Eat It

Even though I am already technically an adult, I still like to consider from time to time who I would most like to be when I grow up.

The answer is Tina Fey. She is funny, she is beautiful, she is honest, she is successful, and she is creative. She has blazed a path in a male-dominated field that is to be admired and, if at all possible, replicated in one’s own context. I agree with the things she has said publicly and I also agree with her tendency to live as privately as she can. I want to be her while remaining uniquely myself - if that makes any sense.

In one sense I am well on my way to becoming Tina Fey. We think similarly about food. In an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Tina says the following to Jerry Seinfeld regarding winning an Emmy:

“The Emmy was not a treat. The only reward for anything is food.”

Preach, Tina.

As my father likes to say of our family, “McKays have never met an emotion they couldn’t eat.” I am a McKay through and through, the prime example of an emotional eater.

This may bring to mind visions of someone sobbing while shoveling a tray of brownies into their face, but let me correct this thinking. Emotional eating is not just about sadness or eating to feel better. Nay nay. I eat when I’m happy, tired, angry, bored, stressed out, grumpy, excited, and, yes, sad. The only times I don’t eat are when I am panic-level anxious or nauseated, and even then I try to pop a couple of crackers to see if that will help.

I eat when I’m inconvenienced. One day last week I had to travel for work. It was just shy of a two hour drive followed by about five hours of meeting, then another two-ish hour drive home. There were then multiple errands to run before I could go home and log back on my computer to check my work email that I’d been ignoring all day. Time was being eaten away by traffic and with each stop my resolve to go home and cook a decent meal was evaporating. By six thirty I was very hungry and decided it would be better to just pick something up for dinner.

This would be fine in the hands of the average person, but in my hands an excuse to get take out for dinner is also like a hall pass to eat like a garbage disposal. In the shopping center where I stopped to purchase cat supplies there is a Panera right next to a Five Guys. I could have gone into the Panera and bought a salad and maybe some soup to take home for dinner. But why would I do that when right next door is the place where they notoriously fill the greasy paper bag with roughly one pound of fries even if you order the smallest size. Burger and fries was obviously the right choice. After all, I earned it given my day of mild inconvenience.

Sometimes I eat out of anger. Once when I worked in retail I asked the store manager a question about a new policy. It was a clarifying question, one that I still feel was perfectly innocent and appropriate. He answered me curtly and then pulled me aside and said, “Don’t question me on the floor in front of people.”

Genuinely taken aback I said, “I was just asking to understand the policy, I wasn’t questioning you..”.

“Don’t do it again.” He walked away leaving me completely floored and in shock. Shock did a slow burn and turned into fiery anger in the space of about five minutes. By the time I went on break I was so furious at him for thinking himself so important that he couldn’t answer a simple question. What is it about positions of leadership that makes people think they don’t need to explain their reasoning to their employees, especially when the reasoning directly impacts the employees’ daily work? This self-importance and arrogance perplexes and enrages me as it did back then. On that day I solved my problem by ordering the grossest meal I could concoct from the cafe - most likely a pizza and a piece of cheesecake. Oh, and I also stopped talking to the store manager unless forced because I was a very mature child in my twenties.

Then there are the times when I convince myself that I deserve a food treat because I accomplished something. That something could be major like finishing my masters degree, but more often it is something quite minor. I have rewarded myself for the Augean task of grocery shopping with a giant cupcake more times than I choose to admit. (It’s not my fault that the cupcakes are one of the last things I pass before going to the checkout…). Sometimes I talk myself into ordering take out on a Sunday just because I managed to survive another week. If I have to drive somewhere that will take more than two hours I generally figure that deserves a stop at a Wawa or similar convenience store for a tasty snack, even though I actually quite enjoy driving and rarely find it arduous. Yesterday I hoarded and ate a giant piece of cake at a work event simply because it was there and I therefore felt entitled to it. No other reason needed.

I am an emotional eater for sure, but I also quite simply enjoy eating. The act of eating is not a thing we do just to survive anymore, we’ve made it a social activity - a thing we humans do for fun. And translating that into introvert language means I find it incredibly fun to sit alone on my bed and eat whatever concoctions of snacks and meals I come up with or order in. It is both fun and comforting to me.

Recently I’ve begun changing my eating habits for the better. Basically the plan is to drink more water, eat more vegetables, eat less garbage, and hopefully not drop dead before I turn sixty. Thus far it is actually going pretty well, knock wood. I find eating more vegetables and fruit to be satisfying and I haven’t found myself constantly craving what I was eating before. But emotional eating is not a thing that can be cured with vegetables. The urges are still there, but the direction they go has changed slightly. Instead of, “ugh! I’m frustrated, I need a cupcake,” it has become, “ugh, I’m frustrated. I want a cupcake, but I will eat this cucumber instead.” I still get the comfort that eating brings me, but my cholesterol levels remain unchanged by the action.

It’s not a great behavior, emotional eating, but it is my birthright. I am who I am - a person who wants to be TIna Fey when she grows up. And I’m okay with the fact that my motto is, as Tina’s 30 Rock character Liz Lemon famously said, “I’m gonna go talk to some food about this.”