I think it’s funny how much we go through life not really experiencing things. Not funny laugh out lout but funny kind of sad.

As part of my food diary, I record not only what I am eating but other things as well. It’s not just a diary of intake but a diary of experience and acknowledgment. Before I eat, I record my level of hunger from a 1-5 range. I also record what emotions I’m feeling at the time.

Before I started this food diary, I would have said that I have my bad times and my times of dealing with depression, but I’m overall a happy, content person. Little stress. Well, apparently I was wrong – even about my own feelings.

Through recording my meal and snack time emotions, I have come to see that I am a lot more stressed than I thought I was. More often than not, I am feeling work stress, anxiety, sadness… And I am left feeling shocked. Low level anxiety and stress have become the norm, so no longer am I basing my opinion of how I’m feeling as compared to happiness – which should be the norm. I compare it to the stress and anxiety I feel nearly every day.

Now, some of it is unavoidable. We all have bad days at work or have to deal with things/conversations/people that don’t jive with us on the given day. But for that to become normal is unhealthy.

As I unravel the intricacies surrounding my food addiction and reactions, I see that this is a bigger can of worms than I could have ever anticipated. But, weirdly, it’s my levels of anxiety facing these things that tells me I’m on the right track. True healing never was easy.

Food doesn’t make me happy.

While this may seem like a no-brainer to many people, it has been one of the harsher realizations in my journey for a healthier mind and body.

The thing is, food used to make me happy. Really. I would scrounge up my allowance money just for the chance to buy a container of Ben & Jerry’s because buying the specialty ice cream was my way of telling myself I was special. And it worked. I felt special. I felt like I was treating myself to special things like no one else would. Of course, the sugar rush certainly helped.

I was too young to understand the shame that would come later in my life after I would sit and eat an entire container of ice cream.

You see, that’s the thing – I’ve been doing this for years. Before I could understand why sugar is bad for you, why I was gaining weight and long before I could understand anything like emotional eating or binge eating disorder. I ate to feel, I ate to comfort, I ate because some days that was the only thing that felt good about my life.

But I’m not a child anymore, and food doesn’t make me happy.

I remember the first time when all of the reading and the talking had finally sunk in enough to become a life thought. I ordered a chai latte, one of my old favourite cold day treats, and drank maybe a quarter of it while walking home. I stopped, looked at it (the largest size, of course), and said, “But I don’t want this.”

The taste was off (mentally; in reality it tasted just the same), I wasn’t hungry or even thirsty. I walked the rest of the way home and then dumped it out.

The thing is, though, that you can get rid of the food. You can realize that food doesn’t make you happy. But no one tells you where to go from there. You have the thing that comforted you for years taken away from you by harsh truth and understanding, but no one replaces it. No one says, “Now you can do x to find comfort.”

For some, it becomes exercise. For others, they go into therapy and/or go on mood helpers while they figure themselves out. Some do great works of art and others rediscover or make new friends.

Exercise is almost it for me. I definitely feel more focused and on track when I’m exercising. But exercising when I’m depressed or frustrated just doesn’t cut it. ‘Social anxiety’ doesn’t begin to describe what I feel when I think about the prospect of making new friends face to face. I’m writing novels still, which is brilliant, but it has yet to prove to be a good therapy. Mood helpers? Well, I’m thinking about it…

That’s where I’m at now. I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here.