losing weight now - how far have I come?

In my second year at university I started to diet. I was really unhappy, physically sick (due to non-weight issues) and I was stuck in my life at Helsinki. Dieting was, of course, the wrong course to take but I managed to follow the weight watchers points program for a year or so and lost more than 10 kgs. Afterwards the weight started to creep back in, and I was really unsure about what I felt like eating, when I was hungry and my life overall. I was unhappy. I remember one instance when I was sitting on my floor, probably eating something "forbidden" and had an epiphany: "I will never be able to eat exactly what I want!" It felt like a huge blow, but I believe now that that's what started my transformation. 

My history with food had been relatively painless, but with my body it was always problematic. My body was not respected by my parents, neither was my femininity. I didn't have a healthy respect for myself to start with. When I was 12 I suddenly realised that I was too much, too fat, too big (too much a woman). I went from wearing whatever I wanted to wearing what I thought I didn't look so fat in. After that I always had the sense that my life would start after I became acceptable, a bit thinner. I was not fat at all, very healthy with some curves. But nevertheless I had the feeling that life had to be postponed until I became something else. Now I know that you either are completely acceptable or not, that its a decision other people make for you, and that if you're lucky, you can take it from them and decide for yourself at some point... I was not accepted at my "home" and seeing myself as too much, too fat, was just code for my life not being good for me. I now feel that I'm only just now becoming truly alive after having been seriously traumatized (my own diagnosis) by my childhood environment. Dieting was never going to be the way to health or happiness. 

About a year after I stopped dieting I had become disillusioned with it in general and I was wondering if something truly was wrong with me or with diets. And I managed to find the trust that the fault was in diets, and that I would never diet again. I think that I did a google search with "non diet" or something similar and somehow stumbled upon the Overcoming Overeating approach. It's a non diet approach to resolving overeating and other food-related coping mechanisms (such as excessive dieting), the basic premise being that dieting doesn't work but just creates unhealthy thoughts about food and our bodies, and if weight is an issue it will gradually fall off into a naturally good level after eating exactly what we want for a while. 

I started following the approach, went to 4 different candy stores every day to "stock up" on fffs (formerly forbidden foods) and tried to trust my sense of what I want to eat. I noticed that I really didn't know when I was hungry or what I felt like eating. I think now that I never really fully gave myself the financial permission to buy exactly what I want but the approach worked nevertheless. Now for a few years I've had the food at the back of my mind, and have thought mostly about what I would like to eat, and what I would like to eat in terms of being healthier, and mostly managed to eat whatever I like. My idea of what I like and how I want to eat only becomes clearer and clearer with time, and it's usually never a problem to stop eating after I've had what is a truly satisfying amount. After initially gaining about 5kg with starting follow OO (and having the diet-induced binges that fell off after a while: an example is the time I ate 1l of ice cream with a full packet of muffins, and I have eaten neither for weeks now) I have been gradually losing weight. Some of my weight loss is due to different medications, but I have never gained a lot weight or eaten excessively even though I really believe that I can eat exactly what I want! 

 

This last week, however, I've been reading the sister book to Overcoming Overeating, When Women Stop Hating their Bodies. I've had it for a while now but never really read it. I want to remind myself of the approach because I'm starting to notice that I still associate thinness and losing weight with 'being good' or 'being more beautiful'. The fact is I'm losing weight. Mostly I think that it is because I had a gallbladder surgery in November, and now I seem to digest less of what I eat, and to crave less of the things I used to like, such as bread and yoghurt. I have a physical sense of deprivation, and that is enough to make food and eating a topic of thoughts (the reason dieters are so obbsessed with everything food-related). I'd like to trust that I offer myself exactly what I want and that I will not abandon myself if I lose more weight or if my weight starts to rise again after my body has gotten used to the surgery. My trust is a bit shaky now that I notice that I'm secretly happy about having lost weight. 

I'm also starting to realise how much progress I've made through OO these last years, now that I notice eating more. I notice that I leave food when I've had enough to eat (even at my boyfriend's sister or with his parents) and am learning to communicate what I want clearly (makes me notice that I know what I want, it's the communicating part I'm learning). I haven't really talked to P about his food issues but I get the sense that he is not as free around food as I am: makes me sad, but on the other hand makes me notice that I've been able to rid my life of a lot of unnecessary stress. I also usually experience my emotions without turning to food - it never was a huge issue for me but after dieting I did have some bingeing. I still think that many emotions I simply am not aware of (repress), but my vehicle is not food. I'm elated now that I have this freedom and that I found such a valuable resource at an important junction in my life. And maybe I can view this situation a lot more constructively than I would've been able to before my dieting days. The truth is that after OO I'm better off, I have a far better idea of what I want and need than I had even before dieting. 

My plans is to find out more about what I'd like to eat now that my appetite has changed, and to get used to my body as it is now (OO mirror work, which means just looking at yourself in the mirror without judgments, with the view of just taking in information) and to let go of the thoughts about a certain body being better than another. Yesterday I went to prisma (huge supermarket) and bought different things that I think that I'll like more, like salmon.  I'll write about how things go here.