MrsTofu's Journal, 31 August 2013

Haha! I missed weighing in last week, so I decided just to wait until now to weigh in and happily my loss is still averaging about the same. Again, not yet doing anything special, just nursing and trying to mind my eating habits. While I don't always make the right choice I notice myself being more aware of my appetite during meals. (As in I will see the food on the table and on my plate and realize, 'huh, there's more food available and I COULD eat, but I'm not actually hungry right now.') I think I am beginning to feel more secure with wrapping up leftovers as opposed to wolfing them down. Food security is DEFINITELY a childhood issue of mine. Part of my mom's illness manifested itself in peculiar behavior regarding food. Sometimes it was that she'd serve food like you would serve slop to pigs in a trough (not being a farmer I am guessing on that one). It was sort of, "Well come and get it if you want it. No guarantees it'll be available later if you don't get it now." There wasn't really a meal schedule, just oh, mom's cooking/ making food now. The other thing she'd do, which I think was more traumatizing, was her random leaven purges. Catholics typically give up something for Lent, and for those who practice, you are supposed to abstain from leaven during Passover; however, regardless of the time of year my mom sometimes would decide that we COULD NOT have leaven in the house. She wouldn't announce it in advance or discuss this with the family so we could decide/ agree to be bound by this, she would just throw out whatever food in the house at the time had leaven in it (Bread, crackers, etc.). Now my dad could only go food shopping around the time he got paid- which meant that we had new food come in about every two weeks. As a kid though I think it seemed like a much longer interval. Yet because my mom did this without respect for anyone else's calendar, her leaven purges could happen right after my dad had gone food shopping for that pay period. That was incredibly discouraging for him and my siblings and me because we knew we were stuck. We just had to wait until the next food shopping trip. So that powerlessness and uncertainty fostered a LOT of anxiety. We never knew when we'd run out of food or how long we'd have to wait until we got more. Given that my mom was emotionally unavailable for most of my grade school years I relied on food both for physical nourishment and emotional comfort, so this practice of hers was REALLY devastating. I am 29 now, I haven't lived with my mom since I was 15/16, I've been married for almost 8 years and had the opportunity to develop many healthy relationships where I can see better food relationships modeled for me for several years now and yet I am STILL learning to be ok with either wrapping up leftovers or emptying the unfinished food from my plate into the trash because of what I experienced in my childhood. GAH! GRRRR!! ARGLEBLARGLE!!! :-/ :(