disordered

So you may have read my previous post on disordered eating and my battle with the bulge throughout my earlier years where I assert diets are damaging and create a negative association with food. I also said how I have accepted myself for who I am and have broken the chains from this negative association with food and now I eat freely whatever I like and refuse to feel guilt or go on a diet.

Well guess what I still stand by all the above and I’ve joined my local fat club (Slimming World)! Now you may see this as a contradiction but stay with me as I explain.

So nearly three years ago I met my man. Like I’ve heard in a lot of new relationships, when happy we can put on weight. I guess with happiness and acceptance of each other, comes that extra poundage! For me the weight has gradually gone on probably due to being wined and dined and I’ll occasionally join him in his love of snacking crap in the evening in fact thinking about it he does like to snack quite a bit. But perhaps the biggest culprit is that social glass or two of wine in an evening that I wouldn’t have had if I was living on my own. So all in all over the first couple of years I think I put on a stone (14lb’s) so not anything too much and certainly not anything that really bothered me.

However, it all started to go a bit pear shaped or perhaps my body did when I thought it a good idea to build my man a bar in a shed in the back yard. Not being big drinkers and just enjoying a social one here and there, I didn’t really think we would use it that much but how wrong was I. Th compilation e bar was a novelty at first and it was like being a kid in a sweet shop. Not sure about you but when I was a kid I loved playing shop and it was a bit like that only playing barwoman. Anyway I think we all know where this is all going…the more we used the bar the more we started to get even more cuddly than we were.

Neither of us were that bothered to do anything about it until my clothes were literally screaming when wearing them and I really didn’t want to buy a new wardrobe of clothes and be mistaken for a beached whale when at the seaside. Yes we could have just decided to cut down our drinking and ate healthier but I think we both needed a bit of discipline about it.

Now during the same time it seemed that nearly everyone I know were members of Slimming World and they were really raving about it and had lost significant amounts of weight, Danny too knew of people. I had tried it out when I was 18 and quite liked it as they have big lists of ‘Free’ foods which incorporates most veg, most fruit, grains, beans and lean meat and by ‘Free’ it means you can eat as much as you want. I liked this as I’m not into restricting myself and measuring out a pea sized portion like some diets. I viewed it more as a healthy eating regime that shouldn’t end once the weight is off.

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Over the years my tastes have changed too so the types of foods I crave these days happen to be healthy foods rather than junk so being able to eat an unlimited amount of all the foods I love wouldn’t really feel like I was depriving myself but just being kind to my body by feeding it the much needed ingredients it needed.

So a couple of weeks ago we rocked up to our local fat fighters club and so the journey begins…

I’m intending to give updates to my weight loss journey as it will make me more accountable and also it will be a bit of a journal as I’m interested in seeing how being on a ‘diet’ has any negative effects to my relationship with food. Will I start obsessing over what I can eat? Will I start labelling foods as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ again? Will being on a diet make me think more about food? Will I feel deprived? Will I feel guilty if I eat something I shouldn’t? How will I feel if I put on weight one week? and Will it work?

If you are interested in following my dieting journey then pop your email address into the box above right and you’ll be emailed when I post a blog!

So I’ll start by saying I don’t believe in diets. Obviously I’m not saying I don’t think they exist as that would be plain silly but I don’t think they are healthy for us. I’m not talking about healthy in view of what you eat on them but more for our mental health. In fact I think they are quite the opposite and quite damaging so have avoided them like the plague. diet cycle

I could qualify this statement by saying that diets don’t work for people who suffer from ‘disordered eating’ but I’d probably argue that if you did not suffer from an eating disorder and had a healthy relationship with food then you are unlikely to ever need to go on a diet. Yes, believe it or not, there are some people out there that naturally regulate what they eat, so if they have a lot of food one day they cut down the next or perhaps they will just eat what they need. It reminds me when I took my niece, 13 years old at the time, on a cruise. Now for those that have been on a cruise you’ll be aware that you can virtually eat 24/7 and have a massive buffet with so many attractive looking foods available. Despite this my niece seemed to eat portions according to how hungry she was and not according to how many foods she wanted to try! I was astonished as remembered back to when I was 13, I would have HAD to try a bit of everything! But I can now see that back then was around the time I developed disordered eating.

