I blame my husband (very long)

First of all, I know this may sound like I'm not taking any responsibility for my own actions. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I actually do. But sometimes, I've learned, it's okay to point fingers at other people's behaviour to learn where we went wrong and to learn how to avoid it in the future. This is what this post is about. I used to have a decent relationship to food. -Decent- is a big word, and this was when I was a child. I would try a lot, apart from fish which I very early on decided was a no-go food much like vegetarians do with meat (because of ideals rather than not wanting to eat because ew fish). My parents' main fault was their focus around soda. There literally was rarely ever water in the house, and all they drank was soda. Both had physically demanding jobs, so it's not as if it showed on their weight that much. My mom, when I was a baby/toddler/young child was overweight, but this was because of back problems before she got pregnant (corticosteroids) mixed with a pregnancy. My dad was as lean as they got, muscular from working in construction. His four weeks off yearly did leave him with a bit of a gut, which he managed to lose in the first few weeks after the holidays. My mother never forced me to eat anything. If I liked it - fine. If not, also fine. She had nothing to worry about, because I was so, so into vegetables. Carrots, peas, sprouts, cabbage, I didn't just eat it, I devoured it. Barely had potatoes or bread, but the soda made it so I never lost that baby fat. Fast forward to elementary school. The school lunch was awful. Just plain awful. My mom may not consider herself a great cook, and it's true, she won't make 5 course meals with all kinds of special ingredients, but her day-to-day cooking is sublime Sure we all want special meals from time to time, but what more do you need daily than plain meat and veggies?! At home we'd have a warm meal - so she was sure I ate my portion (or 10) of veggies. But at school, the food was often terrible. And I wasn't even hungry, because even as a kid I was perfectly okay with living an OMAD lifestyle. I tried to eat the foods I liked, I really did, but more often than not there were things I just couldn't eat. (Like I had once gotten sick of spaghetti with a certain sauce as a kid and ever since it makes me want to vomit, think that bad) But the principal and certain teachers wanted nothing of it, and physically forced me to eat that crap food. I didn't dare to speak up, didn't dare to tell my parents as they had told me that "If I were punished at school, it was because I did something wrong and they'd just punish me more". Although I fully understand and agree with their point of view, it was detrimental to my situation. To my eating habits. To me. So enter first very terrible experience with food. Food became a punishment, not even something to enjoy or to feel good about. It was something awful, something I couldn't enjoy. But of course you do get hungry, you do need to eat, so somewhere along the line, I started to prefer the wrong foods. As I aged, my mom wanted to lose the extra weight. Which is normal. I've no idea how much she weighed at her heaviest, nor do I feel the need to ask her, but I remember her saying somewhere in the 80 kilos but seeing pictures of her makes me doubt that. Either how, she lost the weight by barely eating more than some yoghurt daily and I can't really blame her for that, but it wasn't the best example to a 10 year old prepubescent girl. Perhaps not so much the weight loss or how she lost the weight, but all it meant for our family. My dad didn't like it. Man's food goes through the stomach, they say, but men also enjoy dinner as quality time with their family. Not to mention my mom obviously suddenly had a lot of attention. Probably also did it for the attention. Her weight loss went hand-in-hand with her shift from regular clothing to very short skirts and other revealing clothes. Can't blame her, who could? She was fucking hot before she gained the weight and she was hot once again. Some men like to be a peacock and show off their hot wives, others prefer to make sure there's no one interested in their wives because of low self-esteem issues. My dad was the latter. So there was tension in the house, there had always been fights, but it got worse and worse. At the same time, my grandfather (my mom's FIL, but she cared much for him, and had to take care of my grandmother, her MIL) ended up in the hospital, terminally ill. Two months we daily went to the hospital, and it wore her out. The weight loss, the exhaustion of having to take care of everyone and then later a bacteria made her lose even more weight. She never mentions how low she goes, besides "below 45 kg". She is 1m62. For reference, that's a BMI of 17. She went below that. She lost at least ten kilos while she was extremely ill, couldn't hold anything down. I saw the consequences first hand of low weight and, as such, little (to no) reserve. We had to fear for her life. She recovered and soon had a more healthy, albeit low weight. I, on the other hand, went the other way around. I did a lot of exercises and generally ate little, but if there was one thing I did wrong, it was my drinking habits. Cola. That was what I drank. I tried to now and then switch to water and at some point I managed to get my weight down to 62 kg, coming from somewhere upwards 70 - as a 15 year old. I looked pretty good, but was a bit skinny fat. We need a lot of exercises to tone that