My Biggest Secret

I'm now 53 years old and am a member of Weight Watchers, the second time around. In my past I've taken diet pills, both prescription and over the counter, and lost weight through NutraSystem. I have, at one time or another, tried every fad diet imaginable to lose weight and keep it off. The bottom line is that I'm overweight. More than overweight, I'm considered obese. Most people would just say "fat". I've been blessed with good health my entire life but for the last few years my blood pressure is elevated, I'm pre-diabetic and I live with back and knee pain daily. Food is killing me.

It's not that I want to be this way and if you read the first paragraph you realize that I've spent my entire life trying to change my physical appearance. Sometimes I've lost the weight, but it's always returned. I've been ashamed, depressed and angry at myself. Why? Why can't I just be like a normal person? I've asked myself this question a million times. From the time I was a toddler I've been fat. What's wrong with me?

I've finally come to 2 conclusions. The first is that I'm suffering from the "eat everything on your plate because there's starving children in Africa" syndrome. I was born in the early '50's and a lot of us from that era heard the same thing. Most children of that time lived in home where dad worked outside the house and mom was a housewife. Money was tight for most of our parents and it was a sin to waste food. A lot of my counterparts outgrew the "starving children syndrome" but to this day it's always in the back of my mind when I eat. There have been times when I finish dinner and my husband hasn't finished his. He gets up to scrape his leftovers in the garbage, and even though I'm not hungry I say: "Are you going to throw that away?" "Here, trade plates, I'll finish it." When I think about it, what I'm doing makes no sense at all. Now that I'm following the Weight Watchers plan, I know I can't take his leftovers, but it kills me to see him throwing food away. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, "it's a sin", "people are going hungry", "don't waste food".

The second conclusion I've come to is that my body doesn't know when it's full until it's stuffed. For some reason, the trigger that tells most people to stop eating is absent in me. If I go to a restaurant and order a meal I rarely have anything left to take home. When I get there I'm hungry, when I leave I'm stuffed. Uncomfortably stuffed. You might think that I'm a fast eater and that's why I stuff myself. But, I actually take my time and chew my food thoroughly. At home, my portions are always too large. Since I've been weighing and measuring my food, I realize that even though I always ate healthy, avoiding fried food and sweets, my portions were double or triple what a person needs. Now that I'm controlling my portions I sometimes feel hungry when I'm finished eating. In reality I know my stomach is full, so I just drink a glass of water and eventually the hunger goes away. It's a struggle and I know it will probably be a struggle for the rest of my life.

My big secret in life is that I have a problem with food. It's the reason I'm fat. I'm making some lifestyle changes, one at a time, and have made a commitment to myself to never give up. My only regret is that it took me 53 years to figure this all out.