Bad habits

I have this extremely bad habit that has caught up to me. It's a result of my childhood, and it's fairly innocuous compared to other bad habits I could have developed because of my childhood. Anyway, my dad is wonderful now, but he was miserable when I was a kid. I remember him as angry, volatile, and moody. I hated when he was home and looked forward to every business trip he took. He would rage at the family and then punish us by giving us the silent treatment, all while not telling us why he was so mad. It led to a tense household where my brother and I would hide in our rooms as often as possible.

Unfortunately, my mom was raised in a family where you ate dinner together every night. She would take hours to make these delicious home cooked meals, but I would be too stressed out to eat. I have had IBS for most of my life, and I think that it stems from the tenseness at the dinner table and having to eat while being emotionally traumatized. I remember eating and crying at the same time. I also remember thinking that there is nothing quite as pathetic as eating and crying at the same time.

Anyway, I would end up not eating much at dinnertime. Which meant that by 10 pm, I was starving. In my teen years, I would sneak downstairs and grab food to eat upstairs. My dad was asleep, so I could eat in peace. And read a book while eating. Which was just blissful. My mom knew about it. She also worried that I didn't eat enough, so she never minded. And, I was a skinny runty little kid, so eating at 10 had no repercussions physically.

I'm not a skinny runty little kid anymore. And, when I get stressed, I revert back to the comfort seeking behavior of my youth. I sneak downstairs after everyone is asleep and grab stuff to eat. And I eat, completely alone, and reading a book. It's never bingeing because it's usually a individual bag of chips or a bowl of ice cream. It's blissful. Until I gained 15 pounds last semester from it.

Booboo tells me that I look exactly the same. But, my jeans tell me that I'm not. I can button and zip them up, but there's a roll of blub that just flops over the top. Which is unacceptable. So, I'm faced with the choice of either losing some weight or buying new pants. I figure that doing Zumba 3 times a week and stopping the solitary eating will take care of things. Which is good, since all of you know how I feel about weight loss products and programs. Hell, I even feel guilty about wanting to lose weight. I prefer to think about it as wanting to fit my jeans again.

Anyway, I am mentioning it here because if I get weird and evangelical about it, someone slap me please. I just want to avoid spending any money to replace my jeans.