The Ritual of Food Addiction

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Bobby F. danced the I can go all day without eating, but once I start, I can’t stop tango, a remnant from a previous weight-loss plan.

Since evening activities weren’t as stimulating as the daytime ones, he was without things to occupy his mind; old feelings and thoughts bubbled up. With no place to go and no one to talk to, he incorporated going into the kitchen into his usual evening activity of killing time. One trip to the kitchen yielded a piece of candy, another trip yielded a nibble of leftover salad, another trip two grapes. The once- or twice-a-night ritual became more and more frequent. It really took off when he had a phone installed in the kitchen. He found himself sitting on a chair with wheels while speaking on the phone and rolling over to the refrigerator where he’d open the door and window-shop the shelves.

When he worked on breaking that ritual, I had him put a little tick mark on a piece of paper whenever he thought of putting something into his mouth. Between 9 p.m. and midnight, he found himself thinking about food forty-two times! That is approximately one episode every five minutes.

Forty-two times in three hours he had gotten in the habit of putting something in his mouth, even though he wasn’t hungry. Forty-two times he nibbled a bite of this and a swallow of that, just because he was bored. Whether eating one item, or one bite from many items, it all adds up. It doesn’t matter if it is salad or soda. You’re eating when you’re not hungry. If you practice this habit every day of the week, you’ve got a behavioral addiction that becomes a weight gain. Keep doing the same thing and it becomes a part of the evening’s entertainment. When Herman moved the phone out of the kitchen, the picture changed. His weight changed. His habits changed. This was just one of many patterns he discovered as a result of being mindful. There were even more to find.

He realized how he always ordered a glass of wine when he took clients to dinner; or how each meal ended with a cup of coffee. Every visit to a theater to see a movie seemed to be bonded to eating a bag of popcorn or buying a soda. The buying – I call it a compulsion to spend – is a ritual, too.

When I talked about rituals with another person I teach, she commented that keeping the logbook, in which she enters her daily weights and what she eats, was a ritual. I agreed. Some rituals help us to become mindful of what it is we are doing and enable us to see, in writing, the patterns we’ve created. Some rituals are better than others.

Barbara J. had difficult times at 4 p.m. each day. It was clear that her desire to eat wasn’t about hunger; her lunch was usually only a few hours before. It was connected to her children arriving home from school. When she had to prepare food for them, she mindlessly nibbled on the food herself. She also had a phone in the kitchen and practiced some version of talking on the phone and browsing amongst the bratwurst. You may be thinking: But I only pick at the broccoli. If you’re eating when you’re not hungry, it doesn’t matter what it is. It all adds up.

In an office, an eating ritual might begin at the onset of a coffee-wagon bell ringing at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Rachel S. told me of a mindless habit she had when she commuted from Manhattan to her home in New Jersey. Every trip, five days a week for a year, she’d eat a candy bar. Just that one candy bar habit could add up to approximately twenty pounds by year’s end.

I used to have a habit of buying a large bottle of fruit juice and would sip it a few swallows at a time – it’s only juice I used to think – until all 64 ounces were sipped away and I’d buy another bottle. When I realized how often I repeated this behavior, I began buying juice in individual bottles of 4 ounces each, put the bottles on a different shelf than the top one in the refrigerator. If I didn’t see it, I didn’t think about it. If I didn’t think about it, I didn’t drink it. The habit started to collapse on its own. Sometimes, changing just one part of a ritual – whether thought word or action – loosens the entire knot of behavior without much effort. Sometimes it takes more thought. In this case, changing the size of the container did the trick (a physical action). I also thought (mental re-patterning), that I’d gone years without drinking juice so many times during a day and it had always been okay. It could be okay again. You get used to anything.

What are some of your rituals and habits?

This article is an excerpt from the book Conquer Your Food Addiction published by Simon and Schuster. Caryl Ehrlich, the author, also teaches The Caryl Ehrlich Program, a one-on-one behavioral approach to weight loss in New York City. Visit her at www.ConquerFood.com to know more about weight loss and keep it off without diet, deprivation, props, or pills.