Loneliness

At some point I'm going to write down my history with gaining weight, but the last few years in can be summed up in one word: loneliness.

When Jordan got a job in Phoenix, we were so excited and so grateful. We had been looking for a job for months, and he got a really, really fantastic one.  To this day, we often look at each other and talk about how very lucky we are that he got this job.  At the time, I hadn't really considered the implications for myself.  I had been thinking about how Jordan's life was going to change, how he was going to have to go to work and work hard, but I hadn't even spared a thought of what that meant for me (ok, except the money part.  I won't lie, I was pretty stoked to get an iPhone).  And then, suddenly, I was at home, by myself, without any friends, just me and my cute baby Clara.

Here, have a picture to break up the words  in this long post.  :)

I had no resources to make friends.  At least not resources I was used to.  I wasn't attending school. I wasn't going to work (the two most important places I had always made friends before).  Church was just 3 hours a week, it wasn't enough time to build any sort of meaningful relationships with people (it doesn't help that Jordan doesn't like to linger and talk after church.  He practically chases me out of the building).  I didn't know anyone in this city.  Jordan was suddenly working long hours, so I'd often be by myself for 10 hours a day.  We had one car, and I didn't always have access to it (still just have one car, btw), so I was often literally stuck in my apartment.  I was painfully lonely.  Clara was great and wonderful, and I was (and still am) grateful that I could be with her all the time.  But suddenly I was isolated, lonely and bored.  So I ate.

It was during this time that I hit the highest weight I have ever been at.  It did nothing to help me make friends.  Now I was isolated, lonely, bored and ashamed.  Honestly, this is the closest I'd ever felt to being depressed in my life.  I soothed myself by eating.  Frankly, it was the only "treat" I had to give myself.  Long day with a crying baby? Have a cookie!  Or 5.  Day been so mind-numbingly boring that I'm just looking to feel something?  How about I make a new recipe and eat the whole thing!  At one point I was describing to a friend of mine how much I relied on food for my entertainment.  I said, "There's almost nothing more exciting to me than a cupcake.  The only other thing I can think of off hand is a roller coaster."  Really, for me, food was like an amusement park ride compared to the monotony of my day.

I hadn't realized how directly linked my weight gain was to my loneliness until I went to Alaska for a month.  I had friends and family to talk to all the time!  I could get out and spend time with people, and it wasn't so painfully hot.  And I lost 10 pounds effortlessly.  The only change in my behavior was having people to talk to during the day.

There's a lot of stuff that has happened between then and now, including losing 25 pounds before I got pregnant with Lucy, moving to a house, pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding and making more friends.  My struggles now are similar, but for different reasons, but now I know my big, monstrous trigger, and I"m working on ways to deal with it.  I have friends I can call and talk to on the phone.  I try to take the car at least once a week to get out of the house.  The horrible binging habits I developed while dealing with my loneliness are still there. In the evenings, I STILL want to sit and eat 15 cookies, but by carefully writing down my food intake, I've been in way more control of the amount of food I eat.  I can tell myself no, or if I do binge, I have to write it all down and face the numbers on my food tracker.  This is definitely still a work in progress, but I'm happy with my progress in learning to deal with my loneliness.