So everyone is blogging these days and I thought I should jump on the bandwagon. (Or, given the title of my blog, heave myself up onto the bandwagon...) I thought about all the things I could write about; my work as an employment lawyer, my experiences as a mother with a child who has Down Syndrome, etc. But I wanted to use this blog as a tool to work through things and to write down my feelings in an effort to accomplish something. And those areas of my life are pretty okay. The area that I have struggled and continue to struggle with is my weight.
I have been skinny, chubby, athletic and fat. Currently, I am in the fat stage of my life. And I've been here for quite a while. The sad thing is that I know how to eat properly and exercise and often have. But the one thing I cannot get past is emotional eating. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I am an emotional eater. I eat when I'm happy, sad, bored, tired, etc. Quite simply, food is my friend. And it doesn't help that not only do I enjoy eating, but I love cooking, watching cooking, reading about cooking, etc. So it seems that I am doomed.
I finally decided that if I was going to break the cycle of dieting, gaining weight, dieting, gaining weight, I would have to get at the core of the problem. And that is WHY I eat.
I admit to you that this whole journey terrifies me and putting it out there on the Internet for the world to see really terrifies me as in doing this, I make myself completely vulnerable. And I'm not so good at being vulnerable. But if I'm going to make a change, then I have to change the way I've been doing things. What's that old saying? The definition of stupidity is doing things the same way over and over and expecting different results. Man, I could be the poster child for that!
I've tried to pinpoint when my food became my BFF. And I have to go back as far as elementary school. I moved from another state to a new town and new school when I was in the 2nd grade. Everything was hunky dory at first; I was the new girl in a small town so everyone was interested in me. Of course that fascination quickly faded.
There was one girl in particular who for whatever reason, decided to make my life miserable. Mainly, I guess she didn't want me to have certain friends that were her friends so she would pit them against me and there would be periods of time where I would have no friends at all. Or my only friend would be the stinky girl who was also an outcast. There were two friends in particular (who happened to be twins ) and one of them would be friends with my nemesis and then one would be friends with me. And then they would both be friends with her. And it would go back and forth and back and forth. It was like a roller coaster all the way through the 5th grade. Add to this the fact that I developed very early and you can just imagine. The teasing was often relentless. I was threatened in the bathroom by the older sister of this girl. I was ostracized in group discussions. Recess was the worst part of my day because I had no teachers around to protect me. And it went beyond the classroom and into our home. I did not tell my parents or my sister what was going on. I didn't want them to think I was weak or unpopular since my big sister had so many friends. However, my emotional outbursts gave me away. (I would become so upset and slam the door to my bedroom so often that I actually broke the door frame on my door. ) In fourth grade things became so bad, my parents had to come to the school to talk to the teacher and the parents of some of the girls who were harassing me. Gee; that didn't make things worse AT all. (spoken with dripping sarcasm...)
During this entire time, I continued to turn to food for comfort. I gained weight steadily and went from a tall, super skinny girl to a chubby, chubby girl. (Of course pre-pubescence didn't help either...) Food was the thing that made me happy; that took away the loneliness, that filled me with something I was getting anywhere else. It was quite simply, the one friend that never betrayed me, made me feel sad or hurt me. And so it began...
Wow. I can't believe I just wrote all that down. It's something that still hurts and makes me want to eat chocolate! But it's the beginning of what I hope to be a successful journey to finally healing and learning how to have "friends" that are more healthy and beneficial to me.
