Friday Food-day 3/2/12

Everyone has a relationship with food--it's unavoidable because we must eat in order to survive. However the relationship is very personal, serving purposes unique to each of us. An athlete approaches this relationship with deep respect as it is the fuel that supports his or her goals. A parent or spouse may view food as a catalyst to showing how much they care about those who will receive it. Then there are people like me whose relationship with food moves between best friend and a device to promote self hate.

The summer I turned 14 I was sent to live with a different family, and on a night when it was my turn to clean up after dinner I walked around the table eating everyone's McDonald's leftovers (and there were 7 people in that family, so that was a LOT of food). I couldn't stop, and I thought it was just because I hadn't eaten Mickey D's in such a long time. I now know this was a response to the worst part of my childhood, a response that would become a mechanism of comfort for the next 26 years.

As life went on, when I wasn't being comforted by food, I was using it to tear myself down. When people don't own up to what they've done to you, I think it becomes second nature to just blame yourself. I remember a moment of such deep self hatred that I forced myself to eat a box of cookies even though they were making me sick. I sat on the floor of my bedroom, mentally jumped into a black tornado and held onto it with each bite. Other times I've honestly believed that I just didn't deserve a better life so I turned against me and treated myself with as much disregard as other people were.

There have been a few times when I've been able to turn it around, and it always has happened after I've taken a stand for myself. The struggle was learning how to make taking a stand a habit and not just an occasional thing. Most people who know me well are aware that the biggest fight of my life began three years ago and then reached a crescendo again last year. These fights had to happen in order to get to a point where I could finally like myself, feel happy to be alive, and do a 180 with food. Now, having cleared out every speck of bad from my life, I am able to change my relationship with food to one of love, respect and appreciation.

No one chooses to be overweight. Every pound holds a story. Those stories have to be reckoned with in order to let go of it all so that ultimately the relationship with food can be reconciled and turned into something positive.