This is me in the Star Wars Shirt….Three and a half years ago. Not the happiest time in my life.
This is what I looked like last Sunday.
The interesting thing is I thought I looked GOOD at that Birthday Party. In fact there have been times in my life when I have been even heavier than the first picture. The question is how to get from point A to point B. The first step for me was that I realized I was an emotional eater. I had so many emotions going on that I trapped inside, and shoved them down with food. I joined and emotional eating support group. In this group I learned some tools. The first tool was to identify how I felt when I was eating. I had to start paying attention, I had to look inside myself. I learned these acronyms, HALT or BLAST
H- hungry
A-angry
L-lonely
T-tired
B-bored
L-lonely
A-angry
S-sad
T-tired
This was actually REALLY hard for me. It had been such a long time since I had allowed myself to feel. I was NUMB. I did not feel that I could say how I really felt. I didn’t even know where to start and a lot of times I would just cry. I was tired ALL of the time. I had an actual physical pain where my neck meets my throat… when I would try to express my feelings, almost like I was choking. I learned in my group that this was actually and “emotional” block. What was happening was that my feelings got STUCK because I didn’t know how to verbalize them in a safe way. After some practice and learning how to communicate my feelings, that feeling of choking went away. This was the start of regaining my voice. Also, I began to notice that after any sort of disagreement I would eat. I realized that I would eat when I was ANGRY or FRUSTRATED. So now using these acronyms I stop before I eat and I ask myself,” Am I really hungry? “If not I stop to identify how I am feeling maybe I am lonely, or maybe I am bored, or any of the feelings suggested in the acronyms. There is a process I work through mentally. It sort of goes like this. Am I hungry? No. What am I then? Mad. Why am I mad? I am mad because…………… Then I process my feelings of anger and what they really mean. I allow myself to FEEL. It is okay to be mad, or sad, or lonely. It is not okay for me to abuse myself by shoving the feelings down with a bag of Doritos. ( IT IS okay to have a SERVING of Doritos occasionally…especially if one happens to be at NED’S for lunch :))
It has taken me a long time and I am not trying to brag here. What I am grateful for is the fact that I have a healthy relationship with food. I have struggled with food for years. I think in the LDS community, food is one of the things that’s not taboo. It isn’t alcohol, drugs, porn etc..yet, it still gives the same release of dopamine into the system that gives one a feeling of happiness. A false sense, a temporary sense of happiness and eating food is okay, so a lot of us turn to it. I am a work in progress, I have goals yet to reach. I have work still to do, I am no Heidi Klum. Nor, do I wish to be. I am grateful that I have learned to enjoy whole foods. I try to stick as close to the source as possible for most of my meals. I do drink a EAS or ATKINS pre-made protein shake each day. I am not a huge meat or egg eater so I need to get my protein in from other sources. I love to exercise, and I love to have a goal to train for. These things combined have helped me to feel strong and healthy in my body. I know a lot of us women and I am sure men too struggle with food, especially in the LDS community. I wrote this post because a wonderful friend of mine, has been asked to start a support group at the Stake Center for over eaters. If you struggle with being overweight, I encourage you to take this class to try and figure out WHY.
Over eaters Unite! Let’s lasso our feelings, deal with them appropriately, learn tools to make us stronger, and become healthy together! You will NOT be sorry.
With Love, The Sunny D