Harvesting Twinkies

As far back as I can remember, I was always being served, being fixed, and having to eat “Healthy Food.” I wish I could remember the first time I even heard the word healthy food…but I assume it was at a very young age as my parents were total hippies and owned the only major health food store in my town. It was around the time where that was the thing, we lived very close to Boulder…

As far back as I can remember, I was always being served, being fixed, and having to eat “Healthy Food.” I wish I could remember the first time I even heard the word healthy food…but I assume it was at a very young age as my parents were total hippies and owned the only major health food store in my town.

It was around the time where that was the thing, we lived very close to Boulder, Colorado… the mother ship so to speak and pretty much where the whole movement of natural food providers originated

While that was great for my parents… being a small little girl with a taste for all that was candy…aggravated the crap out of my young palette. I didn’t get chocolate… I got carob… I didn’t get sugar… I got honey… I didn’t get Twinkies… I got rice cakes…. there was always healthy food in my house. Tofu, tempeh, quinoa, wheat germ…some sort of green algae looking stuff that was always sitting in the refrigerator that I swore moved on its own occasionally.

My parents grew their own herbs and sprouts, made their own yogurt, squeezed everything that grew out of the ground or fell of a tree into some sort of juice. We never had junk food in our house, just healthy, no salt, no sugar, no preservatives, and as far as I was concerned, no TASTE!!

It probably didn’t help my bored taste buds any at all that because my parents owned a health food store that is where all our food came from, and I was basically raised from the ground up on tabouli and carrot juice.

I remember most kids at school had bologna on white bread, and I had some sort of nine grain, 5 inch thick, avocado and sprout concoction protruding from my lunch sack. Needless to say nobody everrrr wanted to trade lunches with me.

I remember in my kindergarten class we had a cereal party, and every little kid had to bring their favorite cereal from home. So I show up… with like this nine grain granola, muesli crap that my parents sold in their store. I remember I looked at the table and my eyes nearly popped the frigg outta my head!!

I have never seen so much eye candy in my entire life. There were Fosted Flakes, and Lucky charms, and Fruit Loops… needless to say I went “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” and proceeded to stampede my way through a gazillion sugar coated, high fructose corn syrup filled vessels of scrumpitiosity before I was sent home to my haven of health…and to also tell my mother that I had discovered a new kind of food group, and it was grand!!

I think ever since that day…I have been obsessed with the Sweet, The Processed, the Caramelized, the Dipped in Batter and Bathed in the Deep Fryer, the
Saturated, the Crispy, the laced with Powder Sugar, the Chocolate Coated….or in my world….THE FORBIDDEN!!

I had suddenly become Charlie and my World was the Chocolate Factory….I became obsessed with what I couldn’t have…and I became a hunter…a gatherer…a little girl…who began her life long journey of Harvesting Twinkies, and Building Sandcastles made of Sugar.

I have never liked being told that I couldn’t have something I wanted….and I couldn’t understand why everybody else’s parent’s were so normal. I would go over to all my friend’s houses and gorge myself sick on whatever I knew I couldn’t get when I went home.

I began sneaking junk food into my room and hiding it in my drawers, under my bed, stashed in all my pockets like a true addict…problem was I was a child, and while I should have been getting in trouble for sassing my mother back, or painting on the walls, or staying up past my bedtime.. I was constantly getting in trouble for unwrapped candy bar wrappers and crumbs my mother would find when she cleaned, and then the double pain of her commenting on how fat I was going to get because of it.

So this cycle began…the hoarding…the solacing myself with the Denied…the Exposure… and then the shame.

I now look back at myself from a very small age, and realize that my eating disorder had actually started very early on…it was all these things that started to load the deadly gun of my Obsession… It wasn’t until later on in my life, after years and years of… when I reached Puberty…that the combining of the Secret Binging combined with the changes of my body through adolescence….that the Trigger was pulled….Click… Click… Bang…Bang…..Welcome to Hell.

Deny… Binge… Deny… Binge… Deny… Binge…that’s how my cycle has always seemed to go for me… I either wanted the whole cake…or none at all……either way never brought me satisfaction and almost ended up costing my life. I realized a long time ago I really didn’t want my gravestone to say death by Cake…but how could I actually have my cake and eat it to??

It is possible… and is actually quite simple…I just started to stop the Cycle…I started to give myself an all access pass to whatever I wanted…when I wanted it… and suddenly the wickedness of it, the allure…the appeal seemed so much less.

When I knew that nothing was forbidden, then I knew that I wouldn’t label myself as bad or wrong when I ate them. I had to stop listening to all those old messages that plagued me, and started listening to new ones. I saw food as nourishment, as energy, as love… and I stopped seeing it as…good… bad… right, or wrong.

I also paid attention to how other people handled foods that I abused, and it was very interesting. They let themselves have some….and that ladies and gentlemen in the key word here… some….not All …not none… some. When I started replacing that word “Some” into my daily diet… then it was like the heavens had opened up and I had become free.

Portion size is honestly what I started to practice… and I realized that I could be satisfied with a moderate amount of anything… and in the process was giving myself what I wanted without feeling denied.

I also started to pay attention to what I really wanted….in the past I used to feel so panicked of scared that if I didn’t eat Everything I would never get it again. I had to start teaching myself… that “it was gonna be there tomorrow”…that if I really wanted it… I could have it again.

In looked also at why I was eating it…was it because it was a special occasion? A celebration? Or because I had just gotten in a fight with my mother, or had a bad day at work, and I was trying to numb what was really going on.
I began to practice “Mindful” eating….really paying attention to tastes and textures.

I in the long run ended up developing quite a taste for what is healthy as well…sometimes a fresh peach tastes better to me then anything in the whole world, Grilled Salmon is one of my favorite meals…I adore almost everything that is grown on trees or sprouts from the ground, and yes from time to time do drink a tall glass of fresh squeezed carrot juice.
Believe me, it has taken years and years of practice, but I now have a system that works out pretty well for me.

MODERATION…and if only I had been taught this as a small child, then perhaps I could have saved myself a life long battle with food, or maybe I have just chosen to take the higher road and consider myself lucky today to be able to have such an incredible relationship with my appetite.

Learn to love your life and learn to love everything that comes along with that.

Don’t let your life revolve around food…revolve your food revolve around your life.

Marie Antoinette said…”Let them Eat Cake”…I personally think that lady was one really smart Cookie!!