Hit me like a semi truck

Ever have one of those days where you just can't shake the feeling of inadequacy? Where not matter how hard you try, you just feel like it's not quite good enough? Where the emotional relationship you have with food comes out in high gear? Well today was one of those days for me...

To start out with I'm PMSing, so I am highly emotional, want to do nothing but eat, and am bloated. Add to that my home situation is extremely stressful and wearing. PLUS I didn't get to the gym today. All that adds up to feeling like I was punched in the face (emotionally). So with all that I think I need to talk about my relationship with food (then probably go bake something lol).

Food is a very strange subject for me, it is something I am very passionate about. I love to bake, I love to cook, I LOVE to eat. I don't think I have ever really had the healthiest relationship with food. I mean it was not so unhealthy that is was to the point of an eating disorder, but it was a dysfunctional relationship for sure.

I have always relied on food. When I was bored, it gave me something to do. When I was sad, it made me feel better. When I was happy, I celebrated with food. I was also lucky to grow up in a home where my mom, and Gma, knew how to cook well. As a kid this was all fine a dandy. I was fairly active, had a fast metabolism, and was a kid. Lol But come about my junior year, it started to be a problem. I was eating more fast food due to a very active extra curricular schedule. I was getting less exercise, due to said schedule. I was also dealing with my metabolism slowing down a tad. I want to say I saw about 10lbs in weight gain my last two years of high school. But I refused to see the issues, or to listen to my mom when she tried to talk to me about it. My senior I was at my biggest of approx 150lbs (only 10ish lbs less than my delivery weight with my second baby, and 5ish less than with my first...) and refusing to wear bigger than a juniors sz11 (even though I probably should have been).

My freshman year of college my relationship with food become a little more "healthy", even if my diet wasn't the best. I was a poor college student who was used to eating delicious home cooked meals at least 2-3x a week. Don't get me wrong, the dorm food wasn't bad but it wasn't home. It was here tho that I got addicted to energy drinks, imagine that. Lol I managed to loose a couple lbs during my freshman year, and got down to between 140-145lbs.

My relationship with food has come and gone from unhealthy since then, mainly depending on how much extra we had to spend on crap at the time. It wasn't until I started actively trying to loose weight that my relationship became more dysfunctional in one area and less dysfunctional in another. My relationship with WHAT I eat and my portions has become quite healthy. As a family we have decided to change the way we eat, for the most part. We make basically everything from scratch. I even make my own chicken stock and such. However, I am not the type of person to completely deprive myself of anything. I still have my desserts, I still eats all those delicious carbs, and I love everything dairy. The relationship that has gotten more dysfunctional is WHEN I eat.

While I was counting calories I became so obsessed with not eating too much ( don't get me wrong, my min was 1500cal BEFORE working out) that when I got emotional I had to force myself to eat. That habit has stuck with me, along with sometimes forgetting to eat when I get busy. Those habits, and dysfunctions, have stuck with me even now that I am no longer counting calories. Well, except when I'm PMSing, then I just want to eat everything in sight. Lol

These new dysfunctions have been hard for me to deal with lately. My home situation has been highly stressful. My marriage is on the rocks, AND my husband deploys for the first time in October for 8 months. Plus, I have a 3 year old and almost 2 year old which are stressful enough as is. I have been "forgetting" to eat a lot, and when I do eat I usually have to force myself. Not this week, like I said, I'm in eat everything in sight mode. Lol

It's weird for me to sit and write about this, because I don't even really know what my point is... Basically what I am saying is my relationship with food has always been so intertwined with my emotions that I don't know how to break the cycle. I feel like I went from one extreme to the other. How do I build a healthy relationship with food, when cooking/baking is one of my biggest ways of loving on someone (I'm Italian, it's in my blood...)? How do I build a non-emotion based relationship with food when I have lived with an emotion based relationship all my life?