When I was 9 years old, my father passed away unexpectedly from a massive heart attack. This event brought on not only an out pouring of love for my family, it also brought on a ton of food. When I say food I mean cake, pie, and cinnamon rolls. (A word of advice to people in this situation: try casseroles and not 14 layer cakes. They are more helpful and also are less likely to be consumed in excess by the children.) From what I can gather from knowing myself, this is most likely what caused me to develop my habit of emotional eating.

Thousands of people in the US (honestly probably millions) eat when they get upset. That being said, this can be extremely dangerous in today's age of needing perfection. What tends to happen with people, myself included, is they either feel fat or are told they are fat, so they get upset. What happens next is one of two things, some people stop eating completely and develop an eating disorder. The other option is usually to stress eat or emotional eat. They get upset and they eat because that's an easily obtainable outlet. My word of advice to you is to stop telling people to lay off the burgers and God knows what other terrible things you've said because it does WAY more harm than good.

The irony of emotional eating for me is that I usually do it when I am upset about my body or something someone said about it (thanks to the girls I used to carpool with to dance; you guys are real gems). The progression usually goes cry, eat, cry again, repeat. The funny thing is it's not just a habit you can break over night, so don't try to tell me that I'm doing to myself and to "make a lifestyle change." I'm perfectly aware that I do it to myself, but you and the rest of society is also at fault.

The point of this article is not to complain about my problems, but to share with you what goes on in the lives of a lot of people in the US today. My point in sharing this is to tell you to lay off on mooing at people, fat jokes, and your "advice" that doesn't help anyway. The only thing I'm hoping people take away from this is that you just need to love and accept people. The more support and love you give your friends the more they will love themselves. You never know what people are struggling with, so be careful with what you do, say, and even the faces you make. Oh and clothing companies, people don't stop at a size 12, so why should your clothes?