Facing the Night Eating Monster... This is a long one...

Yeah. So in Therapy the other day I was brainstorming with my shrink about the various ways we could help with my night eating problems. We went over every scenario... medicine, exercise at night, and many other thoughts... but something was bothering me while we were talking about it. Something I couldn't put my finger on, but it was kind of storming inside my head- I felt like we were talking about everything possible I could do to cover up the NIGHT EATING MONSTER but not face it, beat it, kick it's ass, destroy it, and say goodbye to it FOREVER! This thought hit me like a ton of bricks!! SMACKED UPSIDE THE HEAD! 

I spoke the words before I could even process the thought but as soon as they came out of my mouth they were mine, my challenge, my burden, and my path to freedom. 

If I am going to live free from dependence on food I am going to have to face everything. NIGHT EATING MONSTER... FACE IT! BEAT IT!

BODY IMAGE! FEEL THE PAIN! CHANGE IT! FACE IT! 

FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN! DEAL WITH IT! OVERCOME IT! 

AND THEN... I came to the other part of this which is not as easy to think about. The fat I have accumulated replaced the parents I never had, and wanted so dearly. It comforted me it the hard times and the times I felt lost, and did the best job it could to insulate me from the pain. I still felt pain and emptiness but it took the edge off. I was given two people who did not parent me- they may not have had the ability to do anything more than what they did, but it didn't give me what I needed... even as an infant. I had two coaches instead of parents. I had some FUCKEDUP people who came together and made a child. 

As you can imagine, the loss of my parents (fat) is THE MOST TERRIFYING THING I HAVE EVER FACED. Each pound of fat that I lose is getting closer to the point where I have to say goodbye to my parents... the metaphor that losing weight is bringing the death of my (fat) parents closer. I am faced with letting go of my parents (fat) and being left with none at all- because I never had any to begin with. It is scary and lonely and makes me so sad. 

I felt lonely as a child and always thought that I had caused it. I was constantly in trouble for not performing up to my ability (olympic swimmer and star student)... even from the start of my swimming at five and school around the same time. I was told I was a disappointment and a burden for so long that I truly believed that with performance I would finally fill up what was missing. WRONG. 

So along with everything else that is challenging about this journey (the list is up to... 1,000 things that suck ass?) the main battle for me is letting go of the pursuit of parents and taking over and becoming my own. And guess what? I have no idea how to because I just never learned. I have a few ideas of what I need to develop into an independent self, but it is an experiment. 

There is a child inside of me that has been waiting my entire life for her mom and dad to come home, pick her up from school... I am faced with finding her and telling that child that they will never be coming- it is tragic and the biggest heartbreak of her life. There is sorrow and a big gaping hole in my heart, but I know if I am going to change that I need to accept my circumstances and begin to care, nurture, and love myself. In the process of not being shown how to do this- it brings up soul wrenching fear. For so long I have lived in anticipation of those two people coming around... of getting the phone call begging me to come home and that they realized what they had done- and them saying.... WE ARE YOUR PARENTS NOW! Giving up on this expectation will slowly free me... but it FUCKINGHURTS! 

Most of this has been slowly developing into a realization over the last year but as my shrink and I were talking about the food switch that I have when the sun goes down... I kind of put it into a paragraph in my mind. There is nothing that I can do to cover this shit up, or avoid it, or throw a blanket over it... it is just a bunch of really terrible, tragic shit that I will have to face. 

If I do not face it and continue the healing process I will not lose the weight that I want to and I will never be able to keep it off... 

This happened on Thursday and I felt like emotional trash yesterday... and then the husband left to go visit his parents for the weekend (to see his dad, who is going through treatment for cancer in his lungs, liver and colon...) and as usual, I have a hard time with food when he leaves. The result of feeling drained emotionally and my husband was a binge last night. Not the refined kind either... a dirty binge. I woke up this morning feeling terrible from the food I ate last night (think 1/2 a pizza, eight chicken nuggetish things with dip, an entire bag of ginger snaps, gummy candy, soda and about three glasses of milk... this was over about a six hour period). I was messed up this morning (a real BINGE HANGOVER) and new I had pushed over the edge... I had done what I used to do (pre September 29th, when this journey started). 

Anyway. As the day has started and now progressed I kind of feel lighter and like some of the burden has lifted. Now that I have written this down- it is especially noticeable. I am trying to nurse myself back from the binge hangover... tons of water. I am about to go to the gym and spend some time there and later I will tackle some studying and school work. I am feeling calm about my husband being at his parents... although I did do an initial tantrum- I think it is over. I have wwaayy too much school work to continue wasting time... 

I feel kind of embarrassed sharing the binge thing... usually I am pretty comfortable with my food FUCKUPS, but maybe because they are so tame in comparison to my past binges. I guess it kind of reveals how exactly I topped off at 365 pounds though... 

Thanks for having the patience and reading this until the end...!!

The Binge. A brief history. The beginning.

The Binge. The big, ugly scar on my soul. I looked up the definition and one of the descriptions was: A period of unrestrained, immoderate self-indulgence. I have always struggled with the difference between OVEREATING and BINGEING. It feels better to say "I overate." than "I binged."... It has been the source of years of shame for me. 

My earliest memories of bingeing were around ten years old. My earliest memories of overeating were in kindergarten. I started overeating in the morning, at breakfast, with cereal- I would find the biggest bowl I could and fill it until it was overflowing. As the years when on I started adding sugar or molasses to my cereal, as my parents were of the "tofu and sprouts" type who ate the unsweetened and bran-loaded kind. It is funny to look back on the cereal/morning episodes because I still struggle with it as an adult- I used to start my day with two and sometimes three bowls of cereal.

I can point the finger pretty easily at my parents for my early relationship with food, since they were obsessed with my weight from a very young age. They were fanatical about their own weight, my dad and mom ran and did extreme exercise to keep "thin and trim" and my dad kept a running commentary on my mom's body and weight. Also, they put me in swimming at a very young age and by the time I was ten I was ranked nationally in my age group. The prospect of me being a swimming star kept their eyes focused on my body, weight and muscle mass and it got pretty extreme by the time I was ten. I was by no means overweight- in fact between the ages of ten and thirteen I was probably the perfect weight for my height as an athlete. That wasn't my choice though. Not only was I doing double workouts at the age of ten and burning thousands and thousands of calories a day, but my parents resorted to extreme food restriction; like keeping the pantry locked and the kitchen booby-trapped so they could see if I had been eating while they were not at home or not able to monitor me. They went as far as to mark the milk container so they could see if I had sneaked any milk. Milk? Really? 

I didn't really have any knowledge of bingeing or sneaking until this started. I remember finding the pantry unlocked sometimes and feeling a huge rush of excitement and power. I would grab whatever was there (it usually was pretty healthy) and stuff it in my pockets and down my pants to I could hide it away in my room. There were many times that there was so little snack or sugared foods that I would take a box of cake mix- just to get anything that was "off limits". I would eat the whole box of dry cake mix just because I had won and gotten the teeniest bit of power over my food. It was a the turning point for my food issues. They were getting progressively worse but this pushed them into overdrive. 

This is a good stopping point for now. If you are interested in more of relationships with food, specifically the binge, I will continue this story in a future post.