My Personal Truth

Cutting foods from my diet hasn’t been easy, but it’s a
necessity. Since starting phase two of the Best Life Diet my total calorie
intake is 1600 a day. Surprisingly, I’m not suffering too badly. I used phase
one to sort through most of my crap about weight and it wasn’t easy.

Growing up I didn’t worry about my weight. I was confident
and athletic. All that changed after the birth of my first child. I gained too
much weight during the pregnancy, lost most of it with in a year of giving
birth, but then received the kick in the teeth when my mother said if I didn’t
lose another 20 or 30 pounds my husband wouldn’t want me anymore. I was already
feeling unsteady as a new mother and that was the last thing I needed to hear. I
wasn’t ready at 23 to be a mom but it was too late because my beautiful
daughter was already with me. On top of not feeling ready I despised where I
lived. I lived in the Mojave Desert of California. My first time seeing it I
described it as a giant kitty litter box. The weight gain didn’t start then, I
actually lost more weight, had a miscarriage, gave birth to another daughter,
lost that weight and then some after the death of my mother who always told me
I was fat even when I wasn’t. All of that happened between the years of 1993
and 1997.

My weight gain started after my mother’s death. I felt a ton
of guilt at the relief I felt that I wouldn’t have to hear her day after day
say something about my weight or the weight of my oldest daughter. While my
weight wasn’t an issue during the time before my mother’s death my
self-confidence was. Each day from the day I found out I was pregnant with my
first child I felt like a piece of me died each day. I bought into the fairy
tale that life was supposed to be all sugar and spice and that my life would be
full of happiness because I was a wife and mother. Quite the opposite was true
and the more we as women start to talk out loud the more we realize that more
than just a few of us feel this way. I hit a false bottom the day my father
died almost five years after my mother died. I say false because I did start to
make changes in my life it was also when I started gaining weight.

While I was finding my personal voice and creative
expression again I started to feel the guilt of feeling free of the burden of
dealing with an ailing parent. I started to eat. I also started dealing with
the issues I had with my mother and why she dwelled on my weight and the
importance of me being thin and pretty and the weight piled on. I look back at
photos now and realize I was never fat and it wasn’t my problem it was my
mother’s flaw and whether she knew it or not she was projecting her short
comings onto me. While I went out of my way not to repeat my mother’s mistakes
with my girls I let her voice creep into my sub conscious and cause me to doubt
myself.

Today I am able to push her words aside and replace the ‘you’re
getting fat and ugly’ with “Hey, look you lost a pound this week. You’re
getting thinner and you’ve always been beautiful.”

Dig deep and tell the truth about why you over eat. Here’s
mine I over eat because I get bored and I over eat when I think about the past
and what I heard from my mother. I also over eat because being a wife and
mother isn’t a complete and fulfilling life for me. Life is better now because
I am willing to admit that I need more than my husband and kids. I need my
writing, photography, dogs and friends. I am not happy with a life that is
centered on only my children and husband. This is my truth, what's yours?

Until next time I hope you find what you’re searching for.