The Beginning

Why don't we start at the very beginning. When we come into this world, food is comfort; it is joy, love, and satisfaction. In this first year of life, food is never pain. It is the answer to pain. Then we grow up. Little by little we experience negative emotion associated with certain foods and food situations. When trying new foods, we experience dislike and it is painful. We cringe away from bitter, sour, or spicy and develop a memory of what we like and what we dislike. This process is natural and pure. But unfortunately, there are factors that disturb this natural wisdom and replace it with distrust and dependence.

I'm talking about good hearted, well intentioned parents, grandparents, and caregivers. These incredible influences disregard an infant's wisdom of what to eat and how much. It's a shame, because they don't even know they are doing it. Every time mom turns the spoon into an airplane zooming towards the hanger, she is really saying, "You may think you're done, but I know better."

This is another beginning, the beginning of the problem.

Fast forward 5 years. I am no longer trusting of my own indication of hunger and fullness, and instead look toward environmental or external cues to tell me what to eat and how much. Usually, I know when to stop when the plate is clean, the bag is empty, or someone tells me to.

Jump ahead again. I am 9 years old, sitting in a doctor's office at Kaiser in Walnut Creek. My doctor is telling me to eat less and exercise more. Why? because I'm bigger than I'm supposed to be. It's not normal and I have to make a change. Unfortunately, I am crying so hard and internalizing these words so deep, that I don't even hear HOW I'm supposed to eat less and exercise more. To this day Kaiser's still make me tense.

It's 1999, I'm 13 and I have an appointment to see a nutritionist. My mom comes with me and we start learning the rules. The objective: Cut out all the excess calories, especially those from fat. My nutritionist tells my mom I am to be on an 1800 calorie diet, <30% from fat, <10% from saturated fat. My mom meticulously notes the rules down on a piece of paper. At 13, I have no idea what calories, fat, or percentages really are, and I start to soak up this new knowledge. Over the next year it translated to fat free cheese, with a taste more reminiscent of the plastic wrapping it was in, tasteless air popped popcorn coated in butter flavored pam spray, and strong tasting, yet sickly sweet, sugar free jello. No more creamed ham, top ramen, vienna sausages, KFC, or the guilt free eating of my childhood.

I meander through high school, weighing myself, exercising, and yoyo dieting. Food is foe and I'm on the front lines in the battle of obesity. 175, 145, 130, 165. Up and down and up and down. I starve myself for 3 days when I'm 13 to fit into a dress for a school dance. The pictures look great, you can hardly tell that I am suppressing a severe hunger. All throughout high school I am so racked with guilt when I eat, that I scarf down food as fast as I can. Concurrently, I'm exhibiting some pretty risking behaviors, rebellion stemmed from my emotional insecurity and body dissatisfaction. I'm spiraling down so far that I don't even know the way up.

I reach another beginning. This time, I begin the healing process. Of course, though, it must get worse before it gets better. College begins and I'm enrolled as a Nutrition and Food Science major at CSU, Chico. No surprise that my over-occupation with food has brought me to the one area that will eventually challenge my beliefs of the widely accepted calorie counting, rule abiding diet. I go through periods of more yoyo dieting, binge eating, and intense exercising before I finally throw it all out the window. I'm taking lexapro for my anxiety, and as the cloud of serotonin takes away 6 months of ambition, it also reverses 6 months of food restriction. Prozac isn't much better, but it isn't until I wean off of medication that I start to see the damage that was done. I now know it was the cycle of restriction followed by disinhibition. It's a natural reaction to feelings of deprivation, but I blamed myself for not being strong enough, normal enough to just stop eating.

You may be wondering how this is the beginning of the healing process. It seems like I'm just as lost as I was before. I think this is an important place to point out that I had to go through this in order to become fed up with dieting. Without these experiences of failure, I would not now be able to resist the alluring and fantastical promises that diets spew.

Then, I unexpectedly stumble across a non-diet approach to weight management. At first I find it interesting, but not something that would really help me. I even presented on it twice as an undergrad. It wasn't until the last semester of my senior year that I finally let go of the guilt. It's like the guilt was strangling me day in and day out, slowly suffocating me. But the guilt wasn't restricting my airway, it was somehow reducing my capacity for happiness. At this point, I realized that I was the one holding the vice around my neck, and I could as easily let go. With the help of my thesis advisor, whom I'm sure I will call my "mentor" someday, I was able to release the hold that guilt had over my life.

This brings us to the present day. I've devoted my graduate career to researching diet behavior and non-diet rehabilitation in an effort to keep my tendencies for guilt and self loathing at bay. So, I see I am now at another beginning. This time it's the beginning of my healthy relationship with food. I have thrown out the rule book and I've adopted a pioneer's vision of the new frontier. This is what I want to explore with my writings here. Food is no longer foe. It is a misunderstood friend that I have just been re-introduced to. I'm ready now to take it by the horns and feast on life: This is food... by Laura.