Day 13: Food Struggles and Body Image Battles - 30 days, 30 episodes

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends. Welcome to day 13 of 30 days, 30 episodes on the Life Shift podcast.

This is a bonus series in which I am challenging myself in November 2024 to do 30 days in a row of daily episodes. And I got a question the other day of like, how many I have planned and do I pre record anything like that?

And my goal is actually to show up every single day and record on that day, edit and release it within like an hour or so from when I recorded it.

So when you are listening to this, it probably already happened in the past, but just know that I had no idea about 20 minutes before I started recording this of what I was going to talk about. And I think that I'm on this kind of journey of. I. I said this to someone yesterday too, of like, this.

I can't describe the feelings that I'm having right now of this challenge and what I'm doing and the conversations that I am creating with myself, essentially using these prompts.

And also on the production side of kind of like what it's doing, it's like this groundswell of some kind of emotion or feeling that feel like it's in a positive direction. And so hopefully I can put some words to that soon to really understand what this, this little experiment, if you will, is doing for me.

So on day 13, again, I really don't have a prompt here on this other screen that I'm looking at, but earlier I was listening to a former guest's podcast. Former guest is Jennifer Peterkin, and her podcast is the Human Experience.

And so she does something super cool and I just wish I could do this, but she travels the world and I think she has kind of a job that she can work remotely, but she goes to all these different countries and states and when she's in those places, she connects with her guests and she has these conversations face to face with strangers in their homes or in their home countries or states or wherever they are. And I just think it's so fascinating. And you can see in all the episodes like she has where that was recorded.

And it's just a really cool concept and I love it. And she has similar conversations to what I do on the Life Shift podcast outside of this little bonus series.

And so I was listening to one of her episodes from a few weeks ago, and she was talking to someone in England and she was talking to them about the coaching work and the.

And the stuff that they do related to food and food addiction, if you will, maybe not food addiction, but like disordered eating and those kind of unhealthy relationships with food and why we do it, what we seek out, and restrictive diets and all these kind of things.

And so it had me really thinking because towards the end of the episode, they started talking about how you naturally think about women and what they face as it relates to society standards and eating and all those kind of things. And so I thought, well, perhaps I can bring up a conversation that doesn't get talked about as much.

And that is that guys also face this disordered eating, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, all these issues that come along with it. And so for myself, since I was a kid, probably around 12 or 13, I have had a relationship with food, if you will.

When I was about 12, I would say that I was maybe 25 pounds more than I am now at 40 something and about 6 or 7 inches shorter. And so I was heavier. I was quote, unquote, obese level. But, you know, I was a kid and I wasn't too active or anything like that.

But it really came on one summer deep into my grieving process, that I didn't know I was grieving, but it was kind of this internal thing.

And what would happen is I lived with my dad, obviously, after my mom died, and I would fly home to Massachusetts and I would visit with my grandfather and then I would go visit with my grandmother and then my other grandmother, and I would just kind of bounce around to everyone in my family and visit with them. And obviously it was all the fun, fun and games right over summer.

And one particular summer, I think pretty sure I gained about 40 pounds that particular summer because I was just getting ice cream every night and I was having seconds and I was having all this stuff. And I think a lot of that was like trauma informed and just like kind of stuffing that down.

And that really started my unhealthy relationship with food because when I got home, I had to confront the fact that I had gained that and my father had noticed. And I started to feel a certain way about it.

And certain things were said about me and my body weight and, and the things that would come from bullying and all that fun stuff. So that, like at 12 was when I started to restrict my food. I went on slim fast, if anyone remembers that. I think it's still around.

And I would like try my best to avoid eating as much as possible and not necessarily starving myself, but really restricting things and really started to count calories and count the things that I was eating and how much of it and really pay attention to that and then try to do like exercises at home that I could and really started attaching myself to this body image and the struggles that I had to kind of find my way out of that.

And that kind of went through all sorts of phases in which there were periods in which I had lost a bunch of weight and I got a little taller and so then I was a little thinner and then I was like, oh, well, I'm just going to, now I'm going to go the other way and I'm going to eat too much and I'm going to gain weight. And it was this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Always with this looking in the mirror and seeing that 12 year old who was overweight.

