Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This secret was posted on PostSecret last Sunday. I could have written it six years ago if you replaced the Reese’s Pieces with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. There was a time when I had decided to be fat and I didn’t want to deal with any of my emotional issues. I used to spend all day at work just wishing that I could go home, watch TV and eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Some days, I would stay home from work just so I could binge.

Ironically, the decision to just be fat and love myself anyway was the first step toward getting a healthy life. If I had known that I was only a few months away from dragging myself out of the depression, I don’t think I would have binged on the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as much. Deciding to love myself and be fabulous, even though I was fat helped drag me out of the pit of depression, but it didn’t happen immediately. It takes a while to learn how to love yourself, but I didn’t know that.

It took even longer for me to join Weight Watchers because I wanted to be healthy. I had decided that I was joining to learn how to eat healthy since I was so confused by all the fad diets out there. I enjoyed it when the pounds slowly melted, but that wasn’t my focus. All I wanted was to be able to live a few extra years on this planet. That didn’t mean that I was finished with bingeing. I was just learning to incorporate my bingeing into a healthy diet.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I finally learned to kick my bingeing. It took pages and pages of writing out my feelings before I was finally able to realize why I was bingeing and what I needed to give myself to replace it. Now, I could actually imagine a life without Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups without feeling deprived.

This is not a quick fix and it was far from easy for me to give up the bingeing that had served me so well during my childhood. Don’t forget that the first step is deciding to love yourself no matter what. If you do that, then you will be on the road to healing.

For more help on this issue:

• Starling Fitness » Vulnerability Foods

• Starling Fitness » Losing Motivation

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.