I wouldn’t have called myself a binge-eater, but I ate an awful lot at regular intervals. I would eat as if my life depended upon it, of course it did, however several lives could have depended upon it!
A typical daily food itinerary included:
Breakfast: large bowl of muesli with full fat milk, boiled egg two wholemeal slices of buttered toast, tea
Mid-morning snack: cappuccino x 2 sugars, chocolate biscuits,
Lunch: small thick base meat pizza, chocolate bar, can of Coke,
Afternoon snack: slice of cheesecake, tea
Dinner: chicken pie, mash, peas.
How did I feel? Leaden, bloated, constipated, depressed and lethargic. Cellulite began forming at an alarming rate on my previously smooth thighs, which I now know once gained is impossible to shift.
Having been a skinny child and teenager I assumed I would never put on weight and then ignored it when I did. To confront it meant I would have to do something about it and I wasn’t ready to face that challenge yet. Food was my reason for getting up in the morning and got me through the day.
Leaving school at 16 with qualifications only suitable for secretarial work, I had already limited my options. I had concentrated purely on studying subjects that would enable me to earn a living and move into my own apartment in London. I had been ‘duped’ by the programmes I watched on TV in the 70s, which depicted living in a flat in London as the epitome of cool and one constant party.
The reality was quite different, not only was my job tediously unfulfilling and my relationship fractious but I had no creative or intellectual outlet. The Beatles’ ‘Just Another Day‘ was my internal theme tune. I was still struggling to find my place as an adult in the world.
“As she posts another letter to the sound of 5, people gather round her as she finds it hard to stay alive, just another day….”
I moved out of home as a teenager and after working a stint as a receptionist at Butlins’ holiday camp in Clacton, set up home with my boyfriend at the time. Being so young we were both on incredibly low wages and could only afford a dilapidated flat on a deprived estate in Tulse Hill, which was just a couple of years away from the Brixton Riots of ’81. Added to this, the previous tenant was a ‘working girl’. It took a while before her ex client base got the message that she no longer lived there, so her ‘regulars’ would still arrive at all hours of the night shouting her name through our letterbox.
We saw ourselves as pioneers from suburbia testing the water for others to follow and living on the edge, experiencing life at the sharp end. In truth, living together at such an early age whilst struggling with the practicalities and finances of running a home were incredibly difficult. The streets were certainly not ‘paved with gold’, just numbing disappointment!
In an effort, to appear ‘grown up’ and responsible, we thought we should buy a contents insurance policy. In those days Insurance Salesman visited you in your home to draw up a policy. After a cursory look around our home, gazing pitifully at the ‘make-do’ shelf hanging from the wall, which was in fact an old drawer found in a skip. As if to highlight our ignominy it began swaying from side to side on its axis as a nail fell to the floor.
He politely explained that he couldn’t find anything of value to include in a policy and informed us that we shouldn’t waste our money. This was the first and only time in my life that a salesman had refused to accept my money. We couldn’t have felt at any more ‘rock bottom’.
I continued to self-medicate by eating to fill the void. The void left by the huge expectations I had harboured of being a ‘grown up’ and living the London dream. After a tumultuous few years, unsurprisingly our relationship came to an end.
A few well timed ‘barbed’ comments made to me broke the spell. I had a long hard look at myself and was disappointed at what I saw. That’s when I began to take charge. Having always been a disciplined person and the child who cut her Mars bar into 10 pieces consuming it piecemeal – I had let everything slip, including the essence of me.
I eventually realised, it was my mind that required feeding not my body and I had put it on a very restricted diet. I began reading more challenging literature and started to explore the creative side of me. The compensatory eating would have to stop. I enjoyed gaining control of myself again. To quote Newton’s Third Law, as my weight fell, my confidence and esteem rose in opposite and equal measure.
These days my weight may fluctuate by a few pounds, but I have never regained that volume of weight, mainly because I associate it with feeling physically and mentally awful and out of control. If I could offer any morsel of advice to someone who regularly overeats, it would be to look at the whole picture. Why are you self-medicating? The answer can sometimes be found in something as small as finding a new passion or hobby that gives you a reason to get up in the morning so that life needn’t be ‘Just Another Day’.
Stephanie Scala©
Life's a Glitch 