Looking for a Why

I’m reading a book about 5 women who lost significant amounts of weight, gained some or all of it back, and are working on losing it again. It talks about something it calls “childhood myths” that live in our memories and contribute to the reason that we eat. (Notice that I don’t say “the reason we are fat.” The reason we are fat is that we eat.) Anyway, I’ve been trying to work out whether or not I have such memories.

I’ve been overweight basically my entire life. Even in elementary school. I don’t have any negative memories of my parents telling me that I needed to lose weight. And while I was made fun of in high school, that was only partially due to my weight. My wallflower, bookish personality also helped to provoke the bullying.

Most of the women in this book can point to things their parents said to them or did to them. Not so much with me. Early on my Dad and I had some, well, we’ll call them communication issues. When I was 12 I confronted him about them and we’ve been good ever since. My Mom and I have always had a great relationship. While I don’t share some of her political views, we get along very well as long as we stay away from certain subjects. LOL.

The only thing I can think of is perhaps the fact that my parents have struggled with their own weight for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is from first grade. My Mom was a member of Weight Watchers then, and she attended weekly meetings at night. I can’t remember what exactly my first grade teacher had asked me, something about whether my Mom would be somewhere on a certain night, but I remember my answer. “No. She has a fat club meeting that night.” (Come on, I was 6 or 7, give me a break.)

For good or bad I watched my parents—my Mom especially—try this diet and that diet, lose weight and gain weight, yo-yo-ing up and down. Through the years I think they tried them all. Weight Watchers, the Cambridge Diet, the Richard Simmons Diet, (remember those cards?) NutriSystem, Atkins, South Beach, back to Weight Watchers…you name it, they probably tried it. When the low carb diets started coming out, my brothers and I would joke all the time about a phrase my Mom was constantly saying. To this day I can still elicit a laugh from my brothers by saying something like, “Don’t eat that, it’s a bread!”

In middle school I even started trying to lose weight myself. I wasn’t pressured into it like some kids are, any comments from my parents were nurturing and from a good place. But I decided to try. I think I even lost a little. But the subject of weight loss and it’s successes and failures was constantly surrounding me.

So was food. Bad food. Between diets it was pop tarts at breakfast, 2 sandwiches and chips for lunch. Spaghetti and lots of bread at dinner followed by huge bowls of ice cream. A high school friend of mine tells a story about spending the night and eating a huge bowl of ice cream and drinking diet soda. That’s a pretty good picture of what was in our house.

This definitely shapes me. I never really knew any adults that had a healthy relationship with food. Everyone was struggling with their weight just like I am today. It is my status quo.

I guess it’s time to change my status quo.

 

P.S. I will take a moment to be a proud daughter. Last year at the age of 69 my Mom finally reached her goal weight, and she’s doing really well keeping it off. Believe it or not, with Weight Watchers! I’m very proud of her! At the same time, I don’t want to wait that long to get myself under control. And she doesn’t want that either.