Tag Archives: love

to being strong…

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I’m struggling.

I have been thinking about my blog every day since the last day that I posted something, what was that two weeks ago?!?  I have been struggling, dieting and emotionally and I just want to keep that hidden.  I keep telling myself that when I turn the ship around and feel better and my diet is better then I can write about where I was and how I’m in a better place.  I think that most stories, novels, successful blogs are all about the after moment.  The before and after pictures.  The story of how said person was in a low place but is writing to tell about how they got through it.  How they struggled to find success but they are now being successful.  I guess we as a human race prefer to read stories and blogs and watch movies about triumph and coming through the dark stuff because it keeps us hopeful.  But what about those of us still in the trenches??  I personally feel like I’ve been living in survival mode since roughly, January of 2006.  That’s 6 and a half years!  Throughout that time I’ve had some good times, happy moments etc, but I really feel like I’m just surviving each day, not living and enjoying those days.  Maybe I say that because when you’re in the trenches the lens you have to look at the past through clouds everything so it all looks pretty grey.

I wanted to wait and see when I would feel a little more sunny but I don’t, in fact I feel darker.  I want to write from the dark place, with the goal of not sounding whiny and complainy.  But here it goes:

I feel alone.  And dark.  And tired.  And sad.  And stuck.  And alone.  And alone.  And alone.

My diet has been shit this week.  Its a reflection of the emotional tsunami I’m trying to swim through.  My space is a mess, also a reflection of whats going on inside of me.  My car even smells funny, although, that I do not think is a reflection of my inner turmoil, I think there’s just something stinky going on.  Things with Preston’s dad continue at a standstill.  I haven’t had more than a 2 hour window of time without Pres in 5 weeks.  When I’m not near Preston I am at work, helping other people sort out their darkness.  I do have a few evenings to myself when I am not working and those prove to be even more challenging for me because I sit, alone.  Needless to say, I’d love to have a weekend “off” where I can get on my bike again, where I could sleep in, or visit a friend without planning how Pres will be entertained while I’m visiting.  I would like to consume an alcoholic beverage and enjoy the cooler evening weather with a friend.  I want to feel more human – more like a person who has needs and wants that are just as valid as her clients or her son’s.

I’m so sick of being alone (yes I find saying that funny when I just stated that I’d like a break from mommy duty for a few minutes but I’m talking about something a little different).  I want a partner, a boyfriend, a husband.  I want to be chosen by someone.  I dream about someone proposing to me and saying, “I choose you.  You are the one that I choose above any others.  You are worth choosing.”  I want a best friend that I can laugh with and play with and sleep next to every night.  I want a man in my life that helps me sort out the harder times and celebrates that happy times.  I want someone to watch the olympics with, someone to have inside jokes with, someone to play rock paper scissors with when Preston makes a mess and neither of us want to deal with it.  I want someone to sit with at mass.  I want someone to dream with and cry with and play with.  I don’t want to be alone anymore.  I want someone to be my someone who is a constant in my life, I want that person to choose me, pick me, love me.

Sometimes I tell myself that my desire to have a partner is so strong that it must mean I’m desperate.  I don’t know – I won’t settle, I won’t marry the next guy that comes along if he isn’t right, but I am definitely ready.  At least I think I am.  I just don’t want to do life alone anymore.  It sucks.  It does, it really just sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for my family and my friends.  I love all of them so much – the thing is, they’ve already chosen someone to be their someone.  So I get all those parts of a “someone” piecemeal from all my friends and family members.  I get shoulder to cry on here, concoct ideas over there, dream about winning the lottery over here, and share a Sunday afternoon there.  And I don’t get the best part of anyone, those parts are reserved for their someone or family.

At times I do an ok job convincing myself that the deal I’ve got going isn’t so bad.  I have awesome friends and an amazing family.  I get my needs met, even though its piecemeal, I don’t go completely without.  I am aware I have it better than some, many even.  Am I selfish for wanting more?  For wanting to feel validated and worthy because someone chooses me, and just me?

