Making the Switch

Somewhere around my mid-to-late forties I noticed I was getting the same hit off unhealthy carbs as I was getting off my weed pipe in my twenties and that first glass of chilled wine in my thirties. But food addiction is socially acceptable so it can largely go unchecked for many years. Plus it took many years for me to reach the zenith of my food addiction. For years my fridge had to be full or I could not relax. The first thing I thought about in the morning was food and after I had finished breakfast I was wondering what to have for lunch. In the same way an alcoholic’s day and thought processes are ruled by drink my day and brain was ruled by food – and not even particularly healthy food. Wine was like my friend who popped in on the weekends and who I looked forward to spending some time with but food was my constant companion. My cravings were constant and all-consuming as the years wore on and I found myself listlessly roaming my house seeking comfort in food. Food gave me some structure, something to look forward to, especially when I was in recovery from burn out. My secret pleasure was watching food programmes. I loved nothing more than browsing the supermarket or food markets. I think it safe to say I was an avid foodie despite being fairly unadventurous in the kitchen myself. Ironically now I am becoming just that!

I have always loved my food and I had a healthy if conservative relationship with it but it started to become an unhealthy crutch as my thirties rolled on. I put this down to three factors; being stuck at home with small children, being creatively frustrated and as a way to suppress my emotions (or keep them at bay at least). A glass of wine with dinner (usually from Thursday though I would try to wait till Friday) only increased my appetite. I fancied myself as living in the Mediterranean with lunch rolling into dinner. Nigella Lawson was my heroine. For many years I was a human rubbish bin grazing on anything and everything and always eating my kids’ leftovers – if there were any.

As the years rolled by the weight piled on. The body positive movement didn’t help as it encouraged bad habits. I am a fan of body positive – in as much as it celebrates diversity in body types – but I am not a fan of promoting obesity which can cause any number of health issues and complications. This side of the movement is dangerous I think. Likewise with the other extreme which promotes underweight women and extreme fitness. Did you know that extreme fitness actually compromises your immune system?

I had always been 8 stone as a young woman and blessed with an hourglass figure but cursed with a steely drive. I had also been blessed with a strong constitution and body which I promptly abused with substances and that includes food. Too often people don’t include eating certain foods as substance abuse though they are quick to condone drink and drugs. People abuse food too. The healthier I get the more I regret my past life choices. In many ways I squandered my good fortune. My weight never fluctuated until my mid-twenties when it went down to 7 stone. By age 27 I was 6 stone whilst in the throes of a nervous breakdown. I was dangerously thin, even skeletal, for a few years. I gained a lot of weight with my first pregnancy and after I gave birth to my daughter my weight settled at 9 stone. I walked a lot pushing my baby girl in her buggy everywhere during this time and ate well so I was fairly healthy. I was also lifting a lot. I was however quite emotionally stressed due to practical factors (being a single mum with no car living in a remote area, house moves and financial issues mainly).

These stressful issues got exacerbated when I met my son’s father. By now I had learnt to drive. He experienced schizophrenia and we had to get involved with the mental health services. By the time he was transferred from the local unit to a maximum-security facility in the city in a prolonged psychosis I was pregnant with my second child. It must have been the most stressful pregnancy on record; two house moves, holding down a job at a local sports centre, a car crash in which my car was written off, doing a course (and applying for more), raising a toddler and dealing with the mental health services. Food was probably fuel and an after-thought though I always made sure my daughter was well fed. Incidentally both my kids have amazing taste palates; my daughter always loved avocados and pears and my son was an olive freak!

After 6 house moves I was blessed to be gifted an acre site in the beautiful valley I grew up in (from age 5) from my father to build a house on with an inheritance my grandmother left me. To this day I give thanks every day for my good fortune in this area. I practice the attitude of gratitude. For years I was angry that my grandmother had died and I wanted to give my inheritance to the homeless. Luckily my father didn’t facilitate this or I would have been homeless myself with two kids!

After my house was built and I moved in I was unprepared for the wonderful feeling of safety and security that having my own home for me and my kids would give me. I had never put down roots. I had always been on the move even in my childhood when I went between my mother and father’s houses and my boarding school in Cork city. Then as a young woman I had moved around a lot; changing accommodation, cities and countries quite frequently. You could say I was always on the run. I even used to eat on the move. Now here I was in one place, relatively unscathed with two wonderful kids. How lucky can one woman get?

