I was born in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and…, just kidding. We’re not going that far back. Some background is needed, though. I grew up average sized and unconcerned about appearance. By that I mean I wasn’t ever the chubby kid, the skinny kid, the tall or short kid. I had no tags that ever caused me to be self-conscious about my looks, so I was blissfully unconcerned. My health was the same. I had the usual childhood maladies, but no illnesses to cause me to be especially aware of the well-being of my body. My mother was overweight, but that honestly didn’t occur to me until I was in high school or college. It didn’t matter to me.
The first thing I recall that changed my healthy body image was an article I read in a magazine that listed the precise weight a woman should weigh at any given height. I was eighteen or nineteen years old and five pounds over their mandate. Looking back, it frustrates me that I let some “all-knowing” They have such influence over me. It’s sad, really. Even sadder is how many people, women especially, but more and more men, too, fall prey to the same thing.
There I was, a young adult of perfectly fine body weight and now I was convinced otherwise. Yay.
As I got married and had children, pregnancy weight came and went pretty easily, so that wasn’t much of an issue. But I still spent those years discontented with my weight. I was at a completely healthy weight, but I didn’t believe it. What a waste. Far too many people in our society are in that same boat. Why? That’s a complicated answer. We’ll go into some of the aspects of this in subsequent posts.
When I truly began to have weight issues was when my sister died. She was only thirty-eight and left behind a husband and three-year-old daughter. Heart-wrenching, for sure. I gained twenty pounds. This was when I began to see that I had an unhealthy relationship with food. I carried the extra weight around for about three years as I mourned my sister. Just when I began to drop the weight, my father had a major stroke and, since he lived far away and could no longer talk on the phone or write letters or emails, in many ways I lost him before he actually died three years later. I gained another twenty pounds which I held onto to for another two to three years.
Let me insert here that I have never been a big believer in the whole ‘going on a diet’ idea. I reasoned that the very concept of going on a diet implied going off the diet at some point. Recognize this pattern? – Gain weight, go on a diet. Lose weight, go off the diet. Slowly, or quickly, return to previous lifestyle, regain the weight. I didn’t want to get on that merry-go-round, thank you very much. It may be a good plan for the diet industry but not for me.
I chose Weight Watchers to help me drop the weight since their program is more of a lifestyle change than a “diet.” Attending Weight Watchers, I learned how warped my relationship with food was. I saw how often my eating had little or nothing to do with hunger, nutrition, or nourishment and everything to do with what I was feeling at the moment. I learned a lot and gained some great tools for eating more effectively. I lost my excess weight.
What I didn’t realize was that some critical pieces were still missing. The best way I can describe it is that Weight Watchers had given me fantastic and practical information for my head, information that allowed me to get my weight back in the healthy range. But what I still lacked was the deep interior changes, the stuff for my heart, which would allow me to be healthy from the inside out. I had more awareness and knowledge, and much better habits, but some fundamental core issues remained unaddressed. Those issues came to light a few years later.
My husband and I have four children and, for most of our married life, owned a small residential construction company. Our faith, our family, and our business were our life. When the recession struck in America construction was one of the hardest hit industries. We drained all our savings and then used all our available credit to survive. The low point came when the foreclosure notice showed up on the front door of our home. (We barely avoided the foreclosure.)
During this time our nineteen-year-old son’s best friend died in a car accident which triggered the descent of one of our younger children into the world of addictions as he struggled to make sense of the death of someone he loved and looked up to so much.
Needless to say, the next several years of dealing with near financial ruin and picking our way through the land mine-riddled territory of substance abuse with our child were the most challenging years of my life. I gained over 70 pounds. All the helpful things I picked up from Weight Watchers hadn’t prepared me for this kind of stress.
When I first heard of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, read some of their material and watched some of their videos, something shifted inside me.
An analogy for you – Over the years, I’ve watched my husband and sons work on a lot of cars. Sometimes they’ll take apart a complex component of a car, clean it up, replace various parts, put it back together and get it working again. Sort of. Something’s not quite right. Sometimes they can make a few adjustments, and it’s good to go. Other times they have to revisit it over and over before finally figuring out the bottom line issue and getting everything running smoothly.*
I felt like that – like I had done enough work on my complex self to get myself running smoothly. Sort of. The shift I felt learning about the psychology of eating is that I finally have a tool for understanding areas that will help me function more effectively inside and out. I still have work to do, but now I see more clearly where to work.
I can already feel myself running better. I have faced situations that definitely would have caused weight gain if they had happened before my exposure to and study of eating psychology. One example, out of many, of how my relationship with food has changed I this: my mom and my best girlfriend of forty years both passed away. Each took part of my heart with them when they left, and I still miss them almost every day. But I haven’t gained a pound because of it. I’ve dealt with my grief in a much healthier manner.
I have more understanding around body image and the role that food/eating have in my life than I ever have. I feel excited and at peace at this point in my journey, a journey that’s far from over. Maybe you can see a bit of yourself in my story so far. I’m certain we’ll find things in common as we continue on together. I hope sharing the adventure that is my life will be of value to you, maybe provide thought-provoking information and help you see things in a way that brings greater light and nourishment to you.
So, I invite you to come with me. Let’s learn with and from each other.
*There is a possible problem with this analogy. We view a car with problems as being “broken” and in need of “fixing.” While we sometimes may feel “broken,” it’s important to remember we’re not. Our power lies in simply observing our habits, characteristics, situations—whatever we think is “broken”—and asking what we can learn from them. Things we view as “broken” in our lives or ourselves have the potential to be our greatest teachers. It keeps us in a place of power if we can see these things as the gifts they truly are. No “fixing” needed just learning and growing.