Know yourself

One of the things I most love about losing weight this time around (in comparison to other less successful attempts) is that I'm actually in tune with my body. That sounds horribly pretentious and wanky but bear with me.

When I was gorging myself on food I never had the chance to actually listen to my body. I packed her so full of sugar, fat, stodge and junk that she couldn't tell me what she needed. I would eat until I was so full that it actually hurt. I'd have to lie down because I was in so much pain and felt so bloated. Then, once an hour or so had passed, and the bloated feeling had diminshed slightly, I'd carry on with the crisps, cocktail sausages, biscuits and sweets. Then I'd feel terrible again.

The lowest point of my entire life came in May last year. I'd eaten so much and felt so full and bloated and in pain that I made myself sick. I then cried for about two hours and wondered how the hell I'd ended up like that. I vowed there and then that I'd never do it again. But of course I did. I think, however, that was the first moment that I actually realised what I was doing. It was the first time I ever really considered that I might have some sort of eating disorder. Non-purging bullemia? Who knows. I stopped for a while, I told my partner at the time all about it, all about the eating and the sadness and how out of control I felt. It was the first time I'd ever told anybody. That was the same day that he finally admitted he loved me. We then spent the weekend making life plans and talked about how our future would be. I'd never been so happy.

Then, two weeks later, he left me. Without explanation. Without so much as even a backwards glance. He cut me out of his life. I trusted him enough to tell him about my problems with food (a major major thing for me) and then I was left alone, wondering why I'd ever trusted him at all. So of course I did the only thing I knew how. I ate. I binged. I cried. I blamed myself. I gained 28 pounds.

Looking back and writing it down here is actually incredibly painful. I feel so sad that I let myself get like that. It was a sorry state of affairs.

Anyway, the point of this post was that now, because I'm eating healthily and have left my bingeing days behind me (6 weeks and counting), I know what my body wants. I know when to have green tea or fennel tea (amazing for the digestive system and to combat bloating). I know when I need a glass of water and not food. I know when I'm retaining water. I know when my period is about to start (I'd messed my body up so much with food that I never knew if it was hunger pains, pains from being too full or period pains).

I'm actually letting my body speak for the first time in my life.