I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!

When we have babies, everyone talks about who gave them their eyes, their hair, their nose...  There is great pride in claiming height, unusual eyes, particularly unique hair color...

Who gave me my weird eating habits??  And why isn't anyone claiming them?

I am not the only one who has them.  When you make public your food piccadillos, folks come out of the woodwork to share theirs with you.  It actually helps a little to not feel so dirty or ashamed to find out about other peoples.  It also helps to bring your behaviour into the light and make you kind of go, "Huh.  Why the hell did I do that?"   Which, if you have any experience with any addiction, admitting you have a problem is the first step.  But when it's food -its just strange...  You NEED food to survive and hence the inability to "give it up".

You have them, you know you do....  The strange little behaviors that beg your attention to detail.  You eat your Oreos by dunking after pulling them apart.  You can only eat french fries with Thousand Island dressing.  You never, ever eat rare meat.  There has to be chocolate in the house. 

But my habits, and for others like me, indicate a more intense and negative relationship with food.  A friend of mine was telling me how her mom used to hide candy and so now she HAS to have chocolate in the house and her brother bought a refrigerator with a "secret drawer" to stash his goodies.  I'm tempted to find me one of those...

I remember always thinking of food as a reward.  I still want to reward myself with food -and comfort myself with it.  There was a time when there was not enough of it and times when there was an abundance....  And times when I wanted it above all else...  It was my friend -there for me when I did not believe any one else was -and there for me when I could not cope with anything or anyone else.  I could always rely on the people at the food place to talk to me when I was alone....  And when other people had let me down, I knew I could go to my favorite dinner place and the food would taste the same... it was reliable.

My approach to food used to be to INHALE.  Now, I concentrate more on trying to taste it, savor it.  I am trying to make my food an accessory to my relationships, not the main event.  My children help out in the kitchen and we do lots of meal planning to make sure all of our favorites are represented.  I am striving to make it less about the food than the experience.

Think about it -every social event -birthdays, weddings, baptisms, funerals -there is always food.  Movies, concerts, etc...  There is always food offered.  We are an overscheduled society -and our lives revolve around food.  Meet me for coffee, dinner, how about we go out for dessert?  It all overwhelms someone with food issues.

Food addiction can be catastrophic.  How do you shut off the voices in your head about the food but still eat appropriately.  There is also the issues of undoing the metabolic damage the overeating has done and getting your body in synch with your brain.  And now research shows that there is an actual equation of fat+sodium that fast food companies follow.  Nice, they are ganging up on us now!  And breaking the cycle is difficult alone...

The nice lady I pay by the hour told me yesterday that sometimes just accepting that something "is" has to be enough.   I am not supposed to figure out the why -so much as the how to change it.  Figuring out WHY I am not on the treadmill is not as important as getting me back on there now.  The WHY I got so heavy in the first place is not as critical as getting me back on course to reverse the damage and heal.

Money well spent.

Love is a many splendored thing...

Love has so many facets to it -and not the least of which is loving yourself.  I wonder if that is why all of my major life changes consists of events surrounding Valentine's Day...  My last big step was five years ago when I joined TOPS.  Oscar Wilde said, "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."  He would know...

Today... Well, today I went and met...  dunh dunh dunh...  HER. 

The counselor -I went and met her.  After a major panic attack in the parking lot I went in to the meeting -and found out I had gotten the time wrong so I started totally insecure and on the defensive.  Parr for the course I guess!  But she took me in anyway and did a great job of making me feel comfortable and then sneak attacked.

Guess what I found out when I got in there -she was NICE.  It was terrible, I actually like her and I think that means I have to go back.  She doesn't think I am crazy -(ha!  She just doesn't know me well enough yet -we will give her a bit!) and I think she might actually help.  Our goals are simple, measureable and realistic. 

I think we will see how it goes...

On a side note, HUNGER has been a big thing (imagine that, since I have food issues) and my friend Lynn has been blogging about it, which makes me think about it, which makes it come up more in day to day -kind of funny how that works.   Anyway...so I started thinking about how few of us actually know what hungry for food feels like because we are so caught up in the TIMING of eating (breakfast at 7am, lunch at noon, dinner at 6pm) or the social cues ("Meet me for a drink, for lunch, for breakfast, for ice cream, whatever) that we just don't actually feel HUNGER for food.

I think we feel hunger for other things -contact from other people, attention....  We crave human contact and we replace it with food or drink or gambling -whatever our "weakness" is...  The reverse of that is also true with how we SHOW love.  Let me cook for you, bring you a casserole, bake you a cake...

Today for my 2nd grader's Valentine's Day party, I was room mom designate.  I brought the treats in -and I brought carrots and grapes.  The kids got a smidgeon of candy too but not like the other classrooms that got cupcakes or pizza or donuts.  Some of the kids were disappointed at first -but the majority LOVED it.  I loved that my own child did not come home so hyped up on sugar that my day was miserable...  And it made it possible for me to say yes to the candy from the goody bag.  Some of it...

My point?  Providing an unexpected treat -is sometimes saying something like -Let's go for a walk and let's go for salad bar or workout or something.  Or curl up with me and read -or just sit and talk to me.  Or here -have carrots and grapes...

We as a society need to adjust our expectations and try to identify the hungers we have and meet them with the right tools for the job.  The tendency to overindulge in one area while being lacking in another is a dangerous loss of balance....  And contagious...

Now I am the first to admit I am fabulous at instigating this for everyone else...  Not so much for myself.  If I was, now I wouldn't be blogging, would I?