Emotional Eating

I talked in a recent post about a particular Saturday evening. I wanted to watch two movies and eat some emotions - the worst kind.

I started cooking the spaghetti while eating a jalapeño & cheddar Doritos bag and browsing available movies on iTunes. I settled on watching Harry Potter 7a and 7b.

My plate of spaghetti was pretty large. I sat down, opened my bottle of red wine, and tried to rent the first movie. To my dismay, I couldn't rent it (it was the only movie in the series that I couldn't rent, which was weird). The actual download was 10$, so I bought the movie instead, but that started an hour-long download.

I looked at my plate and sighed, and spent the next hour eating and browsing reddit. When the download was ready, I watched it, and before the end credits were rolling, the bottle of wine and the Doritos bag were empty.

I already knew the second movie rental was accessible (the button was there, after all). So I rented it, but that also started an hour-long download. These two movies were my first experience with iTunes movies. I was pissed off that there was no possibility of streaming, and that I had to wait a total of two hours. I spent the next hour sulking on reddit, and eating a muffin bar.

When the movie was finally ready, I watched it by first opening a bag of jalapeño & cheddar Lays Kettle (I only ate half of it, though), and around the half-mark, opened and finished a Häagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream.

Why?
I ate emotions (junk food) because I wanted to think about something else (the cause of that evening). Just watching the movies would have been easily enough, but the act of eating is evolutionary satisfying, especially carbohydrates and fats. What better food to eat for a carbs and fats boost? Fast food. Most people are compelled to eat like that, and an evening of unrestrained eating can feel good at an emotional level, and also temporarily at a physical level.

I could have gone for a run. I could have started a drawing, visited my sister, baked anything, or created something by hands. I could have read a book, or browsed Wikipedia. I could have done a lot of things that would have helped my mind off.

Sometimes, I just don't care. I figure if I eat like that 2 or 3 times a year, it can't be that bad, can it? Turns out that yes, it can be very bad for your health, mental and physical, short-term and long-term. But it was one of these days when nothing matters, and you just want to sit down, watch a movie, and eat.