Some history

My Mother. God, what a cliche. But yes, my Mother messed me up with food.

She was SUPER restrictive. She would tell us there was good food and bad food and she would loose it if we ate bad food. So of course all we wanted ALL the time was the bad food. We would steal it, buy it in secret, lie to get it, and when we were around it we would stuff it down our throats as fast as we could with barely a breath in between.

She also had a thing about TV. We were tightly controlled around TV. We were allowed to watch a mere 2 hours a week, and we would sneak it and steal it and hide it in exactly the same way. The holy grail was watching TV at the same time as stuffing ourselves in front of the telly.

I have just figured out that my bingeing only works when I am watching telly, very rarely in the car, but generally the telly has to be part of the binge. I remember vividly when we started eating dinner with the kids in the dining room, like normal people. I hated it. I still do. I can't get comfortable, I'm tetchy and don't enjoy the food, just want it to be over. I think this comes from the dinners as a child were always filled with such tension.

My sister would never eat anything normal and my mother would be wild with rage and fury as my stubborn sister willfully shoved the food back and behaved like my mother was trying to poison her. If that wasn't happening, then the food was wretched, no flavour, no effort, waaay to many steamed veg with plain meat blah blah blah. Much like the food my kids like now and that make me want to slit my wrists. Of course the real tension was Dad. He would regularly miss dinner or leave in the middle of it to call some one overseas or answer a call, whatever. Well, this would send my mother off like a rocket and that was it. She could hold a fuming grudge like no one on earth, still can. The table would be vibrating with tension and who on earth can enjoy their cold floppy grey beans when that's going on?

Then there was the Hypoglycemia. My mother was convinced she was Hypoglycemic. She said if her blood sugar dropped past a 'certain point' she would loose her shit and start crying and whatever. Nice excuse for horrid bipolar behaviour. I was being tormented at school by evil bitchy girls who were, as only girls can do, my best friends. I would come home and burst into tears. My mother was completely convinced that I was just low in sugar, and I needed to eat, something 'good' of course. I was told to always make sure I have some food around, and never, never allow myself to get hungry and never eat sugar when I am as I'll go on a high and then collapse into misery.

I lived by this rot, I was never tested by a Doctor or anything, just told to eat when I feel bad or stressed. So I did. And so developed the emotional dependance on food. I was six or seven? This is a very hard thing to pull your head out of. Obviously as I am still in it. As is my mother. She eats when she's freaking out, regularly, but I think she stops when she is full and has never been overweight, oh, and of course, she never eats any 'bad' food.

Now, I need to say something here, I was NOT a fat kid. I was skinny and slim until I was 18. I swam like a fish constantly and also, I was never given access to the 'bad' food and so I kept my weight down. But, I was six foot by the time I was 15. I was told very often how HUGE I was, always by some obnoxious small blond woman. I never fit normal clothes for kids my age, and EVERYTHING was too short. Everything. I walked around looking like Pee Wee Herman for most of my life. It was depressing and frustrating. I also had dark hair and pale skin, so when all the brown skinned blond haired girls ran around in their swimmers, they looked hairless. I never did, and as my mother was a hippy, she never shaved, hence, I never knew women shaved their legs. No one told me that, I thought I was just a hairy beast and it would never change.

My relationship with my body was always fraught, my parents were hippies and felt they shouldn't talk about what I looked like. I should never feel that they are assessing my appearance. Nice idea, but not so great when you just don't get told very often that you are beautiful. And I was. I really was. I was model beautiful. But I never once felt like I did. I always felt I took up too much space, just filled the universe too much. I felt overpowering and imposing and like I stood out like a sore thumb. In a way I did, tall, dark hair, white skin, but I hated it. At one point I became completely agoraphobic and wouldn't walk down the street. I fought that for years, I couldn't go to the shops on my own, felt every eye on me, every one judging and seeing my ugly flaws. Of course, I was bullied by more horrible girls in high school too, and they crushed the last bits of happiness. I spent a large amount of time in late high school and just after being suicidally depressed and isolated.

