Writing v Eating

I’m torn today between two topics. Perhaps I can find a way to link them so I can write about them both.

I overeat and I have been out of control this way for the past ten years. I’ve gained and lost significant amounts of weight and have experienced all of the embarrassing uncomfortable issues that come with weight gain. It is less often that I have experienced the issues of weight loss.

I don’t know what changed in me that has perpetuated this situation. I’ve gotten older, I’ve been through your average life disappointments – divorce, death of my mom, a new job, and yet I struggle moment by moment with this all-consuming pattern of comforting myself with food.

So often it is said “it’s not what your eating, it’s what’s eating you” but I don’t buy that. I strongly believe it is related to genetic makeup. When I stay away from carbohydrates – I have the strength of steel to avoid food. But, if I stay away from carbs too long, I become ravenous for them and begin to eat unhealthy once again. The scientist in me says this is related to insulin production. My father’s incessant craving for sweets when he wasn’t drinking a fifth of Schenley’s whiskey on a daily basis had to be caused by insulin production. Can it be that some of us have a wayward insulin gene that overproduces when we see food?

Dr. David Kessler breaks down overeating by dividing the mechanism in two: eating and the desire to eat. Both processes involve separate mechanisms in the brain. He describes opioids as the brain chemical that gives food its pleasure and dopamine as the great motivator to get the food.

OK, so maybe the insulin was a good thought, but is it’s production in the brain controlled by opioids?

According to Dr. Kessler in his book “The end of overeating”, to change our behavior and defeat the absolute pleasure sensation driven by dopamine we have a brief window: a second of control where we can say yes or no to a food. If we say yes, we gain our instant gratification (and calories). If we say no, we need to engage in a competing behavior. Did I have competing behaviors before I began experiencing weight gain? Whatever they might have been, they are gone. New pleasurable behaviors are required. Now.

Perhaps this is my link to eating and writing.

Writing is a pleasurable behavior that gives me great satisfaction. The entire process from beginning to the end keeps my hands and mind busy typing and searching for the perfect word or story or plot. My focus is diverted from the yummy, mouth-watering food item I am about to eat. (Note to self: NEVER write about food.) I have found that as I develop my characters, plots, objectives and ideas, I can go anywhere in the universe, appear on any talk show, work at any profession, have as much money as I want or need. I can weigh what I want too.

And if no one else in the world reads a thing I write – it doesn’t matter.  I can have all the accolades I will ever need written in my stories.