More on food

My relationship with food is a complicated one that goes back to being raised in poverty.  When you are poor, you have a different relationship with food.  You look at food as something that you might not have in a day or two, and each opportunity to eat produces a psychological response similar to that of a starving person.  Growing up, I remember when we would be treated to eating out at a restaurant  my mother would tell us to "Eat our monies worth" in an attempt to get the best value for the dollar.  Sometimes my parents would take us to the Golden Corral or Ryans (both buffet style dining in the south) where we would spend over an hour, with my mother often commenting if we didn't "eat enough" and reminding us that food does not grow on trees (in her defense, nothing they serve there grew on a tree).

I don't fault my folks for this at all.  To be honest, I understood it then.  While my mother and father never left us to go hungry ever, I do remember nights when supper was very basic (grits, maybe with an egg in it) or mustard and cheese sandwiches.  I remember often my folks did not eat with us those nights and framed it in allowing us to eat in front of the TV (something that rarely happened as we always ate around the supper table in a room without TV).  I relied on school lunches in the morning when I was hungry and remember the rare times my mother would cook us breakfast on the weekends as being true treats (Bisquick pancakes, grits with butter and scrambled eggs, ect).

Yet as I entered middle school I began to have body image issues.  I was not fat per say, but I was a bit thick.  Thankfully in the south, being slightly overweight is common and the obese kids were the ones who suffered for weight, allowing the kids to pick on me for being a "faggot", a "sissy" and poor, not my body.  But internally I wanted the muscle I saw on a few of the kids as they entered puberty.  I felt flabby.  In high school, I wished I had a healthy lunch even though I honestly despised salad at that point in my life.  I was working at a fast food joint for extra cash and found myself eating sometimes two of my meals there.  And boy, were they meals.

At this establishment prior to dropping out of highschool, I would start my shift around 530pm.  I would get a food break around 730-8 where I would eat a double or triple cheese burger with onion rings and an extra cup of nacho cheese.  I would snack (as did a lot of the cooks) on mistakes.  I worked the drive through (rare for a boy, but I was "that" kind of boy) and so I also made ice cream which gave me that if I wanted it too.  (Thankfully I was never really into sweets).  Sometimes on the way home from work at 11pm I would stop by Jack in the Box for "supper" where I'd order a burger and egg rolls to take home with me.

After I dropped out of highschool due to bullying, I was in a homeschool program that allowed me to work the opening breakfast shift.  I was at work at 430am making biscuits from scratch and worked till 11am.  I would eat 2 or 3 sausage egg and cheese biscuits in the mornings, and usually took home my double or triple cheese burger at lunch time.  On days that I didn't work, I had ramen noodles for breakfast (latchkey kids who live in poor families each cheap).  Except I'd have two packages of them for a meal.  Sometimes I'd have a box of Mac-&-Cheese instead of ramen.  Interestingly, I never rose above 215lbs.

Once I moved away to go to college, I lived in a dirty, filthy rental in St Louis, Missouri where we had no AC or heat.  I was in a poly relationship with two men and we shared the home.  One of my partners loved to cook and cooked us yummy (but mostly unhealthy) meals where we might have Rice-a-Roni with fatty hamburger meat in it, bread, and potatoes on the side.  (Yes, bread AND potatoes).  The other partner did not eat veggies, and was a bearish guy from the midwest who was raised on a diet of meat and cheese.  I lost weight living there, despite our lunches being take out from Checkers or Arby's 5 for 5 menu.  I can't imagine how many calories I was eating, but it had to be a lot.  I was no where near as big as my two partners, so maybe I didn't notice it, but I went to the doctor a lot for other issues so I knew my weight.  I only drank when we went out to the bar because we didn't keep booze in the house.  After the bars (which we did most weekends at least one night), we'd stop at Whitecastle for burgers and I'd have 5 or so.  (I still adore WhiteCastle).

At school though, I noticed I didn't like how I looked.  I tried to cut calories where I could.  I skipped meals at home, would order diet pills from the internet, and began very unhealthy restricting behavior.  I never liked being hungry (a throwback to childhood) which I guess saved me from anorexia.  My hatred of vomiting saved me from bulimia, but it didn't stop my binge eating when I was sad.  I ate my feelings.  My weight fluctuated between 200-210 though.  I didn't understand it.  I felt like I was eating more than I did at home down south, yet I had lost a little weight.

Upon moving to the West Coast to continue my education, I moved in with a new partner who is a fantastic cook.  I still live with him.  He cooked most nights back then.  He cooked balanced meals.  We had veggies with every dinner, we never had bread AND another carb/starch, and we had a little wine with most meals.  It was yummy.  We did eat out, but he and my roommate had such stark differences in how they ate.  My former partner was a heavyset bear of a man, but ate relatively little.  My roommate ate more than both of us and snacked heavily on cookies and candy, yet was smaller than both of us.  I still felt bad about my body image.  My doctors noticed I had issues with my liver at this point, and performed a biopsy.  The biopsy revealed I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which he attributed possibly to gluten issues or issues with how my body processed carbohydrates.

He put me on a special diet for two months.  It was difficult given that I lived with two people who did not follow it at all.  The point of the diet was to see if I improved.  This diet had no grains at all, very little carbs, and almost no sugar.  I wasn't hungry, I dropped down to 200lbs, and my IBS went away.  I was astonished.  Yet my liver panels only moderately improved.  He asked if it was sustainable for me. I told him that it would not be given my current living situation.  My partner was not happy with me taking up extra room in the fridge, needing the kitchen to cook separate meals, and the fact that I basically couldn't eat with them anymore.  They still ate a lot of grains, and my meals were much more expensive.  After two months, I eased back into carbs (still trying to keep them low).  Things were okay for a while but I still had this issue with eating too much.  It wasn't that I was eating BAD, just my quantity was high.  The new drugs they put me on during that two months had weight gain as a side effect, and my diet wasn't helping.  Then they switched my meds, I gained 10 pounds, and I gave up.  I couldn't do it anymore.  I had tried dieting, I had tried diet pills...I honestly couldn't see how I would ever be more lean in my current situation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be thin.  I'm a thick guy.  I started going to the gym and I look good thick with muscle.  I'm working on getting more muscled, but I'd like to lose my paunch as well.  I had looked oddly forward to my one year externship as a way to practice and try out living my "new" eating plan.  I began drinking heavier because I was miserable and honestly, the booze helped.  No other substance had ever made me not care and make me happy the way booze did.  I smiled more, I laughed more...I didn't worry so much about how cruel my now ex-partner sometimes was.  I didn't have to think about him dumping me because he found my skin issues unattractive, I didn't have to think about the hateful things he said to me about how he had to "try so hard" to be attracted to me or to want to "be in the same room" as me.  I went on interviews but failed to match.  That killed me.

To be fair to myself, I wasn't drinking a lot more than other grad students I knew.  I drank most days, but usually not to "excess".  But the extra calories were not something I needed, and I knew I was medicating myself.  I didn't care.  Not matching dealt a huge blow financially to me as well as to my self esteem.  I had to take another year of schooling, I had failed.

(more to come later).