For those that have not heard of this new fangled condition – there’s certainly nothing new about it but it’s now been given a name, there’s a great blog post that sums it up in a nutshell:

Disordered eating–the less serious, but much more common version of an eating disorder–is an unhealthy, obsessive relationship with food. Disordered eating is so common that it’s arguably, and unfortunately, “normal.”

Quotation-Toni-Sorenson-yourself-self-help-self-awareness-belief-self-esteem-Meetville-Quotes-191098 I made a conscious decision years ago to accept myself for how I am and accepted that my weight can go up and down and that I am not defined by how I appear on the outside but who I am as a person. With this acceptance actually led to weight loss and to me eating much healthier and ditching the negative connotations I had with food. Yes, I still put on weight if I consume too much but I also lose weight, it’s never more than a few pounds either way but this is not a conscious effort and just happens.

We need to go back in time to look at my journey. I was very fortunate to grow up in the era where most things were homemade from raw ingredients so very little over processed or packaged food for me. We were also lucky to have a decent size garden so we grew a massive range of fruits, vegetables and herbs and we kept chickens so nice fresh eggs. Genetically modified foods were not around and none of this pumping water into chickens malarky went on.

I remember when packaged sandwiches were introduced to the world back in the mid 80’s and even remember that they were about 60p. I was 13 at the time and remember thinking what a weird thing to do and I don’t think anyone thought they would take off. It just seemed such a silly idea when it’s so easy to make a sandwich at home for a fraction of the price. Little did I know that the world was evolving and people were to grasp onto these ‘time saving’ solutions, despite them being costly options and quite often not as nutritionally good for you. Grated cheese was another one but look today at how these two items are so ingrained into our society! But life has definitely got quicker and a lot more demanding, more women have careers which they balance with keeping a happy household and let’s face it, motherhood is more than a full time job so something has to give and quite often nutrition does as we find time saving solutions in the guise of ready meals, sauces, takeaways etc.

Outside I came across as confident and took on the role of entertainer at school which looking back emanated from my need for peer approval. I messed around and did what I thought was cool and it was almost like I put on this big bubbly persona because I wasn’t confident being me. I had a negative self image and didn’t think people would like the ‘real me’. I was quite insecure probably like most teenagers but I was very good at hiding it. I think the reality was that I was well liked and popular at school but deep down I didn’t feel it because of my low self esteem.

My way of coping with adolescence and puberty was to comfort eat. Luckily, I was growing and quite active so was able to pack away a fair amount and not suffer the consequences of weight gain…at first! But as time went on, I started to put weight on and became less active. Putting weight on further knocks your confidence so to comfort myself, out came my friend the chocolate bar or my other mate, big fat cream cake! The problem was these friends that comforted me also caused the weight gain so they were not in fact very good friends.

Looking back I blamed the weight gain for making me unhappy but I can now see that I was wrongly linking my body size to happiness. Being young and gullible I believed the media that tells us to be happy and have the perfect life you have to look like those women on the front of the glossy magazines. Strong societal values are also at play telling you that you should look and be a certain size. The media lies and tells us that it’s all about outer beauty and it seems being a kind, caring person with inner beauty is nowhere near as important as looking the part! So when you don’t measure up to that image then you are in some way a failure or not good enough. What a warped lie, yet a very powerful one and it’s no wonder that there is such a big incidence of adolescents that suffer with eating disorders when this is what society is telling them.

Now over my lifetime I’ve had an eclectic mix of friends including some that look like the girls on the magazines and I can tell you that looking like a model does not bring happiness and doesn’t mean you will have a better life – if anything it would probably mean that you’ll be more at risk of attracting false people who want to be with you because of the way you look and not because of who you are as a person. Even writing this now , it seems incredulous that there’s some people out there who put all the value on looks and not who someone is as a person.

Talk to any tall, slim, attractive girl and see if how she looks has made her happy. I think you may find that they have their own problems from looking that way. I’ve had friends who’ve struggled to make friends as other girls would think they were ‘up themselves’ or ‘who does she think she is’ just based on how they look. People who think these things are obviously insecure and not at peace with how they look but still it’s not exactly their fault if they have pretty faces and lovely figures. I’ve also known girls to be bullied because of being ‘too beautiful’. So the grass is not greener on the other side.

