The Hunger Games: How are attitudes to food and sexuality related?

Metaphor of relationship with one’s own body

Previously, people were guided by a simple formula — we get fat when we eat a lot. But over time, they began to notice that for each individual, the figure and body structure can differ and change not only depending on the amount of food.

Weight gain is not just a consequence of overeating, because we all look different, even consuming the same amount of calories. It’s all about how the body absorbs what it gets from food. And this process can be influenced not only by physical, but also by psychological parameters and characteristics.

If we study the history of patients suffering from eating problems, we almost always find difficult family relationships in the «history». As the child grows older, he more and more relates himself to the parent of the same gender (the girl — with her mother, and the boy — with her father). What happens if a girl has a difficult relationship with her mother?

She transfers this hatred to her body. Sometimes so much so that you want to kill this body, torture it, starve it (as in the case of anorexia, for example). I want to stop the process of growing up and becoming a woman, because if you don’t eat anything, the menstrual cycle gets lost and eventually disappears. So, the girl will not turn into a «mother» …

Everything that seems to be a manifestation of the feminine (menstruation, the appearance of rounded shapes, female sexuality) is rejected and suppressed. Then the food relationship strategy is hunger and what is today called selective eating disorder.

Food and control

Relationships with food are much easier to control than relationships with other people. We can limit ourselves to food or allow ourselves to eat whatever we want. We can fill the feeling of loneliness and inner emptiness with food, we can “eat anxiety”. We can “punish” ourselves, our body with endless diets and restrictions. That is to gain control over at least something.

But what if the hunger we are trying to satisfy is not physical, what if its nature is completely different? Often in practice, I come across cases where the client cannot satisfy his sexual hunger. If we’re having trouble building close relationships, then it’s worth taking a closer look: we may be treating our libido and our food in the same way.

If sex is either non-existent or not enough, if for one reason or another it is impossible to experience adult sexuality in its fullness (attraction, intimacy with another, pleasure, release), we can unconsciously satisfy our needs at an earlier, oral level.

This means that a woman who does not have sexual relations with a man can constantly bake and cook something. Filling herself with sweets or something similar, she experiences a long-awaited satisfaction. But after that comes a period of disappointment: she feels contempt for herself and the «nasty» that she ate. Then he goes on a diet and limits himself in everything …

body as a shield

But excess weight with uncontrolled overeating is sometimes associated not only with the very desire to eat something forbidden, but also with the internal feeling of one’s body. The larger the body becomes, the easier it is to feel safe, how to hide «inside» from your own sexuality.

Often such women say: «I’m fat, and therefore no one wants me.» But from the point of view of psychoanalysis, this can mean: “I am fat so that no one wants me. I’m afraid of attention to my body, I don’t want to make it sexy because it scares me.»

This attitude towards the body is associated with deep mental conflicts, when intimacy itself is unbearable and frightening. Then we can talk about early traumatic sexual experiences. And the problem is not necessarily in an unsuccessful first experience.

Fear of a mother’s anger for her sexuality, a father who could afford too much, parents who shamed her for masturbation or interest in sex … All this can influence the formation of adult sexuality.

But what about mom?

In a symbiotic, painfully close relationship with the mother, the child most often feels that he should always be with his mother, and the relationship with his father is a betrayal. Especially if the parents are divorced. In women, this can be transformed into an unconscious ban on relationships with men in principle.

Both sex and any manifestations of sexuality must be crossed out of life, because this threatens the connection with the mother, the most important person in life.

In addition, as a result of sex, a woman can become pregnant and become a mother herself. If identifying with one’s own mother is terrifying, then sex can be seen as a big risk. But the need for satisfaction remains.

Then a person builds a specific relationship with food and his own body in order to be able to get satisfaction in a safe way. Thus, in order to understand the unconscious motives of our uneasy relationship with food, one can ask oneself the question: “Why am I really treating my body this way? What desires and feelings do I fail to recognize and therefore act out in my relationship with food?

And perhaps then we will learn how to satisfy emotional hunger in a healthier way. Then we will feel pure pleasure from food — and not an ounce of remorse.