Comfort food

We all have a comfort food, don’t we?  A food that makes you feel like you’ve been wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold day.  A food that makes stress or heartache or sickness melt away, the same way your mom can.  Mine is macaroni and cheese.  I don’t need fancy macaroni and cheese with nine cheeses, truffle oil, and bacon.  I just need the macaroni and cheese that comes in a blue box with powdered cheese.  I obviously don’t have a discerning palate.  Macaroni and cheese was my pregnancy comfort food.  Let me be honest, the first few months of my pregnancy were difficult.  I vomited on a regular basis for five months.  The only food that stayed where it was supposed to was macaroni and cheese.  Maybe that’s why I ate it like Kraft was going to stop making it.  Or maybe I ate it because it made me feel better.  Either way, I have realized my flab is made of macaroni and cheese.  Isn’t that a flabulous mental image?  I crack myself up!

What is it about food that brings us a sense of comfort?  I think food elicits good memories.  When we feel that sense of goodness, we want more.  Why else would you eat an entire box of your mom’s cookies, other than the fact that they taste great?  I think they make you feel great too!  In a previous post I talked about how gluten-containing grains contain molecules that fit into the opiate receptors in your brain.  These are the same receptors that work with heroine, morphine, etc (*).  This could explain why comfort foods -- at least those containing gluten -- make you feel euphoric.  Or maybe it’s because those comfort foods remind you of your grandmother, mother, spouse, or children.  I don’t have the answer.   

My husband does not understand the concept of comfort food.  I am not sure men, in general, understand this concept.  I think it’s because women tend to be emotional eaters.  In my mind, comfort food and emotional eating go hand in hand.  I am certainly an emotional eater.  During this challenge, I have had to learn new ways to manage stress.  Normally when I feel stressed out, I reach for a cookie or a peanut butter cup or an extra large sweet tea.  Now I can’t do those things.  I am often seriously overwhelmed by the fact that I can’t stress eat.  Why can’t broccoli be a comfort food?  I try to use exercise to manage stress, but sometimes it doesn’t do the trick.  I guess that is why I feel like I am on a journey.  Not only am I trying to teach myself how to eat healthfully, but I am trying to teach myself new methods for managing stress that don’t involve food. 

What is your comfort food?  

(*) Wolf, Robb.  The Paleo Solution; The Original Human Diet.  Las Vegas, NV: Victory Belt Publishing, 2010.  Print.