I feel like I have had a weight problem my entire life. I know that is not true but I feel that way. I first noticed that I was gaining weight when my body starting getting curves and everyone and their brother started noticing. When you’re in the 6th and 7th grade, weigh 70 lbs and have boobs bigger than your mother then someone is going to notice. And no, I wasn’t ready for them. No one would have been ready for them.
But I noticed that I started gaining a little weight in my belly because if your belly is big then nobody pays attention to your boobs. Or so I thought. But most of my life my boobs were a lot bigger than my belly, even when I weighed the most.
Of course, 12, 13, 14 year old kids don’t know what to do with these body changes. Most kids bodies change gradually. Mine didn’t. I had these huge boobs overnight, or so it seemed. I didn’t like the way my body looked. So I started eating.
I have eaten my way through life. When my life is boring or stressful or sad, I eat. Things have got to be really bad before I quit eating. That has happened a time or two in my life but usually I eat through the bad things in life.
It’s very frustrating to know that this is what I am doing and not be able to do anything about it. A prime example is when I am bored in my job. If I am bored the minute I get to work I want to know what is for lunch. Shoot, there are times that I get out of bed in the morning and want to know what’s for supper. Now I say it’s because I want to know if I need to stop at the market or pull something out of the freezer. That could be it but usually it’s because nothing else is going on and food is the main thing on my agenda.
I have been reviewing some of my journals from earlier in my life. I kept a journal on a trip to Japan to visit my brother. I swear all I talk about is that we went and ate. I didn’t talk about the food. All I talked about is that we were hungry or that we went to eat. In fact, I remember the food was pretty bad. I could never live in Japan. The food just doesn’t appeal to me. But at that time we were on a military base so we could get American food. That must not have been good either because I never talked about that food. There was one time that I mentioned that my sister cooked dinner and I talked about how good it smelled. Deep down I know I love home-cooked food.
I love to eat out. But I love home-cooked food. I just don’t like to do the home-cooking. Who else is going to do it if it’s not me?
Anyway, back to being my own worst enemy. I am. If I am bored, I eat. If I am sad, I eat. If I am stressed, I eat.
So the whole thing is let’s get down to the thing that is really wrong. Am I still not comfortable in my body? Is that the case? Well, I will tell you that when I am thinner I don’t necessarily like the way I look. And I know how to combat that. I know all about positive self-talk, etc. But I think it is still deep-down in me that I don’t want to be tiny-little with these big old boobs. I guess I could have a breast reduction and eliminate that problem. I don’t think that would fix it though. I think I need to address it head-on. I need to go to some of the people who made fun of me when I was in the 7th grade and let them have it. Would that make me feel better? I don’t know. I know where a lot of my 7th grade classmates are so maybe they had better watch out. Maybe I should let them have it. But they weren’t the only ones. There was an old lady at the department store who told me that I might be a little girl but I had a woman’s body. What am I supposed to do with that information? Can I look for her. I’m sure she’s long dead. I wonder if she even regretted saying that to me? I wonder if she knew how bad that made me feel.
I recently read an article about self-sabotage and how you really had to get to the core of the issue. The first point was to get to the figure out what was really going on. Okay, I know what is really going on. I don’t have a good “body image”. Yeah, whatever. Okay, so that’s my issue. What next? Next, I need to give myself permission to have an issue with the item. In other words, in a perfect life, of high self-esteem, would I do this thing at all? Would I over-eat? That’s a hard one.
I love to eat. I love food. But I do catch myself eating things that I don’t like, that don’t taste good to me. I have to stop that. I don’t have to finish what’s on my plate, even if it tastes wonderful. It’s okay to waste food. Those starving kids in Africa don’t want that last bite of my hamburger.
But if I didn’t use food to self-medicate, what would I use? Do I need to self-medicate? I don’t think so. I have found recently that I really like to hike. Can I do that if I’m bored or sad or stressed? That sounds like a plan. But what if I don’t have somebody to go with me? Can I go by myself? Or, can I find people who are also interested in hiking and see if I can get them to go with me? I have done that some but can I have a standing date?
The third step is to start making changes, even small ones. Didn’t I just do that? Didn’t I just decide that I really like to hike and I can do that when I’m not feeling good about myself? Didn’t I just decide that I’m going to get some hiking buddies and get moving? Yes, I did. So I got all of that planned out.
But I do think that I have to figure out why I’m bored, or sad, or stressed. All of that doesn’t go back to puberty. I think I can investigate those and see if I can’t resolve those so they don’t get me sabotaging myself in some other way.