Want to read Part 1 first?  Click it.

I was teased and tormented endlessly at school because of my weight.  I felt so trapped.  Everywhere I went; there was this solid brick wall.  I remember trying to talk to my mom about it and she made it sound like it was *my* problem.  I mean, it was my problem.  But what I needed from her, I so seldom ever got.  Once, I remember crying to her that I felt chastised at home and chastised at school for my weight.  If my own family couldn’t love me for who I was, then how could *I* love me?

She apologized at that time and told me that she was doing this because she loved me.  Because she had problems with her weight when she was young and doesn’t want me to have to experience that so she pushes me.  I know now that it came from a good place.  But I also know that she had weight problems when she was younger because my grandpa (her dad) was an alcoholic.  Food was her way of dealing with that.  I didn’t know that then, but over the past two years, I have pieced that together.

Aside from eating, I had two other forms of escape:  reading and acting.  I was a really good actress.  I got the lead parts in all of the school plays and felt comfortable placing myself in someone else’s shoes.  Actually, it was a relief to be able to put myself into someone else’s shoes.

I read books like my life depended on it.  What a treat to escape into a good book.  To this day, I can finish off a novel in a couple of days (if I have uninterrupted time that is).

Through all of the turmoil, my family and I actually came out stronger.  They love me and I love them.  But I was faced with so much responsibility and so much “adult” emotion; at a young age, my little mind just couldn’t compute all of that adequately.   I think I developed my own survival mode, albeit unhealthy.  My parents by example were couch potatoes.  I didn’t have a really good role model for that.  And whenever my mom would have me go on a diet, I always felt that it was something that was done *to me*.  I felt singled out.  No one else had to give up the food they loved, but I did.  We never did it as a family.  And so in that way, I felt like I was the one being chastised.  I felt imperfect and broken.

Therein lays my need to control.  Life felt so out of control at various times, that I controlled it by eating whatever I wanted.  And I felt that if I tuned in to other people’s emotions enough, then I could stop something bad from happening or stop myself from being hurt.  The “tuning in to people’s emotions” part started when  I actually felt like I repaired my parent’s marriage when I told my dad that my mom was seeing some other guy (they were separated at the time and I was 6).

Okay, so now i’m bringing this all up to date in the present.

In the present, I have three young children and I am married.  Because I am also a stay-at-home mom, I am responsible for the kids and the house 99% of the time.  All of these are things *I* chose.  But… to some weird degree, I think I had a hard time realizing that I was the one in control.

My dad used to say that he and my mom were the big chiefs and we were just the little Indians.

And I now know why it was easy to lose weight when I was completely on my own.  It’s because *I* was the one in control.  I love being married but I think a part of me thought that marriage meant that I had to give up the control to my husband and to the inlaws.  Now, I know that I don’t have to do that and that I *shouldn’t* do that.

Because now i’m a big chief.  And this weight loss thing?  This is something I am doing for myself.  It is not something that is being done to me.  I can clearly see the benefits.  And this will allow me to be a good role model for my children.  I am trying to make it so that they see and reap the benefits of all of these changes now so that they don’t have to struggle the way I did.  And if they do struggle?  Then i’m not going to put them on a diet.

Because we will do it together as a family.