Chocolate Therapy

Note: With Halloween coming up, I thought I’d do a short series of posts about some of the messages I’ve found in Dove chocolate wrappers. While I often enjoy the messages, a few of them make me uneasy, particularly ones related to chocolate, so I thought I’d write about them.

“Chocolate therapy is oh, so good.”

When I read this, all I could initially think of was Harry Potter, since in that world, chocolate is literally used as a form of treatment after an encounter with the Dementors. (For those unfamiliar with Harry Potter, Dementors are nasty creatures that suck the life and happiness from those they touch.) Eating chocolate seems to help restore emotional equilibrium to those who’ve had a brush with them.

Happily, those of us in the Muggle world don’t have to contend with Dementors, but we can certainly still suffer from depression, as well as anxiety, fear, loneliness, etc. It is also true that many may turn to chocolate as a means of therapy. After all, it does have some health benefits, particularly dark chocolate, in addition to releasing endorphins, which promote feelings of pleasure and well-being.

But is chocolate really therapy? And if so, is it good therapy?

Yes, chocolate tastes good and may relax you and make you happy, at least temporarily. A lot of things can fall into that category, though, and we wouldn’t necessarily call them therapy.

My main concern is that eating chocolate doesn’t help anyone understand why you wanted it to begin with. It may treat the symptom, but not the cause. As a result, you’ll continue to reach for it whenever that particular problem comes up, and that ultimately does not leave you in a better place.

That’s one of the things I enjoy most about leading the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program – helping people understand what their true needs are, instead of automatically turning to food. It can take a while to understand what that underlying need is and how to best address it, but once you do, you won’t even have to wonder if chocolate is therapy or not. Instead, you can just wonder what your favorite kind is, and if you want to eat it for pure enjoyment.

Additional: The Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program can help find ways other than eating of coping with stress, loneliness, boredom, etc. For more information, visit www.amihungry.com, or my website.

Chocolate Loves Unconditionally

Note: With Halloween coming up, I thought I’d do a short series of posts about some of the messages I’ve found in Dove chocolate wrappers. While I often enjoy the messages, a few of them make me uneasy, particularly ones related to chocolate, so I thought I’d write about them.

“Chocolate loves unconditionally.”

I’m not completely sure of the intent behind this quote, but it only served to depress me, reminding me as it did of times when I believed what it said. Not only, but during those times I felt like chocolate (or sometimes other food) was the only unconditional love I had or would ever have.

I remember how negative I felt about myself, imbibing the toxic message that because I was fat, nothing else about me counted. Oh, I argued against it intellectually, but in my innermost heart, I believed it was true. And being in that place – where no matter how hard I tried, or what I achieved, I was never good enough – made chocolate all the more appealing.

But of course chocolate does not love, conditionally or otherwise. It doesn’t have emotions of any sort, so anything that I felt when eating it came from me, from my own need to have that sense of being cared about. Since I was very good at fooling myself, though, I turned to chocolate quite often for that sense of acceptance and validation, trying to use it to convince myself that I was a worthwhile human being.

The fact that this is one of the phrases in the Dove chocolate wrappers makes me think that I am not alone in having felt this way. Which is another reason why it depresses me. What does it say about our lives when it’s almost expected that we should look to a food to feel like we’re loved?

These days, I’m glad that when I’m feeling that yen for true acceptance, I have other ways of finding it. It took me a while to get there, but I am grateful that instead of looking to food, I can turn to other people in my life, or my cats, or my own feeling of self-worth, among other things. I save eating chocolate for the simple pleasure of it, and accept it for what it truly is – a delicious treat, but not something that I need to make me feel loved. And I enjoy it all the more for that.

Chocolate Won't Let You Down

Note: With Halloween coming up, I thought I’d do a short series of posts about some of the messages I’ve found in Dove chocolate wrappers. While I often enjoy the messages, a few of them make me uneasy, particularly ones related to chocolate, so I thought I’d write about them.

“Chocolate won’t let you down.”

When I read this in my chocolate wrapper, I didn’t smile, although I’m guessing that was the intent. Perhaps I think too much about food, but my first reaction was how much this type of messaging reinforces disordered relationships with food. I wish I could take this more lightly, but unfortunately, I’ve found that even when things like this are stated humorously, the impact can be far from harmless.

