My Husband Made Me Eat It
The Newlywed Spread
Choices choices choices. Sometimes you can’t understand the present until you really look back at all the choices of your past. Even better when your memories of yourself, your mate and your weight get more tangled as you go.
My parents called me their Korean War orphan as a child — I was that skinny. Long, long legs. Arms so thin they rattled around in my little puffed peasant-blouse sleeves. Super-skinny. “Eat some more or we’ll force you to drink heavy cream in ginger ale” skinny.
In college, I married someone even skinnier. He stayed skinny. I did not.
I got into the “normal” zone, then the “overweight” zone, then the “obese” zone, and I just kept going. He had Crohn’s Disease, which wreaks havoc on a person’s digestive system. He needed to eat a lot just to stay skinny.
His doctor ordered him to keep tempting snacks on hand and to buy the high-calorie version of anything he enjoyed eating. I had grown up with a diabetic father. Marrying this man was like moving into the cheesecake factory. I was in trouble!
I stayed so thin as a child in part because I was in perpetual motion. I walked, ran, climbed, skated, and biked everywhere. After college, I worked at a desk and shared my free time with someone who frequently had to just sit and wait for cramps to pass.
I put on fifty pounds in our first three years together. If you are reading Second Helping, I suspect you already know very well how much fifty pounds slows a person down. Now add pregnancy. I was sunk!
Running, biking, skating, and walking everywhere kept my brain bathed in endorphins as a child. I missed that terrific feeling. I missed the sense of accomplishment these brought, too. But mostly, I missed that radiant feeling of good health that results from a balanced diet and plenty of exercise.
Nine years later, Crohn’s Disease took my husband’s life and plunged me into grief and single parenthood, and I put on even more weight. At one point, I dropped 75 pounds, only to put them and a bunch more back on. That was 23 years ago.
Making choices clear-cut is a choice in itself
Today this version of my story embarrasses me. This was not the newlywed spread, the ten pounds you gain by cooking up a storm to impress the love of your life. This was not a consequence of my husband’s illness or my upbringing. This was me, methodically damaging my health and vitality and blaming the one person in the world who cared the most about me.
If I had been single or dating, my self-sabotage might have been a lot easier to recognize. But I was in a relationship, and I invented a ridiculous cover story for my self-destructive addiction to food. I told myself my overeating and sedentary life resulted from marrying my husband.
I have heard other overweight people tell similar stories: My partner gets jealous when I go out with my friends, so I watch sports on TV and live on beer and pretzels. My husband finds my career plans silly, so I overeat. I would go to the gym, but my girlfriend refuses to go with me, and I don’t want her getting jealous.
Every choice to put something in your mouth or not is your own. Every choice to sit still and age or to get up and go is yours alone. More importantly, every choice to use your mate as an excuse when you hurt yourself triples the damage, hurting you, your partner, and yourself again, because such choices weigh heavily on your relationship and warp it.
I know all this. Still, it is difficult to make the healthy choices. I want the comfort of chocolate, the approval I get by choosing whatever makes my spouse comfortable, the ease of prepared foods, and the simplicity of doing what is easiest. I want approval from my mate, and I can get it faster by going to the movies with him tonight than by protecting my knees or arteries so we can grow old together.
I am glad to have a place like Second Helping to share these difficult choices with others whose emotion-numbing drug of choice, like mine, is food. What are you willing to do differently to protect your relationship and your health?
Nearing 50, I’m just now beginning to struggle with excess weight that does not fall away easily as it once did. I have found in the past that my weight gains (those that required the next size up)came at the beginning of new relationships when dinners out were frequent, long, and left me feeling like I’d eaten too much but so happy to have spent time with this new person.
In the thralls of a young relationship now, it has happened again and while I’m less active because of degenerative pain, I am becoming more mindful of my body’s messages.
I try to stop eating when I’m full, even though what I’m eating tastes so good. I try to reach for water when I think I want a snack. I still have trouble reaching for fruit when my taste buds say “chocolate”. I’m trying to keep the temptation out of reach.
Yes, it’s a choice, it’s a daily choice. And when I fail one day, I can try again the next day. I honor my body and its messages; it has served me well for nearly 50 years. It deserves my honor. It deserves my care. And it deserves and delights in the love of this new person.
Kudos Patty, to the hard work that has paid off for you!!! And to sharing so much of yourself with so mamy!!
Hi Patty,
You’re so right. It’s easy to make excuses for our behaviour, but our decisions are just that – our decisions. I guess we just have to remember two things. The first is that we deserve to be happy and to be our best selves. And the second is that, when we want to do things like eat comfort foods, it isn’t our stomachs that are looking for nourishment…it is our “souls”. I know that sounds a bit cheesy, but I think that’s only because too few people realize that it is what is actually happening when they eat for emotional reasons.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Best,
Heather
Fitinto.ca
@Becci – There is no substitute for chocolate, is there? Have you tried Kevin’s Grilled Figs with Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Bruschetta (http://secondhelpingonline.com?p=1675)? Or a bit of chocolate drizzle over a warm pear? Thanks for your kind words.
@Heather – Spouses can be a good source of comfort for our souls in place of food — especially if we learn to ask for it in a way that lets our spouses use their greatest strengths for us.
Thanks for the mention Patty — that recipe is what made me fall in love with Kevin’s cooking. The idea is not so much forsaking fat, but using fat *wisely* — getting the most flavor for the least nutritional cost.
But there’s a whole lot more than chocolate going on with Patty’s installment this month. What I loved so much about this one is how I see something new every time I read it.
This read it really struck me how many negotiations are at play with your friends/lovers/spouses when it comes to your health, but those pale to the negotiations you make with yourself. Choices choices choices.
With my weight loss, the biggest shock I had was the amount of choices I had available to me. Sit in that chair? Try those clothes? Finally get that tattoo I always wanted? I was always used to going with the flow and whatever my closet eating/weight/emotional eating dictated; now, I was in the driver’s seat. On one level, that’s an extraordinary gift. On another, it’s a tremendous responsibility. I didn’t expect that sense of responsibility as I neared closer to goal, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for it.
I still have my times I want to go with the flow, just hide and eat and tune out as I used to. It was safer.
But those periods pass much faster than they did in my 350 lb. days. When I’m willing and open to making those choices — about managing my weight, eating, life, etc. — I draw strength from knowing the Russ of Fat Pant Yesteryear never would have done what I’m doing. It’s yet another way I know that was then and this is now. And incidentally, my relationships dramatically improve and deepen.
So given all that, Heather, let me promise you that you don’t sound cheesy at all. It means you get it.
I’m curious guys — besides the specific choices you make when dieting or managing your food/fitness, are there choices you’ve made in your relationships that you would have never done pre-weight loss?