Yesterday, out of the blue, without any foreboding gossip or rumor, the company I work for was taken over by a competitor. All afternoon we sat stunned and unnaturally quiet, trying to absorb what had happened and what it might mean to our future.

Two hours after the announcement of the sale was made, I walked through the office, a large call center divided into several teams that handle certain accounts or patients at different levels of care. Apparently quite independently of each other, each team was trying to handle the tension and the underlying anxiety in their own way.

What did they all choose? You guessed it: FOOD.

We eat when we're happy and celebrating; we eat when we're lonely; we eat when we're bored. And, above all, we eat when we're upset. When our whole world seems to spin out of control, food remains the only object that can seem to keep us anchored and stable. We reach to it for comfort, for re-assurance, for love. And we remain blind to the fact that our affection for it allows it to exert control over us. Over the next few months, as reorganization plans are implemented and the winds of change sweep through the offices of management and the cubicles of worker bees, we will reach out, over and over, for the comfort of eating to steady our stomachs and soothe our nerves.

Corporate downsizing - just another weapon to make us fat!

Does the pressure never stop? Perhaps when we're dead, there is no longer any compulsion to eat - or maybe we are destined to go into our graves as a starving corpse who tries desperately to communicate with the living about the overwhelming urge to eat.

Virginia Bola, PsyD

Dr. Virginia Bola is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, a vocational expert, a social commentator and a self-admitted diet fanatic. After 20 years of owning a vocational rehabilitation company, she is now Manager of Clinical Operations for a major MBHO.

She has authored numerous articles on the psychology of weight control, the emotional correlates of unemployment and job search, social issues, politics, and the graying of America.

Her latest book, completed in June, 2005,is Diet With An Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook, an interactive manual providing the reader with personal guidance and encouragement in the battle to lose weight. It takes an irreverent approach to dieting while providing innovative and therapeutic exercises for self-exploration, confidence-building and emotional self-support.

Her earlier book, The Wolf At The Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, provides unemployed workers with therapeutic exercises, self-exploration, and confidence-building worksheets combined with specific, step-by-step techniques for finding work.