Want to find out what's eating you? Then put down the food.

Part of why I put off this journey with Optifast and losing the weight is that I just knew in my heart that it was going to be challenging with emotions that I could no longer stuff away with food.  When a person gets to be significantly overweight, not just 20 or 30 pounds, then there is something more to it than just enjoying the taste of food, I don't care what that person says.  I am not saying that I don't welcome this challenge because the truth is that I do.  I don't want to be that 417 pound person living to eat, hiding away from the things that hurt and putting on a smile, assuring everyone around me that I am one hundred percent happy all the time.

This last year to year and a half of my life has tested every sense of strength I thought I had, and even challenged me to see that I'm stronger than I imagined.  I have gone through a work-related injury that has been tough to deal with; a breakup with a boyfriend that broke my heart in a way that words can never begin to express; and, the discovery of cancer in my body, followed by procedures and surgery to remove it that left a scar more than half the size of my back.  I also continued to work full-time and go to school full-time during all of this. Was it emotionally draining?  Yes!  As an example, from the time I had the surgery in my hand (from the work injury) until about 1 month after that, I somehow managed to gain 30 pounds.  How does a person do that, in one month?  I was sick as a dog after the surgery, got sick from the operating room, with a horrid cold and bronchitis, but still.  Obviously I was going through stuff and not talking about it, but managing to eat a ton over it.  I'm embarassed to actually admit that, but I'm here for healing.

All of these things, not to mention Type 2 diabetes along with the everyday pain of living in such a large body, led me to taking care of myself by starting Optifast.  Which brings me back to the emotions part I was discussing in the beginning of this post.  Today I was scheduled to have 3 MRI's - one in each hand and one in my neck.  I went to the office where it was to be performed and got myself prepared.  I climbed on the table, laid in position, but they could not fit me through the tube.  Actually, they could, but the position I would need to be in for 20 minutes made it impossible because I was stuffed in the machine.  The scheduler who made the appointment knew my size, so I was pretty surprised he sent me to the closed machine (as opposed to the open one).  So they said they couldn't do the MRI's because I was too big.  Boy, that was a stinger.  Didn't he know that I'm working on it and how humiliating this moment was for me?  Seriously, can I just crawl into a ball now or what?  The technician was certainly kind enough and sensitive to my feelings, but he couldn't take away how it made me feel.  As I was driving home in my car, I started thinking about my ex-boyfriend, probably because of one of the songs on the radio reminded me of him and I was feeling very alone in the moment.  I started to cry and all I wanted to do was find food.  In that moment, I was really missing food.  I knew in my heart, though, that I wasn't missing the actual food - I was missing what food did for me, which was to numb me out and help me believe things would be better somehow if I lost myself in it.  What a lie!

So where does that leave me now?  First, I did not pick up any food and I'm very proud of myself for that.  I have been praying so much to God, especially since I started Optifast, to just give me strength.  Sometimes I pray for strength to get through the moment and sometimes it is because of the uncertainty I feel about being in a smaller body someday.  For someone who has always had weight issues and been obese for most of my life, being thin is an absolutely terrifying world that I just don't know how to manuver.  Prayer does help me tremendously.  I know feelings are going to come up and I have to find a better way of dealing with them.  No matter what, though, I am absolutely committed to not picking up.  I don't want to be this obese person any longer, I want health and sanity in my life when it comes to food.  This is part of why I have this blog in the first place - to get out what I need to so that I won't feel the need to pick up.  I just don't want to live in an existence anymore where food becomes more important than anything else.  For a long time, sad as it is to admit, that's exactly what had happened to me.  Just writing this post has helped tremendously.