Ok as everyone knows and as i have said before i have had an obession with food my whole life. Starting from when i was about four years old. I think that is when it started. I remember sitting in the living room watching my cartoons while my mom worked in her office in our home. I ran in and ask may i please have a snack. My mother told me no you may not. I was hungry and not fully understanding the reason why i couldn't have one of my favorite snacks (a hot dog with cheese no bread) i went in to the kitchen and i took it any ways. I took my stolen snack back to the living room and ate it as fast as i could before i herd the calculator machine stop. That would have been where the problem seem to come from, being told no when i was really hungry. Back the i didn't know what fat was or what over weight was, i was a healthy little girl but again with big bones and i wasn't fat!

I remember many times eating dinner and not eating everything on my plate and getting in trouble and then later when i would be hungry being told no that i couldn't have something because i didn't clean my plate. I was always told to clean my plate and then i could have something. Well when a child doesn't make his/her own plate its a little hard to say you have to eat everything when the child gave it a good run. But a child's stomach can only hold so much at a time.

My mom would always make dinner or order it in, sit me down in the living room with a small child sized TV tray and load a plate not really load but give me small portions and give me about three cups of juice, milk, and water. I was told i had to eat and drink everything. Thinking about all this now i can understand why i really didn't eat everything on my plate most times i would just drink to much and not be hungry. I don't want to blame my mom for this but then again she was part of the cause for my food obsession.

I am not saying that i was a miss treated child no i had everything a kid could ever want and i didn't want for anything. My mom was obsessed with body image and the way that she looked and the way that i looked. Being a mother now myself i can kind of understand somethings that she did, but i will never be able to understand why she did some of the things that she did to me.

Here is why i want to talk about this because i have wrote briefly about this but never really told any one but my husband my obsession with food. Its not that i just love the taste of food and its not that i love the smell or different foods its that i have a problem with food. The best that i can tell any one is that i have had eating disorders and an unhealthy obsession with food.

Life with food wasn't a good life for me I realized early on that if i could sneak food then i wouldn't have to ask for it therefore i wouldn't have to be told no and i wouldn't have to be hungry. I was told no and could deal with it i wasn't a spoiled kid i knew the word no and i didn't through fits but for me being told no to food was just being mean. I never question why i was told no because that's just the way life was i was told no and i was never to question it. And i really didn't. I guess the next time i remember a problem involving food was when i was about six years old, My mom put me in every dance class possible and i loved basketball i wanted to be a dancer and play basketball when i got older i remember telling my grandmother. But my mom told me that there are no fat dancers. I didn't understand but one night at dinner she told me i couldn't have any more food because i wanted to be a dancer. It was a little like she was using my dreams against me. I didn't really care because after that i learned if i went and ate with my grandma every night then she would let me have seconds on anything that i wanted. When i was five we moved from Bedford Texas to ranger Texas because my mom wanted to sale ostriches and live on our family ranch. She moved my grandma and grandpa out there to so we lived in a little house and down the road a bit they had a house. It got to the point that i stayed at my grandmas all the time because her house was warm and because i loved her and wanted to be around her all the time. When i was six she started teaching me little things to cook, she told me what to put in and how much and how to measure things and all that fun stuff. By the age of eight i could make my favorite meal all by my self. She called it stuffed weenies, you take a weenie and cut it open and fill it with mustered and mashed potatoes and then add cheese on the top.

My mom had a fight with my grandma about how much she was letting me eat all the time and that i was getting fat. I wasn't meant to hear that conversation but i did and it hurt my feelings. I didn't stay in all the time I loved to go outside and play and i did all the time. I remember my grandpa would pick me up from school and take me to his house and my grandma would let me have whatever i wanted as an after school snack and i would watch my cartoons and do my home work and go outside and play. If i was eating an my mom was about to come in my grandpa would either come and tell me or he would hit the floor really hard with his cane so i would know to put away whatever i was eating. sometimes i would get caught with my food and i would be in trouble and my mom would tell me that i had to go home. I never wanted to leave my grandmas house it was my safe house to do what i wanted.

When i would go home i usually had to heat up my own dinner and do my home work which wasn't fun with my mom she had very little patience's for my lack of math skills or that i had a hard time reading. Pulse i was always hungry when i would go to sleep. When i got to be about 14 we moved into a new home still on the ranch and still not very far from my grandma. My grandma and grandpa where both getting older and my grandma had Alzheimer and my grandpa had gone blind in both eyes. i didn't have a food outlet and my grandma kept me all that summer and bought me whatever i wanted and all the sodas i could drink which i said before with my mom wasn't allowed. I had gained weight and my mom only came down on me harder.