tummy, the women in our family, and just being skinny doesn't help. So I wasn't entirely happy with how I looked, but I was okay. A lot of my bulkiness also came from muscles hidden underneath that little layer of fat. I got into my first long term relationship when I was 16. From 62 I went up to 85 in the three years we were together. I know where I went wrong. Men enjoy eating with their girlfriends. I ate along. I didn't realize it so much at the time what I was doing wrong, but he seemed happy with me and how I looked and honestly, 85 doesn't look all -that- bad on me. If I wasn't happy with 62, it's not like I minded the 85. But we ate reasonably okay, it was, again, mostly the bad drinking habits. Every weekend I was with him, from Thursday eve till Sunday eve, and I'd buy myself a bag of chips - not even those huge ones, a pretty small one - and I'd finish that over the course of the weekend. And Thursday eve was pizza eve. The rest I cooked reasonbly healthy meals for the two of us. It was, again, mostly the cola and the lack of exercise. Where I was very active before I was 16, I became quite lazy after that. Because he loved to game and loved to watch TV and so did I. After I broke up with him, my lifestyle and my weight changed drastically. I started a job, a physically demanding one, it was warm, I drank water, almost ate OMAD every day (my natural preference, but back then I thought it was a bad thing) and within a couple of months I was back to 63. Now being 19 and a woman, it looked pretty good on me. Not that I saw it. Because body image is a funny thing. I can see it now when I look at pictures. I was freakin' hot. Perhaps down a few more kilos and I could have been a model - although I'm not tall enough for it. :D And I was so so focused on those "few more kilos" that the opposite happened. I gained those few more kilos, and was at 68 in no time. Still looking decent, but eh. Then I did something I more or less regret, despite it being super healthy. I quit smoking. Don't ask me how, because I am absolutely clueless, but every day for 14 days straight I gained one kilo. So after two weeks, I was at 80 kilos. I gained a bit more as time went on. Our GP just shrugged at it and said "your metabolism crashed when you stopped smoking". Okay, fine. I know some people roll their eyes and say I must have been eating more - I was NOT. I was SUPER CONSCIOUS, SUPER SCARED about gaining weight. I started to exercise to avoid any fat gain. Some may have been water, some may have been muscle, but in a few months, I was weighing in at 90 kilos! That's 22 kilos! And I -did- need new clothes, stat. When I was 21, I was so tired in January that I had my blood work done (sleeping 16h/day, so not me since I usually survive on 4-6h). My thyroid was crashing and my GP told me to check it back in 6 months. I recovered from the tiredness pretty quickly, and then decided to visit an endo. My thyroid was back to normal-ish, so no treatment was started (I've had it checked regularly since and it remains normal-ish for now, despite having TPO antibodies) but she did send me off to a dietician. Worst. Mistake. Ever. I was exercising like mad, I was working a very physically demanding job and before I started the dietician, I was on a very strict diet with yoghurt and soup and some toast and a glass of coke a day. The dietician of course had to change that to "You need to eat more to lose weight". In what universe does that make sense?! So, I gained weight (duuh) since she had me eat so, so much carbs. A small loaf of bread PER DAY, and then some potatoes or pasta or rice, lots of veggies (can never go wrong on that), meat and so on. And exercise. Of course I tried to do what she told me to do, of course she didn't believe me. Of course she never addressed the real issue. Why do dieticians automatically assume someone eats wrong because they don't know better? She never assessed me for an underlying eating disorder - which I did have. Perhaps I was eating too little, but my relationship to food was absolute shit and she should have known she could not treat me simply by telling me what I should eat. Even if her meal plan would have worked (it didn't) it would have just been a temporary fix to an underlying issue. Either how, after two months or so and four kilos of weight gain, I gave up on that. I couldn't even finish what she had me eat! It was so much, too much, and all she had me do when I had to go in, was weigh myself and talk about how it had gone. I could just sense she didn't believe me when I said that yes, I am (trying) to eat as much as you tell me to eat. No, I am not binging on unhealthy foods. Yes, it is a little difficult to eat like this. Whatever. I went to live on my own and went very much back on my regiment of soup and yoghurt and this time much stricter. No binging, or anything. I had a couple of hot meals a week, when I went home to my parents, and the hot meals we had at work on weekends. That was it. And I did lose weight, albeit slowly, but steadily. From 94 went down to 87 or so. And then... then I moved in with my now husband. It was terrible. I bought us a bag of chips thinking they'd last us a week. As a child I had been taught to keep the bag in the cupboard, take a small bowl and eat that as you watched TV. Chips lasted us, generally, between 3-5 days with three people eating from the same bag. The last of it just eaten because no one likes chips that lost their crisp. Since I went shopping once a week, it seemed perfect to me. Buy us a bag on Tuesday, and I'd