Waking up

I had heard Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything mentioned several times. Read about it. When I walked by it on a Target endcap a little more than a week ago, I grabbed it.

Whoa. Game changer. I have been trying - well, supposedly trying - to lose weight for years. I have gotten pretty darn strong working out. I take a small amount of weight off, I put it back on. Bottom line: I am still chubby because I have never learned to manage my eating.

This book had me recognizing myself on virtually every page. Realizing that where I've always thought, "I don't have 'issues;' I just like food," I actually do have issues. The careening, careless food behavior I have taken part in for the last, oh, forever? It's not just me. And my inability to change it is not because I'm weak-willed; it's because I have not addressed my real stuff. I have never learned to embrace the life I have. I have been trying alternately to escape and subdue reality for a long time.

It's really been a case of "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." Between Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything and working through the LDS Addiction Recovery Program on an informal basis with some friends (on the premise that everybody has some addictions, whether it's to food or yelling at your kids, or something more widely recognized as illegal or destructive), and really getting hit hard by Julie Beck's talk from April Conference, I am learning a ton and really starting to change some things. Priorities. Judgments (of self). Behaviors. It's kind of amazing to be putting so much together right now.