My best friend, Katie, wants me to put myself out there and start dating – I’ve been single for a year now.  I have my moments where that sounds exciting to me, but it mostly just feels like a meat market, and my feelings about my body trump my desire to put myself out there and risk being rejected.  All the things Chris used to say about my weight and how my beauty was measured by my size replay over and over in my mind and I can’t possibly imagine being viewed as beautiful at this weight.  I think, why would I go speed dating, or to some mixer, only to stand awkwardly by myself and not be approached by a single guy?  Why would I continue trying internet dating (ugh I hate it) when its all based so much off of the pictures that you post to attract someone to you.  I don’t even think I’m that interesting anymore – all of my hobbies, interests, and knowledge have been swallowed up by sorting out which dance classes to sign Pres up for, what Pres needs to know before preschool starts in three weeks, and what do my clients need from me this week?  Another person couldn’t possibly find any of that interesting.  All of these self-destructive thoughts don’t help my case at all, but I’ve got quite the crowd in my mind telling me these things and its hard to quiet it all down enough to risk putting myself out there.  :(

I have invested several hours this week looking online for a second job.  I need to find a way to bring more money in, without sending most of it out to childcare for Preston.  I want to work more, I want to make more money, but I want to be with Preston.  I don’t want to miss out on these precious years that he actually likes me.  I know that the reality of single parenthood is generally working two or even three jobs to pay the bills and make ends meet and I get so angry and upset that, that is my reality.  This is nowhere near what I wanted my life to be like.  I never would have laid out this path as the one to take.  Maybe that’s true of most peoples lives and you just have to work with where you are.  I know this.  I help people realize this and work to accept these things about life for a living!!  I am just really struggling with it for myself.  I don’t want my life to be like this but I can’t figure out what move to make in order to change it.  With every move I think about taking it means giving up something else that I don’t want to sacrifice.

I know a man (boyfriend/husband) won’t fix this.  I know having a second job won’t fix this. I know Preston’s dad being completely amicable and flexible won’t fix this.  Only I can decide to feel better about what my life is at the present moment.  I’m just really struggling with that.  I’m really struggling to cheerlead myself through this life.  I’m really struggling to find strength and perseverance through this time, through these years and years of uphill battle, where is the top?  When do I summit this beast of a mountain?  How much further and harder can I push?  Everyday I end my day praying to God that something gives because I simply don’t have anymore fight in me – and then everyday I wake up able to make it through one. more. day.  My definition of strength has always been that if you keep waking up every day and keep making it through each day then you are being strong, even if you feel weak the whole time.  Here’s to being strong…

angry.

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I’m feeling angry toady.  Really REALLY angry.  My anger is directed at a particular person who made a horrible decision that affects my son.  I am so angry about it I could swear for ten minutes straight and I’m not sure I could convey how much anger I feel inside of me.  Anger is one of the emotions that I don’t have a problem with feeling and expressing.  I am what some in my line of work might deem a ‘quick to anger’ kind of person.  Instead of letting things simmer and bother me for a long time without saying anything until I explode (a slow to anger type) I am ready and willing to express my anger when I feel it.  Neither way is right or wrong, and both ways of dealing with upsetting things can get you into trouble.  But my way is definitely quick to anger.  I get angry sometimes about little things and express it and move on without it feeling like a lasting thing.  I have scorched a few people in my life because of this trait of mine.  But I am also not typically simmering with anger at anyone because I get it out as I express it.  This particular situation last night sent me through the roof.  So angry that I am struggling to find words to describe it.  And as I have grown older and wiser ;) I have made more of an effort not to scorch those around me when I get angry and instead let the feeling subside a bit before expressing it.  It seems to be most beneficial for myself and those around me.

When I work with my clients on anger I typically talk about how anger is a secondary emotion.  That it is the emotion that rises to the top but there are usually other feelings going on beneath the surface that fuel the anger.  Anger is just more socially acceptable than fear or sadness for example.  The example I use is: when someone cuts you off you get angry with the other driver, sometimes mutter some choice words at them, and other times whip out the bird and send it their direction.  Either way you express anger, but what sits below that is fear.  Fear that you could have been in an accident, fear for your safety, and when that was threatened your expression of it turned to anger.  So in this time of waiting out my anger I decided to ask myself what is beneath the anger in this situation.

