A Merry Life

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Mara’s Story: Compulsive Eating and Body Image

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Today’s post is GOOD and is something I completely relate to and you probably do too. My guest this Saturday is Mara from Medical Marzipan. Her blog is awesome and all about body image and loving our bodies.

I have been stuffing my face this week. Literally, stuffing my face. If you were on the outside watching me through a window you would think that I had been locked in a closet for three weeks and deprived of food. Now, I do not look like the type of person who has been deprived of food. I look well fed. I pride myself on being the type of person that dresses tastefully, strives to love my body regardless of its size, and works with what I have, wherever on the weight spectrum I may be. I have decided to no longer diet, thereby refusing to engage the restrict/binge cycle that plagued me for most of my upbringing, and am attempting to eat intuitively and regain my ability to trust (and recognize) my body’s instincts, wants, and needs.

But today as I was wandering around, looking for something to eat, I was forced to pause and wonder if I was in fact ignoring my body’s needs entirely, and instead slipping back into old patterns where I eat as though the rug is being pulled out from underneath me, as if that cookie is absolutely the last cookie I was ever going to encounter. I have long operated under the belief that your relationship with food is an excellent indicator of your relationship with the rest of your life, and that the way you treat your body is a brightly lit reminder of those areas that you may be rushing through, ignoring, or burying down deep.
The past year has represented a huge amount of change for me. I have fallen in love, moved out of my parents house into my first apartment, become financially independent (successfully), decided what I want to do with the rest of my life, applied and gotten into grad-school, and moved around a lot in between all of that. I have often felt like I am winging it and running with my eyes shut, because I am so afraid that I am going to fail. After a lifetime of fear and fat and feeling inadequate, I have surpassed my wildest expectations regarding what I am capable of, and what my life could look like. And I haven’t lost a pound. In fact, I’ve gained some, 30 pounds to be exact. Turns out when you fall in love with a chef, who wants nothing more than to feed you cheeseburgers, butter, and chocolate, you eat a (little) bit more than when you are single and running around all the time.
The point is, I haven’t had a plan.
Because still, deep down, I don’t believe that I deserve the life that I have created for myself, as if somehow I was so lucky that it just dropped into my lap, and that it could disappear with the blink of an eye. Deep down, I still have to remind myself that I am worth loving (even though I am loved) or that I am smart enough to get into grad school (even though I have). Though intellectually I know that I worked my butt of to create this life for myself, it still feels like the miraculous prayer that I barely dared to dream as a little fat girl who was teased on the playground and made to feel as though she was worthless.
Until today I thought that I had been making progress, and I have, but I’m not finished yet. My current state of reckless eating has made me realize that I have been so afraid of really cozying in and getting comfortable in this new life that I have barely allowed myself to breathe, existing merely in the moment because I am afraid it will all go away. Eating is very similar. I’ve been eating as though this is the last day that I will have food in my refrigerator, blindly, with my eyes closed because I want to eat and eat and without any plan for how it will make me feel tomorrow. I have been binging, stuffing the food in my stomach because I don’t have a cohesive plan for how I’m going to attack that next day, week, month of my life. I have been eating my uncertainty.
And I am worth more than that.
The hardest thing can be to live with intent, where what you say, do, and eat, is a conscious decision that you are making instead of a decision made on a whim. I do want to practice spontaneity, because I know that it is good for me to exist outside of a routine, but I am not going to live myself like this anymore. It’s just not working for me. I need to pay closer attention to what I actually need before I raise my hand to my mouth, and plan ahead.

What does your eating say about the way you’re living your life? How do you reign yourself in and eat with intent? Do you find that it helps?

Comments

  1. The way I eat when I am not doing it healthy shows that I really don’t care. THis not caring is something that I’ve struggled with in other parts of my life as well. I am a chronic procrastinator. I figure it’ll get done eventually and it seems like that’s how i eat. When I realize that I’m not caring about myself I take a step back and look at what I’m doing. I start small making healthy choices and it gets me back on track. THis does help me get other parts of my life in balance too. As much as many people like to think it’s not all connected it truly is.
    .-= Amber´s last blog ..Food Portions: They’re Not Always What They Seem =-.

  2. They say men think about sex every 7 second, I think that as compulsive eaters we top that when it comes to thinking about food. I really like the whole idea of eating with intent. For me I have to ask myself if what I’m eating is about nurturing my body or nurturing my soul. Food that nurtures my body is obviously necessary to sustain life but it isn’t necessary to nurture my soul. When I find myself using food for my soul I have to step back and correct myself and reconnect with what I’m really needing.Of course the hardest part is actually making that voice heard when food can scream so much louder.
    .-= Scale Junkie´s last blog ..Crazy for a Cause…Hooping for Hope =-.

    • Haha. I love the analogy with the way men think about sex! I probably do think about food every other second or so… But ironically, I think about food a whole lot more when I am trying to institute some sort of formal diet. Hence my preference for eating intuitively/with intent instead.

  3. I used to binge eat too.. I would find myself with a large pizza in front of me and didn’t finishing snacking on it until it was done. The same with all my favorite foods when I was in the mood.

    But what I found is a lot of my favorite foods are more like addicting drugs. One that takes discipline to wine off. I find when I workout at the gym, I don’t crave such drugs anymore. I don’t need them to make me feel good for a moment.

    Though there are times.. where I feel I can party like there is no tomorrow with a bag of Fritos and ranch dip. I must stay strong though. :)
    .-= Jay´s last blog ..I am Spartacus! =-.

  4. I really REALLY try to not focus on guilt. I also know that me eating is usually due to three reasons: 1. Feeling depressed about my self-worth 2. UBER stressed 3. Tired. So I am learning, slowly, to silence and/or deal with these areas. It’s not easy..but I think it’s important to stop and really ask yourself..why am I letting myself go?

    I had a friend recently say ‘I am just so tired of dieting’. My response was to her, well why don’t you make it a lifestyle change instead of looking at is dieting? You see many things in life can drag us down my the mental framework with which we filter them through.

    Thanks for sharing this, I think that your honest is impressive and refreshing.
    .-= Michelle@eatingjourney´s last blog ..Sunday Sentence =-.

    • Thanks Mish. I too deal with the stress and ESPECIALLY over tired and/or hungover eating… And am working on not feeling guilty about it but instead trying to prevent these binge-worthy events to take place by focusing on my health and sleeping enough (when possible). It’s nice to know I’m not alone : ) thanks for your support.
      .-= Marzipan´s last blog ..guest posting AWESOME =-.

  6. I find that I can’t trust my body and respond to what it wants in the short term. If I listened to those desires, I’d be eating fried food by the truck load. However, I know what it needs, so I play the “just trust me on this one” card and eat veggies and protein. I do find that often, even though what I really *want* is cake or fried chicken or brownies, chances are if I have a little bit of fat, most of that craving will go away. This is why I always have bacon on hand. Oddly, bacon keeps me on track.
    .-= Hal´s last blog ..So I dub thee unforgiven =-.

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