In this case, saying that a type of food won’t let you down seems to imply that when things aren’t going well, your best option is to go to that particular food because other avenues of comfort aren’t reliable. And in a way, it’s true. Provided you have the financial resources and access to the food, it won’t let you down. It will be there for you rain or shine, whether or not you’ve gotten dressed, showered, brushed your teeth, etc.

But while chocolate (or other food) may provide some initial comfort, it doesn’t tend to last, and from that perspective, it will let you down. Once it’s gone, it hasn’t given you much in the way of additional resources or strength to get through whatever your tough time is. Additionally, you might even feel guilty for eating chocolate, and if that happens, any benefit is usually lost.

What if you could find other things to turn to that would give more lasting comfort, things that also won’t let you down? Perhaps a friend or loved one that you know will always be there for you, creative outlets that allow you to express what you’re feeling, playing with a beloved pet, or maybe losing yourself in the beauty of nature. Using these other means is not always easy, of course, which is why chocolate, or food in general, is so tempting.

I also realize that people are tempted by chocolate not just in complex situations but sometimes in a single moment of stress. If that’s the case, eating it probably does help you relax a little, enough to get back to whatever you were doing. In those situations, while it’s true that eating can calm you down, so can breathing exercises, or simple stretches, or going for a short walk.

I’m not advocating against chocolate, because I love it, too; I wouldn’t be eating the Dove chocolates to begin with if that weren’t the case. And a piece or two is not the worst thing you could use to relax. But thinking of chocolate or any food as the only thing that won’t let you down will probably not make you happy in the long term; finding other means of comfort that will provide more lasting benefit is likely a better option.

Additional: The Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program can help find ways other than eating of coping with stress, loneliness, boredom, etc. For more information, visit www.amihungry.com, or my website.

Calories - Enemy or Energy?

Note: For information about the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program, visit www.AmIHungry.com or visit my website.

Calories became my enemy when I was a teenager and trying to lose weight. Foods that had a high caloric count were automatically bad, and I knew I was supposed to avoid them. Not that I always did, but that was the goal.

Nor am I alone in this. We are often taught that limiting calories is the way to lose weight, and as a result, I know lots of people who count calories, or have at one point, myself included.

In addition, the idea of calories being “bad” is almost impossible to avoid. For instance, you might have heard the idea that cookie crumbs don’t have calories (so you can go ahead and eat them, no matter how many). I also found this message on the inside of a Dove chocolate wrapper: “Calories only exist if you count them.” If people were not trying to avoid high caloric intake, no one would even bother with these or similar phrases.

Unfortunately, what can get lost in all of this is what a calorie actually is: energy.

That reality didn’t truly come home to me until I was almost finished losing weight. Towards the end I was tired of the process and, for the first time, restricted myself on certain things, like not having any sugar. Also, at that point I was probably down to about 1000 calories per day. (I wasn’t generally counting, but out of curiosity I added it up at one point and was rather shocked at how little I was consuming.)

In practice that meant that I sometimes had very low energy and trouble focusing on anything but food. Even then, though, I didn’t consider taking in more calories. They were, after all, the enemy.

For some people, it’s even worse, in that calories become a mortal enemy. In Hunger Pains: The Modern Woman’s Tragic Quest for Thinness, Mary Pipher wrote about weight obsession, as well as eating disorders, and she noted: “To become thin, some women will even risk and lose their lives.” (p. 35)

Most who struggle with disordered eating don’t die, but they may still be casualties: though alive, they have no energy to truly live. What energy they have is instead focused on food, either limiting it, consuming it, fantasizing about it, or getting rid of it. As Pipher noted about anorexics: “They didn’t expect to have fun or find human interaction rewarding. Their lives had become relentless, grim encounters with scales and calorie charts.” (p. 65)

That’s why I appreciate the alternate approach in the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program. Since the goal is mindfulness, not weight loss, we don’t focus on calories. Instead, we talk about what calories provide us – energy – and where we spend that energy. Excess food might be stored as fat, but still, it’s all energy.

This helps people focus on the deeper goals of what they want to do, instead of what not to do. Do they want to put their energy toward food restriction, exercise, feeling guilty, or other ways of limiting emotions and actions? Or do they want to spend just some of it on food choices and enjoyment, and the rest on simply living and creating a vibrant life, without obsessing over weight?

I opt for the energy to live and enjoy my life, finding it a much happier and relaxed way of being. And from that viewpoint, a calorie is no longer my enemy but simply one of the essential building blocks toward creating a life I love.