Frustration, disappointment, fear, disbelief, betrayal, and sadness are the feelings that come to mind.  Frustration for me is almost always and immediately turned to anger.  When I’m frustrated with something anger happens very quickly.  A very clever way of avoiding feeling frustrated.  Disappointment is something I feel somewhat confident in handling – everyone experiences disappointment and it doesn’t have an isolating feeling associated with it so I’m ok with a little let down every now and then.  Fear is something I don’t like, I typically cope with fear by reaching out – talking to people and expressing my fears helps me to normalize my fears and get a grip on reality.    I cope with disbelief similarly to disappointment.  I don’t live the same as a lot of people in this world, I have different viewpoints and at times other people act in ways that lead me to disbelief but I reason that they are simply wired different than me – I’m big on the ‘different strokes for different folks’ mentality.  Betrayal and sadness lead me to eat.  Plain and simple, I don’t like dealing with these two.  They lead me to feel isolated, lonely, disrespected – and all of those play into my fears & insecurities about my self worth.  Particularly in this situation because it was something involving the care of my son it reminds me about my status as a single mom and that enhances my feelings of loneliness and thoughts of “how did I get into this mess?”.

I was proud of myself that yesterday after discovering that my sons care had been neglected and disregarded to the level that is in the ABSOLUTELY NOT OK category I thought about taking a bike ride.  I was so mad and had no words that all I wanted to do was get on my bike and ride around until I felt clear inside.  So I am happy that my initial reaction for coping was something that is healthy for me.  However, at that moment it was time to get my little man some dinner and put him to bed.  I swallowed my anger down and focused on my responsibility as mom.  After I said goodnight to Preston and shut his door I allowed myself to fully feel/reflect on this information I learned about how he spent his weekend away from me.  The anger was so quick to appear that all these other feelings quietly sat unattended beneath the surface.  I made my dinner and ate alone.  This is when the real stuff started to creep up.  This is when I thought about food in a coping/avoiding kind of way.  I didn’t actually feel like acting on this desire my body was informing me of – I tried to stay focused, recognize it, and allowed it to pass.  I told myself no.  I didn’t allow any space to entertain the idea of what type of food I might want to binge on or anything like that.  It was the people that read this blog and what it represents for me that helped me shut down that possibility very quickly.

But now I’m left to deal with all this ugly anger and all of its little buddies that follow along behind him.  In times like this I think a lot about how much I struggle being a single mom.  I tell myself that if I were married I wouldn’t feel so alone.  I make up that people that are married always have a person they can seek solace and support in.  Rationally I know that isn’t always the case – in fact sometimes it is the person you are married to that brings up the feelings that I have been feeling for the past 18 hours.  So I know that I’m lying to myself – that I’m feeling lonely and frustrated (and wanting a prince charming to rescue me) and the story I make up about married people fits with how I feel.  But continuing to believe that I don’t have what all married people have is not really helpful for me.  I may not have a husband but I have family and friends that listen to and support me.  Might it be different if I had a husband?  Maybe.  But only maybe.  So for now I will sit in and process my frustration, disappointment, fear, disbelief, betrayal, and sadness.  I will try not to avoid feeling those things and instead let them help me take action.  Let them help guide me in what to do next and how to respond to a situation that has left me feeling so angry.

Facing My Fears

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“Whatever it is we’re afraid of, one thing holds true: that by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we’re carrying around a giant tumor.” – Meredith Grey (or her writers)

 Just watch the first 2 minutes and 30 seconds of the clip if you’ve never seen this episode.  The sound is really quiet but its the best I could find.

I’m not sure what made me think of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy earlier today yesterday but it happened and it inspired me to write about it.  If you aren’t a Grey’s fan or haven’t seen this episode this woman comes in with a massive tumor on her abdomen.  She hasn’t left her house in a year because of it.  At one point in the episode George O’Malley asks her why she let it grow so big and the woman explains that she’s always feared the hospital so she put off going to the doctor.  She only decided to seek medical attention when it became unavoidable.

