A Brief History of Food and Me

A Brief History of Food and Me

I was born in the early 1970s, to a middle-class Southern family. We grew up eating middle-class Southern food.

For breakfast, we had Raisin Bran or Grits. Sometimes we had Burnt Biscuits and Bacon (my father’s specialty).

For lunch, we had PBJ or Cheese Sandwiches, on Wheat Bread. With Fritos.

For snack, we had Apples-N-Peanut Butter.

For dinner, we had Chicken Casserole, or Hamburgers, or Soup.

This was before the days of organic foods, whole foods, or gluten-free foods. We thought we were pretty healthy. We had frozen green beans with our hamburgers. My dad experimented with carob chips.

Raised on this middle-class diet, I grew up to be medium-sized. Not skinny, not fat, just medium. I was also bookish and uncoordinated. Nervous energy substituted for athletic ability. Like all teenaged girls, I would occasionally try to lose weight. Such attempts produced no noticeable effect.

Nonetheless, while I was growing up, the issue of weight was frequently on my mind. For many years my mother struggled with being overweight. Back in the 1980s, this problem was less prevalent than it is today. My mother’s weight caused tension and embarrassment in my family, much more than it should have. (As a postscript, my mother has grown into a svelte and glamorous older woman).

Three times, I became fat for the beautiful cause of pregnancy and childbirth. Otherwise, my medium-sized life continued into my early 30s.

At some point in my mid-30s, I noticed the scale was pushing the heavy side of medium. The contributing factors were obvious. My job was sedentary and occasionally stressful. Donuts and other sugary treats loitered in the office kitchen. At home, I was cooking for the palate of four growing boys. And to add insult to injury – I was (am) getting older. The metabolism just isn’t what it used to be.

I was becoming uncomfortable in my own skin. My clothes weren’t fitting as well, and finding new clothes was not as fun. So I decided to join WeightWatchers.

WeightWatcher members must log everything they eat, while trying to stay under a certain number of “points.” This highly-controlled approach to weight loss, although tedious, appeared to work well. I lost about 10 pounds, I felt much better, and I stopped participating in WeightWatchers.

Several years later, the 10 pounds were back. My husband, who has no interest in weight loss, tells me this is typical for WeightWatcher members. He even provided a blog cite as proof.

I made some half-hearted attempts to climb back on the WeightWatcher wagon. But my heart was not in it. I kept feeling like I was missing something. Maybe you have felt something similar. Were the only alternatives really a lifetime of fat, versus a lifetime of counting points?

That was when, 2 weeks ago, I read the Heavenly Man (see prior blog post). Brother Yun’s testimony caused me to reconsider how I was viewing food. Like the prisoners, had food become my “god”? More to come.