I'm holding up the light, believe me. Now follow your instincts.

It took me until I was in my 50's to completely change my brain thought process. Before.....I looked at food as a cultural thing (we are all brought up to have great conversations over dinner, enjoy the meal, sit there and eat until we are full, etc. etc), BUT.. if we have the kind of metabolism that does not cooperate with that way of living, well we are going to pay for it down the road with diabetes, cholesterol, etc. etc.

I come from an italian family (mom had 9 siblings). Mom was short, 5 feet tall (I'M NOT SHORT). Mom was obese till she was 18 (so I never saw my mother's weight problem). Her sisters and brothers are short skinny people. My mother obviously inherited some sort of gene thing, so she was BIG until she was 18, when some guy made a crack about her weight, she got upset, she went on a diet, AND SHE NEVER LOOKED BACK.

So she married my father at 31, had me at 32. Both my parents were regular sized peope. My mother was determined that I WOULD NEVER BE FAT.

Didn't work out that way. We never got along, she was a nasty piece of work sometimes, and I did the only thing I knew how to do. I ATE!!

She would hide food in the linen closet. Never saw such a thing in my life. I opened the linen closet and saw loaves of bread. We had company in the kitchen, they were having coffee and cake. I said "why on earth is there loaves of bread among the dish towels. She blurted out "Because you eat everything in sight".

Now if you don't think I grabbed two pieces of cake and hid out in my room, then you don't know me. I remember this like it was yesterday.

Food and cake made me feel good. I didn't have to deal with her. But it destroyed my body, my self esteem, etc. It hurt me BUT at the time, I only knew it made me feel good.

That's why some of us self medicate with FOOD, and others self medicate with alcohol or drugs.

Food was my drug. It simply numbed my brain. I tuned out my mother who would scream at me all the time. She would say "don't you know what you'll look like when you are 30? don't you know what kind of menopause you'll have when you are 50???" You are so stupid". etc. etc. Not a good role model. So I ate more. When I was stressed, I ate more. And now we know much about stress hormone called Cortisol.

And when I married, the first thing he said to me was: 'Please don't get pregnant, you'll have a lousy pregnancy".

Then a few months later when I was pregnant, I turned to Alan and said 'oh brother, now I have to make the call to my mother and tell her (they lived in Florida).

I call up my mother and said: "I have something important to tell you". She blurted out "PLEASE DON'T TELL ME YOU ARE PREGNANT".

See???? All my life, I reacted to her viciousness by EATING. It just made me feel good.

But I learned. I learned LATE IN LIFE, but I did learn. I went to Cornell, I went to a nutritionist. I went on message boards. I learned that I ate to combat stress and that FOOD is my drug of choice.

I had to look at food completely different. Probably if I wasn't a diabetic, I'd either weigh 400 lbs or be confined to a bed.

But I had to look at food like fuel for my body, and not like "if I eat three cupcakes with a nice cold glass of milk, I'LL FEEL BETTER".

I believe, (in my case), I changed the wiring of my brain, to look at food completely different. Not the most easiest thing to accomplish and it took me the past 6 years to do this.

When my son left us, I went through a bad head trip. I took out the ding dongs, the twinkies, the Susy Q's (oh my god, those chocolate cake things).

I ate all night long. I FELT NOTHING, I just drifted off in a sugar haze. I did this because I KNEW I'D FEEL BETTER.

But something finally clicked after I went to Cornell. Alan and I went to a nutritionist. Actually it was Alan's appointment but I went with him. She addressed all information to me because I was the cook in the family and Alan said "show her what we can eat because I don't know my way around a kitchen".

I had been on what they call the Mediterrean diet. Olive Oil, no butter, no trans fats, but I had lots to learn. I learned about the importance of fish (the kinds of fish also). I learned how many carbs a day we should be eating. How to balance the portions.

I also asked the nutritionist one question that I had been dying to ask SOMEONE.

I said 'how come my girlfriend's husband can eat day and night (and I mean day and night), and he's 6 feet 2, weighs 195 and if he doesn't eat the ice cream at night, he loses 5 lbs. How come I can starve and I don't lose weight"???


She explained "you can't starve, your body will shut down, your metabolism shuts off, and your body thinks it's starving". Can't remember the whole conversation, but I learned that to lose weight, you have to EAT. It's how you eat and when you eat and what kind's of food you eat, that makes all the difference.

She then said "Your friend's husband has a fast metabolism, it's genetic. Nothing you can do about that. That's life. It's not fair, but that's the way it is. But he should not be eating ice cream all night, and all the cakes and cookies because some day, this will bite him in the stomach and in his health. She was right. His stomach is shot, he sometimes can't eat for days because of his stomach.

So this nutritionist knows what she's talking about.

So that's how we learned. Now Alan is different than me. He doesn't look at food and say "where is this fish going in my body?, should I have this cereal bar".

Alan says "I eat what Melody puts in front of me".

Alan is NOT diabetic. So he eats fresh juice I make for him every morning. All the blueberries, antioxidants, etc. He can drink this because he's not a diabetic. I can't.

I CAN have a bit of fresh fruit. But this man eats fruit at night till the cows come home.

He also pops a BIG bowl of unsalted popcorn every night. EVERY NIGHT. He then sprays Ken's honey mustard spray on it.

All this fruit and popcorn makes him go to the bathroom twice a day. He maintains his weight and he gets to eat fruit and popcorn.

I can't do this. I eat half of what this guy eats.

But I don't miss it BECAUSE I LEARNED WHAT ALL THAT SUGAR AND CRAP DID TO MY BODY.

Dorrie, I'm a work in progress. I ate because I was depressed. But I know that now so my brain realizes what I was doing. So I don't do this anymore. Took me a few years to get this down to a science but hey, if I can do it, maybe you can too!!

You have my support and encouragement.

And I still don't get on scales. I don't want to see numbers that I don't like. So I let the people at Cornell weight me and write it on their charts.

But I've lost over 100 lbs since my highest weight. And I buy pretty tops.

And guess what? Yesterday for the first time I bought a WHITE PAIR OF PANTS.

Imagine that??? Me, in white pants.

My god. Never thought that would happen.

This is a woman who wore everything black till I was 50 years old because as we all know Black is slimming.

This thought process starts in the mind. Mind started when my mother would verbally abuse me, and it became a habit all my life to self medicate with food.

I'm lucky I got a chance to realize what I was doing to myself.

So when you get down and out and want to eat something you know isn't quite good for you, just read this post.

You'll have a smile, and maybe, just maybe, you won't reach for that cupcake (or whatever food is your nemesis).

We all have them.

Hope I didn't sound preachy.

I really do want to help.

Take care,

Melody