She has cute shoes...and runners....

...and a complicated history with food and body image.

I went on my first official weight loss diet at 15. I remember being a size 8-10 writing letters to weight loss companies asking them what their prices were and how I could not be a huge fatty anymore.

Yes. I weighed about 58kg and at 157cm tall in height and honestly believed I was obese. Oh how naive I was. I would become obese not that many years later but I was in no way even fat back then. I just had uber skinny friends and an underdeveloped teenage brain. ;)

Oh and a dancers mentality.

I've written stories on my shoe/personal blog and mentioned it on my fitness/health blog about my battle with my weight but I don't think I've touched on my attachment to certain foods and how I have self-medicated everything from migraines to grief using these foods.

There are some days that I have almost wished that my addiction was alcohol or drugs. Not that I want that or think that somehow it's easier to kick the habit but at least you don't have to navigate the necessity to still consume non-alcoholic beer/wine/spirits at least thrice daily. I still need to eat. Some days that sucks to be honest.

I've cried bucketloads of tears hating the way I've looked and felt over the years and piling even more shame upon myself when I've lost weight and put it back on because I have turned back to my foods that somehow fill a gap in me since I was a kid that nothing else unfortunately does. No matter how much I pray about it or try to replace it with something else.

After doing the Stand Your Ground 1 with Emazon I figured out, among a bunch of other things, that my avoidance strategies go way deeper than just ignoring the washing up or the housework. I just don't like to feel certain emotions.

This sigh-worthy image was sourced from here

I was a big fan of LOST and Kate's go-to strategy was to run. And I realised I had a lot more in common with her than an attraction to Sawyer ;)

I realised that I a runner. And not in the get-beyond-week-5-of-the-Couch-2-5k sense either ;)

No I escape. I "run" when certain things come up and sometimes I do that literally by leaving a situation and just shutting down and other times I go for the foods that I have determined when I was a sad, lonely, perfection seeking, sitting on the steps with my book in between Ballet and Jazz classes as a 8 or 9 year old eating a packet of chips or hot chips from the Fish 'n Chip shop downstairs. Hanging out by myself blocked out the fact that I didn't quite fit in, I didn't have a ballerina's body, I didn't go to a private school or later on McDonald College, I didn't do Troupe, I wasn't "perfect".

So even now when I am sad, lonely, feeling like I've messed up, when I'm literally ill with a migraine, grieving, uncomfortable, anxious or like I have brought myself out into the light too far....what do you think I head to ?

Image from here

Hot chips wrapped in paper from here

And so fast forward to the end of Round 3. I had lost another 12kg. I was back down to a genuine size 14. Moving towards a size 12. Compliments came at me thick and fast. In Round 3 I ate not a chip nor a hot chip...ok I do remember pinching a couple off Mum's plate at a lunch out but chips in public are very very different to my "fix it" or "fill that gap" chips. Yes?

So in Round 1 I freaked out. Had migraines. Got anxious. Hated feeling exposed. Like I had somehow put myself ahead of other people. And I slowly ate my feelings in chips and hot chips. It's incredible how I can stop for a while and then launch straight back into it so spectacularly.

Yes, I did learn a lot in Round 1 and I did stay accountable. But I've slowly fallen back on these old frenemies and so in Round 2..

My Commitment - Part 3 - 


I commit to not eating chips or hot chips or other snack, potato or carb based food when I am feeling anxious, worried, sad, lonely, sick or any other negative emotion that would usually prompt me to eat them either straight away or a while later. I commit that if I do chose to eat any of these things that I do so in front of or with someone else which is guaranteed to clip my portion wings. ;)


So just curious....what are your food frenemies ? Foods that pretended to be friends but are actually enemies to your goals?