I’ve started again. Yes again. Why on earth were all of these wonderful foods created if we are not meant to eat them! Moderation? No! I want excess. I want all of the cookies, cakes, brownies, shakes and chocolate covered almonds I can get my hands on. That is exactly what I did over the holidays this year. By holidays, I mean I dove into Halloween candy with wild abandon. I dove in, swam around and tried to thoroughly drown myself in sugar. I grabbed a piece of chocolate, cradled it and performed a 40 yard return, dancing across the goal line reveling in pure joy and feeling! While the overeater in me rejoiced, the rational adult me stared in horror, mouth agape because she knew what my inner child greedily smearing her face in chocolate did not. I had scored for the wrong team.My position at work is such that on November 1st , candies and cookies start rolling in from suppliers. Every year I have managed to abstain from partaking in what surely will lead to a sugar coma of catastrophic proportions. Not this year. This year I ate all of the things. There were chocolates, lava cakes, cookies literally as big as my face, popcorn, and chocolate covered almonds (yes they are my favorite) all within arm reach all day every day. Or someone would bring in their grandmas perfect cake that I just had to try because it was a grandma recipe (which let's face it are the best ones).
At some point I stopped taking pictures of myself. The next thing to go were the form fitting shirts which, let’s be honest here, were stretching a bit too thin around late summer just after my birthday. However, this is manageable. Just put an over-sized cardigan on over everything! Problem is solved. It’s cold outside and I don’t really need to wear all of the nice sweaters hanging in my closet anyway. Pay no attention to the fact that going up and down stairs is slowly getting harder. Never mind the fact that I became so self-conscious about the way that I looked that I progressed to (ok completely disregarded all self-control) hiding in the bathroom unwrapping the foil to yet another piece of chocolate delight. I didn’t want anyone seeing me eating yet again! Exercise was completely out of the question. I was far too busy shoving myself into yoga pants and an oversized hoodie playing video games with my husband and children every night. I was completely out of control and ignored all of the signs that I was actually deeply and horrifically depressed.
You see, I have done all of this before. Twice. The last time I dieted I lost 100 pounds. 100! That is two of my youngest son. That is a giant accomplishment! I was driven to be healthy, and love the way I looked no matter how long it took. I worked out every day and treated food as fuel for my body. I read all of the books I could get my hands on regarding losing fat, building muscle and sculpting my body into exactly what I wanted it to be. On top of that, I kept an active and healthy social life. Taking time for friends as well as my sons, I made sure to dedicate time to my own mental health as much as I could. Hiking, curling up with a good book, running, watching some silly movie or show that made me happy and I was slowly becoming what I believed was the best version of myself. However, I was also incredibly lonely. I had separated from my now ex-husband and was now a single mom. Sporadically dating and making online dating profiles (only to quickly delete them because they were overwhelming and frightening and please please no do not send me a pic of you with no pants on as the first message oh I see you did it any way….charming) I was ready to get serious about finding someone. Then I found him. Oh my god how exciting it was. He was funny, so very smart, incredibly attractive and oh best of all he had his shit together. I had gone to school with him from pre-school all the way to our senior year. We had tons of mutual friends and had often even been at the same gatherings but had never really spoken to each other. He was exciting in a way that I had never felt before. Soon I was spending as much time with him as I could. 11 months later we moved in together. 6 months later we were engaged. I had the family that I had always wanted. Then the happy weight began to creep on.
Falling into old habits is easy. I remember being a kid and never having to watch what I ate. They were happy times and food was intertwined with happiness. Therefore all of these wonderful feelings I had were multiplied by the food I allowed myself to consume in the name of happiness. This is tricky, because food also becomes an outlet for happiness when everything starts free-falling into sadness. Everything became routine. Get up, make lunches, prepare the coffeepot for my husband, let the dog out, get dressed for work, leave for work, stop by the gas station for a coffee and grab a donut while I was there because one won’t kill me. Go to work. Stress over work. Have a bag of chips because work is stressful. Leave work, get child off of bus, help with homework, clean the house, do the laundry, make dinner, play games with the family (this part was amazing), go to bed. Also, eat as much as possible throughout the day to give me that small boost of happy energy to keep me going.
Rinse and repeat….forever. We stopped leaving the house, we stopped being active. I moved and was further away from friend groups than ever. I stopped taking care of myself not only physically but emotionally and now I find myself sitting here, a shell of what I was when I first started seeing my husband. History has repeated itself and I am so absolutely mad at myself.
People are beautiful and find happiness in their appearance at any size. One does not have to be thin to love themselves or to be loved by anyone else. Self-love is amazing and should be celebrated. I however, do not love myself right now. I felt better and more alive when I was eating healthy and treating my body as a machine. Food is the fuel to help me do the things I enjoy. So how in the actual hell did I let myself get here?? Who the hell hides in the bathroom and eats? Why am I like this and when will it end?! The answer is right the hell now. Reflection has shown me that I am not in a good place with most of my life. I am not the same person my husband married and I know that is normal but I haven't become better. I have become worse. I have become complacent and stagnant. I want, no I need to move forward. I need to be better. This is the first step. I have put the fork down and backed away slowly just in case it tries to jump back into my hands. I am eating healthy as of last week and am already down a few pounds but it is not enough. I need to learn balance and control which are things I have never been good at, or at least not good at for long periods of time. I am a professional procrastinator. For example, my husband suggested starting a blog 6 months ago and it has just come to fruition. I am an over eater and I allow my emotions to cloud any type of logical thinking in my personal life much to the horror of my super logical husband.
Why am I starting this blog? I need support from anywhere I can get it. I want to find kindred spirits who have been through the same things as me. I want to find those people and help them and hopefully find help myself in return. I need to keep myself honest, so honest is what will be forthcoming from this blog. This will be clunky and weird and embarrassing but it is kind of exciting all the same. Weight loss and health gain are only one of the many topics I plan to touch on here and I do hope some will join me.