Martin Family Adventure

Part 7 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the seventh part in a series, CLICK HERE to start at Part 1

2007 and the beginning of 2008 kind of blur together for me. My love/hate relationship with food still continued but my new-found confidence seemed to help with the guilt and remorse when I would binge. David had his moments of over-regulating what I would eat and it was those moments that would set me back for a while. It seemed that we revisited how I felt about his intrusion every few months. Having to talk about my boundaries again would be a tough conversation for both of us that would usually end in tears - mine and his. He would vow anew to mellow out and not nag and I would vow to try harder to take control of my health and my eating habits. I really did want to be healthy and to lose weight, but anything that set me off emotionally would cause me to fall back on what made me happiest for a moment, but in the end, it made me feel guilty, embarrassed, and ashamed. No one would see me in these moments because I did them in secret so the only person that judged me was myself. I had become one of my worst enemies. 

The road house had burnt down in June of 2007 and I decided not to look for another part-time job outside the home. Instead, I focused on my own business and tried to grow different aspects of it. Being away from the food industry helped but only for a short while. I took to baking a lot when I felt down and blue. For the most part, I felt happy and confident, but there were times when I would feel discouraged, empty, and completely unattached to what was going on around me. These were my moments of weakness and they confused me. I didn't understand how I could be so happy and confident one moment and then feel so incredibly despondent. These feelings weren't a daily thing. It came and went at different times and as I said, for the most part, my self-esteem and confidence had been growing and so my days were usually content, creative, and joyful. 

In June of 2008, David and I paid off the last bit of debt (other than our vehicle payment) that we had. We had incurred business and tax debt over the years that we had our catering business and had worked very hard to get rid of it. The interest was killing us even though we were making regular payments every month so we consolidated everything and paid off almost $25K in four and a half years. It was tight and tough for those years. We had never been materialistic and in fact, many people that know us could tell you that we're quite minimalistic. We weren't the type of eat out, go to movies, splurge, etc. We scaled back every where we could, but since we were already living a simple life, there weren't a lot of other places where we could cut back. We were very creative with our resources and never missed a payment when we were paying off our debt. We had gone "cash only" a couple years before we consolidated so we were used to only being able to buy what we had the money for. Being able to make that last payment and being debt free was a huge accomplishment for us. 

We had told ourselves for years that we would look into buying our own house when we were finally debt free and that time had come. We weren't looking to purchase right away but I was anxious to find out what the housing market looked like and what we could potentially afford. I called one of the best realtors in the area, who also happened to be my brother's landlord at his place of business, and asked what we should be looking for considering our income and the fact that our debt to income ration was in the best place it had ever been in. This was only three days after we had made our last debt payment. She mentioned that there was a house she thought we would like and the price had just recently come down and asked if we would like to look at it. I went to the bank that day and got us pre-approved and the next day, we checked out the house and put an offer on it. The next afternoon, our offer was accepted and we were on our way to purchasing our first home. It seemed surreal. We hadn't expected to buy so quickly and we had said that we weren't going to put an offer on the first house we saw, but everything was perfect and it made no sense for us to keep looking if we'd found just what we were looking for and it was in our price range. The closing took place a month and a half later and we were in our new home. 

During the month and a half between putting the offer on the house and moving in, we were busy packing up our belongings to make the one and a half mile move (interestingly, it's just as much work to move a mile and a half away than it is to move hundreds of miles away). During a hot and sweltering July afternoon, David and I went through and cleaned out quite a bit of stuff in the shed out behind the apartment we lived in. We found a few bird nests and dead baby mice. I thought nothing of scratching at some sweat that had run down my shoulder and into my armpit. I was wearing a tank top and was really uncomfortable in the heat. A few days later, my armpit itched and so I scratched it. A week or so went by and my armpit was red and irritated and itched unbelievably. I put some cortisone cream on it and hoped it would go away. My grandmother happened to be staying with us for a few weeks and she insisted that I try one of her anti-itch creams. The next day, the rash had spread and was starting to be very painful along with being itchy. I would scratch in my sleep and dig it open. Eventually, the rash showed up in my other armpit, probably from scratching both in my sleep. By the time we moved into our new house, both of my armpits were raw, bleeding, and driving me mad. 

