Food Loves Me

by Matty B. Duran

I don't know how to begin this writing. But I shall write that I have read that 2/3 of Americans are overweight, and 1/3 are considered obese. I am one of these Americans.

I didn't start out like this. I was not an overweight child, I was thin in college, and I was anywhere from a 3-6. When I turned 40, I wore a size 1. I didn't know why I starved myself then, now I realize my 20 year old sister married that year.

That year I was in therapy with a 43 year old man named Scott. Oh, by the way, I loved him and our therapy ended after two years. I chose to end it because he married someone else.

Anyway, food has gotten way out of hand, I have gained 100 lbs. from the time I was a size 1. After Scott, whom I really believed I was going to marry, I started eating. It hurt me in a way that doesn't make any sense. We weren't dating, I never slept with him, he wasn't my boyfriend; he was my therapist I saw twice a week for two years.

I used food as a way of coping with the loss of my therapist. I didn't gain all of the weight at once. But I found myself comforting myself with food. I always had good ideas back then, "Let's get a pizza!" I would buy pizza because I was sad, lonely, happy, watching something good on television. When you watch something good on television you have to eat something good. Peanut butter out of a jar for the Academy Awards was just depressing.

When I couldn't afford a pizza from Me-e-Ed's, I would buy one of those u-bake yourself pizzas for $5.00. I did that a lot, a lot. I had to accept the fact there was no one for me. I stopped cutting which lasted for so many years, more than 25 years. The cutting soothed me then, it was a way of self-soothing whenever my emotions got out of hand, when I was overwhelmed with feelings I couldn't deal with. The incision came to calm me, and fix me. Only, it didn't really fix me, it only deeply scarred my flesh and my soul.

When I wore size 1, I was a bag of bones, I liked my body. The protrusion of bone that jutted through my flesh empowered me somehow. It was beautiful to look at the perfect bones of the pelvis I could now see. The beautiful collar bones that pierced through, the bones I could feel down my spine and the huge space between my thighs, the lack of flesh women crave between their thighs was there. I could wear anything then and looked smashing. It wasn't like it is now, "Oh, that doesn't fit." I used to have a whole bunch of sizes in my closet until I realize I was never going to fit back into many of my clothes. I gave them to charity and tried to give them to my sister Monica who was a bone, she didn't want them. But you always keep that one dress you think you will fit into some day, that sexy dress that made you look good. Well, I eventually had to part with it, it wasn't ever going to fit again, not ever.

I didn't want to admit I had gotten F......A.....T.... The word women hate. I used to look at myself in pictures, and I would say, "I'm still good." "Not too bad." The picture I took for New Year's had no excuse I couldn't lie to myself anymore, and say, "I'm still not that fat."

Between the woman who was a size 1, and the woman who stopped cutting, this woman became a size 18. When I stopped cutting that was almost the hardest thing I had to do, learn to process my emotions, my feelings in a different way, in a safer way. Before I could think that razor had dragged across my arms and legs, the rivers of blood were not pretty.

The same thing happened with food, before I could process an emotion, I had already bought the pizza and eaten most of it, if not all of it. The bad thing about this, the most horrible thing about this is my daughter would eat with me too. Had I been a sensible eater I don't think she would be as overweight as she is. Eating was like a party, it was way better than razors, it didn't hurt. There was no aching from the cuts afterwards, there was just more flesh, instead of less skin.

I thought I could handle it. There were times I had such joy with the Lord, and my weight reflected that. Somehow the closeness would end, and I would be ordering pizza.

After my daddy died, I comforted my grief with food, pizza primarily, and making cookies from the chocolate chip packages in the bakery aisle, with walnuts, always with walnuts. I loved cookie dough. I think every food addict does. There was something so wonderful about raw cookie dough, with walnuts. It goes back to childhood; moms never let you eat the cookie dough or the cake mix. There was no one to tell me not to, not even myself.

I never had a successful relationship; they were all; I don't know what they really were, a woman, a girl trying to be loved, men deciding it wasn't a good time to see me, men who were emotionally unavailable. There weren't the Valentine's Day gifts, the New Year's dates; no it wasn't like that at all for me. I thought it didn't hurt me anymore, since I had stopped cutting. I just started eating, instead. I substituted one vicious habit for the other. The razors were all clean in my house, but something sinister took their place.

