Self-Psychoanalytical Crapola

It’s really difficult for me to realize how out of control I am while I’m out of control. Once I regain control and have settled down a bit, it becomes very apparent, even scary.

This is more on my battle with controlling my weight. I have had some very encouraging, long awaited success in this area over the last month. I even started another blog, Fine Tuning, without letting most of you know, to document my progress. I feel so much better and better about myself, partly because I’m losing weight, but mostly because I feel like I’m regaining some control over this part of my life.

I think lots of people are emotional eaters. I know I tend to eat to distract myself from other things that really probably should have my attention. I eat when I feel like there’s nothing I can do about a situation. I eat socially to lift my spirits. I eat brownies and the like for comfort. I love good food, but it’s more than that. Food makes me feel better and just like anything else we use to make ourselves feel better, it can get out of control.

When my trainer first suggested limiting my calories to 1500 a day I told her she was crazy. I’d starve to death. I didn’t even try it. I just decided that there was no way I could do that and that I’d have to find another way to lose weight. I started working out without changing what I was eating, to no avail. Since October 9^th I’ve been counting calories on The Daily Plate and not really working out at all. I want to work out, but I’ve been crazy busy since I picked up the second job teaching. I’ve lost 5.6 pounds so far.

I’m realizing how totally out of control I was. I had no will power and quite frankly I didn’t even want it. I wanted to eat to comfort myself, so I didn’t really want to have the ability to resist what I was using to make myself feel better. Now that I can look at food I’d love to eat and make a rational assessment of whether or not it’s a good idea, I feel accomplished. I feel like the pendulum is starting to settle in the middle. I’ll explain.

I gained a lot of weight in my marriage, about 50 pounds over 6.5 years. I gained and lost in that period, but when I left I was just about 50 pounds heavier than when I married. Since I left I gained another 22 pounds, in 18 months. This just occurred to me this very moment. I’ve really been using food to cope with this whole separation/divorce thing without really realizing it. After I reached a certain weight, I just stopped paying attention. I chose to be in denial because I didn’t want to realize what I was doing.

So, the pendulum. A pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and then settles in the middle. While I feel like leaving my marriage and making some choices about healing some relationships while letting others go has been taking control over important areas of my life, the pendulum had swung to the other extreme with regards to how I’m coping with the stress of this divorce. I feel like it’s settling a bit now. I’m acknowledging how stressed I am and doing things to help with that, and I feel like now I can stop depending on food to help with this. I hate these self-psychoanalytical posts, but it helps me see myself better.

Are there still areas of my life I am not happy about? Yep. Are there still things I’m doing to avoid some emotions or fears that may be lurking just beneath the surface? Almost certainly. Are there areas in my life where I’m just wildin’ out because I can? Yep. Is that a reactionary symptom to all of the constraints on the other end of the pendulum (read: the church)? Yep.

And I know this, man!