Intervention... long story...

[Guest guest]

For some time now I've been both struggling with and trying to not struggle with

my compulsion around chocolate; in particular of late these hand-wrapped

chocolate mint patties.

I've been stuck in a place of trying not to control eating them and struggling

to stay out of judgment when in this logic-defying behavior while unwrapping and

eating mint after mint.

Lately I've been buying the mints in larger amounts so as to not trigger the

sense of forbidding them - while also secretly wishing I could, as I never truly

believed I could control my eating or truly succeed at " getting " IE.

Last night I was walking across the kitchen with one of them in hand, feeling

whatever feeling I usually do when in the thrall of a compulsive act - and I

suddenly realized that there was no one and nothing out there that was going to

stop me. There was no one to battle me over eating them or not eating them.

At the same moment I realized that only I had the power to stop myself - and

that in fact, I actually have that capability with no need to fight or struggle

about it. Choice was sitting right there inside of me all along (so to speak).

Truly a light turned on in my head.

It seemed like the tiniest of realizations and yet it's playing through my mind

like crazy today. Somehow my marble brain had gotten the idea that somebody was

going to drop out of the sky or some intuition installation would magically

initiate that would stop the food war and I would suddenly be on the straight

and narrow around food. Mostly though, I would be saved by something outside of

myself.

That assumption seemed so ridiculous in that moment and yet I guess that's what

diets have tried to do; create an internalized external control on eating. And

guess, what? Not only is that an illusion, it only works for a short time and

we don't really need it in the first place!

I don't know if this is a huge epiphany or one of many, many small ones along

the way - but I like that I have made room in my brain for it to happen.

Someone's earlier posts mentioned starting IE and being able to eat when hungry,

stop when full for a while and then the bottom literally falling out of that

capability. That surely did happen for me - one day I was " on track " and the

next I had absolutely no control around my eating except at odd intervals that

made no sense at all. It was like being thrown in a fast moving riverm, in the

dark of night and not knowing how to swim, except in theory.

My thrall for formerly and long-forbidden foods seemed unending. I could only

rely on this group and my understanding of cognitive behavioral therapies to

serve as a guiding light while I fumbled around in the dark. Talk about being

blind and deaf and trying to learn to learn...

Suddenly that old thrall has some light shining on it. Now I see that the

choicemaker I was subconsciously waiting for was already there all all along - I

just never knew it.

I was a bottle fed baby, I'm sure my mother crammed food down my throat whether

I wanted it or not. No doubt those early meals were a tremendous power

struggle. As far back as I can remember she started criticizing my weight and

my older brother and sister chimed in. She was a compulsive dieter and I was

admonished and guilted and shamed and controlled around food every day of my

life. By the time I emancipated those external values and controls were already

firmly in place.

Of course, I became a chronic dieter until such time as I started to swing

between compulsive eating and compulsive dieting. Of course the result was my

weight going higher and higher and higher with every diet backlash.

So - from Day One, choice around foods was never in my experience and external

rules infiltrated my thinking on every level. But no longer.

Today there is a still quiet voice in me that I am just beginning to recognize.

Right now I have no interest in those chocolate mints and I'm pretty sure their

power over me has diminished exponentially. I do not know what will play out in

the next hour or day or week, but I am certain this new-found treasure is a

cornerstone of the IE foundation I am building.

Thank you all for sharing in the journey.

Sandarah