The whole episode is basically about why we put things off and that it is because of fear that we don’t do things.  When I think about weight loss, dieting, trying to change myself, etc I can completely relate to this idea.  Before I lost 100lbs the first time I was afraid of the unknown, and feared all the work I would have to put into losing the weight.  I was also afraid of failing.  But that first time was mostly me forcing myself to stop being lazy.  This time around has been a different ball of wax.  In fact the past 7 years I think I’ve been like this woman, growing a “tumor” (the weight) and being so afraid of dealing with it that I simply avoided it until I couldn’t anymore.

Someone might say a tumor grows out of human control, and I was the one in control of the weight growing.  The thing is throughout the past 7 years a lot of it felt out of control for me.  I recall times of trying to diet and then on Friday after work feeling lonely or let down or some other negative emotion and I would go find food on auto pilot – literally the decision and execution of finding junk food would happen so quickly I only felt the guilt of breaking my diet after the food was ordered or was sitting in my car on the way home.  Often times I would get a bag of chips, or cookies, or some other treat and plan to eat some of it in moderation and save the rest of it, but when I would try to put it away it would sit there calling my name, taunting me until I picked the bag back up and consumed the rest of whatever it was until I felt sick.  There are a variety of foods that I have sworn to God I would never touch again if he would just make the sick, I totally overate, feeling go away.  In those times I was just too afraid to face the bad feelings so I soothed myself with food.

Other times in the past 7 years I have been stuck in this cycle because of the stream of thoughts I have running about myself as a result of trying to make losing weight about someone else.  The woman in the Grey’s episode had witnessed several family members enter the hospital and died while there, so she believed that if she went to the hospital the same would be true for her.  And unfortunately it was true – she waited too long and died on the operating table.  After dating Chris I believed that even being thinner didn’t make me worth loving.  I believed that he proved that to me by not loving me and letting me go when I was trying so hard to be exactly what he wanted.  He showed me that I had to be 135lbs and maintain that to be lovable or else I wasn’t.  I struggled to believe that at 250lbs if I was laughing and having a good time with people that I was as worthy and lovable as my friends who were at least 100lbs less than me.  I believed these things because I had experienced them.  At one of my lower weights I recall Chris asking me how I ever thought I was pretty when I was at my heaviest, because I used to say I felt pretty when going out with friends or something.  I was at a loss for how to answer it because I did feel pretty.  Probably because I was only focused on my face and I like my face.  And maybe I felt pretty relative to my size.  But, regardless of how I felt pretty at the time, the fact that he asked me that sent the message that I clearly was not pretty then and I shouldn’t have thought that way about myself.  So when I put the weight back on it was tremendously  hard to have “pretty days”.  I also started to interact with the world as if these things I believed about myself were true.   Like the way the doctors react to the woman with the tumor; I believed all thin people talked about me and judged me like that every second of every day.  I was unlovable if I was fat.  I was not funny and enjoyable being overweight.  That “pretty days” were only possible for thin people.  And the world started to react to me that way.  Not that people were more mean or insulting, but the world just didn’t care for me the way it felt in 2005 when I was thinner.  Likely this was all a result of perception on my part.  The story I told myself about my self worth felt true because I looked for validation of it in everything.

I would have moments of clarity where I could convince myself those things weren’t true, that I was worth fighting for, so I would fight.  I would start a diet and within a week or two something would happen that lined up with my bad perception of myself and I would quit. I became less willing to try over time.  I became resentful and frustrated and depressed.  I still struggle with this.  My story about my self worth that was influenced by Chris and adapted and developed by me has a way of creeping up on me.  Sometimes I notice something I don’t like about myself in the mirror and I obsess about it for some time.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and feel pretty and the voice inside of me tries to remind me that fat girls don’t get “pretty days”.  I have to tell myself to shut up – quiet down and go away! That’s not true!!  When I say something and everyone in the room doesn’t drop everything and come listen to every word coming out of my mouth it is not because I am overweight it is because they’re busy, or preoccupied, or something else – but its not about me.