I made an appointment to see my doctor and she told me it was just a heat rash. I was given Nystatin and sent home. A couple of days on the Nystatin and everything had gotten worse. I started breaking out in little bumps on my shoulders and I went back to the doctor. I was apparently allergic to Nystatin and was put on another cream. A few days later, I showed back up at my doctor's office and showed her how bad everything had gotten and how it had spread to my stomach. After being on an anti-fungal medication that didn't seem to do anything, it was determined that I had a staph infection. The culprit was probably the dead mice and bird nests that I had touched and then scratched my armpit directly after. I was put on Keflex for 21 days. In the meantime, I had tripped and fallen in the middle of a crosswalk in town and skinned open both of my knees. I put band-aids all over them only to find out a day later that I was allergic to latex. 

If you've ever been on anti-biotics for a long stretch, you know that you're susceptible to a yeast infection and with my luck, that's exactly what happened to me. My immune system was so shot from the staph infection and allergic reaction to the latex that the yeast took over my whole body. It searched for the least resistant way out of my body and that was through the stretch-marks I had gotten from my pregnancies. All along my stomach, my stretch-marks started popping open. It looked like someone had taken a knife and sliced each of them down the middle. I had never felt such pain before. I'd also never experienced a skin-surface yeast infection before. There were times that I cried for hours before I fell asleep, wishing I could go to sleep and not wake up until it was all over. 

I felt absolutely miserable. The heat of the summer combined with having allergic reactions all over my body was enough to drive me crazy. I would lay on the couch completely naked and with a towel under me, all alone in the house. The ceiling fan was directly overhead and turned on top speed. I had Domeboro compresses on me to dry out my stretch-marks and cold compresses on my head to help cool me down. The itching was maddening and I tried every way I could to suppress the urge to itch. I prayed, I cried, I tried to sleep. David and I even tried raw garlic on my wounds to combat the fungal infection but all that did was cause me to experience a pain unlike anything I ever felt in my life. I remember laying on our bed and having David rub the garlic onto my stomach, bracing myself for the stinging feeling. Instead, it felt like someone had pointed a flame thrower at my body at point blank range and I pulled a pillow over my head to scream and cry into it, while writhing around on the bed and trying to stand the intensity of pain for as long as I could. My daughter came to the door of our room and started to cry because she thought I was dying. I yelled at David to turn our shower on and I ran inside of it and washed off the garlic, sobbing, gasping, and shaking as the water ran over me and slowly took the pain away. 

One of the upsides to being so sick was that I couldn't think past my pain to think of food. The "sick diet" is never a pleasant one, but it does have its benefits. Even though I was miserable and this would usually make me turn to food, I couldn't stand the thought of eating much of anything. I lost some weight because of this. My doctor had put me on Prednisone and I felt like I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

About a week later, we adopted a puppy. I know what you're thinking...what on earth would possess us to adopt a puppy while I was in so much pain and agony? This puppy, though, brought me so much joy. The kids had just started back to school and David was at work all day. This meant that I was home alone with with a puppy that needed house training and love and attention. In many ways, Tovah was my saving grace. I was forced to take care of something other than myself and instead of laying on the couch all day, wallowing in my misery, I was forced to go outside and wait for the puppy to pee and poop. Having something to keep my mind off how I was feeling all the time was something I was so grateful for. Tovah gave me something to laugh at and adore when all I wanted to do was cry all day until David got home to help take care of me. It was a good thing I had Tovah to look after because my condition got worse a week after she came into our lives. 

It was Labor Day weekend (2008) and we had planned a trip to visit my parents in Rhode Island. I felt miserable and was looking forward to getting away. My period had arrived and, because my body had gone through so much over the past 6 weeks, I had the worst menstrual cramps I'd ever had. We were out of Advil so I took a quick trip to the drug store to get some more. I saw that aspirin was on sale and bought it. I had taken an aspirin since I was a wee child and didn't even entertain the possibility that I could be allergic to it. Twenty minutes after downing two aspirin, my back started to itch uncontrollably. I pulled up the back of my shirt and asked David to take a look to find out what was itching so much. He told me that my entire back was covered in hives.  It wasn't long before my stomach started to itch and then my thighs. There was no choice but to cancel our trip to Rhode Island. I was in no state to sit in a car for five hours and then spend a weekend on a sailboat that made me seasick anyway. This disappointed me because what I really wanted at that moment was my mom. 

