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Starlene's Story |
Denial is a four-letter-word by StarleneI'll tell you what I remember... I didn't eat compulsively, and I didn't have an eating disorder. I knew this because I was slender, not 300 pounds, like my 5 foot 2 mother. I didn't get up in the middle of the night to binge like my mom did. I didn't binge and purge, like one of my siblings. No, I couldn't have a compulsive eating problem. It's true, I was a slender child, in fact to the point that our family pastor prescribed nightly milkshakes for me, which I gagged down to the envious stares of my siblings. I never dieted until I reached my late twenties, after the birth of my second child. By this time, I'd been a stay-at-home mother for over a year, and had retained twenty of the pounds I'd gained during pregnancy. I remember thinking how FAT I was, how obese. I even had some pictures taken of me in a swimsuit. Oh, how fat I was. LOL! I'd be happy to weigh ONLY 145 pounds! But back then, I'd decided that something had to be done. I had to lose this weight, so I chose a bodybuilding weight loss book. I'll let you in on a secret... I have ALWAYS hated exercise of any type. I was one of those kids in school who couldn't do a chin-up, sat out in right field -- being the worst and always lastly picked player -- trying to find a four leaf clover, instead of watching for a stray softball to come my way. I even hated running. You may imagine that I didn't like bodybuilding any more, and you would be correct. I HATED it. Sure, it did make my body look good, but it was a daily chore that I forced myself to do. On the days I didn't get around to my workout, I berated and chided myself for what a failure I was — all day long. I thought the foods I ate were healthy, so I didn't bother with the dieting part... until I'd been working out faithfully for two months without any weight loss. So I reluctantly took a look at my food intake, and came to the realization that no wonder I wasn't losing any weight, my fat grams were off the scale! I immediately began lowering my fat intake, and was quite pleased at my weight loss and the inches lost off my waist within a couple weeks. It was a heady time, as I was losing my oh-so-much overweight, a whopping 20 pounds. Woooo. NOT. Fast forward to meeting my “goal.” I had been in contact with the author of the bodybuilding book, and I was invited to New York to be on a talkshow with two other ladies who had lost weight and shaped up. It was 1993, I was the 30-something, the others were 40 and 50. That was really exciting. I didn't eat hardly anything for three days prior, and I couldn't eat while I was there because there was NOTHING to eat. That is how it felt, by this time. Nothing was okay, nothing was lowfat enough. I'd learned all about sugar and how it was a “poison”. So I had completely eliminated sugar from my diet, as well. Donuts literally sang to me from the bakery aisles of the grocery store, donuts, which I'd never, EVER craved before this diet. I had always naturally gone for carb-high and salty foods, but now I craved sugar and anything fatty. I remember HATING the dark meat of the turkey as a child, now I CRAVED it. After my talkshow appearance, I stopped working out altogether. But I continued to berate myself daily for what a failure I was. I went on a new, stricter diet, this time very low/no fat. I discovered that I ate less food when it didn't have any fat. For example, I was eating brown rice with only salt for flavoring. It was delicious, as I recall. My sister put some butter in hers and asked me to taste it, and I thought the butter tasted rancid. Next I decided that I was eating too much salt. I went on a salt-free diet for three days, and that was sheer torture. And it was the last straw. I started eating salt again, and adding fat into my diet. Of course, I berated myself constantly for how I was poisoning myself, for not working out, for being a failure. A couple of years of this badgering went by, and I started hearing of a different way of looking at food. “Eating Intuitively” it was called, and the first book I read as well. The whole premise made a lot of sense to me, and I slowly began incorporating this new way (which was pretty much getting back to the ways I'd eaten before my diet started) of eating. I held out on sugar for a long time, not willing to believe that my crying jags and mood swings weren't solely the fault of sugar. It never occurred to me that it could have had something to do with the bad relationship I was in at the time! Finally, I let sugar back into my diet. And wonder of wonders, I didn't go on four day crying jags, just because I ate a cookie. DUH. So now it's 2001, and it's been about four years since I've been walking this path. I've come to some realizations. One is that I have eaten compulsively all my life, it's just that I was either in school or at work for most of my waking hours, so I never had the chance to eat freely. I do remember the bingeing during the weekends though. When I became a stay-at-home mother, I could eat freely every day. It's no wonder I put on a few pounds. I was never obese though, like I imagined. I don't even look fat in the pictures that I proclaimed I was, and interestingly enough, the thin pictures of me now look like I was emaciated. Of course, growing up in my family would have set me up for some eating disorder behaviors. My mom tells me she could gain thirty pounds in a single month, from night-time bingeing. Nightly meals in our home were sufficient enough nightmares that I do not even having a dining room table. When my children and I do eat at the table it is a special occasion, with candles and great pleasure. I've also realized that I do eat when I'm bored, and when I'm anxious. So I'm working on these things. I have been successful in several areas. I am now aware of when I'm hungry. I can eat sugar and fat without having screaming sessions going off inside my head. I especially love that I can walk past the donuts and they don't sing to me at all!! I have discovered that I really don't even like donuts. It is wonderful knowing that if I want one, I can have one. I continue to work on eating past satisfaction. I still feel a great compulsion to “clean my plate.” I feel driven by it, but sometimes I'm able stop when I feel satisfied, wrap up my plate and put it in the fridge to warm up and eat later, or for lunch the next day. These are baby steps, and I'm thrilled to be making them. I know that eventually, I'll be able to stop eating every time, or almost every time, at satisfaction, instead of choosing to continue eating. I don't know how much I weigh today. I can tell you I wear a dress size of 16 to 20, depending on the manufacturer. I don't want to know my weight. I spent three long years reacting to the number. If I'd gained, I was upset and felt fat; if I'd lost, I was ecstatic and felt thin and sexy, no matter what size my body was. I appreciate my body. It has, as Julia puts it, “housed my soul” all these years. It is “fluffy” as I once heard a lady describe herself. I'm soft, I'm womanly, I have dimples (formerly known as cellulite). I don't know that I'll ever lose these pounds, back down to before I started dieting. I'm okay with that, too. I am grateful that I don't have to spend my entire life watching what I eat, watching my weight and denying myself. I hope that my story will inspire others to join Overcoming Overeating. So it turns out I did have an eating disorder, and I wasn't even aware of it. Finding the online groups for Overcoming Overeating has been a great support, and I've met a lot of very nice women as a result. It is nice to know that there is someplace I can go, where others can understand where I'm coming from, and can validate what I'm feeling. People in the world around me are sometimes harsh and unforgiving, and much like grouchy dieters. LOL, I guess many of them are grouchy from dieting. Good luck in your journey, and I hope to meet you along the way. ~ Starlene 2001. Additional reading from Starlene: Joining the No-Dieting Revolution This college research paper contains documented sources of information.
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