Day 7 - Triggers

Here we are Day 7 of the Made to Crave Devotional:

"I pray that you...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ...that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19

Thought of the Day: The only way to negate an emotional eating trigger is to match it with truth.

Last night I was talking with some friends about this devo & how I have been intentional about when I eat.  Asking myself am I really hungry or is there something else going on?  What surprised me was it was the husband who admitted to having times of emotional eating, the wife doesn't eat when stressed.  I don't know why I've assumed that this is more of a woman thing than a man thing.  A male example of food as love & support just came to mind, Joe Gargery would give Pip more & more gravy after his wife's verbal attacks on the young orphan in Great Expectations. 

Kind of off course of what I was planning on blogging about...I'm sitting here thinking about my relationship with food and it brought to mind memories of my childhood when I lived with my mom.

• She would brag about how much I could eat.  Some of the guys that she dated would take me out to eat with them just to see if this little girl could really eat adult portions.  This was one of the ways I was taught that love is performance based...I know now that shouldn't be the case, but that took a long time to learn that lesson.
• When I was stressed as a teen I wouldn't eat, it was consciously done, and sometimes I would be too busy at work & forget to eat.  I remember a manager pulling me aside & said that he and my co-workers were worried that I was anorexic & they were going to call my dad if I didn't start eating.  I was shocked!
• When my mom died & dad was driving us out to the funeral we stopped at a truck stop to eat.   I wasn't hungry & he got upset with me about not eating and told me couldn't leave until I ate more of my dinner.  I was 18...lol.  But that became an issue between my dad & I until he died.  He would get suspicious if I wasn't eating & demand that I eat.
• When my dad died, everyone was like "Eat!" or "Please eat something." or "You need the strength, eat."  The problem was I couldn't, I would take & a bit and my body wouldn't let me swallow.  I literally had to force some food down.  Even then it was a few bites.  The moment I remember being able to eat was after my dad's visitation & my friend was driving me home and I was SO angry, because of family drama.  We stopped at Chick-Fil-A and I was able to eat a whole chicken sandwich.  Which I paid for later (you get what I'm saying).

I guess I've had a bigger issue with food than I originally thought.  Wow, I'm really grateful for this devotional!  I'm going to be turning this over in my head, probably for the rest of the day!