30 Days: Day 9- Something That Overwhelms Me

Food. Food completely overwhelms me.

Many of you know portions, pieces or the whole of my life story concerning food. The fact that there is a story at all speaks volumes.

I grew up spending the majority of my time with my Nanny, a woman born on a dirt road in Tucker Ga, whose small amount of travels never placed her too far from home. All the things you stereotypically imagine about southern food and cooking is what I grew up eating. She literally had enormous containers of lard, and jars full of saved bacon fat. And she LOVED feeding me. If food was one of the five love languages, she spoke it well. Needless to say, I was a chunk and like every other kid who is a chunk, I suffered at the hands of my peers for some years.

(Around 10 on the left, 12 on the right)

Around the end of middle school I started to "thin out". Mostly I just got taller so the fat seemed more evenly dispersed. Maybe I was eating less, or better, I don't know. By this time I had lived away from Nanny for some time so there was less lard involved. I had also watched my mom for most of my life hop from one diet to another- always displeased. My dad was also obsessed with his weight and how he looked, spending lots of time at the gym and always exceptionally fit. If my pre-dementia memory serves me correctly it was around this time, end of middle school, beginning of high school that I started to accept warped thinking about food, eating, weight, etc. And no matter how much thinner I was compared to years prior, I still did not fit the cookie cutter high school cheerleader shape. I am all, and have always been, thighs and booty.

(17 on the left, 19-20 on the right)

Throughout high school I generally tried to eat as little as possible and balanced that out with junk food binges, all the while never really gaining or losing weight, but always insecure, always over aware of the issue. Looking back there was nothing fat about me at that point. I was squishy, but not even technically overweight.

And then, pregnancy at 20. At which point I threw all caution to the wind, spent nine months eating pizza and Chinese buffet, leaving me almost 100lbs heavier than I was when I found out I was pregnant. I stayed overweight till Jesiah was two and it was perhaps at this point that my eating and weight issues became the biggest they had ever been.

(Very end of pregnancy with Crisco loving Nanny on the right, afterwards on left)

To lose the weight I worked out 1-2 hours a day, 6 days a week and consumed 1200 calories a day for about 6 months. It was the first time I had ever really exercised and my obsessive self picked it up really quickly. I couldn't miss a day, and I could not go over the amount of calories I allotted myself. Obviously, it worked, and I remained pretty exercise obsessed all the way through my pregnancy with Presley and then again after her birth.

Somewhere along the way I picked up bulimia and it was only a few short summers ago that I was at my very worst, purging pretty much every time I ate. I have worked hard to move away from that, and although I have had a few baby backwards steps, I have. In fact, living in CA and enrolling in school has kept me from finding time to do much of anything other than watch what I eat, and despite the non exercise not actually being ideal, maybe the silver lining is that I have been pretty mentally solid without the obsession which is good.

Don't get me wrong. I NEVER actually eat what I want. Really. I am NEVER not thinking about calories or now, chemicals. I order a lot of salads when we go out and eat mostly meat and veggies at home. I won't order myself dessert, only take a few bites of someone elses. I am non indulgent 99.9% of the time. I cannot imagine being able to order what I actually wanted to eat, eat it, and then go on about my day.

And now, as far as I have come, and I have come really far, I feel like the clean eating movement is serving to bring me back into unnecessary obsession with food. Now it isn't good enough to eat well, you have to also eat clean because the chemicals found in everything ups your chances of dying of everything.

And what about my kids??? I have done what I feel is an exceptional job keeping them removed from my warped weight issues, but is what I am feeding them putting them at risk? Is a night or two of pizza making me a negligent parent? What if we are out and have to grab something on the go? Am I supposed to keep a cooler of organic bread and nitrate free ham sandwiches for everyone? Furthermore, how am I supposed to afford to feed these eating machines organic, grass fed, nitrate free stuff anyways?? My grocery bill is already at the top of our budget and that is with about half "good", half "normal". And which is it that we are supposed to be? Paleo? Vegan? Vegetarian? Gluten Free? Does anyone actually know? Does it actually matter?

It is all too much, and it always has been. There is nothing in my life that has overwhelmed me so enormously, for so long.