I have heart arrhythmia I developed at 39 years old. It was because of bulimia and all of the Diet Pepsi I used to drink. I would drink a Double Big Gulp of Diet Pepsi in the morning, and another towards the evening. It was all of the caffeine. Between that and the bulimia I developed tachycardia. This was a side effect of my food addiction.

Throwing up after meals, I began to hate to have the taste of certain foods in my mouth. Every time I threw up, I could feel my eyes being ripped out of my head. My body would convulse. The finger down my throat became a ritual for many years. It helped when I felt guilty whenever I overate. I had to get the food out, it was binging and purging. It was painful, and it was my dirty little secret.

I haven't voluntarily thrown up my food in a few years. It wasn't to lose weight, it was to assuage guilt, even though it wasn't going to keep the weight off. It became a nasty habit. I was never anorexic. But there was a time I did starve myself and walked five miles a day.

The extreme dieting ended when I suddenly quit therapy. I didn't start eating right away, gradually my eating habits changed. I was crushed. I secretly began to cut again, but the guilt associated with cutting was profound.

Eating started off innocently. I would bake cookies for myself to feel a little better. My late father would send me pizza money as I was unemployed. I know my daddy didn't mean for this to happen, when he was alive he used to tell me that I should start walking.

Eating was like pulling a big wool blanket over my flesh when it was cold. Food felt like a long embrace, I felt loved. Food actually loved me back. It wasn't critical like my mom, who would find something to scold me for. It was warm like a bowl of hot porridge. Whereas men's love was fickle, food wasn't like that, when I had it in front of me, it was like the love I never received from men. My mind and heart associated food with love, with being loved, with being accepted. It felt good not to be rejected.

When I saw I was putting on weight, naturally I tried to lose it, and I would keep it off for a while, but I always put the weight back on. I realized the extra pounds kept me safe from unwanted advances. I was disgusted with the emotional roller coaster of trying to find someone. It was liberating that I didn't have to deal with that anymore. Mary, my therapist after Scott thought I was trying to keep men away, maybe, I was at first, later, it didn't matter, I had had enough.

I wasn't young anymore, the bloom was off the proverbial rose. So, I kept the extra weight, when my daddy died in 2013, I spiraled out of control. He was the only man in my life, who was permanent. We had rebuilt the relationship in the last couple of years before his death, he was like my best friend. I missed him intensely when he passed away. I had never known that kind of grief before.

In the last 4 years I have tried to join a gym, lose weight, shed some pounds and then gained them back, always I gained back more, then I would settle back into a corner of the sofa with a pizza box.

My mom tried to get me to eat better, whenever we would grocery shop together, she would have me check on the back for the sugar, the fat and the calories. I hated going grocery shopping with her. But it is only because she loves me that she did that. My older brother tried to intervene, and we would have telephone conversations about good eating habits. My brother Ray who we call "Boi" is only a year older, and extremely thin. My younger sister Monica is also extremely thin, like my brother and my mother she paid for me to join a gym last year. I wondered if my weight hadn't skewed my perception of how thin they really were. Both of them assured me they were at a healthy weight.

My entire family was slim, my younger brother and younger sister watch their weight as well. They are both fit, Jimmy, my younger brother works out in a gym a lot; Melissa, "Misi" another younger sister vigilantly watched her caloric intake. My baby sister was pregnant.

I told myself there was always a fat sibling. I didn't like my weight, I thought I was alright with the extra flesh. But I realized, it wasn't just the way a person looks, there are health implications. It wasn't just my life, it was my daughter Emma's too, and I was responsible for that. Some of her weight was due to her bipolar meds, but the rest of it was bad eating habits.

Being obese is more than just about looks, it is about death. I don't want my daughter or myself to get diabetes. We don't have it, but being at an unhealthy weight, it is only a matter of time. If a person with diabetes, doesn't maintain their glucose levels, there is nothing that can kill you faster. My cousin Diana is dying of diabetes, she is 56 and is on kidney dialysis 4 times a week. I don't know how long her body can take that. Her liver is shot. That is my future.

So, I resolve as many do every new year that I would finally give it to the Lord, as He has healed me from cutting. He is more than able to break this insidious relationship I have with food.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, AND BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.

(Isaiah 53:5)

(This was written in 2016. My cousin Diana has since passed away at the age of 61 from diabetes in 2021. Her husband Benny passed away in 2024 at the age of 65 from diabetes as well.)