing well at every other night right now and am babystepping my way to having an evening treat once every three nights. I’m also replacing the ice cream with popcorn, pretzels, or a fruit mix. Slowly, but surely I am facing my food habits and making adjustments!
The questions come from the Body Clutter Journal Missions in Body Clutter: Love Your Body, Love Yourself
How do you feel about food? What is significant about the food you eat?
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I’d have to say that bread is my comfort food. I was picky as a kid, but I’d always eat bread. For Christmas one year, my mother had a local bakery make the largest loaf their ovens could handle. It didn’t actually taste that good (compared to their normal loaves) and it got stale quickly, but I had a lot of fun carting it around nibbling off of it for a few days.
I make my own bread these days. That way I know what’s in it, and it gives me a way to experiment.