Food & Me….we go way back!

 

I was raised by food.  No.  Not raised ON food, I was raised BY food.  Huh?  Well, let me explain:

My mother owned & operated a sandwich shop in our town for over 20 years.  Mom was a single parent who ran her own business.  To say she worked hard was an understatement.  I was with her at the shop all the time so she could balance it all.  Her shop was not in our home; we lived somewhere else a few miles away.  As a result, when I was at the shop I did not have a place to go to do my homework or take a nap or just chill out.  There were a few tables at the shop & that’s where I did my homework, played solitaire, wrote poetry, drew pictures;  just did whatever I could do to pass the time.  When I was about 13, I started working there.  I was taught to do it all, wait on customers, make the food, serve the food & clean up.  I worked there until I was 18 & started college.  I did not get involved in sports or other activities at school because I was working after school & my Mom was not able to drive me to or attend school functions because she worked six days a week, from open ‘til close.  I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood where the shop was.  When I wasn’t working, I played with the neighborhood kids & many of them left me visit their homes to watch TV, etc. They knew I was stuck in the shop other wise. Other parents always kept an eye on me for my Mom when I was out playing.

Obviously, this lifestyle of being surrounded by food all the time led to me being overweight my whole life.  Food was my pacifier.  When I was bored, I grabbed a bag of chips.  When I was sad, a Tastykake consoled me.  I could have hoagies & french fries everyday, sometimes twice a day if I wanted.  I just took what I wanted to eat & filled myself up, trying to make up for all the “normalness” that I was missing in my life.  You have no idea how much I envied my friends that could go home after school & take off their shoes and do whatever they wanted.  I wanted so badly to sit at a dinner table each night & have “real food”, not hoagies & fries & pizza.   So for all those years I consumed soft drinks & Doritos & any snack you can think of; I recognize now that eating these things was my attempt to fill all my voids.  When I needed a hug, I devoured an ice cream sandwich.  When I got tired from being at the shop for all those hours, the Hershey bars and Twizzlers would keep me awake….

I ate like this for so many years.  I was not a healthy child, I had high blood pressure at an early age & had to get checked by the nurse in school on a regular basis.  But this lifestyle was really all I knew. Childhood obesity was not in the forefront at that time.  And my Mom did the very best she could.   

Here I am today, banded & trying to break ties with the very thing that got me through my childhood.

So yeah, Food & me, we’re tight.