Emotional Eating and Heart Hunger in Mindful Eating

Emotional Eating and Grief: Heart Hunger and Mindful Eating

The topic of grief, and coping with grief, is my TOP podcast episode downloads.

Today is the 20th anniversary of my fiance’s death and I wanted to share my heart hunger, not just from a mindful eating perspective, but from a shared story perspective.

If you are triggered in talking about grief loss, death of a loved one in any way, shape, or form, please do not watch this episode or listen to this episode.

Seek help from a licensed care professional when it comes to your mental health.

Bypass this shared short story, if this is not in the best interest of your mental health.

On emotional eating and heart hunger

I woke up this morning on the 20th anniversary of my partner's death.

I have a daughter, so he was the father of my child. He lost his life tragically in a motor vehicle accident. She was 18 months and very young at the time.

When I wake up on these mornings, I never know how I'm going to feel.

We all have these death anniversary days.

I woke up this morning and I thought about heart hunger. Could I share what heart hunger is, but also how would I honor my own heart today?

Food to me is such a connector, so I will be taking my own self, and maybe a video camera, into the kitchen, and just talking a little bit more about heart hunger while I make his favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Heart hunger is generally described as an emotional hunger, a longing, a desire, attached to an emotion.

Many times that emotion is something that isn't there anymore. You might want to recreate it. We have many emotional ties through food. I

I'm sure you can name some right now.

Maybe they're tied to your parents, your grandmother, even moments with your children. Perhaps they’re tied to different countries and experiencing different cultural foods.

They can also can be tied to loss.

This is my own experience. I'm sharing to a lost person, someone that isn't there anymore.

Today, when I think of my own heart hunger, certain foods did come to mind.

It was more than just food. It was the feeling of the goodness, the good memories of the person that I'm thinking about today, of my fiance, the father of my child.

I had a lot of good memories and I had a lot of terrible ones too, just with the conflict in our relationship.

But today, this is how I wanted to honor him and think of the good times and invoke those memories through my kitchen. One of the things that drew me to this person, his name was Chris, was his love of food and cooking.

He loved to cook, so when I think of heart hunger and the food connection, I do think of him and his recipes.

I have saved a cookbook of his.

I bought it for him and he wrote down all of his little recipes in this cookbook, and I'm so grateful I have it. It's in his handwriting and it will go to his daughter.

She does like to try and make his fudge out of there.

I've even taken pictures of her doing that, which, she thinks is weird.

To me it's just, it's my own way of feeding my own heart hunger.

Before I even think about going into my kitchen and making chocolate chip cookies and uploading this impromptu podcast episode, let me read to you heart hunger from the perspective of Jan Chosen Bays, the author of Mindful Eating.

She talks about heart hunger and the longing for foods that relate to family and loved ones. I'm talking about food that is relating to a loved one.

People have a mood or an emotion attached to a certain food. Hunger for these foods arose from the desire to be loved and cared for the memory of these special times, infused these foods with warmth and happiness.

When I think about meals that I shared with this man, when I think about things he used to cook for me, those are happy times.

I'm not sure how many of my friends listen to my podcast, but I didn't always have happy times and they would be quick to remind me of that. I was in a relationship with an addicted individual.

I come from a dysfunctional alcoholic home.

It made sense that I was attracted to not just a man who shared a love of food, but who mimicked some of the behaviors of my own home. In looking back, this is one of my big lessons for me. I look back and I can see how codependent my relationship was.

I can see how my role in creating a very tumultuous relationship too, and when I think of heart hunger, I feel it’s even broader than food.

I feel like my heart hungers.

I'm sure if you've lost someone, you can feel this.

You want to sit down with that person one more time and say what you didn't get to say.

Especially if things ended abruptly.

I want to sit down and say, “Goodness me, I'm so sorry of the way that I acted, because that was what I knew at the time.” But he's not here to do that.

So today, on this 20th anniversary, I'm going to honor him by cooking, and talking about heart hunger, not just my own, but maybe we can talk about yours too.

I'm sure you feel your own kind of heart hunger. Come find me on Instagram, if you want to share.

Your heart hunger may be for someone who may not have let this earth, but isn't close to you in proximity. Or they are out of your life.

When your children go off to university, we can hunger for them.

Even when a relationship ends, you can have hunger for them.

This explanation from the book, really hits home with me.

Many people are aware that they. In an attempt to fill a hole, not in the stomach, but in the heart. We eat when we are lonely. We eat when a relationship ends. We eat when someone dies. Taking food to the home of those who are grieving. These are the ways we try to take care of ourselves and others.

If you need to take care of yourself through food, give yourself permission to do that.

I took care of myself through food and alcohol.

The alcohol part I'm not proud of, and I don't mean that I was driving my daughter around while drinking. When I would wake at midnight with bad dreams and a lot of sadness, guilt and anger, I would have a glass of wine to get back to bed.

We do these things because we are looking for self-care. Self soothing.

If the food is something that helps soothe you in a time of grief, let’s normalize that. Allow that to be a part of coping, because eating is emotional.

Food comes to funerals. People bring food when someone dies. It's a way of caring for others.

If you need to eat or to honor a memory through the smell of something, remembering somebody, going into the kitchen and baking something, let’s just make this a part of life right now.

Part of the grieving part of life.

Hopefully your cookies will look better than mine in the video!

I think he left an ingredient out, or I had too much butter and maybe the measurements were wrong because they don't look so good.

They taste good, but they don't look so good.

Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I should have been more mindful about baking the cookie rather than trying to bring a message through to the podcast or on YouTube.

Heart hunger is only one of the types of hungers that we can feel on an emotional basis and that we sometimes try to feed with food.

If you are struggling with cravings, emotions and heart hunger, you will come to realize that no amount of food can fill the hole that you might have in your heart. Your heart can hold space for many other things, other people, like mine does.

I have a new relationship and I also watched, This Is Us recently.

The ending on that show, with Jack and Miguel, (I'm not going to spoil it for you), but the whole thing with Rebecca and Jack and the train, and Miguel is there.

Ruined me.

If you find that you have an emotional hunger, if you find that it's heart hunger, you're longing for the past, you're longing for something, there's nothing wrong with that.

It’s great to bring yourself back to present, to bring perspective, but if you find that you need to grieve through food, like I did and still do at times, or to celebrate, or process though food, let that just be.

We need to let all the negative chatter about that type of emotional eating go, because eating is emotional and there's nothing wrong with us when we emotionally eat.

There's nothing wrong with you if you eat things that are in the name of emotions.

Joy or sadness or just desire for a different time.

Maybe there was hope for a better time, but it never came.

And allow yourself to let go of the guilt of your cookie, or whatever it is that you choose to get yourself through.

I said on Facebook, life moves fast and our trains are chugging along.

I have my own story of a Jack and a Miguel. It's not a fairytale, but it's life.

(You gotta watch the show, it's authentic, and loving, and it can be messy. Both of my relationships were messy).

I hope that when it is my time to go, if I've outlasted everybody, I will greet them at the end on my transition.

We will all sit down together, and will just say thank you.

Thank you for helping each other along in this life.

Thank you for the lessons.

Thank you for your chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I hope this episode in this video was helpful.

I'm just here going along through life like you are, I’m not going to get it right, and that's what conversation is for.

We learn from each other.

So until we pick up this conversation, have a great day.

Until next time.

XO Tanya