The subject of boredom eating came up today. It has long been my food spiral. I’m bored, so I’ll eat because the bag of chips is so much more fun than just sitting there. But eventually I stop eating or hit the bottom of the bag, and guess what? I’m still bored! The damn chips did not fix a thing, and now they are in my belly and quickly making their way to my spare tire. So there I am, still bored. What do I do when I’m feeling bored? I eat. It is an endless loop, until I fall into bed, overfilled, uncomfortable, and sleep a fitful sleep because of the food baby in my stomach.
A million programs out there will tell you to take a walk, call a friend or take a bubble bath if you are bored. But really? Is that going to always do it for you? Maybe we all need a deeper look into what we are interpreting as “bored.” For me, I think there is an entire avalanche of other feelings going on that I am resisting and suppressing. I just tag them all as “bored.” If you are not feeling ANY emotions, you are like Data on the starship Enterprise – and yeah, that sounds pretty boring. Let’s go get cookies instead.
That phone call with a friend will distract you for a while. If you opt for a bubble bath, it might work even better if you spend that time soaking in bubbles thinking about what you might actually be feeling. Let yourself indulge in a little feeling – good or bad – just to see what it is like to experience it moving through your body. For me? I bored eat while watching TV. There’s a clue. Either the TV show is so boring I have to eat (and thus, probably shouldn’t be wasting my time watching it if it is not entertaining), or the show is bringing up so many emotions that I push them away, label them as boredom and go get a snack. Small wonder I need something crunchy to get through the fright of “The Walking Dead.” Maybe the next season of Game of Thrones, I’ll just buckle into my chair and brace myself to let all those mixed emotions wash over me as we discover whether or not Jon Snow was really dead at the end of last season. Because that is what life is meant to be – FEELING. Not moving through our days in a state of bored/eating/bored cycles.
