My Friends True Shit

My Friends True Shit

I can’t remember the exact day, but I remember exactly what happened – and most of all, how I felt. I was getting ready for work. I was on one of my starve-binge- starve cycles, and I felt enormous. I was chubby, about 10 kilos overweight, and bloated. My skirt was too tight. My jacket was uncomfortable on my ever-growing nana arms. Even pulling up my stockings was awkward. But I got dressed anyway, because I had to go to work.

When I went to put my make-up on, I found I couldn’t even look in the mirror. If I was uncomfortable in my clothes, it was positively excruciating to look at myself. I was so fedcup, distressed, anxious and irritable about the way I looked that I couldn’t stand to look at my own reflection. So I didn’t.

I went and found a small square mirror and shuffled up to it at an awkward angle, so that when I tilted my head a certain way I could just barely see my eyeball in the corner of the mirror. I couldn’t see my body at all. I could see enough to apply my mascara, but not enough to make me feel terrible about myself. What a way to live, huh?

Even if I was able to ignore my growing body and my plummeting self-esteem for a moment, it all came flooding back the minute I stepped away from that mirror. And that was it. That was the day that the risk to remain so tight around my food issues was more painful than the risk to let go. Food was affecting my mood, sleep, energy – everything! I decided to embrace a new way: eating whole food, and enjoying it, without guilt.

And I’m guessing that you’ve had this moment, too, or a version of it. You’ve realised you get puffed out running after your kids. You find you can’t fit into your favourite pair of jeans, the ones that make you feel like a rock star. You might feel tired and stressed after a hard day and find solace in wine and chocolate, until they make you feel sick and sad. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve had all those moments, but it wasn’t until this moment – I call it ‘the eyelash’ – that I realised my life had to change. I might not have been dying, or obese, but I was done with my current lifestyle. I knew it wasn’t making me happy, and I knew that I could change it. So I did – bit by bit, step by step.

This my friends is true shit…

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