Comfort Eating ...

This is a bit like "True Confessions". My name is Rosie and I'm a comfort eater ... even losing 4 stone with Weightwatchers hasn't cured me. I keep telling myself that food doesn't change anything, but inside I still think it at least makes me feel better! I began by feeling disgusted with myself over an encounter with the Ben & Jerry's the night before, and it all went from there ...
The blue background is painted and then I added colourful strips from a collage sheet, can't remember whose. The word "why" is a real cry from the heart - I'd really like to understand this trigger in my brain so that I could learn to fight against it! I drew the cake onto a separate piece of paper, coloured it using my Promarkers, then cut it out to stick down. Just looking at that cherry on the top made me smile and lick my lips ...
Maybe it is just greed - I grew up in a house where the food was dreadful, so once I discovered just how delicious it could be I was a convert .... and somewhere at the back of my head must be this fear that the good times might not last? One thing I did discover during my Weightwatchers time was that I have a low point at about 4.00 pm every day, and have learned to eat something then to boost my flagging energy. It seems to stave off getting the munchies later. Maybe I eat because I'm bored? Wish there was an easy answer. My beloved is a person who can have just one square of chocolate, but I say what's the flippin good of that? It's stuffing a huge chunk in that fills my mouth which does it for me, followed by another, and then you might as well finish the bar to get rid of the temptation for tomorrow when you plan to start over again? Aha, I see you recognise the scenario!
In the process of trying to work out the psychology behind it all, I sat down to draw my tub of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie (my favourite) and so enjoyed doing it that I managed to talk myself out of seeing its consumption as a bad thing, and ended up hailing ice cream as the solution to all the problems of the universe!! By then I was feeling much better and a lot less guilty about my guilty pleasures ... so what the heck!

IT WASN'T ME .... well it was really!

If you're not a comfort eater then stop reading right here because this will make no sense to you whatsoever! Confession time, when I'm stressed I tend to hit the biscuits (that's cookies to you transatlantic sisters) and just one simply won't do - it has to be half a packet, a seriously major sugar hit. It feels good at the time but of course there's the inevitable disgust at what a pig I've just been. I like to tackle my failings head on so I thought a journal page was called for. Background is Basic Gray paper, and I had some fun making a border out of scraps and bits.
Drawing the biscuits was fun (Promarkers came in handy there) I started with acrylic paint and added detail gradually. If you're interested (and you are aren't you?) the biscuits in question were those ones from the Co-op in a black box, triple chocolate cookies. They're not bad but the hazelnut ones from the same range are even better. Anyway, I ate rather a lot of these but was in denial on the whole subject ...
Anyway, eventually I faced my demons and beat them down, and like I said - there are worse things to do when stressed aren't there? I could have been unkind to people I love, or kicked the cat, or drowned myself in alcohol ... but all I did was scoff cookies like a famine was about to start. Who cares anyway?

And did it help at all? Well no, apart from a momentary distraction and an energy rush from the sugar, not at all really. Will I do it again? Oh yes, almost certainly .... wouldn't you?