Is food the abuser, or am I?

A new problem for an older body.

Being in Texas for a bit is great. The main benefit is that I get to spend time with my sister and other family members, and occasionally get to meet up with a long lost friend. I marvel at the wide streets, the giant backyards, and the ease of luxuries like indoor climate control as I gape at the prices for a simple meal out and the impossibility of walking anywhere.

Another feature of Texas for me is that unfortunately, I go pretty crazy around food. Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream. Donuts like the ones I ate when I was a kid, when my mom would takes us through the drivethrough before preschool (one glazed, one chocolate covered, and a small chocolate milk). All the sweets and chips and goodies that my brother-in-law insists on having in the house at all times and replenishes frequently.

I joke that when I’m in Texas I consume about 10,000 calories a day, but if I bothered to sit down and count them out, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be all that far from the truth. I consistently go back to Mexico 10 pounds heavier even after a two-week visit, my clothes uncomfortably tight. I deflate a little when I get back to Mexico, but never fully.

These Texas-sized binges are as frustrating as they are persistent. No matter how good my intentions are at the start of a trip, it’s as if someone else controlling my body takes over and just shovels it all in. The evolutionary button that tells you to eat everything you can now because later you might starve essentially gets sat on as soon as I get off the plane, and I become an addict, unable to focus on anything besides where my next sugar hit will come from.

I am literally capable of throwing a tantrum to get this.

Why? Well, food is comforting, of course. It’s also grounding in a way that’s hard to explain. The world might be falling apart, but a donut always tastes the same and always triggers the same familiar chemicals. It’s like a magic spell: “There, there. I’m here for you and always will be. Don’t worry.”

Nothing and no one can be counted on like food. It’s literally a “safe space” no matter where you are or what situation you find yourself in.

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I didn’t always have a problem with eating until I literally felt sick.

It started after I had my daughter. My mom visited twice, and had to be in the hospital twice. Even though I had a newborn I was trying to nurse, I had to be there with her as the only available translator, and of course my baby couldn’t be in the hospital with me. I was also trying to work close to full-time hours at my first of many online contract jobs, since I was still the main breadwinner in the home (I know). Finally, I had what is to this day one of the unhappiest babies I have ever met. She cried all the time, and until we finally gave in and did the dreaded “sleep training” months later, rarely slept more than an hour at a time. Her cries were not normal whining baby cries, but piercing screams, the kind you’d expect to hear coming from torture chambers. “Colic,” the paediatrician said, which is what all pediatricians say when they can’t find an explanation for apparently healthy babies that simply can’t be comforted.

All together, it broke me.

Addictions, we now know, often begin in times of extreme stress. And once an addiction path is carved out, it doesn’t get filled in again…there’s no “healing” an addiction in a way that lets you go back to a healthy relationship with the substance or behavior. Think of all those who come back from war as addicts, for example. Having a baby was hardly war, but that combined with other factors was the most stressful time of my life, and it left its mark.

Before I had Lisa, I’d never struggled with my weight. During the pregnancy and especially after, I shot up to pretty close to 200 pounds.

I tried plenty of diets: juice fasts, “shakes” of various brands, the “Whole 30.” It wasn’t until I found Bright Line Eating, whose basic premise is that you practice total abstinence around flour and sugar (among other parameters) that I got back down to where I felt comfortable. It sounds extreme, but the science is sound: we have no cure for addiction other than abstinence; you cannot simply stop eating food in general if you want to live; you can stop eating addictive substances in food.

I went strong for a few years, and then just kind of lost interest around the time that perimenopause started…probably not a coincidence. At this point, I’ve put on 30 or 40 pounds over the past three years or so. Aside from my Texas vacation binges, I eat pretty healthily: lots of salads and vegetables.

I frequently decide “enough is enough” and go back to Bright Line Eating. But now not only are the addiction grooves in place, the grooves for getting off of it little by little at first, and then all at once are also there.

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I know that my “interest” in food (I’m talking my lizard brain here) has so much more to do with comfort and pleasure than it does physical need. As a grownup, and especially as a woman, you don’t often get to feel comforted and happy.

The reason is pretty simple: there’s too much to do, all the time. Capitalism’s got us all by the balls, even if you don’t have any. Also, if you’re a woman, you’ve been brought up to prioritize others’ comfort and pleasure above your own, and feel guilty when you don’t.

So what’s left? Chocolate chip cookies, that’s what.

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I’ve tried multiple times, this year even, to “get back on track.” I am getting older, and my body is suddenly tired and sore, I’m tired all the time, and often grouchy. I know that getting my health front and center will help literally everything, and yet…

The couch beckons. Plus I’ve got stuff to do.

But on Monday, I promise, I am going to sign up for a gym membership, and I am going to start lifting weights because I am right at the stage where muscle loss ramps up in women and starts causing lots of problems. So at the very least, I can get some more muscle. And maybe that will be the first step, again, that changes everything.