Taking A Good Look in the Mirror

Whenever people decide to make a really big life change, the seeds are often planted long before they take the plunge. For me, this happened during the second year of my Master’s program. At the time, I was meeting with a counselor to help me deal with panic attacks I was having. One day I was contemplating something in our session and I realized something really important about myself. 

To understand my brilliant epiphany, you first need to understand something about me. I am a happy person. Wait, I should probably have put that in quotes. I am a “happy person”. Yea, that’s it. “Happy”.  On the outside I do my best to be positive, kind and upbeat. For those who don’t know me well, that is usually the only thing they see. When I am in public, I turn on the charm and brighten the wattage of my smile. I don’t think of it as a false front per se, rather, I’m just trying to show the best version of myself to the world.

I do my best to push down the anxiety, loneliness, hurt and depression that we all feel. To do so, sugar became my drug of choice. Whenever I felt bad, I would eat something sweet. I’ve developed some pretty awesome baking skills, so often I would make yummy things to feed my stomach and my heart. (Look for recipes in my new cooking section, “The Ex-Files Recipes")

Every few days I would make cookies, cakes, bread or pies (supplemented with plenty of chocolate and ice-cream of course!) The first few bites would satisfy the initial craving, but then the cravings would come back stronger. They would build and build until I was eating sugar at every meal and during every hour of the day. It didn’t help that I automatically double and triple the recipes. I would try to resist and tell myself, “No, I don’t want to do that,” 20 or 30 times before I caved in. Before you know it I have eight dozen cookies staring up at me. One bad choice would often leave me with weeks of food that I felt obligated to consume.

In high school I was overweight at 180 lbs. The first year of college, I climbed up to 220 lbs. By the end of my Bachelors program, I was up to 270 lbs. and I was well into my Master’s degree when I topped out at 325 lbs. At every phase, I thought I was “definitely at my heaviest.” I would look at people and think, “I am overweight, but I will never be as big as they are! I can’t believe how much they have let themselves go!” Ridiculous, right? These days I envy women who are only 50 or 100 pounds over weight.
Through all of this, I kept my smile bright and my personality engaging. I thought that if I dazzled people with my personality, they would be blind to the pain and fear churning within me. I was wrong. When I took a look- a real look at myself, I realized that all of anxiety and frustration and depression- all the ugliness inside me would not stay hidden. It was written in every unnecessary pound in my body.  What I thought was invisible became the most dominant and obvious thing about me. For many people, it was the only thing they ever knew about me. 

 I trusted sugar to remove the ugliness from me. Instead, it sucked it farther and farther inside of me, until I was swollen and ready to burst with it. Sugar had betrayed me. It would still be another five years before I would kick it to the curb, but this is the day I realized that no matter how much I loved sugar, it would never love me back.