Fresh Start…..yet again….(LONG!)

I’ve been avoiding this update, because I’ve failed again.  I don’t exactly have volumes of archives on this blog, but the few entries that are here are like a frickin rollercoaster!  Mind you, the word rollercoaster makes it sound exciting – it’s more like a lot of boring old ups and downs like a see saw.  I’m actually embarrassed at this point, because I keep saying, “This is it! – This time will be different! I’ve copped myself on – I know the answer now!”  But, somehow I always manage to fall off the wagon.  If I were a stranger reading this blog I’d want to smack some sense into me!

I’ve fallen off quite spectacularly this time, not in the sense that I woke up one morning surrounded by a mountain of chocolate wrappers like the nun on Fr. Ted that was sent to get the lads through lent, but more because I’m back at square one – the weight I started 2009 at.  I haven’t binged, I haven’t eaten completely unhealthily, but I have made some bad choices, my portion sizes have been too big and have been unprepared.  It’s scary how quickly the weight piles back on – if only it came off that quickly!

I’ve been reading the books – the success stories – and have scientifically scoured the pages for the common denominator – for that certain something that each story might have in common with the others, especially on the official “Day One”, when these folks who won the battle of the bulge finally well and truly got on their way.  But you know what, it’s not there.  There are no moments where the clouds part and the sunrays shine down showing the way.  Nope, it seems that one day – sometimes after numerous wagon falls, sometimes not – one day, it apparently just happens and there’s no way of telling why.

It’s not like I’m not terrified of the consequences of remaining the weight I am, it’s not like I’m not fed up with feeling so unhealthy, it’s not like I don’t have a brain in my head – so why the fuck is it taking so long for me to achieve consistency?  I used to think that giving up smoking would be the hardest thing I’d ever have to do in terms of addictions, but it was a walk in the park compared to losing weight.  The difference is, you don’t need to have a cigarette every day in order to live.

I used the word addiction above, but it doesn’t exactly feel right.  I have a very unhealthy relationship with food, but I don’t feel I’m addicted to it.  I definitely have a problem but not that kind of problem.  I’m an emotional eater yes, I make bad choices yes, but I don’t feel an addiction.  It’s a bit like the way I used to be about alcohol – I don’t think I could ever have been considered to be an alcoholic but I did drink too much and I paid the price in terms of my health.  I’m much more healthy about it now – I only rarely drink these days and when I do, for the most part, I behave.  In some ways I think food replaced alcohol for me.  It’s not like I was ever skinny, but my weight has seriously rocketed since I slowed down on the alcohol.

Hmm….this is better than therapy – I never put that connection together before!  I swapped alcohol with food.  Well I’ll be darned.  One thing I know for sure is that I used alcohol partly to escape reality and numb the feelings I’d rather not feel.  Food doesn’t make me drunk, it’s much more subtle than that, but it does numb to a certain extent.  There are even control freak elements to my eating – the “I’m not going to starve” sort of mentality.  I have a survival instinct that can sometimes border on the unhealthy (though I try to keep myself on a tight leash!) and I think the food is a part of that.  I spend a lot of time trying to tell myself that the world is not going to end if I have a smaller portion and that there hasn’t been a famine in Ireland since the 1800’s – that I can always get more if I’m genuinely hungry.

I’m definitely an emotional eater and the food/alcohol connection I’ve just made would imply that I have major emotional issues to sort out, if I’m medicating with food.  However, a few years ago I did a lot of hard work to overcome some pretty serious shit and managed to come out the other end of a lengthy period of depression as well as a breakdown.  I went to hell and back to confront those feelings – and while I know none of us are ever 100% sorted and there’ll always be shit to contend with – I thought, for the most part, I was done.  It scares me to think I might have something major to resolve – I just couldn’t handle whipping off a big plaster, exposing a huge wound – it wasn’t any fun being depressed and I have no desire to go back there.

However, I have no desire to remain a fatty bum bum either, so I had better try at least.  Thinking about things that are unresolved, one thing I never dealt with fully is my history with food, so I guess I should write a little about that.

