its been a week since i started my weight loss blog. i woke up this morning and was ready to face the scale as i weighed in. i had no regrets, minus a cookie or 2 last night that i ate for comfort and peace after watching britney's "come back performance" yikes! i stepped up this morning and the scale was my friend. down 2lbs. this is good. nothing major, no "4lb alisha" week or anything. but i felt rewarded and renewed to continue to count calories, each whole wheat tortillas ( which honestly goes against all that is true in the world but i am dealing with it) and keep the pedometer on. this put me in a good mood, i wrote it down in my tracker and got on the bus. i am reading a few books about weight loss also to gain more insight as i go. one of the exercises this book has me do is to try and trace my relationship with food as far back as i can. this was difficult being that every human has had a relationship with food since the womb, but i can pin point when mine became unhealthy. as a part of this exercise i want to share it all with you.
my father is a teacher at a private school in albuquerque. my older brother attended this school as well. in the middle of 5th grade my parents asked and me if i wanted to go there too. i didnt think about it and said "sure". i didnt think of how i would leave all my elementary school friends behind and honestly be alone for the 1st time in my life. so i took the 3 hour entrance test, and did the 2 interviews and was accepted. i remember how happy my parents were about it, and i really still didnt give it much thought. then the fall came, and all my friends from church and the neighborhood made their way to the bus stop, while i got in the car and rode with my dad to the albuquerque academy campus.
i would come home from school everyday starving. i was so far beyond even sight of my comfort zone going to that school that i think i was in emotional shock. i remember aching to see my dad or older brother on campus which rarely happened. i felt so very alone. the lunches there were hot meals, and they had "family style dining" which meant you sat at a table with 7 others and a teacher, assigned seats and cleared and washed the table. we had real dishes with the crest of our school on each plate. i had no choice for food, i remember i would just eat saltines. one of my teachers noticed and actually called my parents worried. i starve till i got home from school where i found my comfort zone and i would eat. i would find whatever i could that would make me feel better and accepted.
it wasnt that the school was horrible, it was just so very foreign to me. i had no one there i knew at all. i was surrounded by kids i had never met in my life while all my church friends had all gone to the same middle school. i was suddenly not accepted. i was a "teacher's kid" which meant i was there on financial aid and i was the only lds girl. i remember how shocked kids were when i told them i was one of five kids, "thats way too many brothers and sisters" they'd say. so i absorbed all this, kept locked up all day and tried to fit in. it was pointless really i mean i was surrounded by a world that is so different than my own, so full of money, bar mitzfas and debutant balls and "privilege". this all was so much for me that now looking back i can see that would eat for comfort. thats how it started. i ate away the stress and shock. and the food was there, and accepted me when others didnt. and thats when my relationship with food became unhealthy. i was using food for comfort and void-filling, and as those awkward puberty years continued and my mother's health was deteriorating drastically, the food was always there. this is starting to sound like a sob story but it isnt. its just my relationship with food.
i wouldnt change my education at the academy for anything. it is so much a part of who i am and i cherish it so dearly now. the friendships i made there are still strong, the opportunities i had through that school were endless, and the diversity i experienced is really priceless. it was those first few years of transition when i felt so lost that started this whole food drama.
so now years later, a ton of trials under my belt, comfort food is still my weakness. so i retrain myself. a good movie, a bubble bath, a crossword, a new cd- this can all be comfort. a good walk, or a good chat with a friend. all replacements for Dions pizza or chex mix. i do still have moments of weakness, but overall i can see now when i start to do it, and i can stop.
4 comments:
I understand how you felt about all the wealth and priveledge. It was way over my head too. It was a great place, though, overall. Brian and I switched to whole grain a few months ago, and we both prefer it now, so hopefully you'll get a taste for it too. I've got a great recipe for pizza dough!
YEAH!!! Paragraphs. It makes me happy :)
This was really interesting - I have to think when my unhealthy food habits began...which I think started with BJ calling me "fatty" all the time and my dad making comments on my weight frequently (some of my earliest memories of childhood is my dad and brothers making comments about how I was fat). Still to this day I yo-yo diet and have unreasonable expectations, never finding peace with what I am. Matt has had to deal with a lot of my eccentrics and doesn't understand it because in his family, his weight wasnt a standard of his worth to the group.
Now what do you do after you trace it back?
In the search to replace comfort food, I haven't found anything that works as well as music. I don my MP3 player, crank the volume up, and engulf myself in a little protective bubble that blocks out everything stressing me out. It has the same intimate sensory involvement that food does, although with a different sense, and it reaches the emotional unrest more easily than most other things I've tried.
It's good that you're going beneath the surface of the diet. I don't think I can name a single woman who hasn't struggled with gaining social and self acceptance, and the vast majority of them have had unhealthy interaction with food as a result. If there's one thing I've learned lately, its that all those issues will destroy your body if you don't find a better way to deal with the things that are really getting to you, and/or if you don't get your habits in hand.
I started eating for comfort when I was between 4-5grades. My parents were pretty unavailable, I was lonely, my hormones were rapidly changing and I was bored. In those days we didn't talk to our friends on the phone alot and I lived 10 mi. from all my friends. For yrs. I stuffed my pain of being overwt. with food, longing to be accepted esp. by boys. I had lots of girl friends and in hi school I had guy friends, but not boyfriends. I remember the pain of wanting so much to date and stuffing that pain with food. It's taken many yrs, a wonderful husband and 5 great, beautiful children before I have stopped eating for comfort and now eat for nutrition and enjoyment of good food. I've lost a lot of wt over the past few yrs, and have more to go. I don't know what it's like to be at an "ideal wt." I think that starting young to find the root of your eating difficulties is wonderful. That was never heard of when I was young. Finding good nutrition and help for your difficulties says alot about your character and strength. I admire you so much and I know you are a joy to all your family and friends and will come to terms with this with confidence to live a fuller, happier life.
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