It Started With a Can of Icing

I have been trying to search and find the root of when my problems with food and my weight began. If I could go back to the beginning, perhaps that would help me to change the future. We can learn a lot from our past, and I decided to explore mine.

Let me start by saying that I have never been a skinny person, and I'm honestly okay with that. After trying every diet under the sun for years and never achieving success, I've changed my focus away from the numbers on the scale to the overall health of my body. If I never see 120 pounds, I'm okay with that. I do have a goal in mind, which right now is 200, and then 150 but that's not what this post is about.

I've been overweight all my life, and I've always been a big eater. I come from a family of big eaters. I can remember gathering with my relatives on Thanksgiving and watching them use three styrofoam plates to hold all their food because one plate would break under the weight. I was never that bad, but I would eat all the sweets I could. That's probably just as bad. In fact, my parents would have to cut me off from the dessert table so I would stop eating.

As long as I was under my parent's roof, the junk food in the house was controlled. I would occasionally bake or go to the store and buy cookies, but never anything major. Then I moved in with my now husband, and everything changed. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was standing in the kitchen, grazing the cupboards for a snack. It was then that I saw a can of icing. I thought to myself, I can't eat that - it's being saved for when I make a cake next. I then realized two things (1) we had no cake mix and (2) I was the adult and no one could tell me that I couldn't eat the icing.

So I opened the can and ate a few spoonfuls and put it in the fridge. That started it all. Next, I craved cookie dough and realized that I was an independent adult that could go and buy it for myself - so I did. The process continued with me buying everything that I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. Cookies, candy, chips and dip, cakes - you name it. Before I knew it I hit 200 pounds, and the numbers kept going up from there til I tapped out at 245 pounds this year. That's 10 pounds heavier than I was when I was 9 months pregnant with my son.

I realize now I have a problem. I let myself start and I don't stop. I don't want to stop. I want to eat because those Oreos taste SO VERY GOOD! But, those Oreos don't taste good when I can't find anything to wear. Those Oreos don't taste good when I'm feeling sick from being so unhealthy. And those Oreos certainly don't taste good when I'm out of breath from chasing my son for 4 minutes.

So where do I go from here? With the realization that I cannot just buy something because I want it. I don't need to eat everything I want to eat, and I need to eat things I don't want to eat (i.e. salad, veggies, etc.) There's a time and a place for treats - and that place does not include my house on a regular basis.

I have to be honest with you. It may seem silly but I feel very empowered by my discovery. I feel so much stronger in knowing more about how this all started and what's wrong. Of course any person with eyes could have seen what I was doing and said, "just stop buying junk food". And some have said that to me. But, like everything else, it wasn't until I saw for myself what it was doing that I saw the need for a change.

I'm not going to buy junk food anymore. I will allow my current day to day snacks to become occasional treats that I enjoy at special events. I will not deprive myself, but I will not continue to feed this monster that I have created either.

Okay, I feel better now. Thanks for reading my story.