Food for thought

Food issues. Lots of us have them in varying degrees. Zoot's recent post about her own struggles hit home with me. I was a fat baby, but a skinny kid. But quitting my 4-dance-classes-per-week schedule right around the time puberty hit shot that "skinny" image right out of the water. Somewhere along the line, my perception became skewed even more than my physique. I can barely stand to look at my high school year book pictures, yet the friends with whom I shared clothing were in perfectly good shape in my eyes. Show me a picture of a woman with the same height, weight, and body type as I have and she'll look OK to me. But the woman in the mirror? She's short and flat chested and has too much of a tummy pooch and her butt is fat. I like food. I like ice-cream and chocolate and cheese and bread and chips and pasta. And when I am upset, I sometimes eat a good deal of those things without even tasting them. When I was in college, I would hate myself for the amount I would eat during those moments of not thinking, and I would try to compensate by barely eating at all, or by wearing myself out doing workout tapes, or every so often by sticking my finger down my throat. One summer I worked on campus, providing A/V support for the various meetings and conferences that were held in the break between semesters. One weekend included an OA convention. As I was setting stuff up for this event and the other events going on in the building, I offhandedly mentioned to a co-worker the difficulty involved with working meetings and conventions- the temptation of food tables set up all over the place, and the hurried pace of providing support meaning that we often ate on the run and at odd hours. Later in the day, one of the meeting organizers saw me and asked me if I was on program. I hastily replied that I was not, and extricated myself from the conversation as quickly as I could. I mean, I was fine. Everyone overeats sometimes, and getting all obsessive about how I eat would do me any good, would it? But here I am, sixteen years later, realizing that I did have a problem. I've gotten past where I was then, and I recognize when I am getting careless about what I am eating, or more importantly, why I am eating. I try not to deprive myself of food for any reason, and try to use the way my clothes fit as an indication of whether I need to watch my portions, or forgo the ginormous muffin in favor of a bowl of cereal for breakfast. But I still need to have other people look at my clothing purchases to verify whether they are flattering, and tough times in my life sometimes send me into the arms of my boyfriends Ben and Jerry. My biggest goal now is to move forward and to ensure that I don't pass these issues on to my kids. Because it would break my heart to see Princess doing the stupid things I did to myself for those years.