Testimony: “I Could Not Finish A Diet And My Therapist Helped Me To Know Why”

Sometimes we set goals to change things we don’t like in our lives (eat well to lose weight, play sports to be healthy, take a course to look for a good job …). However, many people find themselves unable to take on these personal goals or challenges.

Although they start out motivated, they always end up abandoning the good purpose. They blame themselves for it, but in reality it is not just a problem of lack of consistency: many times the origin of this pattern is hidden in our unconscious.

Paula’s case in consultation: she couldn’t finish a diet

Paula knew all the diets available on the market. He had tried them all without achieving any success. He could never follow them to the end or lose the weight he wanted. Whenever he started a new one, he would soon abandon it and return to his bad eating habits. Desperate, she came to my office to try to inquire about the reasons for her lack of consistency.

Tell me, Paula, what happens to you when you diet?
I can’t help it, whenever I start a diet, everything goes very well at first, but sooner or later I stop and eat more than necessary. I start with great enthusiasm, but I don’t know what happens to me, I always abandon them.

How are relapses? Have you noticed if something special happens that makes you relapse?
The same thing almost always happens to me. I am constantly following the diet while nothing is happening around me, but when there is a problem, I abandon it and eat again. It can be an argument with my husband or an upset at work, anything that stresses me makes me stop the diet.

Tell me a little about those situations that generate stress and how you react to them.
Well, when it worries me or causes me anxiety, I don’t know how to deal with it. My mind is blocked, I feel like I am not able to do anything.

And what do you do then?
I lose control of my actions and I rush, running, to look for food. I prefer chocolate and sweets. That calms me down. With food I forget everything, as if the problems did not exist. But, of course, after eating, the problems are still there and I have gained kilos.

How do you feel then?
It relieves me at first, but then I feel terrible, very guilty. I shouldn’t have done it, but I’ve been a fool and haven’t been able to control myself. I promise not to do it again, but I always repeat it. And every time I feel worse.

• Food as a reward

For Paula, food was her stress-busting mechanism. No matter how hard she tried her diet, the urge to calm her anxiety with food was far superior. As long as we did not work on her way of managing anxiety, no diet could help her because she would always end up falling back into her old habit.

Paula, we are going to investigate the relationship between anxiety and food. Remember how you started turning to food when you were feeling bad?
I started gaining weight in my teens, with my first boyfriend. He was very jealous and we argued a lot for this reason. I should have left him, but I stayed with him for four years.

And what happened when you argued?
I protested and defended myself, but always came home with a tremendous tension in my stomach. Upon arrival, she would go straight to the pantry or refrigerator and grab anything to eat, preferably something sweet. I remember lying on the couch at night, by myself, having a cake or a tub of ice cream. Only then did I relax.

Were there other times where you also turned to food?
I was also doing poorly in high school. I entertained myself with other things and did not pay attention in class. I left the study and the work for the last day and I began to suspend, which had not happened to me before. Exam times were very stressful because my parents put a lot of pressure on me to study, but I had no interest. I also remember studying in a hurry, always with some food on the table. I think that between my boyfriend and my studies, I started to gain weight.

We are going to connect with what you are telling me, Paula, with the feeling you were telling me about your boyfriend and your studies, how you make that association, in what previous moment have you lived through stressful situations and have you had food at your disposal for calm you down.

Let yourself be carried further back in your memories …
The first thing that comes to me is a memory as a child, playing in a park near my house. I see my grandmother, but it seems to me that my mother is not there. I’m having a good time here, I don’t know what it has to do with food.

Don’t worry, we’ll see what happens a little later.
I’m still playing. I am with a friend on a seesaw and suddenly I fall. It’s not a very big fall, but I get scared and hurt my knee. I have a scratch and blood comes out. I start to cry. It hurts, but, above all, what goes through my head catches my attention. I have a mixture of emotions; on the one hand, the surprise of being playing and having fallen, and I am also worried that they will scold me for having been clumsy or something like that. I don’t know how to react and I stay on the ground crying.

And what do the others do? Is your grandmother there?
Yes, my grandmother comes over and tells me to get up, that it was nothing and to keep playing. I keep crying, my knee hurts. So, she takes out the snack she had prepared, a muffin with chocolate, and gives it to me. He says to me: “Come on, have the bun and you’ll see how it goes away.”

And what happens then?
Well, I comfort myself with the bun. Since he ignores me and pays no attention to my crying and my pain, I focus on the taste of chocolate. It is sweet, rich, and it is true that it distracts me from the pain. It even seems like it hurts less.
I begin to remember other scenes as a child. In all of them something happens, I get hurt or get upset for some reason. And my grandmother, but also my father or my mother, they always do the same, they give me some kind of candy to distract me. In my family it was very common to “shut up” children with food.

What did you learn, then, from this strategy?
When something bad happens to me, my solution is to go find food. It’s what I’ve always done, what I’ve been taught. Sweets calm pain, but this is how you learn a very negative way to calm it.

And what about your emotions? With pain or anger?
At the moment, when I am eating, everything is on pause. Food covers everything and relaxes me. It is as if it numbs the dislikes. And the next day, I pretend nothing had happened and go on with life. I don’t really do anything to fix the problems.

What consequences does it have, then, in your present? What about diets? Why are you not able to maintain them?
Sweets are my way of easing the pain. How am I going to get rid of the only way I know how to overcome my problems? But, of course, I don’t get over them. The problems are still there, only that I am gaining weight.

• Breaking with learned patterns

Paula breaks into tears when she realizes how she learned, or rather, was taught, this harmful way of dealing with negative emotions by hiding them with food.

What do you feel, Paula?
I have never seen it clearer than now. The problem is not the diets, but I do not know what to do with my pain. Although it is the best diet in the world, since I don’t know what to do with my pain when I have a crisis, I always turn to food. It is what they have taught me.

Remember the scene of the fall of the seesaw. How would you have liked your grandmother to act?
Well, I think you could have come to accompany me a little. I couldn’t help myself from the pain, but I should have shown some empathy and solidarity. And, above all, he could have saved the thing about covering my mouth with the bun. It would have been better if he let me cry. It hurt, what did you want me to do?

Was it common in your family to use food to ease pain?
Yes, constantly. Not only my grandmother, my parents and my aunts did it too. The seesaw scene is one of many I remember. It was always the same, when I got angry or cried because he had hurt me, they gave me a cookie or another sweet to shut me up. And the little phrase they recorded for me was “come on, that’s nothing, take this.” In fact, now I realize that they all do the same thing too. When they have a dislike, they are always eating. It seems that food covers everything. I’ve seen it since I was little and I keep repeating it.

Now that you can see your story with food in perspective, what do you want to do? What do you want to stay and what do you want to change?
Now I understand that this was not a healthy way to deal with problems or painful situations. I want to get rid of that. I want to be able to get angry, protest or cry when I need to. It’s my right. I want food to be only food, not to be my pillow for tears.