So you may or may have not figured out by now that I am the kind of person who sets out to change the things I don't like about myself. Though I acknowledge some things are harder than others - otherwise known as everyone has their weak point.... For me it's my eating habits.
I can have such determination and confidence in overcoming social anxiety because I know underneath all the anxiety I am happy, bubbly and sociable girl, but when it comes to food, I am the girl who is completely unhealthy, a little overweight but I feel like my eating habits are more like those of an obese person....
My eating habits never used to be bother me.... well when I was 18 years old, I fitted into a size 6 jeans, and had a large amount of energy all the time despite what I can best describe as a diet of french fries, coca cola and double cheeseburgers. I grew up with my mother who taught me to live a fast food diet... (with a little bit of home cooked carbs every now and then.) Cleaning up after dinner for me was throwing out my fast food containers, and when I moved out of home the only thing I could cook was pancakes, canned or microwave meals and toast. I thought a healthy breakfast was chocolate milk and Vegemite on toast (white bread of course)
Naturally as i've gotten older this kind of a diet is becoming less sustainable for me... Getting fat kind of crept up on me, I've gone from being 4ft 10in and weighing 49 kilos at age 18 and at 30 i'm at my biggest... 70 kilos.... which might not seem much to some people... but I must remind you that I am 4ft 10.... Looking back I can recognise how I came to my demise, when I was at school I was dancing 3 times a week for 3 hours each night, after school... that ended. At age 23 when I finally decided to get my licence, this also meant that the days were gone where I would walk everywhere. And then at 24 I went from a job where I was on my feet all day to one where I sat on my ass all day, and from there is was all downhill.
Though I hate how big I am now and the struggle I have with fitting into clothes and hating the way I look in the mirror, none of these things made me want to change my eating habits. I got sick of feeling tired every moment of the day and finding that the only thing that would fix that was a sugar hit. I hated that I was craving a double cheeseburger at breakfast time, I hated how my addiction to coca cola was also making my anxiety worse and probably stopping me from getting a decent nights sleep. I hate how junk food makes me feel, I hate the impact it has on my health, and I hate that it has taken control of me.
So here I am desperate to stop. But asking myself how am I supposed to do that when I am the girl who hates vegetables and when I am falling asleep at my keyboard by 9am every morning unless I get a sugar hit??? How am I supposed to be skinny and healthy when I see myself as an unhealthy obese girl?
A diet would never work for me... I would have quit by 9am on the first day... and since I am stuck in a vicious circle where food makes me too tired to exercise but the bad food is also the only thing that is keeping me functioning, I am scared that I will never get out.... I have thought and thought and thought about how on earth I can do this... I have come to the conclusion there is only one way... and that is to slowly eliminate things from my diet... so far I have had one success, I have stopped drinking Coca Cola... (perhaps disregard that I have swapped it for a Sprite addiction) and keep in mind that as someone who doesn't drink tea or coffee, Coke was my source of caffeine and I would drink it to keep myself awake even though I started to hate the taste of it.
Now I have almost managed to swap my Sprite addiction to a Sprite Zero addiction, which I feel is ok because hey, at least there is no sugar, the only thing in my way is the fact that I eat so much take away and most places don't actually have Sprite Zero for sale... and then I go back to my sugar filled version.
Other than this... I feel completely stuck at changing, I've tried to tell myself I need to home cook my meals at night and I need to stop snacking at work... but I can't seem to stick at anything. It also doesn't help that I have a partner who encourages my bad eating habits, yet also manages to blame me for our bad eating habits and who tells me that change is a simple as ME cooking us dinner every night.... This might be ok if I was his stay at home wife who had nothing better than to feed and clean up after him, but I work just as many hours in the day as he does. I have also tried to tell him that we need to sit down and decide on a plan to change our bad habits and that it needs to be something we both agree on, we are both committed to and that we are both prepared to work hard towards. He disagrees, "No, no, no," he insists, "Us eating better is a simple as ME changing my habits and cooking us dinner!" then he has the cheek to imply that "Perhaps we should do our own thing for dinner, and then he would be healthy and cook for himself, while I will continue to get fat eating take away." (Says the boy who ate take away every night while I was away on a month long holiday in Europe!)
Maybe he's right though, maybe we do need to do our own thing eating wise, cos if I was copying his eating habits I would be drinking a 2 litre bottle of coke every two days. I just need to set that goal and stick to it no matter what, hopefully by writing it down on here it will help me keep focused on that one goal.
Hopefully this isn't too big to expect from myself...
I set myself the goal that I will eat breakfast and dinner every day, that they will be meals cooked by myself, for myself, no influence from my partner. I will be secretly watching every day to see how many times I have take away in comparison to him. I also would like to get as much protein into my diet as possible, since it seems to be the only thing that stops my sugar cravings.
Well I better go off and set myself a plan for the next fortnight, so that I can stick to my goal!
