Recovery Meditations: November 18th

~ HONESTY ~

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

Pearl Bailey


I was brought up to be scrupulously honest, or so I thought. I still remember how my father would go back into a shop if he'd been given too much change, a practice that I adopted too. I found it hard to tell a lie, even a white lie, and I would never contemplate cheating on a test. But when it came to food, I only realized later, I was totally dishonest. I was even dishonest when it came to telling people how I felt, or for that matter who I really was. The person who did these things was a totally different person to the upright person I liked people to see.

I know now that all the things I'd hidden around food were obviously what I felt ashamed about. I wanted people to see only the "good" side of me and not the person who did all these devious things in secret. I kept thinking that I was a bad person and the shame stopped me from being totally honest about what I had been doing.

It has taken time, and the love and acceptance I have found in the fellowship, to be able to get totally honest with myself. It has taken time to look at all the things about me that I felt ashamed of. In the housecleaning necessary in the Steps, I have been able to face my shame. I learned that I am human, and that I have a disease. Some of the soul searching has been very painful, but at the same time it has been totally enlightening. I am amazed how I am beginning to know a new me, with faults and all, but a loveable me nevertheless. As I peel off more layers of the onion that represents the sum total of what makes me unique and truly one of God's creatures, I am actually beginning to like the new me. I know now that I am not a bad person trying to get good, merely a sick person trying to get well.

One Day at a Time . . .
I will keep being honest about who I am, what I eat and how I am behaving in my relationships, so I can learn more about me. Even when I don't like what I see, I know I am still a loveable person and a child of God, created in His image.

~ Sharon S. ~

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The shame surrounding compulsive eating is huge. We lose faith in ourselves as we fail to keep our promises, over & over again. What is more shameful than having a binge, and hiding the evidence so we can keep up appearances?

Coming Out of the Closet: Secret Eating (Blog, 4/13/12)

Ever since I was a young girl, I was trained & coached in how to diet. My folks were (and still are) normal weight individuals, who feel that obesity can be easily controlled with a bit of ‘willpower’.  In spite of all the training I received in how NOT to be fat, I was still fat.

I was always told to ‘hold in’ my stomach, and introduced to a girdle (with legs) before I was old enough to really hate myself for my ‘lack of willpower.’  When I began to develop, I was introduced to a ‘minimizer’ bra, bathing suits with a skirt, and hemlines below the knee, to hide the ’50 pound-apiece’ legs I was, apparently, the not-so-proud owner of.

Since being brought to Weight Watchers at 12 years old, I learned to feel shame about my eating habits & my resulting body size. I’ve always felt I was too fat to sit down & eat a real meal.  My assumption was that people who are overweight should not be allowed to eat.  And if they were, they should eat as little as possible & only consume low calorie foods.  The assumption was that people who are overweight & eat real meals are disgusting. The assumption being that overweight people should be spending their time losing weight, not eating, and that sitting down to a meal would always result in gaining weight.  And finally, the assumption was that people who are overweight & eat meals are as much as saying they’re not ashamed of the way they look and are, in fact, flaunting their fat by eating like someone who doesn’t need to lose weight.  And I was always, always, always taught to feel shame about my size. Not so much in words but in actions. So how could I eat in public, when I it was my job to diet?

If overweight people ‘shouldn’t eat’, we must forever pretend that we are not eating when we ARE eating. And so, sneaky & secretive eating is naturally born from these types of beliefs & training programs. Since it’s not MY human right TO eat, I don’t deserve to dig in & enjoy.  Eating becomes clandestine & disordered. I begin living a lie, eating one way in public, & a totally different way when I am alone. “If they really knew the truth about me, if they knew how much I could eat, if they knew how gluttonous I am, they would be appalled.” From there it’s a short distance to, “If they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me. Who I am is not worthy of love & must be hidden.” Dishonesty becomes a matter of emotional survival: I must lie; I must hide myself to be loved.  If I keep my mouth shut & my eyes cast downward, maybe I can disappear & THEN I will be loved & accepted.  Gaining weight, however, is surely NOT a way of becoming less visible, and the more I hid my eating, the less I hid mySELF.

What a painful way to live! When you can’t tell the truth, you cut the bonds that tie you to other people. You start building walls around you instead of bridges between you & others.  

I hid food in my room; in my nightstand & under the bed. I’d go to the 5 & 10, with a quarter & stock up on 6 candy bars, to be eaten after the lights were out & the household was asleep. I’d steal money from my dad’s pants pockets to feed my need to eat, or I’d snatch the dimes out of the slots in my uniform loafers, which should have been used for emergency phone calls ONLY! All the food in the house was counted & measured; if I ate a few cookies, I’d be caught, since I was the only child in the house.  My poor grandmother took to hiding her food evidence behind the cupboards in the basement, lest she be caught.  And grandma, God bless her, wasn't overweight in the least. 

