Jo's Backstory

Hi. I'm Jo and I have a bad relationship with food.

By this I mean I have been sick for as long as I can remember and in 2013 I discovered that many of my problems had a common base. Food. I react to Soy, Wheat, Eggs, Dairy, Citric Acid, Cultivars (look it up) and White Cane Sugar (and this isn't even a full list). Yes, I made sure to have some testing done, but only after I tried the food-exclusion diet and found out specifically what different foods really do to my system. It was an ugly time. I was hoping the tests would narrow my lists. They made it longer. Sigh.

What I also mean is that I have an enemy that has re-occurred in my life. I call him ED. I battled ED through my first three years of college at BYU, and although I only had about 50 min of counseling and no support from my family, I did come out the other side. I learned a lot of things about the broken ideas the media has taught us about our bodies and the broken idea that a woman is not good enough if she isn't dating enough. I won't rant here. I learned to let those ideas go and was able to recover.

At the end of 2012 I had my second child, and I experienced the real horrors of Postpartum Depression and Anxiety. When this mixed with the stress of a new diet, I didn't' know what to do with myself and ED snuck back in with a fury that he did not posses my first time facing off with him. This time it had nothing to do with my size, which is large and proud, or about my ability to attract a mate, since I have one. It was all about being very very afraid of food, and knowing specifically how much it could hurt me.

But this time, I knew what to do. I immediately told my husband, who was aware from the early days of boyfriendom of my previous Eating Disorder, and we got to work. I have a counselor who specializes in Eating Disorders, a Dietitian, and a General Practitioner who works with my counselor and knows the ins and outs of treating a person with depression and an eating disorder. I love them all. Oh do I ever.

I am NOT better, recovered, over this craziness. I might be about 1/12 of the way over the hill of this addiction and learning to work within the diet that my body needs. Some days I feel much farther, other days I feel that I have just fallen all the way back to the base of that hill again.

This blog is about me, but it is more about the reality that other people have been here, and some have been here part way. Food is not just a problem for me. It is becoming a common problem for so many others, and I am putting myself here, in words, just in case there is someone else who needs the hope that I have begun to find. Hope that there is food that I can enjoy out there, and hope that I can stop being afraid of food.

This is my journey towards finding hope in food.