As my weight began to creep up, my relationship with food got worse. Society again is to partly blame by attaching connotations to foods. How many times have you heard of a food being referred to you as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ and I’m afraid most diets are based on this negative vocabulary so if you eat something we label as ‘bad’ you then get the associated guilt and feeling of failure or being told you can’t eat certain foods as they are bad for you. This can make people want them more so when they eventually cave in and have it, they feel like a bad person.

I used to try and hide the fact I was fat by wearing tents. I thought by wearing a tent people

would not see that I was fat – in reality, when you are bigger you actually look slimmer by wearing more fitting clothes! I remember one period of my life, probably early twenties when people would ask if I had a boyfriend, I would look at them in disbelief that they had asked a question like that and would think ‘Look at me, of course I don’t’ but outwardly I’d make a joke of it by saying ‘No, I haven’t found anyone good enough for me yet’ or ‘I’m far too happy being single, I don’t want to be tied down’. I really did believe that no one would want to go out with me because of the way I looked. In reality I gave off the ‘I don’t want a boyfriend vibe’ and ‘Don’t come near me’ so there were guys interested but I acted like I wasn’t bothered by them so they didn’t pursue me. Them not pursuing me was my affirmation that they didn’t find me attractive. Now I look back and see how silly my line of thinking was and how warped my outlook was but back then it was my reality. Self fulfilling prophecies really do have a lot to answer for.

My weight was also something I could not talk about to anyone. The thought of talking about it mortified me and I saw my unhealthy obsession with food as a weakness. We can’t be seen to be weak now can we? I didn’t realise that showing weaknesses actually is a very attractive trait and also a very brave and strong thing to do. No I was British and was born with that stiff upper lip. Luckily with time, things become saggy, so my lip has now relaxed. As for writing this blog post, posting it and being exposed to the whole world… Well even telling one person in confidence back then would have been mortifying so there is no way ever I could have done this, but the key is that it no longer has any power over me. Being overweight is just a fact to me now and it luckily does not have all the attached and associated baggage with it.

With age sometimes comes wisdom but also I’m quite an introspective and a self analysing

kind of gal and I consciously made the decision that I wasn’t going to let food control me anymore and I decided to be nice to myself and give myself a bit of acceptance and self love. I decided that if people didn’t like me because I was fat then that was their lookout. And in reality, I’d suspect there are very few people in the world that would not like someone due to their size and if they were that shallow then why would I be bothered what they thought anyway? Ahhh…but you do when you can’t see the wood for the trees.

People moan about putting on the years and getting older, but for me years brings wisdom and self acceptance and the confidence to be yourself so I embrace it. So what if you don’t look young anymore – age has given me the confidence to quite frankly not give a s**t! In every laughter line is years of smiles and good times and in every wrinkle is wisdom where I’ve learnt from my worrying experiences, a bit of extra weight is where I’ve lived life and not spent it in fear of what I’ve ate!

I now allow myself to put weight on and not care and as a result my weight usually

naturally goes down. If I fancy eating a bar of lard for breakfast I will and I refuse to feel guilty for doing so (although I can safely say I don’t get the urge to), if I want 5 plates full of buffet food at that party I will have it and guess what I may feel a bit full and wish I hadn’t ate quite so much but do I feel guilty and start counting up all the calories I’ve consumed? NO because let me tell you this, I prefer to live my life to the full and not waste my time on all these insecurities and fear. As a result I have a very healthy self esteem, I like myself (mostly, it wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have the odd wobble here and there) and above all I am a pretty healthy size. I don’t know whether it’s an age thing but the foods I’m attracted to now has completely changed to what I craved before, so now the thought of a nice healthy salad is far more mouth watering and attractive than a chocolate bar. They say you get out what you put in so feed your body with great nutrition and you’re going to get more out of it than feeding yourself with crap!

Bit of a long way of getting here but that’s why I don’t think diets will work for someone suffering with disordered eating. To lose weight you first need to accept who you are and stop letting your size determine who you are as a person. Instead of wasting time calorie counting, be constructive and spend the time learning to love yourself for who you are and put the value on who you are as a person and not on what you look like in the mirror! Break your negative relationship with food and you may just find you start choosing healthier options and will naturally lose weight. Or let me throw you a curve ball, you may even start to love and embrace yourself for who you, rolls of fat and all, and realise that you do not need to define yourself by your size anymore but who you are as a person! Your new found inner confidence will then ooze out which is what people will be attracted to!

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