Emotional Work

Doing Cambridge has it's own set of special emotions. It challenges our food issues, our sense of self esteem, our learned behaviors, conditioning from our youth, and so many other parts of our personalities. It's a LOT! Plus, eating is enjoyable and social and comforting...usually. Sometimes, for those of us with compulsive eating disorders, it can become a weapon of self destruction and loneliness. I remember my lowest times of my eating disorder, almost feeling like I was beating myself up with food. Probably sounds overly dramatic to those with lessor or different issues then I was dealing with, but it's the best way to describe what I was doing. It was a violent act against myself.

What I realized, as I progressed through this emotional maze of weight loss, was that 99% of my  viewpoint and my internal dialog was negative. I grew up a chubby kid and weight had ALWAYS been the focal point of my life. I visualized it like a wagon wheel, obesity being the hub and all other aspects of life branched off from it. Every choice I made in life had my obesity at it's center. There were no goals or ambitions made from a desire to lead a full and rewarding life. So many lost opportunities.

It was a process that took time, my emotional recovery. It was like building myself a new house to live in, brick by brick. Eventually, momentum kicked in and the bricks started seating themselves.

I consider myself a fully recovered compulsive addictive eater. That person is so far buried in my past, I can not even comprehend that was me. I still struggle with some things. I never did reach my ultimate goal of my high school weight. Not even close! lol!. But I have managed to maintain well enough to have made up for some of all those lost opportunities. The past 17 years have been some of the best, and most heartbreaking, but my miracle is that I have been able to experience these normal life events without turning to food or any other substance to cope. I'm happy about that.