Just when I thought things were starting to get better with the Prednisone kicking in, I was covered in hives. I felt so defeated. Those hives lasted six very long weeks. The heat from the summer, the discomfort, the humidity - everything came crashing down on me. We made compresses of jewelweed and a friend brought over goldenseal powder that I rubbed onto the worst spots. By week five of the hives, all of the skin that was affected had broken open. By week six, the hives were drying out and my skin was healing. The staph had subsided and the skin-surface yeast infection was on its way out due to a round of Diflucan pills. 

My body had started to go back to normal, but after not eating much for twelve weeks, I was so hungry. I hadn't been able to do much in the way of work those weeks because I couldn't focus and was so uncomfortable. It had all taken such an emotional and mental toll on me. Now that I could look at food again, I wanted to eat everything.

Click HERE for Part 8.

Part 6 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the sixth part in a series, CLICK HERE to start at Part 1

In September of 2006, my mom helped me to dread my hair. This was something that I had wanted to do for a little while but finally found the courage and made the jump to do it. I felt giddy and excited during those long five hours that my mom covered my head with sea water, pulled, twisted, backcombed, and teased. With each dreadlock that she finished, I felt a piece of my confidence coming back. In a weird sort of way, the transformation felt deeply spiritual. 

I covered my head when I went in public for a few days after coming home until a kind soul online encouraged me to own my decision and to be proud of who I was, regardless of what my hair looked like. The first six months of having dreadlocks were trying and exhilarating. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. There were times when I wanted to pull them all out and start over and other times, I was like the mom of a newborn and excited to watch them grow, change, and mature. I didn't realize how much of a committment dreadlocks were going to be. More than the struggle of allowing them to do their own thing, I found that my inner self was going through a change I was unprepared for but needed so desperately.

It's so odd to think that a hair style could change the way someone feels about themselves in such a deep way, but this is exactly what started happening to me. They became an integral part of me and I came to the place that I couldn't imagine myself without them. They gave me the confidence to see myself outside of what everyone else could see. Dreads go through their stages of looking ratty, taking their twists and turns, having people look at you like you've never taken a shower and as if you're the dirtiest person they've ever encountered, and they cause some people to take a fascination in the process right along with you. I had strangers come up to me and ask to touch them and then tell me how beautiful they were. People I didn't know started telling me that they suited me so well. I remember one person telling me that they gave me a natural glow and aura of happiness. I actually teared up a little at that one. It had been such a long time that I had felt proud of who I was and what I looked like. As my locks grew and matured, so did I.

To step outside of my comfort zone, I decided to look at myself for who I really was. I started taking pictures of myself completely naked. I didn't want to limit myself to what I saw staring back at me in the mirror. I wanted to find a strength that I couldn't seem to see.

At first I felt silly and ridiculous taking these pictures, but soon, my emotions gave way and I started to look at myself in a new light. I began to see the raw beauty. I started to see the natural glow that the stranger had mentioned in passing. I began to look forward to these quiet moments of photographing myself. I discovered things that I liked about myself each time I looked at a new photo. The combination of seeing myself differently through pictures and the confidence that I was starting to build through my dreadlock journey gave me the courage to put together a small folder of photos to give to David. I wanted him to see me how I saw myself. I used this oppoprtunity to tell him how much his food policing had been bothering me and that it needed to stop. I expressed that I knew he had good intentions but that his execution was all wrong. I cried and made myself vulnerable and we seemed to find an understanding. After this conversation, I felt a lightness in my shoulders and in my spirit. 