So what did I do with my new-found freedom? Design a wonderful garden? Take up painting again? No I took on the Irish mental health services! I joined any grassroots organisations I could find who were challenging inhumane responses to human emotional distress. During this time I met and connected with people who had incredible stories and who had overcome massive adversity in their lives. I met people who were making their livings out of creating new paradigms and many who were doing it voluntarily for personal reasons. I worked hard and I believed in the work I was doing. I joined the Critical Psychiatry movement and I suggested the idea of a conference that gathered together people who presented different alternative responses to human distress. That conference is now an annual event.

All my hard work and campaigning culminated with the legendary Mary Raftery in my kitchen with an RTE camera crew. It was an honour to meet such a woman. Like any great human being she had razor sharp intelligence but was full of humility and compassion. She died of cancer not long after and I believe it was because she shouldered the backlash of the Ryan report. You can read about the Ryan report here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse. It was a huge honour to have a woman who changed the course of Irish history standing in my kitchen and interviewing me! There are no words to describe how surreal that experience was.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with my weight or the food I eat! I am putting it all into context. By the time I had given up my mental health advocacy work I was completely burnt out. I even had Mary Raftery encouraging me to give it up and to focus on myself and my children. I decided my work in that area was done. I had said my piece – which was that force and drug maintenance was not a good enough response to human distress, that it was in fact a human rights violation. I had told my story in newspapers, on radios and now on national TV. It was time to leave the battlefield. Not only had I gone to war with the current paradigm but I had joined movements who proposed new paradigms. I was fighting on one front and creating a new one the other side. This was frontline work. I was also emotionally supporting a lot of people which was very draining. I was doing battle, nurturing, raising and creating all at once!

The energy it takes to go into battle is monumental so suffice to say the aftermath is an adjustment. I locked my front door and went to bed for a year. I was completely burnt out. The reason I have included all this back story is to give you some context.  During my battle with the mental health services I was pushing quite hard which probably meant I was releasing a lot of cortisol. Cortisol is used in fight or flight. Cortisol is also the hormone responsible for creating that spare tyre look around the middle that we all love and know so well. I believe I was quite unhealthy around this time because I drank a lot of coffee – though never after midday – and I would unwind with wine towards the end of the week. I would use food as fuel rather than give it much more thought that that. I had bigger fish to fry so to speak. I was macro and food was micro as far as I was concerned. I would eat large portions like a lorry refuelling and I would eat fast.

All that has now changed.

Now I believe it is more important to fix your own yard before you tend to others. At 40 I started therapy which has been a life saver. Around 43 I started realising that though I liked wine, wine did not like me or rather my body did not react well to it. It was the same with coffee. So I ditched my uppers (coffee) and my downers (wine). At 42 I noticed a change in my monthly cycle and by 45 I was in a bad place physically with excessive flooding – which I have written about elsewhere on this blog.

I now believe it was a combination of chronic extreme and prolonged stress over many years, my diet and my tendency to push my emotions down with food that created my weight gain. Over the years I developed the habit of going to the fridge or the cupboard if I was stressed, bored or emotional. Sometimes even if I was happy I would hit the fridge to celebrate. Any excuse huh! Pretty soon my weight crept up to 11 stone from 9 stone. According to the BMI (Body Mass Index) for my height and frame I was now officially in the obesity camp. I was still the right side of obesity but if this continued I was heading towards the wrong side of it which is morbidly obese. It didn’t help that I had girlfriends who were ignoring their own weight issues (we all did) and embracing the “body positivity” idea and boyfriends who celebrated my “curves” (my fat).