I’m still at a point where my weight loss isn’t noticeable to anyone but myself and I fear something coming along and knocking me off this ride and failing.  And I initially feel comfort in thinking that people then wouldn’t know I failed, that I hadn’t done what I set out to do and it would be fine.  I could just stay overweight and no one would know I want something different for myself.  But then I remember that I’m writing this blog.  That I’ve told everyone I know that I’m making this effort, that quitting now would mean that I have to own it and tell people.  And that is not something I want to do.  And ultimately giving up is not something I want to do either.

The Grey’s Anatomy episode ends with Meredith saying, “We have to make our own mistakes.  We have to learn our own lessons.  We have to sweep todays possibility under tomorrows rug until we can’t anymore.  Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant.  That knowing is better than wondering.  That waking is better than sleeping.  And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.”

The pain of being so overweight has far exceeded the pain of facing my weight and self worth issues.  It has been time to face all of this for a long time.  And I am left with a giant tumor – the pain, the regret, the missed opportunities and experiences.  But I won’t live in fear anymore.  I will continue to try.  Every day.  I don’t want to wonder anymore about who Megan is as a healthier and happier person.  I don’t want to long for her anymore.  I want to work my ass off to become her and maintain her.

Pain in the…

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Last night as I was falling asleep I was thinking about pain tolerance and how we say that one person has a higher pain tolerance than another person and wondered how we might actually know something like that.  The thing about pain is that pain is such a vague concept in terms of it being comparable to other people.  We can compare our own pain to other times we have experienced pain but can not very clearly relate it to another’s pain.  And when we relate our pain to a previous experience we are measuring current pain with a memory of pain.  And memories have a way of fooling us sometimes – whether it be remembering things worse or better than when we actually experienced it, they are rarely 100% accurate.

Our pain is all connected to our awareness of it.  I had Preston via c-section.  I never even went into labor, it was planned, so one minute I was a happy and (relatively) comfortable pregnant lady and the next minute I was numb from the chest down and hearing the first cries of my new baby boy.  It was a good experience and I would say that I didn’t really feel any pain.  In fact I felt great through the whole procedure.  They pulled the epidural out 24 hours after the birth and as the medicine wore off I became sore and then there was pain; but because I wasn’t aware of the pain before the medicine wore off does that mean that my body did not experience pain during the c-section?

What about emotional pain?  Can another person gauge how painful a given emotional experience might be for someone else?  Can two people experience the same trigger to emotional pain (say a death in the family) and give the pain a different value on the pain scale?  Are we ever experiencing emotional pain and simply unaware of it due to the “epidural” that we have firmly in place to block the pain from being too much?  Can we ever have that pain blocker in place before the pain begins (like we can with physical pain) or is it always secondary to the pain – coping?

Some of these questions I can’t answer.  Pain is so personal and so abstract and yet so concrete all in one.  When I recall times of pain in my life I think first of emotionally painful times and later to physically painful times.  Maybe I have been blessed to have not had to endure too much physical pain – although I’ve had a few doozies!  Maybe the emotional pain has just always rated higher on the pain scale for me.  Maybe I have a high tolerance for physical pain and a low tolerance for emotional pain.  But who’s to say?  Pain is pain.  I have dealt with my physical pain with ibuprofen, ice, stitches, casts, and bandaids.  I have dealt with my emotional pain with tears, screams, silence, laughter (a sometimes awkward reaction but it happens), TV, and food.

Now that I am working daily to monitor my food intake (a primary form of emotional pain block) it brings up a lot of memories of emotional pain.  I had my emotional epidural for a long time so that I could avoid and/or lessen the pain (I still felt the pain when not “medicating” but the food managed to dull it).  Now I’ve essentially pulled the block.  I am not feeling all the pain like a backed up dam, but I still have pain its just not quite clear what the source was for all of it.  Just like when my epidural was pulled after my c I didn’t experience the pain of the actual procedure just the residual effects of new wounds healing.  It took several months to no longer feel pain after my c-section.  And I guess for me, it takes years for the emotional pain (from some wounds) to fully heal – or maybe I’ve perpetuated them instead of allowing them to heal in a timely manner.  So now I’m left to sort out how I will deal with, tolerate, cope with the pain that seems to still be present.

