My Eating & How it has Changed

We are at the Mercy of our Mother's cooking in our childhood.  Good or bad, home-made or bought, it is the kitchen we grow up in that defines our eating habits.

I have watched documentaries about eating and losing weight.  The key to that is uncontrolled eating.  They would talk about scarfing down whole pizza's or gorging themselves on a whole chocolate cake.  The need for multiple hamburgers or sandwiches to feed their mouth or something deeper.  I do not recall that being an issue for myself.  The behavior I will admit to was hiding food and I will tell you why.  I had a large family full of boys, if you didn't eat the food the second it was placed on the table then you were not going to get any at all.  No one would save you a piece.  It was all for one, all the time and who ever got the most was the winner.  Such gloating if I got a snow cone and my brother didn't.  Ha Ha! I have been able to get over that attitude, but I still feel anger when I go to the cupboard for the snack I saved all day only to see it eaten. Ahhhh!  Now that is frustration.

I remember going on my first "paid for" diet when I was 8 years old.  Think about that.  Would you mother's out there do that to your daughter?  I look at my nieces and would never dream of putting them on Weight Watchers, but I knew my mother was being pressured by the doctors.

Plus my mother has here own problems.  I was unaware as a child that she considered herself fat.  Hollywood is a cruel place if you aren't a toothpick.  She had admitted to being an over-eater so in an attempt to block that She had gone to "Diet Center" herself and lost around 40 pounds, so I ended up going with her.  I was into it.  Being special and getting to eat "special" food.  I remember a bottle with spices in it that had a "Diet Center" label on it that only Mom could use and now I was allowed to use it.  It really did seem like a good idea and I follow what they told me to do.  As I said my mother lost 40 pounds.

 I lost.....nothing.

 All the councilors were in shook when they looked at the scale.  They had promised me a present if I lost 10 pounds.  The tears were rolling down my checks.  I did the exercises.  I ate the way my mother told me.  Not a pound shed.  Then some one thought to measure me.  I had dropped inch after in on my arms, thighs and waist.  I still do not know why it did not show in the scale, but they fudged the rules and let me have the gift for smaller measurements.  I continued like any normal 8 year old.  I ate lunch at school, a snack when I came home and dinner.  Most nights we had a treat before going to bed.  I did not sneak food at night.  I did not break into the fridge,  None of our cupboards had locks, but I became fatter and fatter.

It took me a while to figure it out , but I am terrible with portion control.  I did not eat whole pizzas, but I did have four pieces instead of  two.  If I made myself a PB & J sandwich, I made two.  My eyes should have been bigger than my stomach, but I didn't feel full unless I felt FULL.  I still have large portions, it is a mental thing, but I have learned to eat less meals.

I had been accepted in my first school.  How I looked was never a source of the childhood interactions and I grew up with a lot of confidence.  I was one of the only girls on our large city block and I considered myself a Queen bee.  I walked to and from school, rode bikes, got in trouble,  It wasn't until I moved to Simi Valley that I felt different.  I heard there were roving groups of girl gangs back in Burbank and I longed to be back, because I knew I would be one of the leaders bodyguards. I knew that my weight would have been as asset.  Unfortunately,  I would probably be maiming and stealing and hurting people, but if I was still in Burbank I knew I would have been loved.

Not so in Simi.  The girls were so bad I had a very hard time attending church.  I could not take the girls I had to deal with at school every day, suddenly being wonderful loving daughters of God toward me at church.  I hid in the car and refused to come out my mother mortified by my behaviour, but I could not explain my revulsion to the other girls.  The hypocrisy at church was blinding.  You have the right to hate me, just do not do it with a smile on your face.  I can not stand hypocrites.  I think one of the reasons I still have a friend from that time is that she was in the grade behind me, so when she was kind to me at church I could accept her kindness as reality not some obligation.

So my outside interactions shrunk when we moved, but we moved to a house with a pool.  Thank you, thank you, thank you Daddy for buying a house with a pool it save my sanity.  He complained often about the time and expensive of that pool but it save my life.

I felt beautiful and graceful in the water.  I was one of the fastest summers beating even my brother at laps.  Our pool was an accident settlement, so it was much bigger than most.  I did lap after lap.  I swam over a 100 laps a day doing the breast stroke, back stroke. side stroke and the crawl.  I could hold my breath for over a minute and I was apart of a synchronized swim team for a good two years or more.  I stopped because I fell out with the coach.  In the summer I woke up at noon got on my bathing suit and I swam til midnight all the time doing laps and water aerobics.  I write all of this because I did not lose a pound.  I only got bigger. 

So during this time of constant exercise my mother wanted me to attend Over eaters Anonymous.  It works on the same principles as the 12 step of Alcoholic Anonymous, same book, same sayings.  It's just that I never felt like the people in the group.  I did not feel like an emotional eater.  There were some wackos too.  One poor woman was obsessed with potatoes. Weird Al had brought out a song "Addicted to Spuds" and I thought it was the strangest idea.  Then I had to sit and listen to her drooling over potatoes. I walked out of the meeting dying for McDonald's french fries.   I did what OA asks and that is to only have three meals a day, which is hard for me since I don't like to eat breakfast.  My stomach needs a couple of hours to be ready for food in the morning, so to eat that meal was very hard on me.  It is a great program.  I have seen success from other in my circle and my own mother.  I just never felt like an over-eater.  I do not use food to make myself feel better.  I was in an eating program, I went to 4 years of marching band.  I participated in PE, hated it, found it to be embarrassing and competitive.  I went on hikes with my peers.  The point is I moved.  I kept up with my peers and my body did not hold me back.  I didn't sit around doing nothing all day like I am now.  I was active and living and I weighed over 300 pounds!  Why?