Other than the regular things that couples disagree on, the only big issue that caused contention between us was my weight. Outside of the comments about what I ate, things were very peaceful. I think this peace in other areas is what made the food and weight comments so agonizing. We have always been deeply in love and neither of us could imagine life without each other. Knowing that he could be so clueless about how I felt when he made his comments, I tried my hardest to overlook them. I think it's important for me to convey that David really isn't the douchebag that this series makes him out to be. You're all seeing a side of him that is definitely cringe-worthy, for sure, but other than those comments and food policing, he has always been a loving husband and best friend to me. He is an amazing father and a hard worker. He provides for us, always comes home to us at the end of his work shift, has never been drunk, and isn't a spender. He truly is an amazing man, with flaws of his own, just like we all have. It just happened that this particular flaw of perserverating on my weight and eating habits struck a very sensitive part of me that I have battled with for a very long time, well intentioned as he tried to be. 

This confidendent and strong person that I was quickly becoming is the one that most everyone saw on the outside. This is the person I wanted to see in myself and so it's also the one that I wanted everyone else to see. This is the side that has forced me to be so vulnerable in sharing my struggles here because not everything you see on the outside of me is the same as what's going on inside.

CLICK HERE for Part 7.

Part 5 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the fifth part in a series, CLICK HERE to start at Part 1

 

At the beginning of 2006, David and I were counting down the days until we left for a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. I had earned it through my Stampin' Up business and David kept talking about how he wanted a hot wife to show off on the beach. I stopped being comfortable in a bathing suit when I hit puberty at the age of 13. When I was 14, my parents dove head first into the Christian Patriarchy cult and bathing suits and co-ed swimming were forbidden anyway, so I really had no need for one. I have a birthmark that covers 20% of my body - my right arm, shoulder, the right side of my back, and over my right breast  and beneath. Because I don't walk around naked (duh!), my back was hardly ever exposed to sunlight. I was also told by a specialist when I was younger that I needed to keep covered when in the sun. Skin cancer was a real possibility if my birthmark got too much sun. Wearing a t-shirt and shorts for swimming became normal to me. I wanted to do something to take off some of the excess weight that I had gained and held over from my pregnancies. I wanted to be able to wear some cute clothes on the cruise so I got in touch with a friend that sold Herbalife products.

For a month or so, I followed the program strictly. I had good results and lost about 15 pounds. We went on our cruise and I actually lost weight while we were away. In spite of all the buffets and non-stop availability for foods of all kinds, I came home three pounds lighter than before we left. We walked everywhere, used the stairs instead of the elevators, ran on the treadmill in the gym every morning, and made healthy choices at the buffets. I certainly wasn't the hottest wife on the beach, but I felt mostly comfortable wearing the skorts and cute t-shirts I bought specifically for the trip. I think I wore a bathing suit once, but covered up so that my back wasn't overexposed to the sun. 

After returning home, my old habits quickly came back. I had done so well before leaving and during the cruise but my urgency to eat was overwhelming. Eventually, David stopped requesting that I go on walks and jogs. Occasionally, we'd go on a family hike but he usually went by himself. The requests for exercise may have stopped by the food policing didn't. In fact, it seemed to get worse. I couldn't eat in front of him without feeling angry, anxious, and uncomfortable. If I wasn't eating salad, everything else seemed to be fair game for him to comment on. Even the croutons on a salad were uncesssary carbs according to him. I felt defeated and discouraged. Even when I tried to eat better, it was still criticized. In many ways, his incessant nagging about what I ate simply justified the secret eating that I would do. I figured there was no point in trying since my efforts were never going to be good enough for him. 

I started working at the bakery/deli right down the road from where we lived around the same time as returning from the cruise. It certainly didn't help that I was staring down eclairs, donuts, and peanut butter bars twice a week. I limited myself to a donut those two times a week. At the end of the year, I quit the bakery and started waitressing at the road house down the road from our place. Sweet potato fries smothered in ketchup and chicken tenders with mayonaise were my downfall. I justified them because I was on my feet for hours, running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room over and over again. What should have been just a looked-forward-to treat twice a week was something that made me feel so fat, ugly, and horribly remorseful. Food had become my "frenemy." 

