I want to be in control. I want to make decisions – almost automatically – that support my healthy lifestyle. I don’t want to fall prey to mindless eating or give into senseless cravings or feel powerless over my behavior ever again. And, over the last few months, I have learned that I am capable of controlling my behavior. That sounds really strange coming from me. I’m a trained therapist, for heaven’s sake. I know that I can control my behavior. I’ve always known that that was possible for everyone else, but I don’t know that I’ve ever thought that was a true possibility for ME.It made me think of the issue of control and weight loss. How sometimes, when you're an emotional eater or a disordered eater, you long for control over your eating. You don't want to eat mindlessly, to push yourself past the point of fullness into actual pain but it's like something else takes over. You're not in control anymore, the desire to eat is and you are just a vessel to fill up and up and up.
Yet, when you try to wrestle control away from the eating monster, almost always we go too far. We over control. Count calories, count minutes of exercise. Look for that number on the scale. Push it lower and lower. Ignore hunger. Ignore the desire to eat. Ignore WHY you feel the desire to eat because you are so focused on the numbers and what you feel they represent. If I could weigh 120 lbs, I wouldn't feel social anxiety anymore, my husband would desire me all the time, he'd love me more, my family problems would be fixed, I'd know where my life was going, I would be happy if I could just get to that magical number. But eventually that control cracks because you can't control everything and because you aren't focusing on the issues behind why you eat.
I have willpower. I don't do drugs. I am faithful to my love (and to be fair- not even tempted. He's it for me forever. There is no one on this Earth I love more). I don't drink to excess and I have the willpower to recognize and stop before the "too much" line is crossed. But sometimes, willpower is not enough.
I never thought I was an emotional eater. I thought "Oh I just like food. That's why I overeat." My last year at CSUS though has taught me that I am an emotional eater and when I try to rectify the situation I put myself in, I am a control freak. I ate this past semester because I didn't know where I was going. Because the unknown is scary. Because what if I wasn't good enough to make it. What if they saw the real, scared me hiding behind my confident facade. And when I couldn't control whether I got accepted at UCSF or not, I tried to control my eating. 1500 calories, 33 minutes of exercise a day, lose 2 lbs a week. Food and controlling that food was my crutch but I don't want to live like that. I want to make decisions- almost automatically- that support my healthy lifestyle. I don't want to focus on food and think about food all day. I don't want to walk the grocery store, stalking through the aisles (something I do when I'm really deep into the control phase).
So that's why no calorie counting and no scale. I want to teach myself the habits to cope with stress eating without descending into the control spiral. I want to eat because I'm hungry. I want to eat fresh food because it makes me feel good. I want to exercise because it makes me feel strong and helps me deal with my emotions by that rush of endorphins. I don't want to feel the guilt that comes along with eating "bad" foods (this is a struggle right now).
And I'm writing in this blog to deal with stress too. To air out my dirty laundry, so to speak. Because I don't have to be peppy and smiling all the time. To grow as a human being. To be comfortable with myself. To love myself.
I am friendly and people like me. My husband does love me and desire me, no matter what I weigh. He sees the me I can't see. Everyone has a little family dysfunction and the dysfunction in my family belongs to the dysfunctional members, not me. No one knows where their life is going and that's ok, that's the way it is supposed to be. Happiness is available at any weight, you just have to grab it. I know all these things intellectually but my heart has a hard time seeing them. That's really what this adventure is about. Learning to relax, relinquish control to the universe, not the hunger monster, let go and love myself.
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