The Story So Far

Ok, so here it is – my next post.  As promised this is a round-up of my eating history to date.

Looking back

Up until 2005 I never had a problem with food and I never cared very much about my weight.  Sure, I knew I wasn’t skinny but I didn’t think I was particularly fat either.  I was just me.  I sat somewhere in the middle of a healthy weight range, ate what I wanted when I wanted and didn’t give it a second thought.  I might have done the typical female thing of complaining that I was ‘fat’ but that doesn’t mean I actually cared about it.  Deep down, I knew that I wasn’t and to be honest I really enjoyed food. 

The year 2000 saw me and my boyfriend (now husband) head off to University for our first taste of independence.  It brought with it many late night doughnut feasts, vending machine raids at 12pm and a few too many takeaways.  Basically, we ate like typical students.  I went up a dress size but still I didn’t really care.  I graduated in 2003 and headed into the world of work.  I continued to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it and accepted my size for what it was.  I was in a loving relationship and was just having fun being an ‘adult’.

Then in 2005 everything changed.  I don’t remember how and I don’t remember why.  I do remember being obsessed with the television show ‘You Are What You Eat’.  I loved the transformations that people went through – from overweight, unhealthy, inactive people to seemingly very healthy, slimmer and more active individuals.  Above all else, they looked extremely happy.  I wanted a piece of that.  More than changing my weight (which by now had started to get me down a little) I really wanted to feel healthy.  I recognised that I felt unhealthy and wanted to change.  In my mind healthy eating and being slim were inextricably linked.  Healthy = thin and thin = healthy, so as well as focussing on eating more natural foods I also restricted what I ate.  I had decided it was time to lose a few pounds.

Let the restriction commence

My very first foray into weight loss was the Special K diet.  You know the one: you eat two bowls of Special K for breakfast and lunch, followed by a ‘normal’ dinner for two weeks and watch the pounds melt away.  Yes, I do appreciate the irony of the situation.  I wanted to get healthy so I ate a heavily processed cereal.  To me though, this was healthy.  Healthier than doughnuts at any rate.  I also wanted an uncomplicated ‘plan’ to stick too and this was it. 

So, I ate a bowl of Special K with skimmed milk for breakfast, another for lunch with a banana and a ‘proper’ meal in the evening which was a salad.  Unsurprisingly I was really hungry on this plan.  I literally had to sit on my hands and mentally slap myself around the face when I considered caving and eating something at about 10am on the first day but I stuck it out and somehow managed to last all the way until bed time.  I successfully completed the first day and there was no going back.  I lasted a total of ten days on this plan without faltering.  In the end I gave it up because it had simply become boring.

I then made up my own healthy eating weight-loss ‘plan’, which loosely contained the same number of calories as the Special K plan (although I didn’t specifically count).  I lost a lot of weight – a total of around 40-50lbs – and was really happy with how I looked.  I would admire myself in every mirror I came across.  I loved my thin legs with a nice gap between the thighs.  I loved my twiggy arms and I loved my nice, flat stomach.  I was underweight but I thought I looked great.  My main fear was gaining weight.  I didn’t want to be a failure.  I didn’t want to be a statistic – yet another person who lost weight and couldn’t keep it off. So in order to remain svelte, I kept gradually cutting back what I ate until eventually I would have days where I wasn’t eating anything at all.

Opening the floodgates

In the end my eating habits were having a negative effect on me and after a visit to the Doctor I was advised to gain some weight.  At this point I kind of wanted to gain some weight and eat ‘normally’ again.  After the appointment with the Doctor I went straight to the supermarket and ate two fresh, double-chocolate cookies.  They were the best tasting cookies of my life!  Those cookies signified my freedom from food restriction, or so I thought.  As it turns out, those cookies actually signified a freefall into binge eating.  They ignited a hunger that had been suppressed for years.  Yes, I’m a cliché –girl heavily restricts diet, girl loses weight, girl binge eats, girl gains weight, girl no longer has healthy relationship with food – whatever. 

In hindsight, what I really needed in order to restore my weight and have a healthy relationship was food was a nutritionist and a therapist, but it wasn’t offered.  I thought I’d be just fine but it was really hard.  It was easy at first, I just added a few more ‘treats’ to my daily diet.  However, once I noticeably started to gain weight I panicked and wanted to remain thin.  This started the binge/starve cycle.  I liked the taste of food and being able to eat but I also wanted to remain rail thin.  It was torturous. 

Food and weight consumed my every thought.  I restricted until I could bear it no longer and then I binged.  I binged hard – days of eating absolute crap.  Stuffing it down fast and not even tasting it.  Eating until I could physically eat no more, going to bed in pain and unable to sleep from the sheer amount of food in my stomach.  Getting as much ‘naughty’ food as I could before the next round of restriction.   I went through physical and emotional hell.  It lasted for about two years (coincidentally, this is pretty much the exact same length of time as my restrictive diet) and I gained about 24lbs, returning to my pre-food obsession, pre-University weight-gain weight.

The Healthy Living Blog Era

By the time January 2010 came I was tired of binging.  I was emotionally drained and didn’t want to give any more of my time to it but I didn’t know how to stop.  I didn’t seem able to.  I tried and tried but it felt like I was taking one step forward and two steps back.  However I persevered.  The main problem was that I was overwhelmed with guilt whenever I ate, particularly when snacking.  I felt like I was eating twice as much as I normally would, and I was!

I had to recognise that I was now eating a normal amount of food, instead of trying to exist on minimal calories.  Colleagues commented on how often and what I ate, which just drew everybody’s attention to my shifting eating habits.  Thankfully, a few months into 2010 I discovered healthy living blogs and I was hooked.  Here I could see exactly what other people ate, which was the reassurance I needed that I wasn’t abnormal for eating good meals and plenty of snacks. 

Unfortunately, I got a bit sidetracked with the whole healthy living thing and my ‘rule’ became that I could eat whenever I was hungry but it had to be healthy food.  This worked to an extent and through sheer determination I slowly but surely stopped binge eating.  Success?  Well, kind of.  I transitioned from binging to just plain overeating.  I was still regularly eating in excess and still thinking about food all of the time.  I was nearly free but not quite.

The Next Step

And that’s where I am now.  I want to get to a point where I don’t really think about food any more and I just naturally make good choices most of the time.  I know it will take time to get there, and this blog is going to document my journey to becoming a healthier person.

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If you made it to the end of this mammoth post then I salute you!  I promise not all of my posts will be as long but I just wanted to lay all of my cards on the table and get you up to speed with how I got here and what I hope to achieve.