Epiphany, part one: The food issue.

Every night for the past couple of weeks, around dinner time, I’ve gone in search of burgers. Only online, mind you. I’ve looked at V Burger and Burger Edge and even McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s. I’ve browsed the burger menus and weighed up my options, and thought about whether I’d like chips and a drink or not, and then I’ve closed the browser and eaten something else.

As I write this, I’m eating my actual dinner, painfully demonstrative of my single-lady solo-living status at the moment (i.e. involving as little effort as possible): multigrain toast with cottage cheese, tomato, alfalfa sprouts, and tuna on top. Then I’m going to eat a small tub of Greek yoghurt, and then I’m going to brush my teeth and not eat anything else until the morning.

You’ll notice that Real Dinner and Fantasy Dinner are quite different. Here’s the thing I have realised: Burgers will always, always, always be a tastier option for dinner. They will always kick the arse of tuna and sprouts on toast. They will kick the arse of almost every stir fry, and many curries, and pretty much anything else you could ever eat. Because, you see, like pizza, even a bad burger is good. No one’s ever disliked a burger. How could you? They’re just so good.

The problem with burgers is that they don’t like us. The average person just can’t get away with eating burgers whenever they damn well feel like it. We’re 23 days into this year and I have eaten exactly one burger, from the Pourhouse in Dunsborough, and yes, it was excellent. It was also probably the healthiest burger that I’ve eaten in a long time, and it was totally worth it. But other than that? No burgers. So what?, I hear you say. Well, last year it wasn’t so good.

You see, I’m one of those lucky souls who pairs their emotions with their mouth. I don’t really eat when I feel depressed – thank god, I’d be the size of a house – but I eat when I’m bored, and I eat when I’m happy (all rules fly out the window in social situations), and I eat just about all the time, given half a chance. I eat without thinking of the consequences, or even worse, I think about the consequences and just adopt that fool-proof (*snort*) I’ll just make up for it tomorrow attitude. But I never do. And that, in turn, makes me sad, because I feel really guilty about it.

Last year involved a lot of burgers. Last year involved a lot of everything. Slightly less alcohol than 2010, but definitely more junk food, a side effect of having moved out of home again. By some minor miracle, my weight stabilised to within about 2-3kg the whole year, and I ended the year around the same weight as I started – certainly not more. But I felt like shit. I never really settled that well into my share house situation and often didn’t put much effort into preparing healthy meals (or, if I did, I just made the same boring things over and over). I worked long hours on a degree that I hated, often meaning that convenience won out over conscientiousness. I become the living, breathing (just) embodiment of the concept ‘you are what you eat’. I was eating shit and I was eating mindlessly, and as a result I felt like shit and I felt mindless and out of control.

Something’s happened this year. I don’t know what it is but I feel like this year is different. I feel like I have more control over everything, and I say that fully aware of the fact that a mere few days ago I was clutching my gut feeling sorry for myself because I had definitely eaten much more than I needed to. I’m not a binge eater – I never really have been – but oh my gosh, I can put away some food. I have to consciously tell myself to stop most of the time, because my ‘full’ register is way off the charts. But I feel like I am making headway. I am more open to the concept of baby steps. I’m more forgiving. I’m more flexible.

I’ll probably keep looking at burgers for a while. It’s kind of like a break up, really – it happens, and maybe you still want to be with them and maybe you don’t, but for a while you keep lurking their Facebook profile just to see what they’re up to, until eventually you realise you haven’t done that for a while, and you didn’t even notice. I’m pretty sure my love of all things burger (and pizza, and fish and chips, and noodley, and… and… and…) will eventually fade away, and I’ll be able to view each of these things from a non-pathological standpoint. I’ll be happy to shell out $15 for a really damn good burger once or twice a year, or to have a couple of slices of pizza, or to save the fish & chips for the place that I’ve been told by many people does the best fish & chips I’ll ever eat.

This is a theme that will come up in the few posts I’m going to write about my epiphany, but I have spent my entire life positioning myself as a victim. All I’ve ever wanted is for someone else to own up & take responsibility for my shitty decision making skills. I’ve wanted my parents to take the blame for raising a fat baby who turned into a fat kid who turned into a fat teenager who turned into a fat young adult who turned into the present-day basket case that is yours truly. I wanted them to take the blame for genetics, to tell me that I was dealt a rough hand in life (after all, my sister isn’t overweight. Why should I have to suffer?). I’ve wanted guys to take the blame for being arseholes for not liking me because of my weight (I don’t even know if this is a real issue. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t). I want society to take the blame for instilling attitudes which dictate the obsession with being thin. I’ve just wanted every single other person to take the blame for problems that, ultimately, have no one to blame, except for me.

Because when it comes down to it, part of being an autonomous human being is taking responsibility for your own actions. I am a notoriously bad decision maker, and I’m a perfectionist, and this has made me generally indecisive and inactive, which is a terrible predicament for one to find oneself in if one isn’t pleased with one’s own situation. My obsession with always being the best at everything means that I have been too short sighted to even bother really committing to getting healthy in recent years. I’ve also been consumed by this completely irrational fear that, if I lost weight, people would just refer to me as “Erin who used to be fat” anyway (vain, much?). Also, what happens if I don’t like my life as a slim person? What happens if my problems run deeper than my dress size?

I can’t live like that any more, though. It’s just so self destructive and I am so done. How I’m feeling now though? I haven’t felt like this. I haven’t felt this empowered and optimistic, this willing to try and possibly make mistakes, but to keep on trying, because what’s the alternative? Inaction?

I’ve decided to take responsibility. It’s just time to start making grown up decisions. I need to decide what I want more: that 250 calorie glass of cider, or to lose a few hundred extra grams. To eat a burger now, or to spend two extra hours in the gym tomorrow working it off. To feel good in my skin, or to accept self loathing as my norm, and do nothing to change it.

And that’s why I look at burgers, but eat tuna and salad on toast.