Menopausal Mother

Love Me, Love My Cheeseburger

I am really gonna do this. I am going to order that mofo and feel damn good about it.

The anticipation is building. I’m not feeling so bad about this choice as I’m in the line behind a new Audi A7 with a nice looking gal behind the wheel with a great hairdo. She’s smoking a cig–-even better….

We creep up the line until I pass her on my way to the other order box and I wait my turn. I am feeling pretty good about this decision. Especially since there is the gal in the Audi and a gal in an Acura in front of me with no kids in their cars. We are secret sisters in crime.

I’m at the speaker---and she asks: “Welcome to Diet Hell, would you like the new double muffin top burger with cheddar, oreos, fritos and chocolate?”

I say---”I WISH! No thank you, but I will have a Number 2, LARGE, with a Diet Coke..”

She says, “First window please”…

I pull up and pass the Audi and the Acura. Me and my Honda go to the window, pay cash and I come away with a QUARTER POUNDER WITH CHEESE MEAL--- and I am HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!! I eat that burger like I’ve just been kicked off the island after 3 weeks of Survivor. Down to the last fry.

Every morning, when I get up and turn on my computer or phone and look at my email, the Body Police on the internet have been pretty busy because I get---no lie---about 6-10 emails a DAY early in the am from all those places out there like Weight Watchers, Prevention, Jenny Craig, Healthy Mom, NutriSystems, Wheat Belly and more. How to this, how to that…. holy crap, I am so confused. What a way to start your day.

At 53, and being a tad soft around the middle, I am also prime for heart attack, diabetes, gout, knee problems, thinning hair, incontinence and more fun body dysfunction than you can imagine. I KNOW there is a troll out there that took one look at a picture of me on FB and said–-OK, we got another one---prime target–--send her the emails of death!!!!!!!!!!!!!

True to form, every time I say I’m going to lose weight, BC (the husband) drops 5 pounds in one week basically doing nothing but eating what I’m eating. I struggle to lose 2. Obviously I do not have enough testosterone. I walk the dogs every day and even they are looking thinner. In my thirties I dropped baby weight like a rock. In my fifties, that baby weight is back and it’s called having a teenager weight gain. Remember that new baby worry---the worry that they aren’t going to roll over, or they'll fall out of the crib, fall off of something, or eat something dangerous? Well, now that baby is behind the wheel of a car.

I actually am looking forward to the empty nest weight loss in a year or so.

I have found out the hard way that no amount of money in your wallet will fix all that stuff like fatness and unhealthiness, because it has to come from within. That’s the only way.

I am tired of the guilt. I am tired of feeling bad about eating even one French fry. I am tired of the comments, the P90X guilt, the running guilt, the food guilt. Yep, I run. I run to the bathroom.

Once the guilt and self-doubt is thrown to the lions, I truly think that great things can happen. Even my skinny girlfriends complain about their size. What has this come to, except for a ton of women of all sizes and shapes unhappy with themselves? Great.

So yes, I am going to try and improve my health. And no, I am not going to feel guilty about that piece of birthday cake I ate that’s in my office kitchen. Even though I committed chip-a-side the other night at a super bowl party, I did counter it with tons of raw vegetables and yogurt dill dip. It made Monday a day to be close to a restroom…

If I go every day feeling guilty about something I did or did not eat, I'll end up at a standstill and end up doing nothing good for myself.

Unfortunately, body and beauty perfection is the holy grail of women today. And what should be the holy grail for women is to truly like ourselves.

Warts and all.

My childhood was a mixed bag of insecurities. I ran home from school often, cutting through neighborhood yards to escape the children who taunted me. I was a shy, pudgy little girl who struggled in school and dealt with an eye condition known as Mixed Dominance that required me to wear a patch over one eye. This made me an easy target for the bullies who thrived on breaking me down in order to build themselves up. The insecurities created from this situation festered deep inside me, causing years of fear and shame. Little did I know how damaging it would be to the quality of my life in the future.

The lack of confidence in my physical appearance prevented me from doing many of the normal things girls my age were doing---attending swim parties or clothes shopping at the local mall. I was incapable of confronting the body issues that plagued me---I had been cursed with a large frame and a chubby stomach that I despised and hid behind blousy clothing. I was also taller than all the girls at my school and yearned to be petite like them. My reflection in the mirror was a constant reminder of my shortcomings, and some days I couldn't bear to look at myself because I knew how bitter the self-recrimination would be. Outward appearances were important in the prominent family I grew up in. My father's convoluted view on weight loss in correlation to beauty was damaging not only to me but to my two, older sisters, who also endured his sharp criticism. Rather than growing up with a healthy attitude toward food, we grew up fearing what it would do to our waistlines. Ironically, my mother was a stellar cook, but food was the enemy that led to diet failure, and both my sisters and I feared we could never measure up to our father's expectations.