Not long after starting to work at the roadhouse, my grandmother, one of my closest friends, passed away. Shortly after that, my sister and her husband divorced. These both affected me in ways that I didn't quite expect. The loss of my grandmother took an emotional toll on me and food was my comforter. It seemed much easier to grieve and cry when I could soothe it with food. When my sister and brother-in-law announced their divorce, I cried for days. So many emotions and experiences had been wrapped up in the few months that my sister and I were both engaged and then took part in each other's weddings. We started our relationships with our husbands (who happened to be brothers) on the same day, we got engaged two days apart, and we married four weeks apart. Their divorce was not about me, but I felt a loss nonetheless. A cosmic connection felt like it was being broken. And then my mind start playing tricks on me. If they could be getting a divorce, what would happen to my marriage? I had never had any concerns before then. There was no reason for me to be worried about my marriage, but seeing my sister and brother-in-law split up made me realize the impermanance of relationships around me. It seemed as if right after they split up, so many more of my friends were finding themselves in the same sort of situation. I heard of four more marriages ending within two week's time. I wondered if my husband would get so tired of my weight that he would leave me because I made no efforts to change. It was crazy to even think that way, but circumstances like this do crazy things to the mind. And food, both my friend and my enemy, was there to comfort and shame me. 

CLICK HERE for Part 6

Part 4 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the fourth part in a series, CLICK HERE to start at Part 1

Over the years between 2000 and 2006, I gradually put on weight, lost weight, and then found it again to put it back on. We owned a catering business up until the end of 2004 but surprisingly, I didn't snack a lot when I worked. I was so into the zone of what I was doing that I forgot to eat most times. Quality control was usually left to David. I was on my feet all day, running back and forth between the cooler, the stove, and the counter.

At the end of the day, David would expect us to go on a walk and eventually added light jogging to the routine. This was his way of trying to get me to exercise. He thought he was encouraging me but I would put up a fuss every time he got the kids ready to go. It didn't matter what season it was, he wanted to be outside and exercising and he wanted me to be exercising right alongside him. I hated every minute of it. What I once loved to do as a 19-year old, I now couldn't stand. I hated being expected and prodded to go. I knew that if I insisted on staying behind, David would call off the whole outing and he would be miserable. He would never raise his voice, but the sullen moodiness and quietness was almost worse. I would finally put on my sneakers and go just so that I wouldn't have to put up with the pouting and silent treatment. 

None of this was on my terms and that irritated me. I went along with it simply to keep the peace. Inside, though, I was seething. It felt like control was being ripped away from me. My family had always believed in comfort food. If you felt sad, you ate food that made you feel better. If you were mad, you ate to quell the anger. If you were heartbroken, food soothed the wound. If you felt guilty, hopefully food would give you peace. Food was a band-aid. Food once again became my default in times of trial. 

A year or so after our second child was born, I started eating meat and dairy again but in very small amounts. My body had taken a toll from back-to-back pregnancies and the medications I had been put on to counteract a collapsed bladder and prolapsed uterus affected my body in horrible ways. I was put on a high dose birth control pill as my doctor had recommended that we not have any more children after the complications I encountered after baby #2 was born. My mom had had similar problems after my youngest brother was born and my doctor warned that we would be facing a highly complicated and dangerous pregnancy and birth if we conceived again. In spite of the high dose pill, I became pregnant in early 2003. We found out at around eight weeks. I went off the pill immediately and David and I found ourselves scared and confused. A few days after going off the pill, I realized that I was in the middle of a miscarriage. Between the birth control pill, the meds, the steroids, and the miscarriage, I started losing hair, my nails were cracking, and would have two periods each month. I knew my body could no longer take the medications/steroids and the mostly vegetarian diet I was following. I gave up all the meds and bulked up my meat and dairy intake. 

There was an underlying guilt that came with completely giving up my vegetarian/vegan roots even though my body was thanking me for the extra nutrution I was feeding it. It really didn't matter what I was eating; good or bad, there was always guilt. I heaped guilt on myself and I would have guilt heaped on me by David asking what I was eating and if I should be eating it. I constantly felt watched. David wasn't the only one watching; I was policing myself, as well. 

