I wasn’t 100% sure about sharing this part of my journey but meh – I have been open about everything else so here goes. 

Food has been a bit of a friend to me, albeit a bad friend. Food was something that I turned to in times of stress or anxiety. Most of us now know and acknowledge the chemical response in the body to food. That calming sense of well-being became a friend to me as a child when things happened to me that were beyond my control. Yes years later I confronted my abuser, but the abuse that I have inflicted upon myself – triggered by the past – has become my lifelong fight. 

I was anorexic by the age of 11 and by the time I was 14 I had developed bulimia. I haven’t had a bulimic episode for about 10 years now. The thoughts have still come from time to time but there is a huge difference between thinking of something and acting on it.

Do you know that gastric bypass is not a cure all – it is possible to stay fat, gain weight and make poor food choices after bypass? For the rest of my life I have to knowingly and thoughtfully make good choices. Slider foods are real – they are things that you can eat that will go down easily and are not good for you. I seem to have little to no restriction when it comes to drinking so I am fairly sure that it would be possible for me to make poor choices if I wanted to but I don’t want to because I have realised a lot about myself over the past two or three years! When your substance of choice is one that is needed to keep you alive ….. well it isn’t like you can just quit it! It becomes complex dealing with a food addiction, BUT I know that it is different for me this time around. I know that I am different this time. 

At 41 I have finally come to grips with the things that have happened to me and I am comfortable in my own skin. I have decided that while I remain imperfect and flawed, this doesn’t mean have less value – this would seem a simple lesson – but when you are filled with a sense of self loathing it is not that easy to see clearly! For me, suddenly the fog lifted and for the first time in so many years I am happy to make choices for my own good and I am grateful for all of the changes that have happened in my life. 

The next thing is a change of direction work wise and then returning to my passions. I am going to be working on my fitness and once I hit a certain weight I am starting back taking adult dance classes again. For no reason other than I miss it so much. In other words – I feel like I am waking up from a long long sleep. Returning to the things I love and being kind to myself for a change. This is the difference that hope makes, it is the reason that I WILL celebrate each milestone because I am beating a lifelong addiction one day at a time. #gastricbypass #onedayatatime