I have been trying to figure how to lose weight for over four years. I'll lose about 10 or fifteen pounds and then gain it back. While trying to lose the weight I never thought about how I was going to keep it off or why I was gaining weight. All I knew is that I was gaining weight and I need to lose it. When I was small I never thought about what size I was or about food. When I was smaller food wasn't even important to me. So how did I get to the place where food became so important to me that I would sabotage my health?
My earliest memory of thinking of food in an emotional way goes back about 10 years ago. I can remember being in high school and my boyfriend and I had broken up and every morning the book store would sell fresh cappuccinos and fresh baked Otis Spunkmeyer sugar cookies. I had them in the past but, I remember this particular day when I more than craved them. It was a feeling of me needing them to comfort me. People always talk about comfort foods like it's a good thing. I think comfort food is a dangerous thing because when was the last ime celery was a comfort food? Comfort food is usually rich, soft or creamy. At the time I did not know that this would start a journey in my life that would be hard to reverse.
Consequently, I gained about 10 pounds that year but, it still wasn't a wake up call. From then on I just ate what I wanted because I didn't realize what I was doing to myself. First of all, no one ever taught me how to deal with my emotions, secondly, I was never taught to not over eat, and thirdly, I've never been taught to eat healthy and to not gain weight. Where I come from, fat babies were great and fat people were normal. People in my family never exercised or went on diets. Ironically, I enlisted into the Air Force Reserves and went off to basic training and I lost all the weight.
Well, I still didn't get it. When I went to basic training I was happy I was losing weight but, I didn't think about keeping it off or leading a life to maintain the weight. Therefore, when I got back home less than three months later I couldn't even fit into the nice little size 5/6 I had bought. I still didn't get the point. I didn't even realize that I had gained 14 or 15 pounds until about two years later and it still was no big deal (to me). To make a long story short the same viscious cycle just kept going on and on.
Unfortunately, I began to devalue you myself. I wasn't only eating to hurt myself. I was drinking alcohol and sleeping around. I was suffering from a lot of trauma and I still am. I grew up without a father and I learned to except it but, than I fell in love and fell out of love and the trauma just came all over again. What happens when someone goes through all these changes is they get lost in it all. I lost myself and than I began hating myself and now that's where I'm left. If could truly love myself, I wouldn't abuse myself like this. I have two children and they were premies so they are still underweight because they don't like to eat but, I still wouldn't allow them to just sit around and eat junk food all day. It would ruin their teeth, possibly cause diabetes, and worst of all they could end up like me. I won't allow this because I love them so why am allowing this for myself? I couldn't love myself. You don't hurt people you love if you can control it. Humans might think just because we abuse food, drugs and alcohol it doesn't mean we don't love ourselves but, that's exactly what it is. We're not on the outside looking in.
If a man was going to lose his wife and he knew with all his heart he wanted to keep here he would do everything he could to make that happen in a healthy way. If we loved ourselves the way we should we would do everything in our power to secure our health and well being. If we truly loved ourselves we wouldn't let food control us. If we really want to lose the weight it's going to have to start with loving ourselves because if we don't we might lose the weight but, we might gain it back.
The more we love ourselves the more we will have a healthy relationship with the things (food) and people will love. I'm nowhere near where I need to be but, now that I know what I need to do to get there and stay there I believe I can make it. If anyone wants to lose weight, they need to figure out what made them this way. They need to find the root cause. They need to figure out the reason they're eating. You can go on a diet anytime but, if you don't know when you're more vulnerable to eat than you will fail. If you don't know what makes you gain weight than you won't know how to lose weight. Weight loss is a long journey and it's more than being skinny and pretty. Weight gain is more than being fat and lazy. This is only part 1 of my journey.
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