Other people’s obsession

In the past, beyond my anarchistic appetite and hunger, I fancied cookery as a skill I should master to be an accomplished person. We have to eat, so we might as well do it well, being able to meet that need with skill and resource is admirable.

Later on, I was able to normalize those inner signals and instinctively I tested ideas as they came up, based on theories I had on logic and so forth, to unravel the hold negative food obsession had assumed over my life. Once I got out of the calorie restriction business, it didn’t feel like my own it wasn’t why I got into healthy eating.

I'd always had an honest relationship with food, it was the obesity persona and wanting to be thin that had made a liar out of me. Feeling I had to 'confess' to things I didn't feel, yet couldn't come up with an alternative explanation for, because of the tremendous pressure that is put on you to comply set that aside. In spite of that, I did not pretend that I enjoyed eating when I didn't, I said, I felt a constant drive to do it, not that I was addicted or getting a high. I said I was relieving the symptom of rising tension that would keep going until it overcame so much of my brain that other thoughts had little room to exist.

I'd have to go back to being to being a small child to think of a time when my awareness was not getting in the way of what I ate. I have a few pictures in my head where I remember eating or drinking things without any concern other than whether I liked or disliked them. Then around that age, I became conscious that my desire to eat seemed heightened for some reason. I could suggest many things but I don’t think it matters.

I reacted to that sense and only the threat to my height stopped me from trying to 'do something' immediately. I held off for a few years, at that point I just couldn't stand the tension and started my first experience in WLD fail. I don't remember a genuine and pure moment of pleasurable nor peaceful eating from then until a couple of decades later, when I crashed into WLD burnout. It was afterwards that I was lucky enough to be relieved of an overarchingly responsive hunger.

Now although that was good, it wasn't enough, I felt I needed to let go of anything I suspected burdened my eating in any way. I wanted to feel psychologically free of the debris of anti food propaganda and feelings left in my head.

I let go not only of this food is good/bad, I let go of as many personal feelings of I like this or that food as I could, trusting that whatever preferences I had would remain without the need for excessive fuss and fanfare. I didn't know it at the time, but I was instinctively moving to a more spontaneous feeling about food. I'm not talking about intuitive eating; I mean offloading as much stress surrounding and during eating as possible. IOW, how rational people eat.

You cannot avoid having ideas about it, but you can try and make those ideas supportive and protective of your own needs and your ability to decipher them accurately. More than that you make your mind get out of the damn way.

I wanted to help re-assert the sense of personal authority I had over myself, that I felt I'd given up to pursue an invasive and outer directed view of myself and how to eat. That had not in any way sympathetic to me on any level. What happened along the way was a bit of a surprise, whilst I can easily enjoy any cookery program I fancy, when I want. Or I can discuss food a bit my interest quickly palls.

I've found the way I feel about food does not suit the ostentatious variety of healthist or foodie preciousness which hangs around the place. Even more, I’m not even sure I care that much about food at all, at least, relative to that.

And that's just what it is and that's the way I like it. I got an inkling of this years ago, when listening to a group of women spend 10 minutes talking about things they didn’t eat but wanted to but couldn't because it was wrong etc., I found myself shouting "eat or don’t eat but SHUT UP!" at the radio.

I'll walk miles to get what I want if I want it enough-and have the time-and if I don't care, I'll eat later, or I'll make do, often just to deal with basic energy needs and eat something more desired later, it all depends on a mind boggling complex set of circumstances both inner and outer. But all is very easy in the end. I just do what I feel like doing, full stop.

I'm not an intuitive eater, I have no problem with thinking, I could use a bit of x or I'm getting into a bit of a rut with y, I'll seek something else and so on. That conscious kind of rational is as natural and instinctive to me as any strong inner preference for this or that; it's just another point to read my needs. I don't pathologize it because of WLD horror- this of course, caused a rise in appetite and fear of fat to erupt.

I’ve junked the nastiness and am using that part of my mind differently to enhance not to be overly directive and I hate it when people come along to give orders on what fat people should/shouldn't eat and how much. That time is passed.

To say that I beyond do not want to use my eating to regulate my weight, full stop, is an understatement of epic proportions. I'm actually, not interested in whether eating more of this or less of that leads to less weight here, because I actually can't relate to food anywhere near like that anymore, it doesn't make sense nor cause me to do anything but switch off. It’s made me fully aware that it is other people who are obsessed with what (fat) people are supposed to eat and they who will not let go of it.