If we’re getting into the history of me and food, one of the more prominent roles in the tale would go to my mother, who used to over feed me when I was little.  I realised this a long time ago, even as a kid I knew on some level something wasn’t right.  For example, I remember a lady coming to our house at dinner time one day and being really shocked at the portion sizes.  She wasn’t wrong either – there were enough chips on the individual plates to feed the whole family.

Food was the only way my mother could show love – or at least her version of love.  I grew up with a completely screwed up idea of what a portion size was and I had a huge appetite as a result of the over feeding.  As a result I had a fair bit of extra weight, though mercifully, having grown up in the countryside, I used to ride my bike a lot as a method of transport so I got a lot of accidental exercise, which probably helped to keep me from completely ballooning.  As much as I bitch about Ireland in the 70’s, I suppose I should be thankful in one sense that I grew up during that time, because I’m convinced I’d probably have ended up in the morbidly obese category if I was growing up now, ie in the Playstation era.  When I was small, cartoons were a big event – now there are whole channels devoted to them – but when I was a child we had a grand total of 2 channels and one telly so there was no choice but to make your own fun.

When I was in my early teens I had a bout of meningitis, which, in terms of weight, ended up being a blessing in disguise because I lost loads while I was sick.  It didn’t make me skinny, but it was a marked improvement.  Back then, while I wasn’t happy about what I weighed, I was almost completely oblivious at the same time – I was in a strange sort of self-protecting state of denial, developed after waking up from many years of allowing myself to be treated like a second-class citizen.  I had a very unhappy childhood and spent the majority of the time up until my early teens living as a subservient walkover – something that would shock most people who know me now – but the house I grew up in and the school I went to played a huge part in making me into that person.  Once I hit secondary school it was like a bolt of lightning hit me and I turned into a different person overnight.  Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that they didn’t beat people for not understanding maths in secondary school.

Another “gift” I have to thank my mother for is the memory loss from my childhood – I found out a few years ago that she had drugged me with mind-altering medications.  I had huge gaps in my memory but always put it down to blocking out my awful childhood.  When I found out about the drugs it all made sense – the memory loss, the hazy stuff.

Anyway, despite the memory loss, I do have a certain amount of “fat memories”, where I was called fatso and other imaginative names – looking back now I wasn’t actually all that fat – I had a bit to lose, but not all that bad – but the comments made me feel huge.  There was one incident that still hurts a bit all these years later.  I was only about 8 or 9 at the time.  I can’t remember the exact details of how it got started but I remember these two girls trying to get me to put my chin to my chest.  I was a bit totally gullible at that age so I obliged.  They started praising me saying well done, I did it again and then eventually they started teasing in a really snide and mocking way about my double chin.  I was too blinded with self consciousness to realise that one of those girls had a fair few pounds to lose herself.  I felt like such a fucking gobshite for falling into their trap and the more they sneered the shittier I felt.  And isn’t it a terrible thing that over 28 years later that incident can still bring about a twinge of hurt.

Other prominent “fat memories” are of my mother’s lack of tact when it came to my size.  Again, I must point out that I know now looking back that I wasn’t actually that big, but with the way she behaved it was a small wonder that I felt like a Ten Ton Tessie.  Anyway, I remember being dragged around clothes shops and every single time, whether I was 5, 10 or 15 years old, she would be inappropriate and would mortify me by ROARING the size at the top of her voice or making comments about how hard it is to get clothes to fit me.  She never made the connection (still hasn’t) that her incessant feeding of me might have something to do with it.  This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my mother’s capabilities – a non weight related example is how she decided when I was in primary school (I was around 9 or 10 ish) to dress me in the uniform of another local school.  This was bad in itself, but it was made a lot worse by the fact that our school didn’t even have a uniform.  I can’t remember how long I was made wear the uniform but needless to say my classmates had a field day with me – it’s not like they didn’t hate me already but this well and truly put the nail in the coffin.  It’s a small wonder I’ve grown up to become a complete control freak.

