Again...

I'm back.

I need somewhere to hammer things out. And so I'm back.

I start therapy on the 23rd. I've been diagnosed with anxiety disorder, panic attacks, and depression.

Good times. :)

Taking care of myself is hard. Hard work. I'm not sure I'm ready. Ever ready to abandon food. I have good days and harder days.

In the end, food is definitely a protective shield for me.

How to get past that?

I've made a pact with myself.

The last two weeks I've had episodes of my heart skipping and also of times where I can feel "bursts" of stomach acid go up in my esophagus. Both are painful and annoying (I've always had my heart skip beats, it's genetic in my family). And although both may or may not be related to my overeating, I decided last night to just give IE a shot again. Not for any other reason than to see if it helps with either of my physical symptoms.

If it helps, great! If not, well then I tried.

I also noticed that I've been using any perceived anger against my hubby as a reason to rebel and eat. I still can't completely put my finger on it, but it seems that I am making up excuses to overeat. That I am actually "creating" situations in which I am angry at him. I'm not quite seeing the full picture yet, but for the first time I'm beginning to see it for what it probably is. It's time to unravel the truth.

I will keep this blog updated about my progress this week. How Intuitive Eating helps with not only my emotional well-being, but also my physical self.

Lost

I have been eating out of control.

I can't seem to stop.

I can't seem to want to stop.

I'm lost.

The Difference

All the things I'm hearing, all of it, came crashing in tonight.

"Eating intuitively is not the same as binging."

"If you continue to binge, you will gain weight."

Etc. On and on.

It's been rough.

I almost came here earlier, asking "How do you stop? How do you go from dieting and binging to stopping?". But I didn't. Why not? Because I know the answer.

I can keep "researching" and "reading blogs", or I can commit to this.

Therein lies the difference.

The doorway.

Either I step up and do it, or I wallow in the "how's" and "why's" that I already have the answers to.

Tonight I choose to step up.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Miserable Diet

My life is so complex. And I'm feeling it right now.

The desire to eat intuitively.

The desire to binge and not feel.

It just feels so overwhelming. I don't want to treat IE like another diet. But in many ways it feels like just that. I have to find a way to see beyond that.

The overeating/binging is not good. It almost always occurs at night. It leaves me so uncomfortable that sleep is a mess. I toss and turn all night. Dreaming weird dreams. Waking off and on. Feeling physically awful in the morning. Taking Tylenol to soothe the "withdrawl".

It's not good.

I want (and need) to drop the diet mentality. That's what I need to let go of.

Because until I see IE as living and not dieting, I will forever be searching for the next binge.

Kill Me

Everything about this book is rocking my world. It literally has sapped the "fun", the "thrill of the sneak" out of eating when I'm not hungry. Hundreds of times a day, I am forcing myself to stay present with myself. To not give in and zone out. To live.

It's hard.

Very hard.

But oh the wonderful flavors when I am hungry! I am amazed at how food really tastes!

Last night was difficult. I had a great time with my older girls, shopping and just hanging out. We got home and all of them went their separate ways. This is prime time for me to eat. Happiness (well really ANY emotion) is a trigger for me to eat. I think I binge to numb the intensity of the feeling. I think in my head I don't think I deserve any of this. That any emotion in life is too...much.

Last night I forced myself to stay in the moment. To sit and feel the feelings. Accepting that there is a God who is bigger than any emotion I feel and that if I just go through the feeling, He is there.

I went through a gamut of emotions as I sat. Some which surprised me. Fear, anger, joy, sadness, love.

Guess what?

The emotions didn't kill me. I lived through them and even found moments that I could stay present with myself.

This is very much the beginning of the end of dieting for me.

I can feel with every part of my being that this is different. I feel almost as if I am waking up from a food-induced coma and finding that I am changed. Or maybe that I was here all along. Hidden beneath the layers of eating.

I am strong.

God is stronger.

A binge is no longer a binge when you take away it's power to control you.

It is a good beginning.

Women Food and God

This book is hitting me.

Hard.

I am having to stop, rewind, breathe, re-read. Over and over.

Wow.

Wow.

Bigness

Last night I started reading the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. I was only in the introduction when this little exchange between Geneen and a lady named Nell, hit me...

"but suddenly I realized that I am afraid to push the food away."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because...I realize I am not broken..and that you will be angry at me if you know."
"Who are you taking me to be? Anyone you know who was threatened by how gorgeous you are?"
"Hi mom." she says.
"She was depressed," Nell says, "And if I was just myself, that was too much for her. I needed to shut down the bigness-I needed to be as broken as she was-otherwise she'd reject me and that was unacceptable."

Whoa....what?!?!?

(Brakes screeching)

Remember this post? And especially this? "Of this list, the two I struggle the most with are accepting that others will be uncomfortable and that it's ok for me to be comfortable, and having to say no. Both of these are the emotions/actions I shove under the food rug most often."

Oh. my. gosh.

"Nell" is ME.

Always worried that others will be uncomfortable if I allow myself to be comfortable. Afraid to just "be" because it will mean someone in my life feels "less than".

Forever the protector. Forever living out my role in a family I no longer live in. Never wanting my mom or my sister to hurt. Always seeking to make them "ok" , even if it means at the cost of my own sanity. 