As time went on, I’d spend more & more time eating, in the car, the bedroom, the bathroom, anywhere I couldn’t be seen.  I convinced myself there was something wrong with me, look at what you are DOING, you can’t possibly TELL anyone, they would never understand. So I turned to food. Again, for comfort & escape.  And the walls around me became walls of flesh.

My car was my favorite restaurant, worn out kitchen table & beloved dining companion. I’ve been known to go to the store, buy whatever I wanted to eat, and then load the passenger seat with a half-dozen  bags.  Eating in my car was safe; no one I knew could see me, question me or judge me. Eating in my car didn’t really count. As long as I wasn’t sitting at a table, eating from a plate with a knife & fork, as long as I was concentrating on braking & steering, it didn’t count.  Any food I ate when I wasn’t sitting down, either in my kitchen or at a restaurant, didn’t count.

You wouldn’t believe how much I ate that I didn’t eat.

In my mind, it didn’t count-----I wasn’t really eating----if I ate:
~at the stove while cooking, tasting

~bites off someone else’s plate

~standing in front of the refrigerator or the sink

~watching TV or a movie

~standing up anywhere

~reading a book or a magazine

~when involved in an emotional or anxiety-producing conversation

~in the car

~at someone else’s house when no one is around

~off everyone’s dishes when cleaning up

~after the meal is over & I didn’t eat what I wanted & now I’m back (or still) in the kitchen eating what I REALLY wanted;

~anywhere at any time when I felt that I wasn’t allowed or supposed to be eating.

~crumbs of ALL kinds do not count; so if there is ½ a cake left in the pan & it’s all crumbs, it doesn’t count 

It’s not that I’m NOT judging myself at these times or that my body doesn’t get full at these times. It’s not really that I ate but didn’t eat; rather, it’s that I ate, but because my attention was focused elsewhere, the food didn’t satisfy me. Or I felt guilty. Or I overate, stuffing the food down SO fast, that I wasn’t even tasting it.  And then I ate some more.

When I’m eating and my mind is on something else, I finish but it doesn’t seem as if I really ATE. But the me that buys, moves my right hand & puts food into my mouth DID eat. The me that looks in the mirror, can’t fit into clothes, and hates my body-----this me------ate.  This is the me that gains weight & no one can understand why because I eat so little at mealtimes.

Here is list of rules designed to focus my attention on mindful eating:

1. Eat in FULL VIEW of my friends, husband, parents children & colleagues (this is a TOUGH one)

2. Eat when I am sitting down

3. Eat without distractions, TV, radio newspapers books for loud music.

4. When I do eat, do so in as lovely & nourishing environment as I can create.

5. When I eat, avoid emotional conversations.

6. No eating IN BED.

If I follow these guidelines, I prevent myself from the painful lies about how what I’m ‘picking on’ all day long doesn’t really count, or that I’m not really eating because there’s no kitchen table & place settings involved. 

If I follow these guidelines, I force some sanity on myself & I stop feeling humiliated & degraded for the places I find myself eating. Even after 4 years of sticking to my Food Plan, I still fight the instinct to secretly eat.  After 3 years of marriage to my soul mate, I still can't bring myself to discuss the secret binges I have had over the years.  Intellectually, I know that he loves me no matter what, but emotionally, I'm still ashamed of letting him SEE that side of me.  By the grace of God the Fat Me doesn't make frequent appearances, but I have had, and will likely continue TO have, my bad times.  As a woman who deals with the disease of obesity, I've learned to stop thinking my journey will ever be 'easy' or trouble free.

At 55 years old, I still 'hold in' my stomach quite often.  I find myself in all sorts of situations where my mid section is tight as a drum, and then I realize, yes, I'm still that fat little girl, wearing a girdle and a minimizer bra, trying to hide who I Am, behind the facade of invisibility.  If I can suck myself up into a tight little package, maybe then I'll be worthy.  That's not true, of course, but after all these years of training, it sure does FEEL real.

My program keeps me on track, and stops my mind from traveling to places that used to be, once upon a time, but no longer exist. My program keeps me from feeling ashamed & unworthy and that, my friends, has a whole lot more value than I'd ever realized, in 40 years of yo  yo dieting. One day at a time, I am still 'becoming' the woman that God intended me to be. I am a work in progress and for that, I am grateful to Medifast for teaching me a better way.