One of the newer things I have had to face up to during this journey is emotional eating, which I did around Thanksgiving. I had a lot weighing on my mind (pun?), and instead of confronting those issues and working them out, I resorted to comforting myself with food. Worse, food that I don’t normally have. My body is still sensitive enough that just overeating what I normally eat can often result in weight gain. So needless to say, things like apple pie and sweet potatoes might as well just be applied straight to my hips — because that’s where they’ll end up.

As a consequence, I’m up in weight and have a few pounds to lose before I’m back at my low weight. The damage wasn’t horrendous, but it still delays where I’d like to be. I know my body well enough to know exactly what happens when I mis-eat or overeat. So, this was no surprise, and I am back on the straight and narrow. That’s the good news, here is I don’t just flip out and keep damaging myself by eating things I know my body doesn’t need. That’s something I used to do quite a bit, years ago, and the biggest reason why I have fallen off many a “diet” wagon.

I rarely saw myself as an emotional eater before this journey. Yes, there were times I could binge eat like I was training for a world record. I would feel so deprived on whatever eating plan I had chosen, regretting and resenting that my body wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do (LOSE WEIGHT!!), that I’d show it who’s boss by eating everything in sight. I’d end up feeling gross and sorry for myself, with little time for actually savoring the foods I’d binged on. They were simply gone.

In retrospect, maybe I was eating my emotions when I just figured I was bingeing. Eating frustration perhaps goes down a bit better with sweets. It solved absolutely nothing and, instead, just amplified whatever I was feeling at the time, as well as my waistline. Any of the times I binged, I knew I wasn’t fixing anything at all. In fact, I knew I was punishing myself but wanting to get some gratification in the process.

For most of my adult years, I punished myself for being fat by making sure I remained fat. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but in the mindset I had until fairly recently in my adult life, I also never believed for a millisecond that I could not be fat. For a while, especially as a young (and obese) adult, I convinced myself that I was part of a minority of fat people who suffered no ill effects from my obesity; I didn’t feel like I was damaging myself at all, and that I was totally healthy. I ignored the many warning signs that I was not, in fact, healthy at all.

Yesterday was the 2 year anniversary of having my second knee replacement. I know, in retrospect, that I damaged my body with the weight I carried; I was quite young to have two total knee replacements. Decades of dieting and then piling the weight back on afterward have also made my current path much harder, and more crucial that I succeed. My health issues did not happen overnight, and the solutions to them certainly have taken a long time. If I had a Delorean, I’d shoot for my young adulthood and tell my young self to get control before ravaging my body, but I wonder if I would have even listened to myself.

I still am learning about my brain and my body, and recognizing when I am doing things that don’t serve me is part of the process. I accepted before the holidays that my weight would be a bit of a rollercoaster, though my goal was to make sure I remained in control. I didn’t factor in that 2020 has been its own trial and how it would contribute to my mindset around the holidays. I let myself lose focus rather than remaining accountable. What I saw when I stepped back on the scale was entirely my doing.

I am continually working on strategies that will help me stay the course while occasionally enjoying food holidays as I slowly move into maintaining my health. My whole journey has been a recognition that none of these achievements come easily, and that learning never stops.