The ironic thing is that in an effort to dull the emotional pain from various experiences with other people I ate which caused me to feel miserable about myself, which put me in a fair amount of pain as well!!  Both emotional pain and physical pain.  I think the challenging part of losing the weight for me is getting out of this cycle.  I have to lose a decent amount of weight before my weight is no longer a source of emotional pain for me – and I fear my weight will forever be a source of emotional pain because of some of the emotional pain I endured in a previous relationship (read a little bit about that here).  I also have to deal with the emotional pain from other experiences that are marbled throughout the parts of me that are depressed about my weight.  It is so complicated.  And yet going forward is so simple – right?  I have to eat less, move more and the weight will come off.  In the meantime I have to cope with emotional pain in a new way so that it doesn’t make me turn to food, and when I want to I just have to tell myself no.  So whether my tolerance for pain is high or low I am extremely aware of it while I attempt to eliminate triggers to pain that I have control of, my weight.  As for how I will deal with pain going forward, be it physical or emotional, is yet to be completely determined.  But I’ll keep you posted ;)

My Story – Part 2

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Before I left for the conference that I attended in early January 2005 I had been inspired to read Dr Phil’s – 7 Keys to Weightloss Freedom.  The book touched me in a different way than others had been able to.  I planned to start a diet sometime after I returned home from my upcoming trip.   I sat on the plane to Nashville with my arms folded over my enormous tummy/chest so as not to disturb the person next to me.  I just barely fit in my seat and was thankful to have the aisle to lean into, I was mortified and thought everyone on the plane must be judging me.  Upon arriving in Nashville I realized that it was one hilly town!  I struggled walking place to place because of how out of shape I was (huffing and puffing, sweating, the whole bit – it wasn’t pretty).  While negative thoughts about my weight were never far from my mind the trip was positively life changing.  The conference was put on by well known Christian speakers and the most popular Christian artists.  It was amazing to be in such a giant space with thousands of kids my age worshiping God together.  During my time at the conference I embraced God in a way that I had avoided for so long.  Before then I had convinced myself that due to my weight not only could the people in my every day life not love me, but neither could I, and more importantly neither could God.  My thoughts shifted and I had a true realization that God made me special, he chose all of my uniqueness, my gifts and talents, and my weaknesses. I accepted that he loves me and therefore I began to believe I was worthy of being loved.  Maybe for some people this idea comes easy, but for me it was a major hurdle of self acceptance.  I had clarity and peace that I had never experienced before.  It was amazing.  I left the conference having 110% confidence that I could be successful in whatever I set my mind to, and next on the list was a major slim down.

I decided that because I had been on so many diets before, I would keep this one a secret from everyone except my parents whom I was living with at the time.  I didn’t want anyone to know I was trying just in case I wasn’t successful.  So Sunday morning January 22nd 2005 I stepped on the scale and saw the numbers 290… I couldn’t believe how close to 300lbs I was.  I promised myself that would be the last day in my life I would ever see a number that high on the scale.  So I set to work.  By using Dr. Phil’s plan I was able to eat very sensibly and controlled without having to put too much effort into measuring and counting and all of those things that became tiring after a week or two.  I decided to skip the exercise portion that goes with most diets for a while to allow myself time to get used to the new eating plan.  The first week I lost 11lbs!  The second week I followed with 6 more!  I was on a roll.  It was as if I was melting from the inside out.  It took time for people to even notice that I was losing.  When you are thin losing 5 or 10 pounds is very noticeable.  When you are nearly 300lbs it takes at least 30 before people question if you’ve lost weight.  It only took about two months (maybe less) for me to drop nearly 40 pounds.

