I am an emotional eater. I use food to comfort me when I can’t handle the anxiety or the intensity of the emotions I feel. Coming from a dysfunctional family background where there was mental illness and abuse, I have abused food as an attempt to stay invisible. The consequences of doing that over the course of a lifetime has put my health at risk. I am only 5’1″ and I am carrying 237 pounds on my petite frame. Several years ago I was diagnosed with Prediabetes but then I lost 30 pounds and was out of the risk zone. But since going through a depression last year I regained back the 30 pounds. I haven’t yet been back to the doctor, but I assume that I am currently in the Prediabetic range again. Since last year I’ve been aware that my level of health has been slowly declining. I don’t take medication, but my energy has gotten very low.
Last year around October I got the scare of my life when I injured myself walking. I’m incredibly lucky in that I am very healthy and have never had any issues with pain. But due to my inactive and sedentary nature at the time, it triggered a massive case of sciatica. I spent a week lying on a heating pad, crying from the pain in my back and legs and mulling over my life choices.
The following month, I left for Florida to care for my mother. It was one of three trips where I dropped what I was doing to take a week off to basically babysit my 80 year old mother. I describe it that way because Mommy suffers from bipolar and depression and has bouts of dementia. She is much more like a child than an adult. Over the course of my life I’ve stood by helplessly and watched the consequences of her mental incapacity unfolding into one drama after another.
Now observing her relate to others in this institutional setting, it gave me an opportunity to see up close what old age looks like and how people incapable of caring for themselves are often treated. Back in 2001 when my Nana required care in an Assisted Living in New York, it was a very loving experience. I lived a few miles away and visited her almost every day. I was horrified to notice the level of neglect and apathy I witnessed in people’s general attitude. Unfortunately my mom has made her choices and I don’t have any legal say in her decisions. She lives with Yale, her 89 year old boyfriend who is a very kind-hearted, yet controlling man. She has always chosen men over her kids. After years of feeling sadness and regret about that, now I just accept it with love.
As much as I disagree with Yale in many ways, I see that he has Mommy’s best interests at heart. I can’t change Mommy’s life, but I can change mine. I’ve learned that loving her from afar is the best way to care for her without losing my own mind. As a result, I came away from that trip with a renewed respect for my well-being, and I vowed to take better care of myself which meant changing my eating habits to get healthier. I swore that I was not going to go down the same road as Mom.
I had a sample taste of depression and it rocked my world. In 2016 my daughter, Cara went away to school. Just around the same time, my precious cat, Owie was diagnosed with kidney disease. I was so paralyzed by my grief that I had to put a pause on my coaching. By the beginning of 2017, Owie had passed away. I was shaken to the core by my sense of emptiness and loss. It seemed like the best I could do was eat ice cream and cry. I ended up regaining all of the 30 pounds I had taken such care to lose over the previous 2 1/2 years. I felt horrible about myself. One day it hit me like a brick that I could continue to grieve for my losses or I could do whatever was in my power to change the course of my future. I noticed that the ice cream that I was eating always made me feel tired. That gave me the insight that the best way to change my life was to get serious about improving my health.
Since then I’ve been making a lot of changes in the food I eat. I’ve radically reduced the amount of sugar I consume. I rarely eat ice cream, or candy, cake or baked goods and I have completely cut out eating meat. Now I’m also working on reducing my salt and dairy consumption. With the exception of a major love of eggs, I’m a couple steps away from becoming a vegan. No more animal-based foods for me. Eating a whole foods, plant-based diet has become important to me because I’ve become aware of the health consequences of consuming dairy, processed food and animal fats. Unlike my old diet days fueled by weight obsession and body insecurity, I have a goal to change my eating, because at 55, I want to live longer and feel better. I don’t want to get old, be fat, sick and medicated. I want to be like my Nana, who at 80 was travelling everywhere and sharp as a tack running a business until she died in her sleep at 97. That’s the life I want to live, not my mom’s.
I’ve been making the changes in my eating, not by depriving myself of the foods, but by becoming more sensitive to how they make my body feel. For the large part, I have weaned myself off of sugar because I have allowed myself to eat it, and notice how it makes me feel. That’s why I choose not to continue to eat the baked goods, the candy and the other sweet treats that used to litter my cabinets. But now, somewhere in my cabinet, I still have a bag of Swedish Fish I asked my hubby to buy for me sometime around Halloween last year. It’s there because I want to know that it’s there if I want it. But because I know that eating those sugary fish-shaped bits of corn syrup laden jelly will put me on sugar overload, and land me in bed for a nap, I don’t want to break open the package. I like knowing I have a choice. Eat it, or not.
Some people would advocate not having any tempting foods around. I don’t see the package of Swedish Fish as a temptation, just an option. I’ve learned that having a choice is powerful because it neutralizes the forbidden lure of the temptation. So to me, they are just a package of Swedish Fish, more than likely they are very stale and taste like the package. Swedish Fish is no longer a compelling binge food for me that I consume hand over fist. It’s not something that I can never eat again. They are there if I want them, but if eat them in an excess quantity the cost of doing so is a loss of several hours of precious time wasted due to a long food coma induced nap.