“Namaste, I’m Linda. A compassionate spiritual light worker and positive lifestyle blogger/YouTuber, I coach women to step into their highest, most vibrational selves by letting go of fear and obligation and embrace life out of excitement and inspiration. You get to THRIVE, not SURVIVE on earth!
I’ve gone through my fair share of struggles, from loneliness to feeling lost, to food addiction and perfectionism. Here is one of my stories on addiction:
Oh gosh, this is going to be a long, winded, emotional post. Forgive me, because this post will be up and down and sideways with all my thoughts spewing without chronological order or filters. I’ve never addressed this issue with any of m’fitties before(that’s you guys), and this is really hard for myself to share.
I’ve been a comfort-food eater for almost all my life. When I was sad, I ate, mad, I ate, and happy, I also ate. I distinctly remember a time in grade 6 when, every night after dinner and before bedtime, I would put on a show, sit in front of the TV and the food my mother brought home from her workplace. Cookies, chicken, pie, pasta–everything. The thing was, I wasn’t even hungry. It just became entertainment for me, and then developed into a habit. My parents were furious with my gluttony and told me if I was hungry to go fix myself some rice from the rice cooker. I felt like a 6-year old who just got her lollipop yanked from her mouth.
It was only a matter of time in my teens, that I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t like the person I’ve become. I’ve used food as a means of numbing my sorrows, and as a way to battle bordem and depression. It was not an effective coping mechanism because it only added to my list of problems. I remember doing track and field at school one day and not being able to walk for the next 7 days because my legs were so sore, I couldn’t wait properly. I didn’t want to sit down, and when I did, I didn’t want in stand up. It was the first time I realized I wasn’t fit.
Fast forward to middle-high school. Somewhere along the way I fell into fitness. At first I wanted to get into exercise because it’d help me lose weight, but I eventually liked the emotional component of it too. It made me feel alive. I ran track and field and cross country for almost 2 years in high school, I was introduced to yoga through a school program and I loved the way I felt. As a bonus, I also felt myself getting thinner, an I was thrilled. My fitness journey went up and down as I went through phases I would workout on a regular basis versus not, but it continued.
It peaked last year–I was fittest in my life in May 2015. I looked incredible.
I felt hot and sweaty and tired and nauseous all at once. I didn’t know how to stop the uncontrollable anxiety attacks I had and I would lay awake at night, hyperventilating. I couldn’t stand myself. I cried at the fact that underneath all my fat lay other problems, like that my life was a mess–there would be no career for me because my parents didn’t support my love for the creative arts (I didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer). I felt like a burden to my mother by the way she always looked at me and yet I longed for her love, and despised by my father who look at me like I was garbage on the street. I could see the hate in their eyes and I couldn’t bear it. I cried because no one loved me, I cried because I felt lost, I cried because I hated who I had become. I cried because my dream art school wasn’t the utopia I had imagined. I didn’t have friends and I rarely got the spotlight, and that crushed me. And I cried because I was fat. I cried because no one understood my feelings and I had no one to go to. I cried because, on top of it all, food was ruining my life, not helping me.
Continued…