The secretive eating became more common. I would stay up late and work on scrapbooks and pop small candies the whole time, for hours on end. David and the kids were asleep and I didn't have to have anyone looking over my shoulder and critiquing what went into my mouth. Any remaining candies would be stashed away before I headed for bed and any wrappers were stuffed to the bottom of the trash bag. When I would go grocery shopping, I would pick out a donut from the case and eat it while I was walking the aisles and make sure to hand in the wrapper when I checked out so that I could pay for it (yes, our store allows us to do that here - end of story). This enabled me to dispose of any evidence. Even eating a tuna fish sandwich with light mayo on whole wheat bread with a side of red grapes became something that I would eat after David headed out on his delivery route, making sure to dispose of it quickly and get started on the catering dishes so that he wouldn't suspect anything when he got back. I made sure that I ate on napkins so that I wouldn't be washing a dish he might not recognize when he got back. Eating became rushed and emotionally painful. The more guilt I felt, the more I sought out comfort food and the more I would eat in secret. I thought I had control but didn't realize I was losing it. 

Eating wasn't about hunger. Yes, it tasted good, but it was about trying to control something in my life that no one else could. I always picked something that tasted good but most all of the time, I didn't even want to eat it. As I was eating, I kept telling myself that I didn't want it, that I didn't need it, at the same time feeling a sort of balm all while feeling pain and guilt. It was confusing and there was a compulsion and urgency to it that I didn't understand. 

In Part 5, I attempt a change. 

Part 3 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the third part in a series: Part 1 and Part 2

Zach was 4 months old when we celebrated our second wedding anniversary and when we opened our catering business. We were living with my parents and working out of their kitchen while they worked out of the baking kitchen. We were with each other all the time and we were all surrounded by food. David was working in carpentry and about a month into the start of our business, he was able to quit his job building houses to work alongside me. 

A few short weeks later, I became pregnant with baby #2. It didn't take us long to figure this out because Zach refused to nurse anymore and I started with the morning sickness right away. My body didn't have time to recuperate from the first pregnancy before I got pregnant with the second baby. I was still eating well and making sure that I was very strict about it. I was throwing up 2 or 3 times a day with this pregnancy and my iron level was so low that my midwives warned me that I wouldn't be having another home birth if I could raise my levels. I wasn't eating meat due to being a vegetarian so I started taking iron pills which I promptly threw up. Dandelion root tea and Clif Bars were my go-to remedies for getting my iron level one-tenth of a point over the minimum for my midwives to do a home birth. I actually lost about 15 lbs. the first half of my pregnancy because of all the sickness. 

We moved out of my parents' home a little over a month before baby #2 arrived and I gave birth in the kitchen of our new apartment (with a ankle that I'd broken by slipping on the ice 3 weeks before) to a baby girl - 8 lbs. 5 ounces. My mom made the typical birth breakfast that had become a tradition for births in the family - eggs and toast. I remember sitting in the birthing tub with a big plate-full while the midwives measured and cleaned off our new little one. 

At the time of our daughter's birth (April of 2000), I was the heaviest I'd ever been, though still a healthy weight. My body hadn't had time to recover from the first birth and so, despite my best efforts not to, I had packed on a few extra pounds during my first pregnancy and it ended up being transferred to my second pregnancy. I was determined to lose the baby weight but I was hungry all the time. My body had just gone through two back-to-back births with babies 13 1/2 months apart and was craving nutrition. I was exclusively nursing baby #2 and was insistent on keeping up with my vegetarian lifestyle, though I was a bit lax on the amount of food I allowed myself. The sticky buns that my dad made were a particular downfall of mine, especially when they were just out of the oven. Even though the guilt was overwhelming, I would tell myself that I needed to eat more because I was nursing a baby and taking care of a toddler. 

David and I spent our afternoons walking with the kids strapped to our shoulders and chests and took hikes up and down Mt. Philo. David was determined that I was going to lose the pregnancy weight from back-to-back pregnancies. I wanted to lose the weight but I was beginning to resent the pressure, well-intentioned though it may have been, from David. His mother had been excessively overweight as long as he could remember and he didn't want me to go down the same unhealthy road. I knew his heart was in the right place, but being pushed to eat healthy and exercise by someone else smacked of control to me. This was never his intention but considering the background that I came from, I chafed at anything he said in regards to my weight and what I ate. Little did he realize that whenever he said something, I would let all the anger build up inside of me and take my frustration out in eating later that night. It was backfiring on him and, in the meantime, I was sabatgoing myself. By eating what and however much I wanted out of his sight, I was taking back control, or so I thought. 