35lbs lost

And that’s when things got interesting…

**I am struggling with this next part of the story…1. to make sure I tell it fair and from as honest a place that I can, 2. to explain it clearly and concisely and, 3. 7 years later it is still painful to rehash – bear with me, I will do my best.**

So there was this guy.  His name was (still is) Chris.  We had known each other for several years.  We were JUST FRIENDS.  I had the biggest crush on him.  We hung out pretty regularly before I started losing weight.  In fact he and I talked about my desire to get healthy and he was really supportive of my efforts.  We had a really goofy, no boundaries kind of friendship.  Like I said earlier I didn’t tell anyone I was dieting, especially him.  I wanted him to notice that I was looking thinner.  He noticed.  In fact he noticed sooner than anyone only 3 or 4 weeks in.  He was very excited and supportive of how well I had been doing and only encouraged me to keep going.  So we continued to hang out.  Then one weekend we were out together and he kissed me on the cheek.  I knew it!  He liked me, it was clear.  So the next time we were alone I asked him about it.  I recall saying something like “I probably shouldn’t be asking you this right now” and proceeded to ask him if he was interested in me and if my weight loss had anything to do with it.  We had never kept things from each other before so he was honest.  I thought that’s what I wanted – I did want that, I just didn’t know the effect his answers would have on my self worth over time.  He did like me but was hesitant to date while I was still losing weight to be sensitive to my process and for selfish reasons on his part.  We spent weeks discussing the status of our friendship/relationship.  I was so excited at the idea of dating him – dating someone I felt so connected to mentally and spiritually that I pushed really hard for him to get over the weight loss thing and start dating already.  I knew he was not 100% sure he was ready but I was 130% so I rationalized that it kind of evened things out (and patience is not my strong suit).  Around the time of our first date I had hit the 75lbs lost mark.  I felt so good about myself.  When I got dressed up to go on dates I felt truly beautiful.  I bought products for my hair and new makeup and perfume.  I even wore heels!!  It was magical.  He took me on your standard dinner dates but nothing about dating him felt “standard”.  I convinced myself I was living a fairytale.  We were happy but I spent a lot of time in lala land feeling so excited I had found my soul mate (I thought we were one evil step mother away from being a Disney movie…).

75lbs lost

Shortly after we started seriously dating I went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic.  I had not faltered one day, one meal, in the previous 5 months but I was heading to another country to serve and didn’t feel like my diet could take precedence over respecting our hosts.  That mindset sounds all good and innocent, but as soon as we landed in Miami (our layover) I gave myself permission to go off my diet – but not permission to fall off the wagon – however I felt like I did…I had a turkey and cheese sub sandwich with mayonnaise and a bag of chips and real pop!  Then I bought a small bag of candies and a small bag of teddy grahams for the flight (the fact that I can remember exactly what I ate and recall devouring all of that “off limits” food just tells me how obsessed with food and my diet I was then, and how restrictive I was).  The slope was slippery!!  When we landed in the DR our host was waiting to take us out for pizza.  The pizza wasn’t that good but I ate far more than a controlled portion.  We went to our hotel and about an hour after I went to sleep I woke up feeling like my chest was on fire.  I thought maybe I was having some indigestion from the drastic shift in diet.  (damnit megan why did you do this?!?)  Then I thought the pain was too severe to be indigestion and it must be a heart attack (oh sweet jesus don’t let me die in another country!!!).  I was rushed to the nearest hospital, was asked a bunch of questions, got a chest xray, an EKG, and an ultrasound all to find out I had gallstones.   I was told that it is common for extremely overweight people to have stones and even more common that a gallstone “attack” occur as you are losing and then have a largely fatty meal (damn you pizza!!).  So I was laid up for the rest of the trip and got my gall bladder removed a month after returning home.  The whole thing was an ordeal and something inside of me got shut off on that trip – my self discipline.

Chris and I continued dating.  He even came to visit me after my surgery (I think I basically begged him to come and even was an ass about making sure he sent me flowers – I had expectations and a fantasy he had to live up to!).  It became very obvious my weight loss from week to week (I shared in detail with Chris every week) was slowing down.  I went from averaging 4lbs a week to 1 or 2.  And Chris didn’t get it.  I made excuses and at times lied about what I was eating but I began to feel a bit defensive with all the questions.  I started to wonder why the 75lbs weren’t enough.  Our relationship continued to get more serious we said the ‘I love you’s and talked about spending our lives together.  I was drunk on love.  It was bad.  I was blind to the scary dark undertone that developed in our relationship.  This ‘weight thing’.

