ADDICTION|FOOD|LIFELESSONS
My Journey to Overcoming Food Obsession to Wholeness
I quit filling up the cake hole and became whole instead
Unhappy Years
My teenage home and school life were not happy years, and at the impressionable age of 13, my disordered relationship with food and alcohol began. New to secondary school, there was a girl in the year above who befriended me early on, obsessed with image, boys, dieting, and starving herself in a quest to be thin.
At the tender age of 13, I didn’t know what a diet was until I met this girl; she introduced me to the other teenage girls in the year above, who appeared cool and trendy compared to me in the year below. I desperately wanted to fit in and be cool like them.
My life at home and school was miserable, and strict diets, smoking, alcohol, and food binges became something I discovered I could be good at. Alcohol brought me a newfound confidence in social circles, and I would always be the first one to put my hand up to dare to drink the concoction brew at a party. I had figured out how to look older than my years and was already getting into nightclubs, and by 14 I worked in a bar.
Mum had always been critical of my body shape. Whenever I would come downstairs in an outfit, she would ask me to turn around so that she could scan my body 360°, shake her head, and tell me that my legs and bottom didn’t look right. She was my Mum and I trusted her opinion, right? And she would say, “You’d want me to tell you, wouldn’t you?”
If a bit of weight crept on, my mother would be the first to let me know. When I reached for an extra potato at dinner, she would say, “You don’t need that.” Unbeknown to me these comments led me to feel guilt and shame about eating food in front of her.
Binge Eating
I learned it would be easier to plan my eating in secret instead. Friday night became my chosen night to shut myself away in my bedroom to feast on packets of chocolate-coated flapjacks and eat until I was stuffed full. If a cake was in the fridge, my mind would be occupied by it until I had eaten the whole thing. Of course, we all know what I did next. It seemed such a good idea to eat secretly and make myself sick.
After the weekends, I would revert to starving myself and strict calorie-controlled diets. I would eat only apples during the day and then a small calorie-controlled meal at night, followed by a diet yogurt. I carried on like this for years; trips out for dinner on a weeknight would bring a whole new level of anxiety.
Modelling
Desperate to be loved and liked, my tall, leggy best friend and I joined a model agency at 14. We were both 11 when we met. Her Mum had just died of cancer, and her father, an alcoholic; a few years later, her older sister committed suicide. We were like soul mates, two lonely ships that always looked out for one another, trying desperately to be loved in a harsh world.
The girls at the agency were lean and tall, and then there was little me with a big bum and chunky legs. I could either model plus size or lose more weight and do glamour modeling. It shocks me now to think that I was only 14 years old.
War Within
By 18, I trained and qualified as an aerobics instructor to make a well-paid career teaching thirty intensive workouts a week, paid to burn calories- clever, huh?
Everyone was clueless about what was going on under the healthy façade I portrayed to the outside world, and to some extent, I was too. Lisa was confident and attractive, a good leader, plus I loved the attention and admiring followers that the fitness life brought.
And so this lifelong war against me continued in an impossible quest to be “Perfect.” Today, I know it is a battle with no victory because we are all imperfect humans. This fight led me to a fall on the battlefield, broken-hearted in body and mind.
The Shift
It was my older sister who eventually helped me to shift my mindset around food and men (but men are another writing piece)
Food consumed me (forgive the pun), leading me to categorize foods into good and naughty. When I ate something deemed bad, I would wear the shame and guilt associated with it and feel bad. Good days were the days I ate barely anything.
My sister taught me to stop looking at foods like this and to listen closely to my body’s signals. She told me to have chocolate cake for breakfast if my body wanted it and quit viewing certain food groups as bad.
It was like a light bulb had finally switched on in my mind. When I stopped forbidding myself of the so-called naughty foods, I no longer wanted them as much. I could go to a coffee shop and say to myself, “Now, enjoy a cake if you want one” Yet, I discovered I was not always interested or felt hungry.
Human behavior works in weird ways; we desire the unobtainable, yet when we obtain it, it’s never as good as we initially thought, and then we seek the next thing to fill the huge gaping hole in ourselves.
The Hole
And there lies the issue, the hole within that we so desperately need to fill to feel “WHOLE” within ourselves. We will shovel in anything by way of food, alcohol, sex, drugs, or toxic people desperately trying to complete the whole of our being.
When I met my wonderful husband I thought having children would be the completion of me. How wrong I was to think anything external could fill the hole. I love my children unconditionally, yet I still passed on my unhealed trauma. Today, we all recognize it and work through our unresolved and harmful beliefs.
Our upbringing and early years shape us into who we are and why we think and behave the way we do for many years to come. When the upbringing is dysfunctional, the emotional needs aren’t met, and sadly, the true nature of our being is denied, but one day, we all have to face the devil within ourselves.
“Sometimes you have to realize that you’ve HAD enough to realize that you ARE enough.” ― Mandy Hale
Today, I am 52. I am enough, I was always enough, and the people who attempted to teach me otherwise were incomplete themselves. The Scapegoating abuse was an attempt to fill the hole within their being. Control and abuse of anything or anyone is always about trying to fill the hole within oneself.
My relationship with myself
Food is fuel, and today, my mind and body are treated with the utmost respect they deserve. Cooking and my spirituality are both about the nourishment of mind and body.
Pouring love and goodness into food makes for a better-tasting meal. I prefer home cooking over packaged food and make choices based on love for myself. Last week, I baked a delicious lemon cake to accompany my evening cups of tea. I no longer have to eat the whole cake because there is no longer a gaping cake hole within to fill.
Nobody comes into my kingdom except through me, and that profound realization tied in so beautifully with the scriptures. I did eventually find the truth and the way. I know God, the higher power, the image of myself, loves me just the way I am, so perfectly, imperfect.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Thank you for reading today. I hope my writing serves to help, support, and uplift, you the reader.
Brenda Grate, I can resonate with this piece. Many of us had our children before we healed. An excellent read.
Thank you for the writing prompts and for always baring your soul to encourage us to do the same.
At 👉Smiley Blue, our content expands from conscious mentoring to in-depth discussions on how your mind and body can be powerful assets to you and your business.
