I have been wanting to write this post for a month now, but I have been too scared.
I had actually planned to start a brand new blog, with an anonymous name, so I could put my story out without worrying about who was judging me. But I finally decided that my story is just my story...and those people who care about me will probably care about me even more after reading this and those who judge me for my faults, judged me long ago anyway.
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There is not one time in my life, that I can remember, when I didn't feel fat.
Not one.
Sure there were times when I wasn't feeling as fat. Like all the times I joined Weight Watchers and lost so many pounds, but I never made my goal weight. Not meeting my goal weight = being fat. So of course it felt good to have the scales read lower instead of higher, but the bottom line was that I had failed yet again to get my eating under control. Which propelled me to eventually run back to the comfort of food.
I can tell you how much I weighed in each of my high school years, when I graduated from high school, when I moved into my freshman year dorm room, when I lost 20 pounds during the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college, when I gained 10 pounds the next summer in Sweden. I can tell you how much I weighed at college graduation, when I got married, when I got pregnant with my kids, how much I weighed after I gave birth. Every major event in my life, forever has a weight attached to it. One cannot be separated from the other.
And the desperately sad thing about the whole realization, is that up until about 1992, I wasn't fat. I wasted over 20 years of my life feeling hate, disgust, remorse, helplessness, hopelessness and out of control...over food. So I guess all the other years of self loathing have been justified?
I have tried everything to get thin: weight watchers, Adkins, medicine, a nutritionist, starving and even wanting to become bulimic, but couldn't make myself throw up. So in 2004, I decided to have weight loss surgery and chose the Lap Band, a less risky surgery, knowing that I could always go the gastric bypass route if the Lap Band didn't work. Two years later I had only lost 40 pounds, had some complications with the band and gained all but 18 pounds back. At my last doctors visit, in the fall of 2008, he suggested I consider going with the gastric bypass surgery.
Devastation washed over me. 80% of patience are successful with my surgery, but I somehow found a way to keep eating, eating and eating.
You are just a failure.
I know I am.
Food owns you. It's never going to stop.
I know.
I decided to give myself a year, to get my head right and deal with this. I didn't want to have to subject myself to another round of failures with a whole new set of risk factors. Bypass surgery was way more intense than Lap Band surgery... it would be a huge decision.
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It's been about 8 months since that last doctors visit and my world is completely and absolutely different now. My husband and I are now separated, the house as been put of for sale after I spent months going through 11 years of household clutter, I have reconnected with many, many friends that I had long ago lost touch with and I found a new church home that I connect with deeply. Most of these things have been positive moves in the right direction...but the best gift I gave myself was going back to therapy.
I have been to counseling before, and it always helped to some degree, but it was just never....complete.
I decided to go back to Cathy, the psychologist I had seen right after my weight loss surgery. I didn't want to talk about food, but I remember feeling a connection with her. And the commitment I made to myself was to be completely and totally honest about everything with her. I knew I had to do this if I was going to get better and deal with all the issues I had in my life....and I have a list of them.
For the first month...therapy was easy. We talked about how to deal with my ex, how to help my kids through this difficult time and things I needed to do to build healthy boundaries in all my relationships. I was making great progress and feeling good. Then came a pivotal session in March when Cathy reached right to the core of my deepest pain:
Cathy: So what are your weight loss and exercise goals?
Paula: I don't have any and I'm not going to.
C: Why not?
P: Because it's never worked before and I'm tired of dealing with it.
And I'm a loser because of it and I always will be. Okay, don't start crying. Cathy will see that you are hurting and ask you more about it.
C: Tell me what you are feeling. I see the emotion in your face.
Damn it Paula! you slipped. Now you have to say it. You promised. Remember? Tell her everything.
But I've never said it out loud. Well then, maybe it's time to.
Tears, tears and more tears.
I can barely speak the words because it all hurts too bad. Words that have been sitting, rotting, burning my soul for so long that I didn't know they existed. But I had come this far, and I wanted to get better.
P: No one is going to love me because I'm fat.
Those 10 words had held onto me, leeched onto me.....they DEFINED me for as long as I can remember !
C: Oh Paula
Words spoken with such tenderness.
Cathy let me cry for a few more moments.
C: Don't you see how distorted of a view that is about yourself? You have an eating disorder, you can't see things clearly.
Her words soothed over me with a calmness I hadn't felt in years. She understood, she didn't think I was crazy for what I had just said.
We talked about what I was feeling for what time remained in the session. And on my way back to the car, I somehow felt lighter. I could breathe easier, my head didn't feel the normal pressure that had somehow become comfortable and the burning in my soul was not as hot.
I spent the next three days crying.
They weren't tears of pain. They were tears of cleansing, of letting go of all the hate I had stored away in that burning fire. It felt so good to let go. I welcomed the crying because there was a realization that every single tear I shed brought me closer to "healing the fat girl".
And something else changed as well. I stopped eating. Not altogether, of course, but I stopped eating when I wasn't hungry. It went unnoticed at first, but I slowly observed that I was only eating when my stomach growled. And my stomach only growls when I'm not obsessing about food; otherwise, it never gets an opportunity to actually get empty enough to call attention to itself.
Wait.
What happened to the cravings, the snacks, the sweets you so loved and thought constantly about?
I don't know...I haven't been thinking about it.
What do you mean, "You haven't been thinking about food"? You always think about it.
Maybe I don't need it anymore.
Paula, this is big.
I know...I might be getting better.
I think you are right.
How do you feel?
I feel really, really hopeful. Like I never have before.
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I have lost 20 pounds since that day.
In 2 months I have lost 20 pounds. I am still in shock thinking about it. And the unbelievable part of the whole thing is that I'm not even trying. Not even remotely.
I eat what I want, but only when I'm hungry. And I stop eating when I'm not hungry anymore. I don't crave anything. And on the rare occasion that I do want something to munch on, say, a cookie...I can eat one cookie and be completely satisfied without going into an all out frenzy for more and more to eat.
And my relationship with food is not the only thing that has changed. Everyday I learn more about me and everyday I love more about me. These revelations and learnings about who I am are the things I will continue to write about. Because writing about it helps me to absorb it and maybe someone else out there, who also struggles with food, can learn to love themselves too.
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