Becoming "Normal"

More than wanting to be thin, I wanted to have a "normal" relationship with food.  I didn't want to think about food all the time.  I didn't want to be constantly chastising myself for what I was eating or what I wished I was eating or what I wasn't eating.  I believed it was possible to eat when I was hungry and stop when I was full.  I believed that I could eat all foods in moderation; that nothing had to be off-limits.  I believed these things, but I'd never actually lived them.

As long as I can remember, food played a disproportionate role in my life.  I was a thin child and a thin teen and a thin adult until I was 29.  But through all those years, I felt out of control with food.  I felt like if I permitted myself to eat the way I wanted to eat, I'd weigh 500 lbs.  Events were about the food I could eat, the food I couldn't eat, and the food I wanted to eat. 

I had no idea how to obtain this normal food relationship.  I read books.  I went to Overeaters Anonymous.  I went through eating disorder treatment.  I remember trying to defend myself to my ex-boyfriend, Eddie, (who had food issues of his own) when it came to having certain foods around our home.  I had taken to buying a tube of uncooked cookie dough and having a bit, raw, as dessert.  He believed that I was deluding myself by having that stuff around.  He thought that with my past food issues, I should abstain from eating sweets and fats FOREVER.  He said that the fact that I was so attached to those foods proved that I wasn't eating them "normally", that I was being compulsive about having sweets and eventually I would binge on them.

One thing I have learned about myself is that other people can really influence my confidence in my beliefs.  I thought that I could eat sweets in moderation, but when Eddie questioned it, I became defensive and resumed my previous "sneaky" food behavior.  And eventually I binged because for me sneaking food is a part of that binge behavior.

But I don't want to talk about Eddie just right now.  I want to talk about the other part of it.  I want to talk about trying to have a "normal" relationship with food.  I want to talk about what that means and how we go about getting it.

See, I think I have a normal relationship with food right now.  At least as normal as I've ever had.  I'm not compulsive about food.  I don't obsess about food.  I don't think about food all the time.  I eat what I want.  I stop when I'm full.  I don't "go off program" because there's no program to go off of.  I do what I do.  I don't always make good food choices.  Sometimes I overeat.  Sometimes I eat when I'm not hungry.  But most of the time, I'm pretty normal.  And when I do make a mistake, it doesn't last long and I don't struggle to resume "normal" behaviors.

I don't know how I got here, to be honest.  I know it has to do with finally stopping dieting and stopping beating myself up about food.  I know, too, that having my lap-band to tell me when I've had enough is a HUGE part of my success.  I don't know if I could have done it without that.  But I also know that there's more to it than simply having weight loss surgery.  I read other blogs where people talking about needing to get their mojo back, needing to do a 5-day pouch test to get back on track, needing to go to the gym again and I understand those feelings, but I also recognize that I don't feel that way now.  To me that sounds like how I felt BEFORE I had surgery when I was always thinking I needed to "do" something - go on a diet, start an exercise routine, SOMETHING.  I wish I could give some concrete advice so that others could have what I have, because it is amazing to be free from all that crap.