When you think of a bad relationship with food, you often think of cases like anorexia and bulemia--where the relationship involves hating food to the point of not eating at all.
However, the truth is that overeating is also a sign of a bad relationship with food. Over-eating, in my case (and I'm sure in many other cases out there!) often means that food has become a sort of compensatory mechanism in dealing with emotions such as stress or depression. Human beings, like all creatures on this earth, are built to eat to survive. Food intake is meant to be for nutritive value. But when you start to see food as an emotional cure for stress or even boredom, that could lead to overeating in our stress-filled society, and of course, overeating can lead to weight issues, and all the health problems associated with it. Thus, eating to alleviate an emotional response such as stress or boredom can ultimately be just as damaging to the body as starving to alleviate an emotional response such as low self worth.
Overeating for emotional reasons can be due to a number of different factors. Primary among these is that food is often associated with happy memories--special occasions are often celebrated with food (yours truly had THREE Christmas meals during the Holidays!), and food or cooking is often used as an expression of love or caring (think birthday cake or Valentine's day chocolates). Thus, when under stress, humans look to the most readily available trigger of these happy memories--food--in an effort to alleviate stress. Unfortunately, of course, when there's a lot to be stressed out about in life, eating when stressed can mean eating all the time.
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