CLICK HERE for Part 4

Part 2 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the second part in a series, CLICK HERE for Part 1

When David and I got engaged, I moved out of my parents' home in Vermont and down to Pennsylvania where he lived. This meant that I was no longer living under the eating rules that my parents had set down. David and his family ate the same things that my family did, but they weren't nearly as strict in enforcing the rules. David was really committed to the diet, however, so I was careful as to what I ate around him. 

I got a job at a restaurant waiting tables during the breakfast and lunch shift shortly after I moved to Pennsylvania. I stayed strong to the vegan lifestyle for a few shorts weeks and finally broke down one day with an egg sandwich on buttered and toasted rye bread. My stomach paid for it all night long and the guilt that I felt only added to the physical pain. The next day, I ate another one. The guilt piled on as my stomach learned to handle the pain. The third day, I added homefries. The greasiness of the fried potatoes felt and tasted so good. Smothered in real ketchup (not the fruit sweetened organic  kind that tasted bitter and acidic), I was in heaven, but only for the time that I was eating. Soon after I handed my plate over to the dishwasher, a heaviness set in. I was angry with myself and gave myself a pep-talk. I vowed not to eat another egg sandwich and homefries while on break. I would stick to the raw fruit that I had eaten for breakfast every morning for the past 3+ years. 

I carefully watched what I ate and made sure to go walking or rollerblading with David so that I could work off those sandwiches and homefries. I calculated my calories that went in and the calories that I expended with exercise. David never knew about the egg sandwiches and that was the way I wanted it. I held strong for about a month. The stress of planning a wedding in a short 2 1/2 months weighed on me along with being bombarded with disapproval from my parents over my choice to leave home and the choice of the man I chose to marry. 

Shortly before my wedding, I tried on the dress that my sister was sewing for me and it was a tad on the baggy side. I decided that I could afford some egg sandwiches and homefries to give my dress a better fit. I ate in the back dining room during my break so no one could see me. I also added a long-john donut to the mix for about a week before the wedding. When I put on my wedding dress on June 14, 1997, it fit like a glove. I weighed 115 pounds. I gained 10 pounds to make that dress fit.

In our first year of marriage, I put on another 20 pounds. My craving for egg sandwiches and homefries won over even though the eggs made my stomach hurt. The pain was worth it to me. While the 20 pounds I gained only made me look healthier, I agonized over every single ounce. At 5 foot, 7 1/2 inches, 135 pounds and a BMI of 20.8 was a normal weight for me. It was just 2.3 over the "underweight" category but it still bothered me. In my mind, I was overweight and unsightly. I told myself that I had to lose weight, but at the same time, it was too painful to give up the egg sandwiches and homefries I had come to look forward to four days a week. 

A month before our first anniversary, I got pregnant with our first child.  By the time we found out by pregnancy test a month later, I was no longer waitressing due to remodeling being done on the restaurant. I tried getting another job but only lasted three hours at the front desk of a hotel as a receptionist due to morning sickness. I had been taught that a pregnancy on a vegan diet was the best way to ensure that my child had a good start in life, so it was back to being strict again. I occasionally had some skim milk but always feel horrible about it. David would chide me when he saw it in the fridge and I would find some way to justify it by telling him that it was my one vice. As much as I justified it to him, it was difficult to justify it to myself. I would never drink it around him. I made sure that I only had it with granola when he wasn't home. 

I walked regularly during my pregnancy, making sure that I wouldn't gain any extra weight except the weight of the baby and his surrounding environment. I wanted to be certain that when I gave birth, I would be one of those women that would look like they'd never been pregnant just moments before. 

In my old bedroom of my parents' house, I gave birth to a  7 lb. 8oz. baby boy, perfect in every way. My midwife said that my placenta was the healhiest one she'd ever seen. It was Valentine's morning, 1999. For the first time in nine months, I had a plate full of scrambled eggs with toast. My father had made breakfast for David and me, the midwife and her assistant, and my mother, who also assisted at the birth. I was so very hungry after all that work but felt guilty for the eggs the whole way through that plate. 

