The other day, I was talking to a neighbor, and she remarked on how well I had maintained my weight. I thanked her, but really didn’t think it was a great accomplishment. Then, today as I was preparing my afternoon snack, I realized that for about ten years now, I have been counting and weighing my food almost with every meal. I know that about ninety-five percent of the time I track my food. I guess for some people that shows great will power and discipline, but that’s not the case for me.
I have OCD. To NOT count my food would take great will power and discipline. I was overweight all my life until I found what works, but the ironic part is I never really had a weight problem. I was just stuck with a mother who had an unhealthy relationship with food. She never taught me how to tell when I was hungry and when I was full. She was always forcing me to eat more than I should. She taught me to use food to self-soothe. None of those habits were good for me. The worst part was it didn’t help me to find a fad diet or to just learn healthy eating habits. I had to find a plan that helped my problem of never really understanding the feeling of hunger and feeling full.
I don’t eat because I am hungry. I eat when I have it planned. I hardly ever feel hungry or over stuffed. I also take it on faith that if I eat the amounts on my plan that I will have enough food to eat and I won’t get really hungry. That idea might seem simple, but for me I felt like I took a huge leap of faith the first few times I did it. I found myself eating significantly less food than I normally did, but it worked.
My adult life has been a series of these leaps of faith. I have what I was taught by my parents, and I found myself doing something completely different hoping that it would work out. Every time I take that leap, I feel I rush of fear like jumping off a ledge, but most of the time, everything works out okay. I’ve learned more and more to rely on faith instead of the misinformation my parents fed me as a child. It reminds me of the Bible passage saying that man cannot life by bread alone. I know I can’t. I live by my faith in God.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
