Hello! Welcome back.
In my last post I talked about being introduced to the MyPlate and not really having any success with it. I would take that do my best to fill to the portion sizes and refill the plate 2-3 times in a sitting. So, yeah didn’t quite work for me.
I have always had a strong relationship with food; it was there for me when I was happy, sad, angry, excited. Food was there to celebrate every milestone in my life. Food was more than a substance to provide nutrients and energy to my body. No, food was my friend, confidant, and at times with the right meal, my lover.
I thought about food when I wasn’t eating or my next meal when I was eating and dreamt about all the wonderful food I saw on tv that I wanted to eat. It was all I cared about and the beginning of a huge problem.
What I realize is that as a child, I was depressed and for so many reasons. One of the reasons was I did not have a father. I had one, knew his name, what he looked like, the general area that he lived in, but he was not in my life, and that type of rejection early on created a massive hole for a little girl to fill with food. So when my sisters would leave on the weekends to visit their fathers, I stayed home with something that would never leave me, food.
As a teenager, food took on a different meaning. Food was money, and if you had money to buy food from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, or even off the Ala Carte menu in the cafeteria, you were quite popular. I enjoyed having an off-menu lunch; it was my ice breaker to try and talk to other kids and show them I had the “good food” and was worthy of their table time. I ate to be accepted. I was now using food to network.
Towards the end of my senior year, I got pregnant with my first child. The words eat for two were words I longed to hear from a doctor, but I was already eating for two, so I ate for four. I was depressed, unhappy, and downright miserable, but I had to hide it. I would order a large pizza every week with my babysitting money, find a comfy spot and eat it sometimes in private. Eating large amounts of food was a challenge I often accepted and one I never lost.
I was depressed on so many levels as a child, a pregnant teen, and an unwed mother. I didn’t know why I ate so much or how to get help. I knew was something was missing in my life, so I ate to feel something.
Years of eating to feel or escape reality finally caught up to me in my mid-twenties. At 5’2″, the 220 pounds I carried on my frame started to show. I didn’t consider myself curvy anymore; I was by medical standards morbidly obese. Some doctors have a great professional way of telling you that you are overweight; my doctors chose scare tactics each one told me I was going to die if I didn’t lose weight. When most people hear that they’re going to die if they don’t end a bad habit, they usually stop the bad habit. When I heard that, I went to the nearest fast food joint and cried whiled eating my food.
My mental health was never addressed by doctors, no matter how many times I went to the doctor, until my late thirties, and by then, I had topped 250 pounds. I receive a better job with better insurance, and it had a wellness program. It was here that I started to get a better understanding of why I was eating like there was no tomorrow. I was diagnosed with BED or Binge eating disorder. I went to therapy on and off, and during that time, I learned the what and why of my eating habits. I learned to recognize the triggers such as boredom, loneliness, and my biggest trigger, anxiety.
So here I today, finally putting everything I have learned in the past to use. Identifying my triggers, learning to eat, and exercise in a way that benefits my body. I could say that I wish I had done this earlier, but mentally I wasn’t ready to commit. I’m in a better place where I can identify and address my food issues.
If you would like to know more about B.E.D click here.
Until next next my friends
Stay healthy and safe!
AnissaMarie
AnissaMarie 