A few weeks ago I shared with you about my own food addiction and how I was touched my Andie Mitchell’s blog Can You Stay for Dinner. She recently published her story about her struggle with food and weight loss in the book “It Was Me All Along: A Memoir”. I had the privilege of reading it last week, and I wanted to share a few pieces with you today.
I will start by saying the book is a quick read, and Andie will have you laughing, empathizing, relating, and cheering for her from the very beginning. She opens her heart and mind to the reader immediately and invites you to see every nook and cranny. She tells her complete story, the good and the bad, the exciting and the sad.
In short, I highly recommend it.
As someone who has struggled with food and battled with weight loss, I found myself saying, “Thank you, Andie, for telling your my story. I don’t know if I had the guts to be that honest with myself. But I feel like you have lifted a weight off my shoulders, and you have shown me there is a possible happy ending.”
I am going to share 5 quotes from throughout the book. If you are worried I will give too much away, skip my review and go straight to the book. (There is a link at the bottom of this post to purchase the book through Amazon. It is an affiliate link, so I could earn a small percentage on your purchase, but it has absolutely no impact on the price you pay. I include it only to make it convenient for you to connect with the book so you can start reading it right away. Thank you Kindle!)
So here are 5 quotes that really hit home for me.
Andie begins the book talking about the preparations for her fifth birthday party. Even at that early age, she already knew “what kind of standard one should uphold with baked goods: frosting on cupcakes should sit no less than two finger-widths high; cookies should be crackled across their tops to reveal gooey, barely baked centers; the best piece of sheet cake is always the corner and, of course, sporting a frosting rose.” I know many 5-year-olds feel that way, but some of us hold those beliefs well into adulthood.
By age twenty, Andie was 268 pounds. She decided it was time to get serious about trying to lose weight. “By the time I’d arrived home late on Friday afternoon, I’d already planned to start trying to lose weight on Monday. And just as I’d done in the past, I launched a massive “farewell to fat” binge. That weekend…I ate all I loved, taking care to fit in all my favorite foods before I’d start trying to lose weight on Monday.” Oh how I can relate to that!
Andie later verbalizes what takes many of us a lifetime to realize, that losing weight is more than letting go of the fat.
“Until I was thirteen, I ate with reckless abandon, using food for every reason unbound to hunger. But through my various concerted efforts to change the only body I’d ever known, I was accepting that all of what I’d been was less than ideal. I was trying to lose weight on the surface, but deeper, I was acknowledging that I’d been wrong for sixteen years and had to work to right myself. How do you walk away from all you’ve ever been?”
Andie seriously pursued a healthier lifestyle and lost 135 pounds. However it was not exactly the thrilling accomplishment she had strived for.
“A part of me was disdainful of the new-found attention I was receiving. You see me now? I’m attractive now? Receiving the congratulations, the praises in some small way felt like accepting that what I’d been before – all my life – was wrong. Even though I’d often felt that way myself, I resented that the size of my body was correlated to my value, my worth as a person.”
And losing the weight was not the end of the struggle.
“What worried me almost as much as letting myself down if I gained it all back, was letting everyone else down. Being a failure. The pressure, the foreignness of it all caused the welling up of a deep, deep insecurity. The months that followed – in fact, that whole year – were dark. I was scared all the time.”
Andie struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, worried she might consume a “poor” food or not get enough exercise to stay thin. The terror of maintaining her new weight consumed her and continued to affect her relationships.
Although I might be giving away too much, I will let you know that Andie comes to a place of contentment before the book is over, and she shares how she continues to live with balance, at peace with food, exercise, and her body. Learning that alone is worth reading the book.
While my struggle with food and fat has been different than Andie’s, I find her honesty and vulnerability empowering. I can relate to many of her struggles and appreciate her giving a voice to my emotions, even the ones I couldn’t put my finger on. She has a way of making me feel I am not alone in my journey and she provides hope for what can come.
I believe her book “It Was Me All Along: A Memoir” has the power to change many lives, and I thank her for that. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
What book(s) has touched your life?
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