emo eating

No, I don't mean putting on skinny jeans and plastering my bangs to my forehead before I eat. I'm referring to emotional eating.

There seems to be consensus out there in the dieting world that most of us trying to lose weight are emotional eaters.  Had a bad day?  Scarf down some candy bars.  Fight with the hubby?  Dive into a tub of cookie dough.

I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I'm an emotional eater.  That sounds like a good thing, right?  I can control my eating independently of my emotional state.

Here's the problem, though.  If I'm not an emotional eater, but I'm still a good 70 pounds overweight, what kind of eater am I?  I've thought about it, and the best I can come up with is that I'm a food eater.  

If it's food, I'll eat it.  It doesn't matter what my mood is.  Take today, for example.  I woke up feeling refreshed.  And excited for breakfast.  Then I had a pleasantly slow morning of schoolwork and anticipating lunch.  As soon as lunch was over, I started thinking about dinner, and trying to figure out how many points I'd have leftover after dinner for my favorite part of the day: TV and snacking.

I enjoy food.  I enjoy all kinds of food.  I enjoy eating more than exercising, sleeping, or even having sex.  I believe any social gathering is enhanced by food--in fact, the two are basically synonymous in my mind.  Happy or sad, bored or busy, hungry or full, I've always got food on the brain.

So how do you cope with that?  They tell emotional eaters to replace food with other forms of comfort, but how can you replace something that is constantly on your mind no matter what else is going on?  Is this food addiction?  

I'm not necessarily feeling discouraged right now, I just realized that I always want to eat and am wondering what that means.

ETA:  Looking back over this, I think the term I was searching for is glutton.  Seriously.