And so it wasn't very healthy at all. And I would binge eat, never did the other part of that sometimes comes with that never purged or any of those things.

But I would just then feel really guilty after eating a ton in this particular whatever the snack was, or I would, you know, see what the serving size on something was. And then I would put that number aside on the table or the plate or whatever.

And then I would sneak, nobody was watching, but I would sneak extras and eat those and then convince myself that those didn't happen. That didn't happen.

And so it became this really super unhealthy obsession, if you will, with body image dysmorphia for sure and just an unhealthy relationship with food. And then in my 30s, I was like, okay, this is enough. I, you know, I just can't go this yo, yo, unhealthy process.

Like I wasn't lifting and I wasn't doing these things to be healthy. So I went the other way. So then it became, I started working with a trainer.

I got a particular food plan which meant a certain amount of protein, a certain amount of carbohydrates, a certain amount of fat. And then I would start tracking that. And for two years I did not cheat at all. I hit my numbers every day.

I made a spreadsheet every day, actually every night before. And I would package the food and I would weigh the food and I would do all this stuff.

And what came from it was probably the best shape that I've ever been in. But the beginning part, I was a vegetarian and I was following the rules and I got down way too skinny. So I got down to like 122 pounds.

I was eating a lot, but my body needed, like, meat, essentially. So then I started eating meat. And then it became this nice little balance in which I was in the best shape that I had ever been in.

I was kind of almost athletic at that point, which was like, never in the cards for me growing up, if you ask anyone that has known me. And I maintained that for a couple years. And then I fell off, went the opposite way again. And now I'm in this space in which I'm.

I'm still struggling, but in a different way. And a lot of it stems from losing Mikey earlier this year. My dog. I lost my dog in July.

And I'm still in that grief process in which I don't want to go to the gym and I don't want to eat right, but I do want to eat right. But then I feel shame when I realize that I've gained some weight. And so it's this big mess. And I think that.

I think growing up, I couldn't tell anyone that I was struggling so much.

And Even into my 20s and 30s, I couldn't really tell people that, like, I had these particular thoughts about my body or the way that I looked or any of those kind of things, because I guess it felt like society was like, no, that is not a guy issue. That is a female issue, which is so stupid if we say it out loud.

Like, sometimes I'm like, the things in my head sound much worse in my head than when I say them out loud. And now saying that out loud, it just sounds silly.

But I don't know if other people agree that, like, it felt like just guys weren't allowed to talk about that. Like, guys were, I guess, allowed to be this, that, and the other. And females, by society standards, weren't. And all of it's really silly.

And I think the more we can talk about it, the more maybe we can find this normalization of how we can find a healthy relationship with food, how we can find a healthy relationship with exercise. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

It doesn't have to be a waste of time, or I'm too lazy to do this, or I too energized to do this, whatever it may be. I think we just need to talk about it more. So here is my full admission to the fact that I do have a struggle with food.

And it is something that is regular in my life. It's not worrisome to me, but it is something that I'm never not thinking about.

It's always top of mind, whether I am in a phase where I am eating anything that I want and really not caring about it, or on the other side where I kind of get too obsessive about it. So there is your confession for November 13th here in November 2024.

I'm just a human and I have flaws and I have lots of mistakes that I've made along the way. And hopefully I find a new relationship with food that makes me feel empowered and makes me feel okay and not disgusted at myself sometimes or not.

Like I'm missing out on things because I'm trying to look a certain way or feel a certain way or whatever it may be. So here's to hoping. But I want you to know if you are listening and and you resonate with any of these thoughts that clearly you aren't alone.

And if you are a guy and you've faced these things before, you're not alone because I have been facing it for 30 plus years.

So just know that we're all human and we all have our things and our things are okay if we're not hurting other people and hopefully we're not hurting ourselves. I think when we have the awareness and we're thinking about it, we are in a better space than ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist.

So if you need to reach out, connect with me, talk about anything, please do that. I would welcome that and hopefully this wasn't too depressing.

But I do want to say thank you to Jennifer Peterkin for bringing this up with her guest on her podcast and talking about it so openly and also inviting me into the conversation via these particular daily episodes. So that being said, this is the end of day 13. Don't judge me too hard and I will be back tomorrow for day 14. Take care, friends.

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.