still have some on Saturday. Screw the last two days without any. I was fine without it. But noooooo. He finished the bag in one sitting. If I wanted some, I had to gorge them down as quick as I could. So one bag became two bags. And he finished his own bag on Tuesday - and then went on to eat "my" bag on Wednesday. So yeah, I learned to binge. For the first time in my life, I WAS BINGING. Not because it made me feel good, not because of whatever-reason, but only so I could have some chips. Because if I didn't, they'd be gone. Same with pizza. I'm a picky eater ever since what happened in elementary school. There's certain toppings I won't have. Rather than him adapt some and eat a pizza he too would enjoy, he would want his own pizza. Which he would eat in one sitting. So saving half a pizza for tomorrow? Whatever would he eat! Getting a bigger one and me having some slices of his? Not an option because he had to have the most special fucking pizza. And even the smallest pizza is so fucking big. But I was taught not to waste food. He'd also give me the stinkeye for wasting food. So I learned to finish that pizza. People were all giving me a hard time when I wasn't eating at noon at work, so I caved in, and had lunch again. (Despite prefer one meal per day, at the evening) People complained when I just had soup or yoghurt, so I tried to have a proper meal. Not to mention I then also started to have issues with my jaw. Half the day I couldn't eat, so when I could, I likely ate very wrong. Also on a lot of pain meds. So my weight just went up. And up and up. To 115. Look, I know he didn't stuff the food in my mouth, but he taught me how to binge. I already had an unhealthy relationship with food, and the last thing I needed was a lesson in binging. It wasn't just chips. It was everything. He is taller than me, but who cares? You don't need to eat a fucking big bag of chips in ONE GO. YOU DO NOT NEED TO TAKE THE PACK OF COOKIES NEXT TO YOU AND FINISH THEM IN ONE EVENING. If I wanted a cookie, I had to eat it as quick as I could. Even if I reserved food for my own, bought two packs, one his, one mine - it didn't help. On Wednesday he was out of food and he'd eat mine. It's my responsibility for not noticing it earlier how wrong I was to fall prey to that, but I did. I was 22, with an unhealthy relationship to food, and stupid. When I was a couple of years older, I managed to get my weight down, quite rapidly. I had quit work and was going to go back to school, good, wise decision. I lost weight by eating an apple a day and walking 1-2h/day. In the blistering sun. I went down to 100 in a matter of weeks. School starts, I get home way too late so I, stupidly, want him to cook. Plan was simple: Skip lunch, eat a small, healthy meal each evening. I was too tired to go for walks and suffered from lots of migraines, so it all boiled down to what I ate. I bought us healthy choices, vegetables, meat and so on, and quick fixes in case he really didn't feel like cooking. He could do fries, pizza or pasta those evenings. He did those things EVERY NIGHT HE HAD TO COOK. No biggie, since I only had one meal right? Wrong. In school I wanted to eat an apple for lunch so people wouldn't be too weirded out. But soon they started to nag, and I caved in - because yeah, you should eat so and so and an apple is not lunch. And at home, he, oh so kind, would fill my plate. With a portion so big it was three times what I would serve myself... And I had it all. Because it was in my plate and I had to finish my plate or the big bad principal would come hold me down and shove it down my throat (very tragic lol). So the 15kg I lost soon came back. And then some. At the beginning of last year, I was weighing in at 115-118. This year in January I had gone up to 120. It was a constant struggle to keep it from going even further. But this time around, I recognized just how detrimental his eating behaviour was to me. And with a lot of determination, I've managed to go down to 102 as of last week. NOT WITH HIS HELP THOUGH. He knows I do keto. OMAD. And fast. He SEES ME LOSE WEIGHT. He sees how much it means to me. How unhealthy I was back then and how much better I feel now. Yet he feels the constant need to binge on chips right in front of me. To wait to make his own dinner until I'm home. To make too much pasta and then have it sit there, smiling in my face. To make too much fries. And leave them there, ready for the takers. He buys me crap food. And when I snap, he realizes it for a while, but after a couple of weeks he's back at it again. So yeah, I'm blaming him. The same way my dad was to blame when he couldn't accept my mom wanting to be happy with her body, to be attractive to others that weren't her husband. I blame my parents for teaching me to drink cola as a toddler. I blame my principal for giving me an eating disorder. My husband for triggering it and turning an unhealthy relationship with food into binging. I blame him for his lack of self-esteem. People around me for believing we need to eat 3-6 meals a day. That an apple isn't a meal. I mean, I also blame myself, but sometimes pointing fingers at your own won't fix anything. Sometimes you're allowed to share the blame with others. Recognizing the crap behaviour of others is sometimes more helpful than just trying to push yourself down for all the times you've done something. Should I have had those chips? No. But there's a reason I had them in the first place. And that's not solely on me. TL;DR: First and two last paragraphs. Also, I lost 18kg. Yay me.