The message in our house was clear: the inability to lose weight signified a lack of self control.

If we were unable to control our bodies, we were weak. As a result, I spent my youth yo-yo dieting and binge eating, but was never able to escape my addiction to fattening foods. I obsessed about every calorie I put into my mouth. It was a vicious, destructive cycle that involved starving, binging and purging, and it would form the basis of a pattern throughout my adult life. Despite my husband's best efforts to compliment me and assure me that he found me to be beautiful inside and out, it wasn't enough. I didn't believe him because I didn't believe in myself. I was suffering not only from a binge-eating disorder but also from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and was ill equipped to deal with either one of them.

My life was dictated by the numbers on the scale, which left me with a closet full of clothes ranging from the smallest to the largest sizes---a testament of all the years I'd spent dieting and failing. I tried every fad, gimmick and diet pill out there to lose weight and warily ignored researcher's claims that overeating is caused by a need to fill an emotional hole. 

There were times when my weight spiraled out of control, impacting my social life by causing me to isolate myself from people. I was playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette by engaging in episodes of mindless binge eating. For a brief period I thought I had found my salvation in the form of a little miracle drug known as Phen Phen. I jumped on the diet pill bandwagon and dropped weight effortlessly, which fed into my obsession to be thin. People told me stop losing weight---I was getting too thin---but their words only fueled my desire to keep losing. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of power over my body and freedom from my food obsession. But as is true with any diet, I set myself up for failure, looking for a quick fix rather than doing all the hard work on the inside first. In a few years, I gained back all the weight and more, further engulfing myself in feelings of self-loathing and disgust.

My biggest mistake was allowing my children to see that darker side of my psyche. While I was focused on building up their confidence and self-esteem, I busy tearing my own down. I failed to see how my depression and self-recrimination was affecting them----especially my daughters.

They grew up with a compulsive mother who calculated calories, categorized food as "good" or bad" and berated her appearance daily. 

Whenever my children slipped into bathing suits for a swim at my parent's house, I insisted they wear t-shirts over their suits because I wanted to protect them from my father's critical comments. In reality, I was passing down the same lessons that I had grown up with---shame and a fear of how others perceived them. My older sister died from the devastating effects of her eating disorder. She literally ate her way into an early grave. My sister had a binge-eating disorder, which researchers have now found is closely linked to anxiety and depression. The disease damaged her heart and her gastrointestinal system when she became morbidly obese. I was helpless to stop the self-destructive path she was on because I was busy fighting my own eating disorder demons. I handled her death the only way I knew how---I ate through the guilt and grief to punish myself. Stuffing down my emotions with food was an easy solution to filling the void that was left in my heart after she died. It numbed me, allowing me to ignore the pain. One day my husband handed me a picture he had taken without my knowledge and said, "You look so pretty in this blue dress." My eyes blurred as I stared at the overweight, middle-aged woman in the photograph; a woman I no longer recognized but one my husband still saw as beautiful.

How could I have done this to myself?

How could I have allowed my unhealthy attitude towards food and body image infect the lives of my children?

They are beautiful adults now but are haunted by low self-esteem issues and are self conscious about their appearance. I am responsible for their attitude because I didn't set the right example when they were young. They learned incorrectly from me that thinness equated beauty. Since the day I saw that unrecognizable woman in the photograph, I joined a gym and am learning to eat healthier. I no longer punish myself with grueling diets or berate myself every time I look in the mirror. Instead, I focus on my positive attributes and take pride in my workouts at the gym. Once I stopped counting calories and obsessing about the numbers on the scale, the weight started falling off. I have tuned into what my body has been trying to tell me all along; life is a gift and that every human being is a work of art regardless of size, shape or color. The path to confidence and self respect will not be an easy one for me, but this is a start.

I am determined to be the person I know I can be---for my sister, who gave up too soon, for my children, who need to discover their own, inner beauty....but mostly I am doing this for me. Life is meant to be lived; it's time I start enjoying the ride.  

Funny Can Be Found Anywhere

BIO

Chris Carter is a SAHM of two pretty amazing grade school kids.  She has been writing at TheMomCafe.com for almost three years, where she hopes to encourage mothers everywhere through her humor, inspiration and faith.  You can find her at the following links:

  

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