Bloated

I've been feeling bloated the last couple of days. We ate really poorly this weekend, for a variety of reasons, and I gained a few pounds. It's weird how gaining just a couple of pounds brings me from feeling pretty thin and successful right back to "fat". I feel like I can see it all over, I feel like none of my clothes fit me or look good on me. 3 pounds did that...wtf?

Those 3 pounds feel like they are right in my belly, my #1 problem area anyway. When my belly feels fat and bloated, there is no way to feel good about my appearance. I feel like I can hardly move. It's so psychological.

Lately I've been examining the way my parents used food when I was growing up. As I think about it, they both really abused food--one parent is a compulsive overeater, the other had a variety of eating disorders all through my childhood. There was no chemical dependency in my family, but there was this kind of addiction. Odd that I didn't really confront this head-on when preparing for bariatric surgery. I looked at my own relationship with food, and decided that I had a tendency to misuse food, and knew I needed to work on that. And I have worked on that; it's not "cured" by any means, but it is better and I have more awareness when I am eating for reasons other than being hungry. But I think there is a bit more work to be done if I am to maintain my weight loss. I think this family history is what made me attracted to a person with addiction issues. Since we didn't have any obvious chemical dependency in my house growing up, it was a bit of a mystery how I could end up this kind of codependent, yet I am.

Things are going better, though. Recovery is happening in our home, slowly but surely. There is no cure, but we can be happy again, and we are.