In Part 3 - another baby??

Part 1 - You know it's time to lose weight when you break the toilet seat

This is the first part in a series

Okay, so I don't think my weight had anything to do with why the toilet seat broke, but considering that I already feel uncomfortable with my weight and struggle with a diagnosed eating disorder, it certainly didn't help to make me feel any more comfortable than I'm already NOT. 

When people hear the words, "eating disorder," they think of anorexia or bulimia. I admit that I thought there were only two types of eating disorders. Most people never hear about the third one: Binge Eating Disorder. It's also known as "compulsive overeating," but most people don't think of this as an eating disorder. Like me, I think a lot of people just assume that binge eating is simply a lack of self-control, not a disorder. 

I grew up in a family that has a deep appreciation for food. We've all been in the food industry in one way or another. My mom was a candy maker and my parents owned a catering business and bakery for many years, my husband I owned a catering business for 6 years, I've waitressed and worked in bakeries, my sister is a waitress, one brother owns a bakery, and the other brother works as a chef. It's in our blood. We love food, entertaining, and creating amazingness for the tastebuds.

I also grew up without any sort of balance when it came to food. My Oma (German grandmother) would sneak downstairs at night to feed my siblings and me green grapes dipped in white sugar. She was always baking something fatty and laden with calories and made sure that we never went back downstairs hungry from her house upstairs. We all have hearty appeptites and were never short of Pizza Hut pizza when my dad was a manager there in my younger years. When my parents were food salespeople for a food distributor, there were always samples brought home and they would order our favorite snacks in case loads. When they opened their bakery, any leftovers were quickly polished off by the four of us kids. We would think nothing of sitting at the table to devour a chocolate torte with a gallon of milk to wash it down. There were never any limits to what we could eat and my parents never set their feet down. Food was a free-for-all in our house. We were never taught good habits, balance, and nutritional wisdom.

This all changed when my parents became raw foodies and vegetarians. I was 17 years old and after all those years of eating whatever I wanted were brought to an ubrupt halt. My parents have always been all or nothing, though they've mellowed considerably on this lately. When they decided to go 80% raw fruits and veggies, vegetarian, and gave up all refined foods, my siblings and I didn't have a choice but to go along with their decision. Actually, we didn't go along with it - we were forced into it. While sparing you the details of the strict religious movement my parents got into in 1991, it's easier just to tell you that none of us were allowed a job outside the home or a driver's license. We didn't go to public school and we had no money of our own so even if we wanted to eat differently, there was no way for us to get food other than what was in the house. In fact, if we had been found eating outside of the prescribed vegan/no-refined-foods plan, we would have had hell to pay. As much as I would like to say that it was "all or nothing," we only had one option. All. Just as we had no balance before this way of eating started, we had no balance in this diet either. It may not have been a free-for-all, but it was just as extreme on the other end. I got myself down to a healthy 140 pounds. Everyone in my family lost a substantial amount of weight, but there was no balance.

A couple of years went by in this eating lifestyle and I found myself in a deep depression due to living under extreme athoritarian parents that were fully immersed in neo-conservative Christian patriarchy. Food became a way for me to have something I could control. It was the one thing that I could control, seeing as everything else in my life was dictated by my parents. At least, I thought I could control it. I started restricting myself and over-exercised. I counted every calorie and weighed myself mutiple times throughout the day, especially after a bowel movement. By the time my husband and I got engaged (I was 20 years old), I had started throwing up some of what I ate and found myself at 105 pounds (I'm 5 foot, 7 1/2 inches). We were married 2 1/2 months after we got engaged and I actually gained 10 pounds so that I could fit into the wedding dress my sister made for me.

I hid my scant frame under the gaudy and oversized clothes that my parents required me to wear as part of their religious standards. No one could see my ribs this way. They saw my sunken cheeks and tiny wrists, but most people didn't say anything about them. In fact, my parents held me up as a great success story for this diet (the Hallelujah Diet). My grandmother told me that I looked sickly and was too skinny, but my weight has never been to her liking no matter what state it's at. I've always been too skinny or too fat to her, so I've never heeded her admonishments when it comes to my weight.

In Part 2, I'll share how things changed with my eating after I got married.