after we got married it took a few months for underlying problems at work, my dad's tumor, the brunt of my feminist awakening, my disillusionment with the church, my sexual frustrations, and my general feeling of being trapped in our sunshiny-neighbors-up-your-hoo-haa to surface and for me to become depressed. that winter was the ninth circle of hell. i knew something was wrong at the time, but a lot of things were still okay--i was still looking into events on campus and volunteering, i was in the honeymoon phase of my marriage, i still had my friends around--and things on the surface were pretty normal.
my then-part-time work days were punctuated with a weird situation that i can describe perfectly but that i barely remember. we didn't have a car and while i would sometimes walk down to the campus grocery store to buy groceries, more and more i didn't. i had been having this weird anxiety attack about cooking for my husband because feeling like i should do it came naturally but with no dishwasher and spending 4/7+ nights at home alone i was feeling a lot of weird feminist things about it. combine all of this with my depression and with a love of papa johns pizza delivery, which i had discovered my senior year when i was exercising 3+ hours a day, and it was a set up for disaster. another big factor was $$$. when i was a senior i could afford pizza once a week. but now? now i could have it whenever i wanted and it wouldn't make a big dent in my bank account.
i'm going to be really real here and say that sometimes i was eating two pizzas a day. i would get home around 2pm and order a pizza (so easy! no groceries! so delicious! right at my door!) usually it would stop here but sometimes it has happening every day or every other day. but in the pit of hell, during the absolute worst of it, i would sometimes order pizza for lunch, eat pretty much all of it, and then i would order pizza again for dinner from a different store to avoid being judged. and i would eat it all.
it's hard to describe what made me do this, or at least it was until i found this article today. that deep sense of hopelessness and just wanting to feel better and not being able to control myself. i was consumed. i could not escape it. as i was eating it i hated myself, but i couldn't stop. afterward i just hated myself more. it was the truest sense of addiction. i've never told anyone besides dh before.
in school i had a roommate who would order pizzas day after day, usually two at a time. she would give me her credit card and beg and cry for me to keep it away from her so she couldn't order them (i think i have blogged about this before). at the time, it was like the twilight zone. she was the one who would leave her addiction recovery pamphlet from the church on the couch and then awkwardly hide it when our home teachers came. i knew she had a pornography addiction (which she was also open with us about........) but it never occurred to me then, when i was in the peak physical form and best mental space of my life, that she had an addiction to food. and to see all those pizzas coming to our house, day after day, and to see her helpless, it's unimaginable to me to think that i became her.
these days i'm in a much better place, but i'm still working to have control and find ways to improve my situation and empower myself. so as a public display of good faith in myself, i want to recommit to some suggested ways to improve.
Manage stress. - This is the most difficult factor for me... obviously. I have never done this before, but I think one idea I could follow through on is to go on a walk instead of eating when I'm bored or need to unwind. There are a lot of places a couple blocks away from where I live that I could go, and this is something I don't take advantage of like I used to.
Eat 3 meals a day plus healthy snacks. - I've developed countless "food schedules" or meal plans by week and they are beautiful things. Still, it's seriously so difficult to follow through with them. Mostly, take out is more convenient, if I buy fresh food but don't follow through it's a huge waste of money, and eating or snacking out is a huge part of my relationship with dh and what we do to relax. A key to eating healthy, I've found, is preparation. Soaking your grains and cutting up and bagging up veggies and other healthy things. So next week I'm going to take time each night to prepare some healthy options for the next day.
Avoid temptation. - Hard one, because of the social aspect (i.e. I live with someone who has different eating habits than me and I don't think it's right for me to control what he eats or say what he can or can't bring into the house). A lot of what I eat through the day comes out of my bag while I'm on the go, so today I'm going to take all the junk food out of my bag and put some healthier options in there.
Stop dieting. - I don't believe in fad diets so this is not an issue.
Exercise. - I will walk home from work (45 min walk) a few times a week when it works out for us with getting the car home.
Fight boredom. - I will keep my to-do lists up to date (I have one for work and one for personal life). If I can keep a list and put manageable, one-time actions on it, it really keeps me moving and busy with taking care of all the little things I want to do or I'd like to get done.
Get enough sleep. - I will get in bed at 10pm every night. Usually I read or listen to a TV show in bed to quiet my mind so I can sleep, but simply by going to bed earlier and on a schedule, I'll be getting more sleep.
Listen to your body and keep a food diary. - I will recommit to using my private Instagram account to take a picture of everything I eat and writing in the caption why I'm eating it.
Get support. - Well, I wrote this blog post, so that's a start! I'm a person who's usually actually dissuaded by people checking up on me, but something about putting things down in writing in public make me be honest with myself and also really think through my situation.
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