Getting a Handle on Emotional Eating
Stop. Drop. And Feel.
Before the corn goes away this summer
Make some succotash! Traditionally it’s a skillet sautée of summer squash, corn, and lima beans but many different vegetables happily go with corn. In the photo is a batch I made with a mix of braising greens that contained edible flowers (thanks to Cloud Nine Farm in Wilsall, Montana.) Just remember that you don’t need to cook corn very long. I’m talking a minute or two sizzling in the pan. So, depending on what else you’re adding to your succotash, get the sturdier things cooking first and add the corn and fresh herbs in the last couple minutes just before serving.
Succotash ideas:
summer squash (cut into ½-inch rings or chunks thereabouts for the crazier-shaped varieties)
braising greens, baby greens like chard, kale, tatsoi
green beans/haricots verts (great with tarragon)
edamame or lima beans or butter beans
cherry tomatoes, halved (great with basil)
chives always a good idea but if you don’t have chives, use a shallot or spring onion at the beginning when you’re cooking the sturdier vegetables
edible flowers like nasturtium, violas, chive blossoms
No mushy vegetables:
If you’re using summer squash, cut it into bite-sized pieces, get it cooked most of the way to tender (splash of olive oil or butter or some of each, check at 5 minutes but it’ll probably begin to caramelize closer to 10), and then holding pattern it until just before you want to serve. Then, and only then, add the corn and fresh herbs and cook for a couple additional minutes. This preserves a nice bite to the vegetables and a crispness to the corn.
Optional decadence to add a bit of butter when you add the corn and finish with flaky salt.
Emotional Eating
Most of my “emotional eating” doesn’t happen when I’m sitting down at the table. It’s the standing-in-the-pantry grazing that has always been my issue. And it was in the pantry, hand in the cereal box, where I stopped one day and came up with the phrase: Stop. Drop. and Feel.
Mindless eating was a lifetime habit for me. Over the past twenty years, as I’ve been healing my relationship with food and body, I’ve had a lot of time to ponder and test things. I don’t really believe in “emotional eating” per se, as eating is emotional, but I get where people are coming from when they say it. I prefer the phrase “mindless eating” as it is something we clearly want to reduce if we don’t like the consequences whereas with “emotional eating” sometimes I want to soothe myself with a bowl of ice cream and I know exactly what I’m doing and am enjoying every delicious spoonful. The difference is all in the intentionality.
It’s not really the food’s fault, is it?
Much of my checked-out, mindless eating was a reaction to the near constant dieting, food rules, and restriction that I forced upon myself since I was a young girl. Honest to goodness hunger can make you do some crazy things.
My food relationship recovery has several phases. First I stopped my eating disorder behavior, but it took about ten more years to figure out what it was really all about and that I used food to cope with my emotions. To numb. To not feel. And that even though I didn’t do the disordered thing anymore, I was still coping with food. Using food. Overeating. Which is disordered eating in my book.
So, one day I decided to Stop. Drop. and Feel. It was difficult. But in time I felt my anxiousness, my anger, my sadness, and wrestled with unmet desires, confusion, and insecurities. I’ll get into this further as I write here at About Love & Cookies, but for today, let’s leave it here: things began to change for the better when I began to feel and deal with my emotions. I do hope the same can happen for you and those you love.
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