I just finished reading a book by the actress Portia de Rossi that documented her life while she was battling an eating disorder. I loved the honesty of the book, and it really got me to thinking that so many people....in one level of extremity or another....battle a type of eating disorder.
God intended for us to ENJOY our food, to enjoy the bounties that he intended for us. So, how do we become so obsessed with these bounties that they take over so much of our thoughts, and our lives? I remembering being 12 years old, and thinking "I'm so fat, I need to go on a diet." I remember being 13 or so and going in the grocery store and buying the over-the-counter dexatrim. That was just the beginning of my obsession with weight gain. I'm sure that I had heard my mother and my aunts discuss dieting, and the media has been obsessed with being THIN since as long as I can remember, so maybe that's how it got so stuck in my head. By 15, I had been prescribed a very strong diet pill called Obenix, I was doing workout tapes, and running on the country roads surrounding my house. By 17 years old, I had a FULL BLOWN eating disorder, and this pretty much consumed by life and views on food till I was around 25 or so. Everything that I did centered around being thin. I was on a constant search for a new miracle diet, a new miracle drug to help me become thinner. I recall going to a bariatric clinic in Birmingham, and starting this diet that required me to eat packets of soup and shakes. They tasted HORRIBLE, and instead of eating them, I decided just not to eat at all. This method obviously didn't work and I found myself with no energy and near collapse. I won't go into all the details of my eating disorder, but let's just say that it was NOT pretty. It was bad enough that all my friends were taking notice, and that my mother had arranged for me to see a therapist. Therapy did NOT work for me either. I need to also mention that I had no reason at this time to worry about my weight, but in my head, I needed to lose tons!
So, where did the eating disorder stop for me? To be truthful, I don't think that it ever did. I just developed a new way to handle or NOT handle it. I had always been into working out and exercising, but I learned more and got my certification in personal training and nutrition. I figured that if I worked as a mentor for other people, that somehow I would be helping myself too. For a while, this worked, and it definitely helped to further my education on how to manage my weight.
The purpose of this blog post is NOT to talk to you so much about my eating disorder, but to talk more about WHY we are so obsessed with food in the first place. Why do we have to eat till we are sick to our stomachs and then feel guilty. Why do we feel that we have to eat only tasteless, low caloric foods in order to stay the way that we feel we need to look? We, as a society, and especially women in general, have poisoned our own minds against food so much that we don't know how to eat anymore. It seems like common sense that we can eat what we want as long as we do it within moderation. SO, why is moderation so hard? Is it because we deny ourselves certain foods so often that when we do finally allow ourselves to have that 'forbidden' food that we just can't put it down because we don't know when we might be able to have it again? Do we all play that trick on ourselves where a few days before we start a new diet we say to ourselves: "I'm just going to go ahead and eat whatever I want and as much of it as I want because I'm starting this diet on Monday."? Then, worse case scenario, we don't end up starting the diet on Monday and then we just consumed all those calories and will probably do the same again with the intention to start the diet the NEXT Monday.
I wonder how it would REALLY work if we ate what we wanted and learned to just do it in proportion? If we stopped thinking about food all the time, and just ate when we were hungry, would it work? Is our mind stronger than our urge to binge? Can we stop the constant DIEt and learn to LIVEit? I, personally am tired of the protein diet, the cabbage soup diet, the slim-fast shakes, the starvation diet, etc. I want to be HEALTHY, but I also want to feel GOOD about myself in a bathing suit. I want to ENJOY eating, but not OVEReating. So, is there a good balance that I can find and stick to it? I think that one of my biggest obstacles to overcome is eating when I'm not even hungry. This particularly happens to me late at night, when I'm lying in bed reading and decide that a snack sounds good. I need to learn to really LISTEN to my body and HEAR what it needs. I'm going to take my blog on my journey of Eating to Live instead of Living to Eat. This may end up comical at times, and sad at others, but I'd like to see where this takes me. Maybe I can find that healthy balance that I have searched for all my life, and maybe in the process, I can help someone else too! Put on your seatbelts (with extenders if you need them) and get ready for a wild, cellulite riddled, body chiseled ride!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment