Ready to Move On?

Affirmation: There is more to life than food; choose life.

Last night in group I commented that I just want food to not be the focus of my life. I was challenged that I sounded angry at food and perhaps I was not really wanting change because recovery takes a lot of thinking and focus on food. I understand what was being said, but it doesn't change the fact that I am ready for food to not be the center focus of my life anymore. I still feel that somehow all the focus I have put on food and eating issues that past year is no different, really than the previous years of over-eating. The focus of my life was still on food and eating. I don't think that I was able to explain my point so that anyone could understand what I was - am feeling...maybe because it is not completely clear to me either. But I keep thinking about this quote that was on Kerstin's blogg

"Naturally slim people have lots of goals and things going on in their lives that they focus on, e.g. their careers, family life, hobbies, faith etc. They eat because their bodies need the fuel, and because they enjoy eating. Overweight people on the other hand know only one goal: to lose weight. They think that their 'real' life only begins once they have dealt with that weight issue.." --Doris Wolf "Abnehmen und dabei geniessen"

This really explains what I am struggling with right now. I am ready to live life, to go back to the time when I was concentrating on living a life not centered around food; making goals, going after them, running hard after God, having a circle (tribe) of friends and food was something to be enjoyed, not obsessed over.

This past year has been about confronting the issues, both emotional and physical, surrounding this eating disorder. To learn about hunger, to feel hunger, to eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. To learn other ways of coping with life than using food. To learn portion sizes and teach my eyes and body to believe that this amount of food will satisfy me. To reteach my tastebuds to desire whole and healthy food and not junk food, sugars, and soda. I haven't quite taught my body to love exercise yet! But hope springs eternal.

But I am ready to let go of that as a focus of my life. This is not to say that I am going to quit working on or monitoring my actions, choices, and thought life around food. But I do believe that recovery, for me, looks like being normal. Perhaps it is because of my in God and the scriptural promises he offers like "Those whom the Son has set free are free indeed" I believe that at some point, after doing the deep work, I can be free from this eating disorder.

It is vital to do the work, the emotional, the spiritual work, the deep work. To resolve the issues behind the reasons for an eating disorder, but does it really have to be the focal point of my life forever? I am convinced not. That speaks too much to the victim mentality to me, of being tied to this disorder for life; it controlling me rather than me being free of it. Perhaps I will always have to be on guard that it will not return to consume me again, I can live with that, even scripture speaks to this with the description of putting on the whole armor as means of resisting temptation and sin.

Perhaps I am asking too much too soon. But I also think that this anger, this readiness to move beyond all the focusing my life on this issue speaks to me of being ready to move on. And oh baby am I ready to move on. I am tired of food being the sole focus of my life.

I am particularly talking about all that surrounds the physical act of eating; planning, shopping, cooking, eating, thinking about what exactly to eat next. It is exhausting and taking time away from all the things I really want to do. (Of course this begs the question of whether I am using this as an excuse for not doing what I really want to do is a valid question and my whine-fest on my morning pages will attest to that.) What I am talking about is all the time and effort surrounding planning menus, looking through cook books, going shopping, making sure you have all the right things on hand, cooking and cooking and more cooking, thinking almost incessantly about food, when you will eat next, what you will be eating, if you will be able to choose the healthy choices and not eat too much, will I have enough food with me during a long day so that I will not get hungry - all of it. It is like only half my brain is focused on anything else at any given time during the day. I do not think that this the way recovery will look. I am ready to move into a different place...a more normal place.

For instance. I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman who only had 1 loaf of bread in her cart, exactly 7 TV dinners, 3 baked potatoes, some fresh fruit, some cheese, a bottle of wine, some chicken breasts and a box of crackers and a few other fresh veggies. We were talking and she said something like "I hate doing my big weekly shopping". I looked at my cart (for two weeks for two people) that was almost filled with healthy choices of food that would take hours of thought and preparation. It was a light bulb moment for me. Eating healthy was not synonymous with eating simply or normaly for me. But it could be. I started to watch what people were eating at work - normal people - and saw that even the men were eating simple things; sandwiches and a piece of fruit, a frozen dinner, a can of soup. They were eating to provide fuel for their body, not making it a major production. So I have been trying to incorporate this into my life. Eating foods that are easy and don't take a lot of prep time. Foods that taste good. Foods that are uncomplicated. It has liberated me and my life. Now this is only about 2 weeks old, but it has been a major paradigm shift for me. And I think it is going to revolutionize my life. It makes me nervous to not have a lot of food in the kitchen (just in case), but it is wonderful to not have to touch food, cook food, think about food so much. The frozen dinners are working for me. Perhaps I will one day become tired of them and be ready to go back to more conventional ways of cooking, but for now it is freeing me up from being chained to all that surrounds food for me.

Next frontier: exercise!