One of my earliest memories of "stuffing" this feeling of bigness came after a high school volleyball practice. I was good. Really good. A sophomore in a new town with a competitive team. First in off the bench. I came home that night, psyched. The coach had me playing! I was telling my sister, feeling good. She wanted me to eat a bologna sandwich she'd made. I wasn't hungry. I was feeling...powerful. Strong. Alive. It upset her. SHE was the athlete. She kept asking me to eat. I saw the look in her eyes. The "you and me" . I needed to protect her feelings. She was feeling "less than". I could see it and I didn't want her to hurt. I ate the sandwich. My introduction into stuffing my bigness so that no one would hurt.

But what if?

What if I'm actually not broken after all?

What if I allow myself to be free of the self-imposed brokenness I live in? What if I just stop "shutting down the bigness" and live?

The thought alone feels terrifying.

And powerful.

Whoa.

Something to think on today.

Worthy

Had an honest talk with hubby this morning. By text. Told him about my fears of being vulnerable and how it impacts US.

I grew up in a home that was severely verbally abusive. One of my sisters struck back. She now lives as far away as she can get. Another sister talked back. She too struggles with her weight but is able to speak out. We all protected our youngest sister. She is healthy.

Me? I internalized everything. All of it. Withdrew into myself. Became unable to trust anyone with my deepest feelings. Being in a large crowd of unknown people is easy for me. It's all superficial, so I'm good with that. Happy, charming, funny, sweet.

It's when you come closer that I withdraw. I become quiet, uncomfortable, painfully shy. I often wish I could just disappear.

Somewhere in this journey I began to find a friend in food. Food never hurt me (only it did). Food never talked back. Food wouldn't leave me.

But this warped relationship with food as my lover and best friend is no longer working.

Especially in my marriage. Marriage is a partnership, but it doesn't work when only one partner is in a healthy place emotionally.

As I've continued with IE I've realized that this is no longer working for me. That truthfully it never has. That food can not hold it's own anymore. That at the end of a binge is emptiness and a cavernous void. That what I crave more than anything is human connection.

It terrifies me. To put myself out there. To be vulnerable to the person who has the most potential to hurt me.

To the person who has the most potential to love me.

But.....

What if instead of  bringing the pain I anticipate, allowing myself to be vulnerable and be loved brings joy? What if I find happiness in marriage and intimacy? What if I acknowledge my needs as worthy? What if instead of shutting others out, I live my life with others in it?

I think I'm wiling to try.

Hubby knows the demons he's up against and how they haunt me and will me to cower in fear. He knows that this is new and terrifying ground for me.

And he still loves me.


What if I break free?

Vulnerable

Not wanting to feel vulnerable and wanting to protect myself.

That's what this is about.

Coming to terms with some hard stuff here.

More later.

Enough

I don't know. I've been having a worse time than normal. It almost seems to me like I'm grieving not only letting go of the food habits, but also grieving letting go of the lifestyle of an overeater. I didn't realize that so much of my whole person was wrapped up in the sneaking, the snacking, the constantly looking for the next thing to stuff my face with.

I have been being gentle with myself and really noticing not only the times I do wait for hunger, but also the times I walk past food and don't eat.

It's just that it doesn't seem to be enough right now. I am ordering the book Women, Food, and God. Roth's book have helped me greatly in the past, and I've heard only good about this one as well.

There is a void of some sort in my life that food has filled for these 25 years, and my dream is to fill that void with something else. I long for that day. But it scares me too.

How did you overcome your fears and move forward?

An Epiphany

I had a bit of an epiphany last night. It seems like a no-brainer now, but last night it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have figured out that my emotional eating in the evening has two parts. For so long I had thought I ate at night because I needed to relax. This past week I've really paid attention to my feelings while I detached myself from my eating.

What I found is that I eat first because I'm tired, and it's a way to wake myself up. And second because I don't want to say "no" in the bedroom to dh. Let me rephrase that. It's not that I don't want to say "no", it's because I desperately want to be allowed to say "no" without having him unload a ton of bricks of guilt on me. Because "no" is something I was never allowed as a child or in the first 10 years or so of our marriage, "no" is like a precious jewel to me. Very hard to come by and something I hold tightly too. I have my reasons. I can't explain them to him.

I want to be allowed to have control over this part of me without being made to feel "bad". When you have not had that, it affects you. Deeply. And the further into IE I get, the more I feel the need to set personal boundaries I have not set. I want to be ok, and I want him to be ok, with my "no's".

We're not there yet.

But.

Back to my epiphany.

Here's the thing. I am beginning to find the courage to say "no" when I mean "no". As I went to bed last night and he left, it occurred to me that the end result is the same whether I eat or not. He leaves and I feel the same amount of guilt. It occurred to me for the first time last night, that I can get to the same end result without eating.

The eating no longer serves any real purpose.

I am truly surprised to realize this. Truly. I had thought that I continued to eat to cover feelings of anxiety. At this point in my journey it's no longer true. I'm not anxious until I walk up those stairs to go to bed. The eating I've been doing is not serving any purpose other than to battle fatigue.

So what if I stopped? What if I just allowed myself to doze off and on? What if I read or did some other activity? Because truthfully? Eating at night has served it's purpose and is no longer useful to me.

What a weird thought after years and years of covering up feelings.

I need to think about this one today.