But I do know this: I’m done with the mental anguish and suffering over food.
So true.
After years of trying to restrict and direct my eating for optimum health, weight loss and to become thin, I've finally realised something really surprising. I feel like I just don't care about food.
It's all relative. I was on a constant programme of restriction and was always thinking about how to eat more of this, less of that and what the latest health hype nutrient/supplement/food was.
Not only that, the environment of concern around it is so over the top in all areas that not joining in feels remiss. Now I know why people who don't obsess about food often feel a bit apologetic and claim they need to start 'caring' about it.
They probably do care enough already, we all do in our way no matter what the health hypochondriacs say, but we can almost always get into a greater frenzy about it, in comparison to them.
My interest feels pre-crisis and there's real joy in that. I trust the lessons I would have learned through experience anyway and the whole episode in between feels like one long pointless interruption of balance and common sense. My interest feels so contained for the first time like its serving me and anyone else I'm taking care of, not the other way around.
It has removed a noticeable amount of tension from my life. I feel free and more at ease in general, not just around food and that feels like such a gift, I can actually enjoy eating for the first time since I was a young child.
I've realised what this has been taking out of me. Always trying to eat a maximum amount of the correct macro and micro nutrients, always trying to persuade myself out of eating x and into eating y, often eating y thinking of x and sometimes eventually eating it anyway.
A process that cranked itself up more and more as my appetite and hunger became more out of kilter, which horrified me. I was nervous when I ate, in the pit of my stomach, something I only noticed recently when the 'talking' stopped and I was relaxed enough in general to notice it was there whenever I ate anything.
So you'll understand why the prospect of going back to before fills me with disgust, indeed when people get into their 'healthy lifestyle' chat I often feel repelled then bored. It didn't have to be this way, it's just 'keep trying' when it isn't working =overdoing it.
I avoid what I used to seek out.
The quieting of this white noise means I've finally noticed the overwhelming obsession everyone else seems to have with what they presume fat people eat/don't eat, should/n't eat. I know people tend to deny this if confronted, but when not they are always on about it believe me.
Because I'm no longer joined under the mental aegis of that culture-I'm still deprogramming but you know what I mean-I can perceive the abject nature of this fixation.
I've noticed too, that I don't give much of a damn about what other people supposedly eat because a) I know its likely to be food and b) weight to me is clearly a process that is controlled essentially by the metabolism and what you do or don't eat is part of and comes out of that. The conventional view no longer makes sense.
It feels as if folks are desperate to impose an eating disorder on fat people. It's like they need to see their belief re-inforced for some kind of a catharsis. Like someone with an actual disorder needs their behaviours to achieve or relieve certain feelings.
We've eaten too much and that's weighing heavy on the collective psyche, so for their relief, we must starve. Even though it doesn't matter that we have or we've tried- that urge cannot be satisfied by those it is aimed at.
It's like everyone is having an eating disorder by proxy, using fat people as the vehicle for it. They don't want the reality of it, they want it for you. That seperation and its lack of accountability just seems to make the obsession all the more frenzied, untempered as it is by reality. They could find that out from us of course but that would spoil it.
The fondness for fat hating feels distant and odd. The pleasure of 'bringing us to account' is a one sided one. It can be a bit like watching someone getting off on something that doesn't hold your interest, but they insist on you keeping them company.
When it comes to trying to lose weight the food route of restricting calorie intake was not my choice. It was all that was offered.
Now I wouldn't even be interested in it even if it did work. Its not just that I'm chronically unsuited to it-I focus on eating- my appetite and hunger increases to compensate-it's that I can't stand the effect it has on everyone.
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