Emotional eating and why do we get fat

I was thinking today I wanted to talk about emotional eating. Someone told me recently they didn't understand why an intelligent person would allow themselves to get fat. Maybe in different exact words but that was the jist. I mean saying that cause I started out thin, long, long ago.

What I say to that is obviously they have never been fat. We all have our different reason for putting on the poundage. Sometimes it's just getting older and eating too much and not moving that much. For me it was a little of that but more about emotional eating. I was trying to go back in time and remember when I starting to put on weight. I remember a distinct time was right after I got married. I was working for this accountant. He was very nice and outgoing but he had a real bad tendency of coming up behind me and trying to massage my shoulders. And also when I had to go make copies in the copy room, there he would be in the doorway and not moving. I had to kind of squeeze on by him and was thinking 'why won't he move out of the way'! He was the touchy feeling kind of boss and I finally realized that he was sexually harassing me. I was young and naive I suppose. I thought, well, he's just from Morrocco or somewhere, aren't they like that in their country? His wife was the office manager, she didn't seem to say anything. I started to feel stress about going to work. I started to gain weight. I'm not sure how that's related but I guess cause I was stressed and feeling down I started to eat and to gain weight.

Anyway, fast forward to other times in my life. I was at work at the school district, I was an admin assistant/office manager. I liked the people I worked for but my boss was an evil b*tch who no one seemed to like much. They were always asking how I could work for her. The job was stressful and I began to eat. She liked to stress me out my giving me things last minute to do in 1 hour....projects that she could have given me days if not hours before. She drove me crazy. I think I was 170lb when I started that job and by the time I left there 3 years later when I got pregnant I was up to 212. Hmmmmm.....stress....weight gain. Coincidence? I think not.

Then later after the baby....started to gain more. Hit a bad spot in the marriage. You know, don't talk about it...just eat. Adding a baby to the mix was a real big shocker/change for us as we had been married 10 years with no kids. So we fix the marriage and then I started to lose the weight....about 40lbs and now a standstill due to stress again.

Food had/has become my drug of choice. When things bother me, let's eat. When someone made me feel bad...let's eat. Keep it all inside. Don't let them know how they hurt me. Just eat. Of course, it worked for a while. But then I'd get mad at myself for eating the fast food or ice cream or whatever and I was just hurting myself. Stress has always been a key trigger for me. That, and food is love. You know, growing up it was a treat to go out to eat. We started out poor in the beginning and going out to eat was a rare thing. And my mom was and still is a good cook. It seems food=love. She loved to provide us with the food, especially the holidays. We got the full spread. Now 2 out of us 3 sisters are overweight. My dad also loves to eat but he's not too much overweight. I guess he would go up and down 10-20 lbs. all the time. My grandma was overweight. Who the heck knows why we are the way we are. Or maybe it was that I didn't share with hardly anyone back then....my father was a big drinker. So was my grandpa. Definitely alcoholics....did I not get the love I needed from him? Probably. Did it affect my weight? I really don't know. Did it affect my happiness and my body image and self esteem from things he would say? Yes. I think so.

All I know is that when I am in pain or under stress, I can revert back to eating. It has been happening again as of late. With the deaths of 2 of my loved ones....I don't seem to care that much about healthy eating. And due to my constant school and studying the exercise in nill. I'm trying to break out the rut. I'm feeling crappier and my pants are tighter but I haven't gotten on the scale. I'm sure I've gained a good amount...ya know I can just tell. But, this is not about beating myself up. This is about understanding it. This is about how to break the spell that food can have over me. My own little coping mechanism.

I was talking to my sister about the weight issues. And she said it's funny you know. When people mention your weight or that you should do something about it.......she said ya know, 'it's not like we don't know we have a weight issue'. Meaning, why the heck do they need to bring it up at all. It is our own private dilemma. Another blogger, Sandi from down under in Australia took it a step further and said you know what? She said she is tired of dieting and is just going to accept who she is right now and the weight she is at. I wish I could do that. I can't seem to do that. It would be so much more easier. It would be easier than thinking....'I have to get back to that thin woman I was years ago'. Because the funny thing is that I'm still the same inside but it seems that some people forget that. Then it makes me think, 'have I changed?' Yeah, I suppose I am not as confident as when I was young and thin. I mean confident in the way that I look and feel about myself. But other days I'm like 'I'm still the nice person inside and if people can't see that then they can just go stuff themselves'!

Anyway, I'm just going on and on. Taking a break from my all day study marathon as I have 2 big tests on Monday. I am liking learing about xrays and like Fridays the best as sometimes we get to do real xrays on the phantom/dummy things they have in class. The hands on learning is fun. All this bookwork and memorization is the dull part.

Tomorrow we will go with some friends to the pumpkin farm and pick out pumpkins and maybe go through the huge corn maze. My son loved it last year. And it's time for some fun about now....dangit! Ok, share with me if you have had struggles with emotional eating. Do you still struggle? If you don't, how did you break the cycle? Please share, I'm not getting any younger and want off this merry go round.