Who I am, Who I Want to be.

Since this is my very first blog, I thought I’d talk a about what prompted me to move into this growing world of health and life coaching as well as my personal struggles. My blogs won’t always be about my emotional eating, but I thought it might give you all a glimpse of who I have been and who I want to be.

I grew up in a (mostly) Italian family. Food was ALWAYS present. Present for EVERYTHING. If we were celebrating something, food. If we were mourning something, food. If we were fighting about something, food. And worst of all, if we had nothing to do, we all turned to food. You get the picture. I learned at a very young age that “food will make everything better.” How the words of my family haunt me every day! “Eat something, you’ll feel better.” This is how I learned to avoid what I was feeling. I could stuff the feelings deep down with food. Feelings of anger, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of self-pity, anything that might cause me to cry or feel could get stuffed down with FOOD. Now, I wasn’t a heavy child. Most of the time when people tell these stories, they talk about being the chubby kid and that they suffered because of it. I wasn’t chubby at all. Actually I was quite thin. I was a dancer and very active, so the bad food choices and eating my feelings didn’t have any affect on my life. Or so I thought…

I hit adulthood and through my struggles with marriage, loss, and pain, I had to deal with weight issues like I had never had to before. Bad relationship, food. Marriage, food. Miscarriage, food. Divorce, more food. Speculation regarding the divorce, even more food. During all this I was a gym rat, so I was not putting on much weight because it was all being off-set with excessive workouts. But after the divorce, I had to find employment, after years of being a stay at home mom. That’s when things shifted. I was less active, but the emotional eating surged on. And let’s face it, emotional eaters aren’t eating salad! I was eating crap, and starting to feel like crap, and hating myself because I thought I was crap! And those wheels keep spinning. Then, in 2018 my mom passed away after her final bout with cancer (I’ll get into THAT story in another blog). I was absolutely in the darkest place of my life. I couldn’t be there. She didn’t want me to come down until after my oldest walked in her graduation ceremony. I was scheduled on the first flight to her the morning after graduation. She died as we pulled into graduation. I wanted to scream, cry, die. But it was my daughter’s moment and I knew she was hurting too. I pulled it together until after it was over. My daughter wanted Olive Garden after graduation (I apologize to all my Italian family members for this lapse - lol). So I sat and ate with my daughters, my ex-husband, and his girlfriend. Massive emotional eating ensued, I can assure you!

After my mom passed, I went into a sort of spin cycle. During this time, I signed up for the Health Coach Institute. I did it because I needed something to cling to, something to get my mind off my stress and fear and anxiety of living in a world without a mom. During my studies, I realized that I NEEDED this. I needed health coaching and life coaching. I wished that I had known about this before! Up until I started my classes, I truly thought what I was doing was completely normal. It’s not normal to hate yourself, hate your body, hate your life. Eating my feelings had turned me into a person I wouldn’t want to be around. That was a major eye opener for me. I would actually say that it helped save my life.

Am I perfect? Hell no! I’m nowhere close to it, but I’m progressing. I’m learning ways to feel the feelings I’m having, and those I’ve avoided for years. I’m learning how to use food to fuel my body instead of feeding my feelings. Do I always do things the right way? No, but that’s what makes me human. And I know that’s the reason I can help others who struggle with the same thing. The beauty of being a coach, is that I’m always learning and growing with my clients. I have “Ah ha” moments in every session along with them. I am learning to have gratitude for every emotion, for every event (good or bad), for every person. Because of the coaching I've received, and the coaching I have done with others, I’m growing, I’m learning, and I’m starting to live again.

Until next time — Rebecca