Anyway I digress……  It’s not like I sat down and decided, but by the time I’d reached my teens and lost a bit of weight thanks to meningitis, I was in a sort of denial, but this was just a thin coating for severe self-loathing.  Though I found my voice and stopped being a walkover as a teenager, this was replaced with even more misery because of my controlling mother and it culminated in all sorts, including a suicide attempt.  Apart from feeling huge deep down and generally hating myself, I don’t remember weight playing an obvious role in my teenage years.  In my 20’s in college I was too busy drinking to allow any kind of real feelings to surface – except for extreme drunken stupor nights when I’d over do it and lose the plot completely – but those times were rare, I wasn’t too keen on removing the bandaid.  But even in those drunken stupor moments, I’d never talk about the weight – never ever – it was one thing that would never be spoken about – it was too horrific to ever think about, let alone speak about.  There was the odd time when I’d get in there before anyone else got a chance – the “oh the size of my arse in this” sort of stuff, just in case anyone tried to say anything – in reality I wouldn’t have actually been looking at my arse at all – I’d have just recited the line as a protection mechanism.

After secondary school, I unwittingly walked into a very controlling friendship that lasted all through college and for many years afterwards and my friend’s other half eventually joined the controlling element.  I eventually saw sense and walked away.  This was a defining moment for me – it marked the first REAL step towards freedom and being my own person – something I thought I’d been doing for years.  I remember my first meal in my new flat (I used to live with the aforementioned friend and friend’s partner) after I’d moved out.  I was new to the area so the golden arches of McDonalds seemed sensible to opt for – yes it was pretend food but it was familiar pretend food.  I can’t remember what I ordered but I know I ordered more than an average meal.  I ordered an extra portion of something or other and there was something significant about that.  Though I didn’t think this thought “out loud” or anything like it, it was my way of saying I was independent and free – I could eat what I wanted when I wanted.  I was still drinking heavily in those days, so I mostly drank instead of totally over eating, but I was eating mostly fast food, which contributed to a gradual piling on of the pounds.

I mention this because I think I carried this “I can eat what I want when I want” thing through in later years and I might have overdone it just a smidge.  It’s a sort of inverted, screwed up kind of control freak feature that has done me absolutely no good whatsoever.

I’m not sure where all this is going and I wasn’t expecting to write this long of an entry, but somehow I ended up “in the zone” and as long as I’m there I’ll keep writing.  Writing played a huge part in sorting out my problems before, which is one of the reasons I started this blog, so if I’m spewing stuff out, I’m not going to stop myself!

Anyway, thinking about it, I didn’t really start piling on the weight big time until the last 6 years.  About 6 years ago I had a breakdown, which had been preceded by a lengthy bout of depression.  I was in such bad shape that all I could do was stop everything and just concentrate on getting well again.  All of this actually ties in with what I was saying above, about replacing alcohol with food, now that I think about it.  I stopped going out with my friends, stopped going to the pub, and just stayed in all the time.  I was never much of a lone drinker, but I was well able to scoff food by myself.  Anyway, when I had the breakdown, everything else took a back seat and I confronted 30 years worth of pain.  My weight and any form of healthy living were among the back seat passengers during my time of sorting myself out.  Eating played a big part however, in that this was the one period in time when I binged.  All sorts of crisps and sweets and buns and other stuff were brought into the house and I wouldn’t be happy till they were gone.  -Not that I was actually happy after they were gone – they were just a distraction.

I gradually emerged from this state a few years ago and actually got off my arse and went to Weight Watchers.  However I also got the bright idea not long after joining WW that I was going to stop smoking.  This was fantastic but I had not really planned it well in that it was too difficult to lose weight and give up the smokes all at once.  Besides, WW was pissing me off at that stage and I wanted to leave, with full intentions of keeping it up on my own.  It kills me to think that I’d have well and truly reached my goal by now if I’d stuck with it.

I wasn’t expecting to have written a brief(ish) history of how I came to be the size I am but there you have it.  However I do think it’s important to figure out how you’ve gotten to a particular spot in order to work out how to get off it, so I’m going to go with the flow.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I strongly feel that the weight battle is fought and won in the head and heart.  If I’m trying to figure out why I’ve been failing, maybe I need to look at how little I’ve been exploring the emotions surrounding my weight.  I am nervous of exposing a huge emotional wound, but I’ll just have to be careful.  I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do to be healthy and happy – simple as that.

If anyone has made it to the end of this, fair play to you.  I’m sorry if this is too long but, no offence, this blog is primarily for me and you never know, there might be another soul out there who is as neurotic as me to whom all of the above will make perfect sense!