a little about moi...

'lo all

thought i'd tell you a little about me

my name is erin. i'm 21. i'm a student at Penn State majoring in Human Development and Family Studies. i love history and bad jokes, movies, books and fashion. i love cooking, baking, most colors of the rainbow, cursing like a sailor and generally enjoying the various vices and deadly sins while attempting to be a responsible grown up. it's an adventure, for sure.

food has been a big part of my life for a long time. at first, i imagine it was a case of two parents who'd grown up with very little trying to give their firstborn all they never had much of, including food.
as i got older and family drama unfolded, it became a comfort, a security blanket that was always readily available.
then it turned to an addiction, a shame-faced game of hide and seek from myself and everyone around me.
i've struggled with this for the better part of the last 10 years. once i was living on my own it became less hiding and unraveled to just plain bingeing, but it was like this two way thing. this sort of double life controlled by food. by day i was health conscious, some evenings, too. but the second i slipped up, i experienced such guilt and disgust that i just quit. it was this constant struggle.

i've finally gotten to the point where i had to sit myself down and say, "look, you're either going to have to accept your body and health the way it is, or DO something about it."
so, here goes, i'm at it again. only this time i'm committing myself to NOT dieting. i'm not depriving myself, not forcing myself to do things, but i am taking a more conscious role in my relationship with hunger, food, and nourishing my body. in myself. observing. i want to see what exactly goes on in my day and brain that triggers bad eating habits and how to recognize motivators for good ones.

right now i'm in kind of a limbo. i've been unemployed now since april, for the first time since i started working. it's thrown this funky weirdness all up around me. on one hand, i don't make much money from my nanny gigs, so i'm not fast-fooding it every night, but i'm also stressing about money and that triggers me to blow the money i DO have on food.

ha. some of my comfort foods are mac and cheese, root beer, dove chocolate ice cream, wendy's cheeseburgers and pizza. but honestly, if i'm in a binge state of mind i'll pretty much shove anything in my face.
the other day i binged on sugar free orange jello. the thing i have to keep reminding myself of is that it wasn't that it happened to be practically calorically zero, i was still eating to try and fill a hole that was emotional and not physical.
that's the thing about food. it gets digested, which makes it a pretty bad choice for filling emotional potholes.

so in order to stay more conscious of my food choices and the reasons for them, i've started keeping a food diary. i'm tracking what i'm eating, the time of day, and on a scale of 1-10 how hungry i am. i'm not counting points, i'm not measuring to the milligram. just on a visual level, taking note of what i put in my mouth.

now, i've done food diaries for years on and off with Weight Watchers and other programs, but 1) i can barely afford enough groceries and gas not to die; let alone $50 a month, and 2) i'm done tracking points, done driving myself crazy with trying to eat all of my points, or not eat so many or whatever.
don't get me wrong, WW is amazing and i've had some great results with them. but the truth is, you can do it on your own. you need a support system, yes, but that's attainable. you don't need to shell out half a thousand dollars per year to get it.
but the truth of it is, i got on the scale this morning and realized i'd lost almost 10 lbs in the last two weeks or so, just making tiny changes. it kind of set off this wacky energy. mania more like. i've experienced this particular kind before, right before i start blowing merry bushels of cash on health food and fitness gear that end up being passed up for tasty food and being worn as pj's to sit on my ass and hog out.
more times than i'd like to admit this it's happened, while in the back of my head i'm screaming that i'll fuck it up. self-actualizing prophesying. it's almost amusing. this time i don't have tons of cash to blow, so in that regard i won't disappoint myself. i'm taking the front seat instead of the back, watching the road, mapping my journey and paying attention to the signs along the way, hopefully seeing progress at the same time.

wanna come along? i'm sure it'll be interesting...lol