What!? A Food Problem?! Me??

How did I get to be 43 and discover I had issues with eating? And how was it that someone like me, someone who had been keenly observing herself for over twenty years, who was a fitness professional, a yoga, qigong, meditation, pilates instructor, and a personal trainer suddenly discover she was a mindless eater? The mind boggles.

But here I am, 43, and I am here to say I am an addict. I'm addicted to sugar, chocolate, being full (I drink tea all day to maintain a full sensation in the stomach), wheat dressed up as white bread and pastries and I am also addicted to being right, judgements, certain stories in my head that help me to feel like my resentments and my poor behaviour of the past is justified, and myself. I am addicted to myself and my story.

So part of writing this, which I love because its about myself, let’s be honest, is about facing these things about myself. Honestly. As straight forward as I can manage, with as little deviation from the truth as I can muster. Honesty, where it hits the constructs of our defences against the ‘them’ that can hurt us, is tough to muster, but well. Let’s go.

Basically I'm  a mother of an 18 month old and I don’t have the time to exercise like I used to. So I didn't realize I had a problem with eating, because if I put on a bit of weight prior to baby,  I would just do some more exercise. I correlated gaining weight with an eating problem, even though I was never taught that as a fitness professional. I even remember a Fat Albert episode where Fat Albert was eating bowls and bowls of salad, and his skinny friend was eating lots of sugar, and it was the skinny friend who felt sick and couldn't play sport, while Fat Albert was healthy and mobile.

I have been a size 34 for most of my adult life. In the past five years, that has moved up to a 36 and I didn't mind. Now I'm a 38. I don’t think I'm overweight, I'm just bigger than I was before. And I don’t seem to be able to lose the rest of the weight by restricting my food intake. And that’s how I discovered I was addicted. I had a 40 day detox and I lost 4 kilos, but as I'm sure you’re guessing, as soon as I could, I ran straight to the bakery and shoved cake and donuts into my open and salivating mouth.  Mindlessly.

I watched myself, quite surprised. And I looked back and saw a history of binge eating that I had never considered before. It had never been a problem because it didn't show up in fat tissue. When I am in a chaotic moment, apart from breathing, meditation and lots of exercise, I would binge eat or shop. And I was not conscious about it, at all.

So I'm restarting my blog after quite a sabbatical to journal what happens from here. You are very welcome to join me as I move from mindless eating to well, to where ever it takes me.