Relationship, with food

When I started this blog, I was trying to get my waist measurement to half my height. That seems to be the magic ratio for protecting your heart. Four years later, I'm no closer to getting to that measurement than I was when I wrote the first post in this blog. I'm wondering if I gained a great insight into why that is the case earlier tonight.

I'm currently enamored with this book about the way our psychological defenses prevent us from connecting with one another (a consequence of my effort to not fail as a husband). Like most psychotherapy books, there is frequent discussion about the role of the parents in shaping our emotional lives. I've been watching my mother for the last couple of months. I've seen that a few of my relationship patterns are her emotional legacy to me. Thanks Mom (in a tone dripping with sarcasm).

Given this awareness of my mother's impact on my emotional life, I've been looking for other patterns that may have their origins in the role that I was assigned very early in life. A role that I am currently under absolutely no obligation to keep playing. I noticed a pattern tonight that may account for why I haven't been able to shed my gut despite a stated desire to do just that. I was the good eater in the family. My mother provided food and it was my job to eat as much of that food as I could with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Being a good eater is a critical part of my identity. Eating is a primary part of who I am.

I can find other evidence of the key role food had in determining my value to my mother by looking at the way she treats my kids. Almost every time she takes them for the weekend, I hear who ate a "good" lunch or dinner or whatever. Eating lots of food is somehow associated with a positive outcome. I'm sure I ate plenty of "good" meals because I wanted to be a good boy. I liked getting approval from important adults. (Being a "good" boy is another part of the identity that I was given rather than being a natural expression of who I am as an individual.) Eating lots of food is one way that I can be a good boy. I eat to feed that emotional need for acceptance. Eating a good meal, with good meaning lots of food, makes me feel content because I'm earning praise for the kid I was 30 some years ago. I've confused the voice telling me to eat more, a voice placed there by my mother, with my own voice.

How many other aspects of what I think is me is really just something put there by somebody else before I knew what was happening to me?