2 years in the making?

On so many bad days, fat days, sick days or whatever negative title you can give the low days, I've been trying to figure out, what it was I used to eat, years ago and when did the healthy eating turn extreme.

I mentioned to Diann on Monday that I don't know why or how important it is, to say exactly when it started. Diann said it's important because we like to frame things. We like to know what we were being controlled or driven by, throughout the different periods in our lives. I've been asking myself over and over again, if I went to Australia, and Anna had already started. I don't know.

I remember from the very first week I set off, in September 2006, I was terrified of putting on weight. I remember after 2 weeks I wanted to stop eating. I then went to work on the farm and I remember admitting to Jason, my boss, that doing the hard work actually saved me from starving myself. If I hadn't chosen to work on the farm, I didn't see why I would need food. But the level of physical work I was doing meant had to eat. It wasn't for wanting the food, but for needing the food. I can't remember exactly what I would eat. But it was healthy. It had to be. But I do remember I ate chocolate and I drank beer, preferably together.. The weirdest combination but such a treat..

Surely it didn't start 2 years ago? I can't have gone through life, with this, for 2 years? Or could I have? I ate chocolate and drank gallons of beer.. I don't know. Losing the weight so gradually, makes it hard for me to know what it was it was Niamh trying to live a healthy life and when it was Anna making me ill. I seem to think if I figure this out, then I'll know what I should weigh at the end of this and what I should be eating from day to day.

Diann tried to make me see that it doesn't work like that. At different times in your life, you eat differently and your body needs different foods. They always say, that when women reach the age of 30, their metabolism changes. They can't eat what they ate when they were in 20. They sometimes can't digest certain types of food anymore. Sometimes food that they lived on, or that was once healthy and good for them, they now can't stomach. It makes sense because of course our metabolism changes, as does our need for nutrition.

I'll never be able to figure out what I ate exactly, 2 years ago. At the end of the day: Food is food. It's what our bodies need. I shouldn't beat myself up for not remembering what I was eating. Just because I ate it back then, doesn't mean I should be eating it now. My body needs different food now than it did back then. Not until my weight stabilises (and I'm a huge barrel) will I know what food I need on a daily basis. I don't know what my metabolism is like right now or what it will end up being and I don't know when I'll stop putting on weight.

I'm doing what I seem to do best. Worrying about what I'm gonna turn into and what my weight will do and how all the food will make me feel. I just want to be able to eat healthy food and not weigh 50 kilo's. Diann said that I have to get that number out of my head. But I can't seem to. It's because when I dropped below 50 kilo's, 2 years ago, my energy started to go. I lie awake at night and think and worry about this number and would give or do anything not to become that number.As I write this, I can hear Diann talking to me. I am not a number. I'm me. I shouldn't identify myself with what the scales say. But it's so hard. Because that's what I've always done and the worst thing of all, that's what everybody else does too.

It's the society we live in, that identifies a number with a person. Who wants to live like that? Who wants to listen to things like that?.. I don't..Not anymore..