Here I am after years of swimming.  My family in '93 right before I graduate.

 

I did not want to go to school any more.  I was so angry and hurt by the time I graduated High School that I did not have the motivation to continue.  My mother literally shoved me into the car and drove me to the closest community college.  I sat there refusing to talk.  "You better help me pick your classes." She warned me.  "I might not pick anything you like."  That got me out of my funk.   I was treated completely different in College.  People stayed away and the overt torture ended.  I was able to form friendships in my classes, but not many,  It was a lonely existence, but I have grown used to it and even prefer it to a lot of people.  I would much rather have one true friend then worry about a group.

 

The big change came to my eating when I was dirt poor living on my own in Montana and Wyoming.  I will tell how I decided to go on a mission, but for now I was called to the Montana mission which still included parts of Wyoming.  You have to give up many things to be a missionary.  Things may have changed, but when I went on a Mission you were required to pay a monthly amount, most saved up for it or your family paid.  The church took the money and paid the rent & utilities everywhere you were assigned.  They paid for Doctor visits and if you were lucky, for a car.  Every month we would receive an allowance into our bank account to pay for food and at that time gas.  You tried to come to the mission with all the clothes you needed, so that small bit of money went to what was important.  I am very good with money.  I never had a "real" job so I have figured out how to save and what to cut costs on.  A big treat that disappeared on my mission was soda.  We drank soda all the time at home.  I could not afford it and the water out of the tap was free.  Thankfully it was some of the best water I had ever tasted.  At home you took your life in your hands if you drank out of the tap, but I came to love the water in the wilds of Montana and it made a huge difference.  So being very poor if I felt hungry I would drink a glass of water with ice and I came to find out that bang!  I was not hungry, but thirsty.  That slow process began retraining me.  If I felt hungry I drank first and if I still felt hungry I could tell what my body really wanted and I would be satisfied after a reasonable amount of food.  Some nights I would be dieing for a good juicy steak, but another night I would feel the need for a salad.  I began giving my body what it wanted and feeling satisfied for the first time in my life.  I didn't have to eat the whole bag of chips.

 

This new thinking served me well when I returned home.  I made my family get a water service that I liked.  It was expensive, but so worth it.   I lost the 80 pound in my golden age of Fashion Design college and then I plateaued.  Nothing.  I wasn't as active so I thought I had to be more aggressive with my eating, plus my mother was in full blown diabetes with insulin and I thought that I was heading there myself.  So my mother joined a group called C-HOW, it is a more structure version of Over eaters Anonymous with a strict eating plan.  I went two years without sugar and white flour.  Do you understand what I did!  Two hold years without any sugar or white flour.  I ate a one egg omelet with a little cheese in the morning, cottage cheese and fruit for lunch and then a dinner of all the vegetables I could eat and a small amount of protein.  No Birthday Cake! No pie! No bread! For TWO YEARS!

 

I realized I had another problem with my thinking.  I became obsessed with whatever I denied myself.  If I was craving sugar and told myself it was off the list, then all I would want was a sugar fix.  I couldn't concentrate on my work.  I thought of nothing else and then when I gave in to the craving I would gorge on it.  Next came the beating myself up.  For me I learned that when I wanted something to eat it was fine for me to do it if I kept it in moderation.  That became the key to my life. Moderation.

 

 I did not lose a pound!  That was they only time I was very upset at my sister-in-law and it was not her fault.  She went on the program with my mother and the pounds melted off.  I pasted a happy smile on my face because she deserved all the praise in the world.  She was losing weight!  Fabulous! Spectacular!  I was ecstatic for her pants were falling off.  Meanwhile I locked myself in my bedroom because I swore I would not eat any pizza and there it was lying on the kitchen table.

 

I did not know what to do.  I could not figure out why I was denying myself with no visible effects.  I became an agoraphobic during this time.  It felt to me every time I went out the door a rude comment would come my way.  "Look at that fat lady, mommy!"  I heard that shouted out of the window of a house on my block as I walked by.  It was so awful to swallow the hurt, but it was an innocent little girl.  

Here I am in 2002 after my biggest weight loss. 

When I finally broke away from my family I turned to smaller amounts of better food.  I loved TRADER JOES!  Too expensive to feed a family on, but as a single working girl I was able to get fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade soups, salads and sandwiches.  They had beautiful one person frozen meals that I could make on the stove top.  It was perfect for me and I loved it.  Not a pound lost.

 

Now I am sick.  I do what the doctors say.  I take my meds, do the insulin shots and I have terrible eating.  I am doing one meal and a snack and that is still probable too many calories.  I move so little.  I was getting in trouble for not taking enough insulin and for a while I was very afraid to get a low blood sugar attack since I would go days without eating, I felt so sick.  I have now realized that I need to take my whole does even if it means with one meal, but I separated it between two most of the time.  There is nothing worst then the weakness and shock of low blood sugar.  It is an attack that befuddles the mind and it feels like your whole body is shutting down, which makes it easy to have high blood sugars.

 

 

I have tried and tried and tried so hard to lose weight.  I refuse to become obsessive or have losing weight be my only focus.  I think if I got gastric bi-pass something would go wrong and I would die on the table.  I have found that I am in the 1% of procedures that go wrong.  Even in my eye surgery the doctor had to destroy more than he thought and I now have cataracts.  The more I have done what the Doctor say, the worst my life has become.  I do try to do what is right for me.  What ever that is.