Food Noise

 

I joined WW a week ago and I have tried to get to some of the virtual meetings.  I am trying out some of the different leaders to see which ones I like (and it’s easier to judge a leader if they are presenting the same information).  Therefore, I have attended a few workshops this week.  The  topic for that first week was food noise.  Good subject for sure.  I have tons of food noise.  I plan my day around food.  I haven’t even put down my fork after a meal that totally fills me up and I am already thinking about when and what I will eat next time.  Even sitting here typing this, I have already thought about breakfast, lunch AND dinner for today (I started typing this at 7AM).   So, this topic was very near and dear to my heart. 

After attending a few ‘Weekly Workshops’ throughout the week, I decided to attend a “Deep Dive’ session.  I actually really liked this coach’s style and energy (Coach Marianne B) and the interaction was great.  She talked about three factors that affect the food noise.  Environment, stress and appetite.  She talked about how when you are hungry the food noise is incredibly intense.  And right then and there I had an epiphany about my food noise and my weight issues. 

 

I have always wondered what happened.  How did I come to live the life of an obese woman.  I was always more of a petite person as I was younger, not overweight, just healthy.  By younger I mean 10, 11, 12 or so.  I actually remember referring to one girl at school as fat in my description of her at home.  I actually came across a picture of her in my storage recently and I had it labelled as ‘Fat Joy’.  How shameful is that?   I am actually utterly embarrassed to admit this, but it is the truth.     I was one of the normal sized or even smaller people among my friends. 

And then something happened.   I started to gain……quickly.   Within a year or so I was overweight and then shortly afterward, obese.  All when I was right around 12-14 years old.

I have long wondered and pondered what in the world happened.

-        We moved from Pennsylvania to Florida right about that time.  Was it a culture shock?

-        That was the age that I was hitting puberty.  Was it hormonal?

-        I went from a carefree kid playing outside to a teenager more apt to be in my room lounging.  Was it just a result of change of lifestyle?

It’s been a big question in my mind for quite a few years.  It wasn’t until this week that I had an epiphany.

It was during that deep dive session about food noise that I knew.  I knew exactly what had caused my spiral or at least contribute (because I think those other factors played a role for sure).  It was a true light bulb moment……before we moved to Florida (before I had weight problems) I had plenty of friends and the cafeteria at school  was not crowded, one could actually find a place to sit and I had a group of friends to sit with. I ate lunch every day.   But then we moved.  I didn’t have friends…and I never made a lot while we were in Florida.

Lunchtime was utterly horrible at my new school.  First, try walking into a large room teeming with people you don’t know.  Then you get your tray and have to navigate through this throng of people between tables that are placed too closely together to try to fit as many people in as possibly.  Why are they so close?  We had moved to one of the fastest growing counties in the COUNTRY and the schools were way overcrowded, that included the cafeteria, where I had to find a place to sit.  Amongst strangers….other kids that didn’t want a newbie sitting with them, they were saving those precious and few places for their friends.  It was the most uncomfortable situation. I remember getting my tray, looking for a welcoming place to sit. Not finding any availability I remember dumping my tray full of food and walking out.   It was so uncomfortable that as an 8^th grader I choose to forego lunch.  It was less stressful to sit in the quad outside. If there wasn’t a bench available, it was acceptable and not awkward to sit on the ground up against one of the buildings, lots of people did it.  Even if I was alone, I could do homework or something in order to not look so pitiful.    I didn’t eat lunch.  

Don’t feel too bad, I wasn’t utterly friendless, but I never really had a lot.  I was friendly with everyone, but I just never clicked with anyone.   I was just too different, too foreign, too something.  And that’s ok. 

That trend continued into high school the following year.  The cafeteria was insane.  It was not a welcoming place.  It was worse though because high school gave us the option to go through the line and buy a snack.  This was important because a snack I could take outside to the quad where it wasn’t crowded and where I could melt into obscurity.  (Usually with one or two other people that were also just trying to survive.)  The snack of choice…. Little Debby Snack cakes, my new friend.  I didn’t do that every day because the cafeteria was still way overcrowded to even just walk through and honestly, I had figured out that the lunch money was more aptly used on my own pursuits (books and music).  

It is no surprise that I got home from school each day and hit the kitchen absolutely ravenous!  I started to make larger snacks.  A full box of Kraft mac-n-cheese.  A box of taco shells with melted cheese was actually quite delicious and/or apeanut butter and jelly sandwich always hit the spot.  Whatever I could scrounge from the pantry was fair game.  An hour or two later, dinner would be served and guess who ate a full meal then too?   Why yes, me!

That is exactly where my issues started.  I learned unhealthy habits.  The food noise in my head was intense by the time I got home and the food noise never faded.  Once I let it in, it took up residence and stayed firm in my head and that voice has remained there for all of these years.

I have no desire to take medications, even though they say the medications will silence the food noise.  I don’t want to be on a medication for the rest of my life and I know that when I stop taking the meds the food noise comes back (just look at what people say when then end up stopping the meds…. they regain).  I am still 100% committed to the holistic approach of learning to manage these food noise and my desires.   I ‘just’ need to learn how to silence that food noise voice.  Just for a laugh, I do refer to these voices as my mini me….and my mini me screams at me not just about food.  My mini me tells me that exercise is bad.  My mini me tells me that I am not worth it.  When I was running regularly, my mini me would tell me that I wasn’t a runner and I looked like an idiot. This little mini me is so insistent that once when I was running the mini me was telling me that I was a fool for thinking that I was a runner, that I looked ridiculous and so many other things that I was started crying, but didn’t stop running weirdly enough.  Finally, I had enough and I just yelled out loud “SHUT UP”.  (I am trying to find a post, because surely, I wrote about that!)

But yeah…food noise. 

Wow….I honestly cried like a baby as I wrote this.  This started as a simple epiphany, but turned into a soul releasing cry as I recounted these experiences and relived those emotions of stress.

As a side note: I look back and pity my poor mom because I annihilated the pantry on a daily basis, which had to have affected her meal plans.  I may have and probably did ask first for some of those larger ticket items like taco shells, I assume.   She never said a word though.  I know that she had suffered with excess weight all her life and I know that she had said that her mom had made comments which hurt her self-confidence and she never wanted me to feel fat or inferior.   Her silence raised a gal that didn’t care about her weight …. but it also didn’t stop a growing problem.   (It wasn’t until I accidentally started to lose weight when I got roped into a weight loss challenge  that I began to see and care that I was overweight, until then, I just liked me for me).

So that is the deep thoughts for this week.

I like my official weigh in days to be Friday, so my first ‘week’ on weight watchers was actually only 5 days (from Sunday to Friday morning).   I am happy to say that I lost 3.7 pounds. 

Not to keep that up!!!!!   Lets see what we can do on week two.  I know that I will have a bit of a cheat meal once, but otherwise, I’m ready to knock week two out of the park.