PATHWAY TO JOY AND HEALING

Awareness can be eye opening as I recently became aware of my feelings about overweight people.  I consider myself very progress in my views about differences in people including culture, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, body types, etc. However, to my surprise, while watching a sitcom recently, one of the female characters gain a lot of weight as I suspect she probably had a baby in real life.

To my dismay, I had feelings and thoughts in my head of disgust and dislike for this character because of her weight.  This was such a surprise to me as I pride myself on being open minded. As I observed myself having these feelings and thoughts, I wonder why I was having these thoughts and feelings, and from where they came.

After contemplating on this, I realized that my first memories about worrying about my weight came from my mother.  I have never been heavy, and my mother has been thin her entire life.   However, my mother obsessed about her weight, even when gaining just a few pounds.  In retrospect, I realized that it was never really about her weight, but she had a self image or body image problem causing her to fear gaining weight as her self esteem was centered around her body image.

I have consciously changed my eating habits as I always watched what I ate, and now, I eat what I want and do not deprive myself of foods I enjoy such as ice cream, donuts, and chocolate.   This change in my eating habit is to unlearn the negative body image behaviors I learned from my mother.  (Copyright 2015 Awakening Journey with All Rights Reserved)