Rebel Loss

Each tree was rooted in some health philosophy (Juicing! Micronutrients! Veganism! Food Pyramid! Raw! Paleo! Macronutrients!).

And each philosophy had different branches or factions to follow (Juice only vegetables/only fruit/combo of both/only for breakfast/all the time/forever/only when you're sick!)

And each branch had millions of leaves touting the exact way to follow that branched philosophy (40/30/30! Raw 80% of the time! 90%! 100%! Don't eat meat ever! Eat meat on occasion! Eat meat all the time! Eat double the RDA of all micronutrients because they Government just picked random numbers for the RDAs in the 1950s anyway! Soy is the spawn of Satan! Soy is God's gift to man! Omega 6:3 balance must equal 1:1 or 2:1 or be less than 5:1! Eat complete protein at every meal using only these combinations! Or these combinations! Or these! But never these combinations, even if that guy over there said so!)

It was overwhelming.

Sometimes I curse technology – specifically the internet. It is a wonderful tool to gather information, but how much of that information is right? How can I be sure the information I'm reading is correct? Are these people telling me the truth, or do they just want my money? What about all those broken links to the sources at the bottom of the page? Are the links broken because of a server error, were they linked wrong, or did the links ever exist in the first place?

To show you how frustrated I was at the beginning of my journey, I'll show you a few phrases I had typed into the Google search bar. Here were my results:

Diet: 319,000,000 results in 0.25 seconds.

How to eat healthy: 246,000,000 results in 0.19 seconds.

Proper nutrition: 27,000,000 results in 0.32 seconds.

How to lose weight: 345,000,000 results in 0.24 seconds.

I don't know about you, but that's a little daunting for me. If it were all the same information regurgitated 300,000,000 times, great! But unfortunately, this is the forest I was talking about. All that glorious information Google found for me is contradictory. A lot of the cited links on these results are broken. A lot of the cited studies are misquoted, misrepresented or just plain wrong. People are trying to get me to pay money before they even tell me what their amazing program is (Only $39.99 plus shipping and handling!) too.

And the worst part? My brain ate all that information up. Despite the broken links. Despite the money. Despite the poorly-cited studies.

It was a very confusing time.

The first step of addiction is admitting that you are indeed and addict. That part wasn't hard at all. I readily told people I was addicted to food. I was 150 lbs overweight, so it wasn't like I could hide my addiction anyway.

The second part though, was the hardest to admit. Not only did I have to admit that I was an addict, but I also had to admit that I couldn't overcome my addiction by myself. I couldn't try “just one more time alone” because it wasn't working. It never did. I'd lose a little weight then gain it all back (plus more) afterwards.

And the forest of information on google made it even worse.

Once I admitted I was powerless to overcome my addiction alone, the addict part of my brain said, “well, lets look on the internet. That's getting help, right?” I ended up scouring hundreds of different websites for hours on end to find that one cure that would save me from myself. It never occurred to me that maybe I'd overload my brain with so much information – correct and false – that I wouldn't know which way was up or down anymore.

But that did happen. And because it did, I had to go back and admit that I had tried to save myself from my addiction. Again.

So, I found help. But not with a food councilor or a nutritionist or a doctor. No, I found it with an addiction recovery group and a therapist, and those wonderful people made me realize that my addiction had nothing to do with food.

It had to do with myself.

Didn't expect that, did you?

Sounds crazy, but it's true. I wasn't stuffing my face because I was hungry. I was stuffing my face to numb myself. To run away. To make myself invisible because if people saw the wall of fat I created first, then they would never have to see me. The best part of the whole situation was that I could blame anything I wanted to on the wall of fat. In fact, I blamed every negative thing that ever happened to me because of the fat. It was a win-win.

But in reality, it was a lose-lose.

I thought I could white-knuckle my extra fat away, but I couldn't. In fact, the extra fat on my body isn't fat at all. It's anger, hatred, self-loathing, depression, pain, misery, hurt, and regret all packaged not-so-nicely into my already over-stuffed fat cells.

Sounds strange, but it's true.

I now fully understand why my other attempts at dieting didn't work: diets make you lose weight - not the emotions that put the weight there in the first place.

Lose, gain, lose, gain...it was a vicious cycle of distraction from the real issue that I hated myself. I absolutely despited myself and the things I felt I could never forgive myself for; even though to the outside world, I was happy and content. The outside world wasn't there when 2:30 AM rolled around and I would cry myself to sleep, feeling like the lowest human being on the planet. The outside world wasn't there when all the memories of my mistakes – big and small – would come flouncing into my mind and destroy my self-worth further.

Nope. The outside world wasn't there. But I was. So, I would try to run away from those emotions by shoving food down my throat, but it never really worked. I just ate and ate and ate until I was miserable and physically sick.

Once I realized that my whole perception of my addiction was wrong - that it was never really about food – then I started to think that maybe my perception about how to find the truth on Google was too. So, I did what any sane addict would.

I forgot everything I ever learned about food and nutrition and started over.

And boy, has that changed my life.

I am still addressing these emotions residing in my fat cells, but I can honestly admit that I see someone of worth now. I see someone who does make mistakes, but who is not defined by those mistakes. I see someone who can learn from the past, pick herself up and move forward as a better woman than she was yesterday.

I now have a wonderful support group throughout the valley, both addicts (of all vices) and non-addicts alike, who understand where I've been and who cast no judgements. They praise me for my successes and cry with me during my hardships - and I them. I am eternally thankful to them and their infinite wisdom.

And most of all, I learned that there was a pathway under my feet in that forest the whole time; I just had to look in a different direction to see it.