All I knew was I felt trapped in a body I no longer recognised as my own. I felt heavy and sluggish no matter what kind of a positive spin I or others put on it. Then I started to get cellulite on my knees. I think that was the point of no return when I thought maybe my life as I formerly knew it was over and I had been abducted. I gasped with horror when one day I saw just how much cellulite had accumulated on my legs. Due to excessive flooding for months on end I had gotten really out of shape physically. I did hardly any exercise and it was starting to show. At 5 feet 2 I was slowly turning into a tubby, chubby, short, round person. I would get breathless just running up the stairs. I had asthma and a whole host of other health issues were starting to form. At this rate I was heading for more problems down the road. I got myself tested for diabetes (no, thank god) and thyroid (all fine). I also discovered that overweight women suffer more in the perimenopause and menopause. From years of unchecked stress, over-eating and always trying to please others my hormones had gone haywire and were creating havoc in my body.

The first thing I did at around 44 was completely give up booze. It happened fairly organically, slowly starting at 42 but by 44 I could no longer finish a glass of wine without feeling awful so I switched to fizzy water and now eventually to just plain old water with a squeeze and a slice of lemon or lime in it.

The next thing I did was to increase my green leafy vegetable intake, mostly kale, rainbow chard and spinach whilst reducing unhealthy carbs. I increased my fresh vegetable intake in general; broccoli, cauliflower, beetroots, carrots (raw and cooked), leeks and salads. In conjunction with this I reduced my plate portions which in the past had been huge. I also cut out mashed potato with butter as I was getting acid reflux every time I ate mashed potato or chips. I replaced potatoes with sweet potato. I swapped white rice for brown rice. I bought quinoa and lentils. I completely cut out regular wheat pasta, white bread (sliced pan, wraps, bagels etc), biscuits, crackers and cakes. I now only eat cake at a special occasion.

Then I slowly reduced my intake of red meat (beef and lamb - which had reached unhealthy amounts in an attempt to manage my enemia) and increased my intake of fish, mainly fresh hake and tins of sardines (delicious with a generous squeeze of lemon and lime). I am researching other sources of iron aswell. I radically reduced my chicken intake as I am a blood group B and chicken is not good for us folk. Roast chicken is one of my favourites so I will let myself have it occasionally. I still eat eggs, yoghurt and cheese. I love whole foods, real foods and slow food. In other words I love good, healthy food. Since making the switch gradually I no longer have any cravings for junk for the first time in years. It is amazing. It is like being released from a kind of food prison.

I have completely eliminated packet foods with E numbers (gravies, stirfry sauces, seasonings etc) and replaced with fresh herbs and spices and organic vegetable stocks. I replaced sweet snacks with a variety of nuts and dried fruits so now when I get cravings I hit those instead of the biscuits or cakes or ice cream. There are no biscuits in my cupboard anymore anyway. And finally I drink more water and I move more, eat less. I try to take 1 hour exercise in walking every day. Doing some yoga is my next goal when I feel stronger. I also take supplements; vitamins A, B, D and C, magnesium, flaxseed or fish oil, evening primose oil and passiflora tincture to alleviate stress.

My target weight is 9 stone. So I have to lose 2 stone. I started at a size 10 and over the years I have crept up to a size 16 (in some cases 18). I was definitely heading to 18 next stop 20. I would be happy to be a 14 or a 12 now. We shall see. I am making the switch from unhealthy to healthy and it feels good. It feels like the right time and I feel ready to let all the layers fall off. I no longer need to protect or buffer myself with weight, hide behind it or stuff my feelings down with food. I need to find healthier ways to deal with my feelings – maybe by honouring them (but that is for another day, another blog post). Removing unhealthy foods and too much food has been like removing my security blanket rather like how a hoarder gathers stuff to insulate and cocoon themselves emotionally. I am also a bit of a hoarder so this will be the next issue I have to confront – my attic!

I have done all this food change programme in conjunction with a course in osteopathy over many months as it came to light that I needed to radically change my diet and lifestyle. Since changing my diet I have no acid reflux or incessant cough and my energy levels have increased. However I have developed headaches but I have heard this is common in detox – as it is withdrawing from drugs or drink. I am hoping these will go in time. I no longer feel like I need to abuse food in the same way that I abused drugs and alcohol. Food is there to support me not to swamp me. I have also slowly started to research herbs and restorative teas to support my journey towards health, healing and balance.

It can take a long time to address food addiction partly because at it's root it is an emotional problem and also because it is socially acceptable to eat - of course. We need food to live though what we eat can make us sick.