Y M I FAT?

I once saw a license plate that read: Y  M  I  FAT.

I've been contemplating that very question.

As much as I love The Protective Diet, I don't love the word diet.  In the past, I've gone on diets, lost my weight, and stopped the diet.  Of course, the weight came back on.  And then some...

Even after realizing that diets don't work, I tried different ways of eating, but they just weren't right for me.  I believe that The Protective Diet is right for me, but I sure don't view it as a diet.  It's how I live.  Period.

I don't believe that I can stick with The Protective Diet if I don't come to grips with how and why I got this way.

I believe that it's twofold.

First of all, I'm addicted to sugar.  But, it's not just the sugar.  Although I probably could take a spoonful of sugar just to get it into my system, I wouldn't continually binge on sugar alone.  It's the combination of sugar with fats and processed grains that I'll binge on every time.  I used to wonder why I couldn't stop binging when other people could eat one bite or one piece and stop.  I no longer care.  I just accept that that's the way I am. 

The other part is the emotional part.  For some reason, I thought that I was different, that the typical reasons that people medicated with food didn't apply to me.  Sure, I'd been through some abuse, but I was over it.  I'd dealt with it and it had nothing to do with why I was so overweight, or why I lost the weight and felt good, only to regain it all.

The last time I lost a lot of weight - over 100 pounds - my husband says that he remembers the exact moment that I started gaining the weight back.  It was after someone, a guy almost 20 years younger than me who had never seen me thin, said how hot I was.

Although I denied it at the time, I now know that it's true.  I couldn't handle that remark and I couldn't handle the attention.

Time to hide again...

I didn't talk about the abuse for a long time.  I blamed myself.  I had absolutely no reason for self-blame, but I felt such shame about it.  There were two separate incidents that both occurred when I was in my late teens.  The first incident happened when I spent the weekend at an older friend's college. I was drugged, thrown into a van, and gang raped.  Someone finally came to my rescue, only to rape me, too.  Someone else rescued me and drove me back to the school.  The following day, I got a bad cut in my foot, ended up with blood poisoning, and spent weeks recovering.  Not a great weekend...

The other incident again involved abduction, but this time I was held against my will for a year, during which time I was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused.  I had a gun held up to me more than once, and I once tried to escape and was hunted in the woods.  After the police rescued me, I had to testify against him.  He swore that, if it was the last thing he ever did, he would find me, and kill me...but not after killing all of my family members while I watched.

My parents meant well, but their solution was for me to never bring up the incident again.  So, it festered inside, rearing its ugly head in the form of anxiety attacks, nightmares, and weight gain.  I kept trying to stuff it back down with food.

After all these years, I still feel some anxiety while writing this, and I'm so tempted to delete it.  I will leave it, though, in the hopes that someone else who may have experienced something similar and suffered with some form of addiction as a result, will read it and know that they're not alone and that they can overcome it.  Instead of shame, I now feel compassion for the young girl who went through such horrific things, and wasn't given any tools to help her through them.

Today, I know that none of it was my fault, that I in no way deserved it, and that healing is possible.  I no longer need to use food to try to make it go away.  I truly believe that this is healing from food addiction: removing all addictive foods, 100%, and letting past traumas come to the surface and coming face to face with them.  It's not easy but I'm so thankful to be on this journey.

It's time to heal.