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Thursday, May 17, 2012

The "why" behind the fat

My journey didn't start off because I wanted to be a supermodel. I know...shocking, right? It started because I went to the doctor to adjust my insulin settings and was told that my cholesterol was high. Um...I'm 34. I don't need another issue on top of what I currently deal with everyday.

She wanted to put me on medication to lower it and I refused. I didn't want to be on another medication. For once, I wanted to be able to control that portion of my life. I can't control the fact that my pancreas shat out on me when was I was barely five. I can't control the fact that I will always have to take insulin to stay alive. What I can control is what I put into my body and how I take care of it.

Needless to say, that got me thinking and started on this whole process of a "healthier" me.

So...I recently read an article about "why" people are fat. Which in turn...prompted my topic for today.

So many people in our society are apt to blame it on the fact that we eat out too much, roll through the McDonald's drive-through because we have to be in 10 places at once, or that we are just a lazy society that doesn't care about our health.

In my humble opinion, I believe that those are contributing factors as to why people are overweight, but that those factors don't really define the "why".

I'll be the first to admit....when I started this journey, I was roughly 35-50 pounds overweight. My BMI told me that I was OBESE (what an ugly word). And by the way...I hate the BMI. I mean...it tells me that my ideal weight is between 105-119 pounds. Um...could you imagaine? Tits on a stick. Gross!

So here's the big question...how did I get that comfortable and that heavy?  I can tell you that it wasn't from stuffing my grill with HoHos morning, noon and night (I HATE those things!). 

My weight gain was the slow, silent stalker of boredom eating, two pregnancies and the occasional emotional binge.

It wasn't that I was making bad food choices at every meal. For me, it was those moments in life, when I could barely breathe and would stuff a PB Twix in my mouth (or in my case four - who doesn't get the King size?) because at that particular moment, those four pieces of peanut butter and chocolate deliciousness made me feel better. Then I would try on clothes, have nothing fit, feel bad, have a DEFCON meltdown in my closet and then soothe myself with a bowl of ice cream. Okay...not really on the ice cream part - I HATE ice cream. But I would binge and eat everything else.

Or how about the non-emotional binge when everything is all unicorns and glitter and you just eat becasue you're bored. This is my real struggle. I could just eat lunch and still be thinking about what I'm going to eat next, when and how much. Boredom is my trigger for overeating.

I don't know. All of this probably doesn't make sense to the skinny minnies out there that just don't understand why people eat when they aren't hungry. But...I'd be willing to bet that most of you that are reading this right now are nodding you head and thinking, "Been there, done that, wrote the book."

So this is what I know. I didn't get this way over night. Getting healthy, changing my attitude towards myself and not being my own worst critic isn't going to change over night either. To say that I've learned a lot about "me" in this whole process is an understatement.

Maybe, just maybe, you have learned a little from this post too.

1 comment:

  1. FYI, I love you, I hear you, and I'm 100% in the same place as you! XO! Great post.

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