Tag: fat

Hello, I’d like to exchange my Overeating for some Overdrinking please.

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Since family time and Holidays are upon us, I wanted to explore the toggling of addictions or behaviors.

: toggling

  1. 1.COMPUTING switch from one effect, feature, or state to another by using a toggle.”the play/pause button toggles between those functions”
  2. 2.provide or fasten with a toggle or toggles.”our horses were hobbled or toggled before they were turned out to graze”

One of my favorites was swapping out my binge eating for bingeing alcohol. It worked like a charm!

Beer served to satiate me so I ate less. In fact, I just drank first and then if there was any room left, I may have some food. But not usually.

Since I was often in a buzz, I didn’t feel my body as much and actually found it more attractive through the alcohol lense.

I repeated this festive behavior over and over, continued to lose weight , and didn’t really experience hangovers till about 8 years in.

I have recently launched a podcast with focuses on overeating but can be applied to all the “Overs.

Available on Apple, Anchor, Spotify, etc

https://anchor.fm/alexandra-hoover

The episodes are short, less than 15 minutes. So please take a listen if you’d like to a voice to go with these words.

I’ve listed a lovely before and after photo. The first at 19-20 years old , the second at 50 something, after I stopped both binge behaviors (mostly).

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you are on or off the struggle. We are not Alone. Mostly.

She wore a Blue Bathrobe because nothing else fit anymore

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I was laying out in the sun with my new, shiny friend Jen at 16. She looked at my legs.

“You don’t have any saddlebags”, Jen pronounced ,amazed.

What were they? She showed me hers. Oh. Didn’t look like much to me but I guess they’re not desirable?

Jen was blonde, tan, native Californian, more experienced. Christy Brinkley tone. Her parents let us drink and then helped me throw up over the side of the boat. They were so cool.

“Do you diet?” DIET. What was that?

Wow, now she was introducing me to a whole adult world full of saddlebag fear and diet culture. Calories and counting. I loved counting. It’s comforting.

I had friends. I was getting tan and I had no saddlebags! It was 1984 and the pants were full-on pastel at Contempo Casuals. Jelly shoes were light as a feather. I knew the words to both Synchronicity I and II. 16 and blissful.

10 Items Of Clothing We All Remember From The 1980s

I had just moved from Michigan where I was bullied and unpopular, at least by the end. Now I was laying next to my empress friend (who had a college-aged boyfriend )on her boat in Catalina. So, So stoked!. To make her laugh I would get buzzed and imitate the aerobics instructors on the “20 minute work out”. Her boyfriend laughed too. What a man. Los Angeles, where have you been all my life?

4 years Later.

I live at home and am 20 years old. I’ve gone from a 114 lb naturally slim girl to a compulsive overeater who is nearing 150 lbs. I’m agoraphobic. The gaze of anyone as I walk across a crosswalk hurts. My 50 -something year old mother is sleeker than me. Nothing fits. My body is not mine.

I have a bathrobe thats nubbly and Navy blue. It has red braided waist tie. Sometimes I tie it slightly below my waist,80s style. This Bathrobe is all that fits. Sometimes I would belt it with my fathers tan leather belt to feel more secure. It’s the only piece that doesn’t rub up against the folds of fat and remind me physically of my size.

I eat whole loaves of bread with cold, Imperial margarine in a fever. I don’t even like bread. And it was Roman Meal for god’s sake. I cannot stop. I rabidly eat pasta which tastes like nothing and I chase the hope of it tasting like something. I grab hold of flesh around my body often, pull at it, and visually measure what is me and not me. I have friends but don’t want to go out. None of them have my problem.

I was hurting myself with food. With distention and paralysis. I did it over and over again.

Neato Coolville: ROMAN MEAL BREAD IS THE BEST

There’s a lot of reasons why I did it. None of those reasons are: “Everyone gains weight as they get older”. I do not have any molestation in my history. I built a house of extra in that bathrobe. I needed protection. It was not safe out there. I did not belong anymore.

If you are here. If you are suffering and repeating this pattern compulsively, it can change. I am proof. The whys may be different for you. They may be worse. My compulsive overeating was traumatic but not special and it’s mainly OVER. It taps me on the shoulder sometimes but it’s mostly out of the picture.

I remember listening to a cassette tape by Marianne Williamson circa 1990 about the power of food and its ability to physically transform the body. That’s different in comparison alcohol or heroin. Those drugs may string you out, hag you up and kill you too. But they don’t have the power to multiply you by a quarter or more of your mass. FOOD. Potent and Powerful. This nourisher and nullifier.

More later. I’m full.