What does all that horror mean now? I take up a hell of a lot more space than I did when I was a skinny kid! That is really hard. When I lost the 52kg after my last child was born I felt by some kind of magic I had shrunk myself. I felt, normal. I felt confident and happy with my body for the first time in my life. Then my thyroid collapsed and I gained 25kg back. A lot of bingeing in that time. I was white knuckling that time I was skinny. It was hard. But I was happy about my body, for the first time ever. I miss that. I miss that so much. That's hard. That makes me want to go back to the starvation diets.

The last two days I have been eating like a mad woman, but only when the telly is on. So, should I just never watch telly and eat? But then I don't get the lovely peace and calm of a binge. The books says that's what my body is telling me I need. But I have no idea what else to do to get that. Swimming. That's the only thing. When I was a kid it and riding my bike were the only two physical things that made me happy like the food. We are looking at getting a pool. And I'm going to try and pull out my old bike and ride around the block with the kids.

My shrink says I need to make small steps towards nourishing myself. I need to just make one little step in each area. So, find the bike. Called a client I wanted and might get them. Kids are going back to school tomorrow, and I want to clean out my studio.

Little things.

Breaking the silence...

The inside of a binge is deep and dark; it is a descent into a world in which every restriction you have placed on yourself is cut loose. The forbidden is obtainable. Nothing matters—not friends, not family, not lovers. Nothing matters but food. Lifting, chewing, swallowing—mechanical frenzied acts, one following the other until a physical limit, usually nausea, is reached. Then comes the sought-after numbness, the daze, the indifference to emotional pain. Like a good drug food knocks out sensation.

- Geneen Roth 'Feeding the hungry heart the experience of emotional eating'

This was the paragraph that completely devastated me and brought me to tears. It described what I have been doing for most of my life, since a young child. I had always thought it was 'just me' and that it was the sick twisted thing that I did that no one on earth would understand. See, I wasn't bulimic, they puke it all up again, I could never do that. So, just thought I was some kind of freak

This has been coming for a long time, two and a half years ago I started gaining weight again. I went to a specialist who was a nutritionist and psychologist specializing in eating disorders. At the time I was on one of those last stitch efforts diets, no carbs (including tomatoes and broccoli) until 6pm, then anything I want for exactly 60 minutes. My god, I can't even believe I did that one. She told me that if I continued this diet I would get sick, and it would eventually affect my heart, possibly give me nasty things like diabetes. YAY!

Her suggestion? NO MORE DIETING, ever. Shall I repeat the last one, EVER. Did that freak me out? Umm, yes! I was desperate to loose weight, I had spent the last 24 months fighting over 5 kg (not that much on a frame of my size, I'm six foot). My thyroid was collapsing and I was desperate.

She told me that dieting creates the obsessive need to eat, and think about food. She gave me a bunch of books (Diet No More, and If not diet then what) I read them cover to cover. I could see the points of their arguments, but they all said it would be a loss of 5 kg A YEAR, that's right, stay in fatty land for years and years. I was devastated.

I devised a plan, loose the 20 or so kg I needed to loose, and then I can look at why I binge, and all that tricky stuff.

Well, that was two and a half years ago. And, nothing has changed, sorry, did I say nothing? No, sorry, two and a half years has allowed me to GAIN 15 kg!! Yes. Great.

While attempting to pull myself together and start yet another diet, weeks of bingeing and fighting and feeling wretched. I came across the Roth book. I was so moved by the book I decided, that's it, no more diet, no more restrictions. I felt free and relieved and didn't really want any food. Ate when I was hungry and relaxed. For two days. Then my husband left for a two week overseas trip and left me with a sick kid and a grumpy kid. And today was the day of en masse consumption. BAD. BAD. BAD.

Ok, this is it. My first post. The first time I have talked publicly about the pain and heartache food has caused me in my life. I want this space to be a completely honest and open. This blog, I hope will be the catalyst for real and long term change. I want to examine why I eat or what I feel when I want to binge, and try to find alternatives. I want to nourish my body with good food and my soul with...whatever it needs because food can't fill your soul.