I read two types of books. For work it’s mostly non-fiction.
There’s a stack of books staring at me on fascinating topics such as probiotics,
hormones and seeds. On the weekends, I’ll treat myself a novel, something I can
read more than one chapter of at a time. Though I like anything
nutrition-related, rarely am I captivated by something I’m reading for work.
However, I spent most of Saturday on the couch with It Was Me all Along. And if you’ve ever struggled with food or
family, you will cherish Andie Mitchell’s story.
I do something weird while I read
(and I randomly found out another friend does too). I fold the bottom of the
page in a book if there’s something I want to return to. I had so many corner
flips as I read this one. A few of my favorites:
Where does emotional
eating begin?
Without giving too much away, in the first part of the book
you learn about Andie’s early years. In a way both of her parents were absent.
But it was her mother who was “scared of scarcity” and baked and cooked
excessively when she was around who had a steady influence on Andie’s food and
weight. When she was around, we get the
picture of a loving mom who truly wants what’s best for her daughter.
Change of
circumstances, change of eating?
As I read, I thought surely when Andie left home and went
off to college she’d be less lonely and her food might fall into place. I was wrong, what started off as eating out of
loneliness morphed into social eating. She found friends and entered
relationships with those who enjoyed overeating too. In many ways, for better
or for worse, our peers have an effect on our eating.
The realizations that
start to change things
At one point, after visiting a drive through with a friend,
Andie remarks she doesn’t even like McDonald’s fries “I wondered how many other
foods I ate that I didn’t even like. Then I wondered, however briefly, if my
eating was even about liking food at all”. Eating can be about so many
non-taste related things. As Andie said best, “whenever I started to feel even
one inkling of boredom, doubt, anxiety or anger, food would soothe me. At least
temporarily.”
There are always “two
voices”
Andie captures the struggle, the pull of “both voices” many
of us have. “I struggled between wishing
away all the food that had collected on my body as fat and fiercely missing
every morsel.”
What to do when things aren’t going so well
I loved a breakthrough Andie had when she was wavering “oh so
this is going to suck for a while”. She compares eating to a marathon “where
miles 10 through twenty-six just purely, uncompromisingly suck. ” It’s not
always fun and many of us have to realize that.
Mindful Eating
Some of my favorite parts of this book are when Andie goes
abroad to Italy. She discovers running and cooking but also pleasure in food.
It’s a major, meaningful and beautiful shift going “from someone who ate to capacity to distract
her mind, into someone who purposefully tasted every morsel, was not
unconscious”
We can lose weight
without really addressing things
“I wanted so badly to
conceal the fact that, despite a radical transformation, I remained as screwed
up as I had been. I was alone with myself. I was exposed. I was left with
emotions I’d eaten for twenty years”
And finally…
“I was simply one person who happened to have lots of history
and personal experience with dieting, losing weight and learning to love her
whole self”
Have you read or heard
of this book? Which quote resonated with you? What are you reading now?