I still wasn't fat but she didnt see that. She and my dad would ask me do you really need to eat that? They would cook spaghetti and i wasn't supposed to eat it i still don't know what i was supposed to eat but every time i would take a bite they would watch me to the point of i just didn't want to eat any more. I had stopped eating for two weeks and my mom thought it was a good thing. I stopped because she told me that cheerleaders where not fat. And i was trying out but didn't make it and i was told if i had lost more weight then i could have made it. I never tried out again for fear that my life with food would be a bigger hell then it already was.

I weight a good 100lbs at the age of 14 and gained about thirty pound that year because of all the weight lifting i was doing and at the end of the year i weighted 130lbs but again i wasn't fat i was big boned and had lots of muscles all the way up until i was 16 i weight the same. I had a rundown of diet pills to take every day and shakes that i was supposed to drink.

When i was 16 i was sick of being told i couldn't have this and i couldn't drink that so sick to the point that i stopped eating for about four weeks i found that I could drink soda and stay fool. i lost weight and started weighting about 120 my mom said that i should keep doing what i was doing. I was sick of her and started to just not like her and not want to be around her. I also started to binge eat i would eat and eat until i threw up. My mom and dad where gone most of my sophomore year and left me 300$ for gas food and all the stuff that i might need pulse my lunch money for school. Instead of going out like most kids my age would have done i would stay at home and eat. I would cook rice and mac and cheese and all the things that i couldn't have normally. I would eat so much i couldn't even sleep at night and i would wake up at night just to eat more. On the weekends i would stay at home and lock all the doors and eat. That's when i thought maybe i have a problem. i would wake up at night when my mom and dad where sleeping and sneak food out of the fridge and hoped that no one found out in the mornings. I had lots of basketball games and came home real late at night and there wouldn't be any food from dinner for me that was my moms way of saying i was getting fat and didn't need to eat.

That only seem to add to my problem i would get home from a basketball game or any after school things and go to a fast food place and get all kinds of food and eat all the way home. I wasnt fat i worked out like crazy then. That was my life until i went to college and found out that if i wanted it i could have it. Again by the time i realized i was over weight i was a good 240lbs. My mom would talk to my friends and ask them if i was drinking cokes, when she came to where i was living she would see a coke can and tell me "this is why you are as big as a barn" she would tell all my friends that i was as big as a barn and just be cruel and mean. That didn't want to make me loose weight that only add to my problem. I got to a point of food was the only think that i could count on all the time. It was always there and it seem to always make me feel better.

My dad has a conversation with me about my weight right after a horrible relationship, he told me that no man will ever want me because i was so fat. i was 240 and while i know that isn't the ideal weight i was still a person and things like that still hurt me. I went to the kitchen that night and just ate and ate and ate. i was on a roller coaster for the worst. I didn't think i would ever have anyone to love me because of that conversation right there.

When i met my husband i was about 250 or more i didn't believe that he wanted to marry me or even that he loved me. by the time we got married i was about 265 or 275. But she said that he loved me no matter what. we got married and by last summer i was a good 285lbs. At that time my mom informed me that my husband was going to leave me if i didn't loose weight. that made me eat more and more i hated her i hated me and i hated my husband who said he would always love me and that i shouldn't listen to any one.

I cant say that i love food in fact i hate food but obsessed yes. I am my husband told me that when we would sit down for dinner before i would eat about three plateful of food and it wasn't because i was hungry its because i could. I talked to a consular about my surgery. He asked me how i felt about food i said i hate it but its like im obsessed and that all that i can think about and i cant make myself stop on my own i need help. I needed the help to see that food didn't control me that i could control what i wanted and what i didn't. I needed more then anything to know that i was in control again. And without lap band and my Doctor i would have never been possible for me to get over the control that food had on me. Some times i still have the want to to just go and eat and eat but i don't have to and i have the control not to. So yes i am still obsessed with food but it doesn't have control over me any more.

Being an overweight mom was hard for me and i was doing wrong with my kids and i can see that now. I would let then eat 24/7 whatever they wanted any time they wanted and that was wrong of me. They would eat all the time. I could see my own son start to get a big belly and sometimes throw up from eating way to much. I realized that kids shouldn't have to clean there plate that if they are full they should stop eating. Since i had surgery and lost weight i give smaller portions to my family and they are getting healthy along with me. Something else good did come from my surgery my family is healthy and all at healthy weights for there ages now. I let them have snacks like pizza rolls and stuff but i don't let them eat all day long i ask them are you hungry or are you board? Usually the answer is just board mom so i give them a game to play out side or hand them a basketball and tell them to go play. They are not starving and they are healthy and happy and they will never have to sneak food from our house all they have to do is get what they want.