Why are girls eating their way to happiness?
A blog post written 30th April 2015
Over the years working with teenagers, there has been one thing that never seems to change and that is their obsession with food. Whether it be growing lads who can’t get enough of it, girls who view it as a deadly sin, or those who see it as their faithful friend when the going gets tough. I guess it’s something we all have a relationship with in our own weird way. I mean we can’t live without it, but the relationship runs so much deeper than that. Now, I am writing this as a food lover myself, someone who has never been on a ‘diet’, with my motto being ‘live to eat and just keep moving’, and I would consider myself as having a ‘healthy’ relationship with food, but what prompted me to write this post has made me question my own eating habits too.
I spent an afternoon with a large group of 17 year olds at a school recently discussing the ups and downs of being a teen, exams, stress, parents, video games and food! What really got my grey matter twitching was the strong message that came from the girls about how they turn to food when they get stressed out. This wasn’t something the boys seemed to relate to, as they were keeping themselves amused on the Xbox, or playing sports with their mates. What is going on??? I hate jumping to typical gender stereotypes when it comes to young people or anyone else to be honest, but this was what these kids were telling me, and when I thought about it a little more this wasn’t the first time I had seen this in teenage girls.
Having worked for years with young people in the care system, mainly girls, I have seen them time and time again stuffing down their emotions with food. I have seen them eating when they are happy, sad, lonely and rejected. It’s as if their craving for love and belonging is being fixed with a shot of sugary treats. I have lost count of how many times a tiny 13 year old has come into a children’s home, only to leave 5 years later with ‘extra baggage’.
My fascination with this has unsurprisingly been backed up by plenty of examples in the media and some research. I mean, how many times have we watched films, sitcoms, comedies with the ‘Bridget Jones’ type character bleeding mascara into her Ben and Jerry’s whilst clutching a bottle of wine?! It’s a classic cliché, but one I know I have grown up watching. Paradoxically, I also read that the average woman in the UK loses her body weight 9 times during her lifetime and spends 17 years of her life ‘dieting’. It just gets more bizarre, please shoot me now!!
So I’m left wondering, where are we going wrong? What messages are we feeding our girls about food? Growing up in the UK and probably most of the Western world, food is often used as a reward from a young age and gives us huge amounts of pleasure. This not only makes us feel great, but actually alters the biochemistry of the brain triggering the release of our happy hormone serotonin, and surprise surprise the foods that seem to give us the biggest kick are the sweet and salty ones! Explains the Ben and Jerry’s scenario!
Food is a big part of my life and I can see how I’m emotionally and socially attached to it. If I’m meeting up with friends, I will be looking for the tastiest cake shop to hang out. When a new curry house opens in town I can’t wait to get down there and try it out. I even got excited when Lidl opened a new store nearby as I love their fresh baked goods! I eat when I’m happy and I reward myself when I’ve worked hard with a foodie treat. So I’m certainly more ‘live to eat’ not ‘eat to live’ and see food as a way of enhancing my life as oppose to filling the gaps.
My concern for the girls I met at the school and those I see living in care is that this becomes a way of coping, where they are not able to acknowledge their real needs and start to have a love/hate relationship with food. Where they end up in the ‘yo-yo dieting’ cycle, increasing their feelings of guilt and shame about food and themselves. My main mission when working with young people is to help them become their own best friend. I teach them to become aware of their own needs, we look at what is happening inside their bodies, including their brains, and we find ways they can meet those needs in healthy ways. We talk about stress, excitement, sadness, happiness and we normalise and accept all feelings, so they don’t have to suppress them or run away from them. I believe that understanding and accepting ourselves, the good bits, bad bits and everything in between gives us the best shot at being happy and enjoying life, and if that’s with a slice of cake on the side, I’ll see you there!