85/90lbs lost

We spent Thanksgiving together and I thought I was looking good, somewhere around 90lbs down.  A week after we got home from visiting his family I got the question I’d hoped to avoid that week – “so did you lose any weight last week? I forgot to ask?”  I knew it was coming because we celebrated my successes together every week. “no. I gained 4 pounds…but some of it was probably from traveling and I’ve been working really hard this week and by Sunday I will have lost it all so its ok…right?” There was a clear and painful shift between us from that moment on.  My diet went from being something we both celebrated for me to it being an expectation for the relationship to continue for him.  By the end of the following week we had decided to “take a break” to see if I could get back on track with my diet and such.

**Now this part of my story is hard to tell for so many reasons, but one of the very important reasons is because I don’t want all of the blame to end up on Chris.  He and I can share it 50/50.  I defended him at the time to all my friends because I was not willing to look at some of it without my ‘drunk on love’ goggles on.  Then after coming out of that I spent years being furious with him for it.  None of it has done me any good and I think the only way that telling this story is of any use is if I own my half of the destruction of the relationship 50/50; but this is my story and it can’t be skipped over because of its profound effects on my motivation, self worth, and relationship with food.**

I wanted to get back on my diet as much as he wanted it for me.  I shared his viewpoint that I didn’t want to be with someone who would just accept me the way I was.  I wanted to be with someone who loved me enough to want me to live as long as I could and not live overweight and die young.  This part of it is so confusing and tough to work through in my mind.  I wanted to be loved for who I was on the inside – but I didn’t want to be loved as is because it wasn’t my best me, or the me I needed to be in order to live a long and healthy life.  Additionally I had already started to fall out of love with myself the moment that I “cheated” at the Miami airport and then continued to binge and “purge” with exercise and minimal calories – so expecting someone else to love me felt unrealistic.  When we went on a ‘break’ I was devastated.  I wanted to be with him.  I had already committed in my heart to spend my life with him.  I made choices in our relationship based on that internal commitment. So I cut my calories down to the minimum and went running, a lot.  Within a couple of weeks he and I decided that we would continue with our plans to spend Christmas with each others families and see where things went.  I sent an email to his mom letting her know the small amounts of rabbit food I would require while we were staying with them (I was consuming on average 800 calories a day – less if I could bear the hunger).  Things were looking up for our relationship but I had entered dangerous territory in my relationship with food and my weight and how those defined me).  I weighed myself the day before Christmas Eve and I had dropped 100.5lbs total!!!  I was 189.5!  I was so proud of myself.  And I knew he would be proud of me too.

100.5lbs lost! (I looked normal sized standing between my sisters!!)

We officially decided to get back together on Christmas day.  I was so happy.  On New Years Eve morning we had a small fight that turned into the ugliest fight I had ever been in by that night.  We were done (again).  I was devastated.  I had worked so hard; under eating to reach a goal I thought would make me worth hanging onto and within a few days it was all over.

I cried for days, weeks, I cried so much I nearly lost my voice. I regularly went to work/school with wet, swollen, red eyes.  I could barely hold it together.  My friends were angry with him.  I was angry with me and then him.  It was all really confusing.

I binged.  Often.  We saw each other every Sunday due to a shared commitment we both had so I would binge the first half of the week and be “really good” (aka, starving myself) the second half so that I didn’t have a gain on the scale by Sunday.  I was in so much pain.  I said a lot of hurtful things.  I convinced myself he wasn’t hurting because my pain was too intense to believe he would hurt like I did by choice.  It was awful.  A few months later I found a job in Atlanta, GA that started three weeks after I finished school.  All I wanted was to get out of Chicago and start over.  I abandoned my Bachelor’s degree and the opportunities it offered to be a live in nanny in Atlanta, GA so that I could get as far away from him as possible.  What I didn’t realize is that you can’t run away from yourself no matter how far away you go…

Keep reading… Part 3