Women, Food, and Me?

This time around, I lasted almost an entire week on Weight Watchers.

7 days of counting points in lieu of calories.

7 days of chronicling each and every workout in my journal.

7 days of torture.

Because I knew, I always knew, that I wasn't supposed to be on this diet.

I knew I wasn't supposed to be on any diet anymore.

Isn't that why I started this journal in the first place?

When you've been on and off diets for your entire adult life, you pick up some information along the way. 

I'd be a damn fool if I thought that my inability to lose 20 pounds is actually about what I put in my mouth each day.

For me, for a lot of compulsive eaters, it goes a lot deeper than that.

When I'm happy, it doesn't even occur to me to overeat.

When I'm sad, angry or stressed I turn to food.

Each and every time I binge, each and every time I put something in my mouth that I'm not physically hungry for...it's like a fucking cry for help.

I'm desperately reaching for something that I don't think I can provide for myself.

Growing up I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in this world but...

I chickened out.

I never believed in myself enough to pursue my own dreams.  Never thought I'd amount to much of anything and in true self-fulfilling prophecy...I didn't.  So here I am, 39 years old and I can count on one hand my list of accomplishments: college degree I can't receive until I pay UMass the remaining $3,000 I owe them; 5 year old daughter that I adore but who sucks every ounce of conceivable energy right out of my body; and a boyfriend who drives me crazy with his DAILY requests to have another baby despite the fact that he barely spends time with the one we have.

That's it.

That's all I got.

Well, no, I've got just one more thing.

I've got a choice to make.

I can continue along this path, blaming my excess 20 pounds on my inability to stick to Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers or whatever the diet du jour or I can cut the shit right now and, as Geneen Roth outlines in Women, Food, and God, examine my overeating and use it as a guide to discover what I really believe about life, this world we live in, and the force that I call God.  Do I really believe that my life, my goals, my dreams are over because, at 39 years old, I haven't "made it" yet?  Do I really believe that, because I'm a mother, I'm entitled to NO time to myself and am a horrible parent for not wanting my child attached to my hip 24 hours a day?  And do I really believe that I'm less than Lorenzo deserves because I won't give him the son he so desperately wants?

Hell, it's no wonder I eat to escape.