by Aerynne Aiudi

Created on: April 30, 2009   Last Updated: May 02, 2009

At the age of two, I was considered obese. The doctors that my parents took me to would not even consider the fact that I was a growing girl, or take into consideration the genetics of our family. I was fat, chunky, chubby, large... obese. And this bit of news had me running for the cookie jar as soon as I woke up in the mornings, saddened by the rejection of me by my peers.

I have nine surviving siblings. There are genetic conditions of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes in our family, as well as overeating. Much of the eating and overeating in our home was due to emotional factors. We ate when we were happy, we ate when we were sad, we ate when we were feeling sneaky; one of my brothers would always steal hotdogs from the refrigerator after my mom brought home our weekly groceries. We ate to celebrate everything from birth to death and then some. That was just the way it was in my African / Jamaican home cultures. And the crispier and juicier your fried chicken or the fluffier your dumplings or the cheesier your macaroni and cheese, the better. You were in like Flynn baby!

Eating for us was as emotional as it was ritualistic. My mother made our favorite pies for our half-year birthdays, so once again we were eating in celebration mode. When there was a funeral, there was an abundance of food and drink. Anything else would have been considered just plain odd and out of place. By the time I was 12, I weighed more than most of my brothers who were all older than me, and I began to associate eating well and being big with feeling the love and acceptance of my father.

My mother and father piled my plates high and always boasted about what a good eater I was. But being a big eater as a pre-teen also brought forth jeers and jibes from neighborhood kids, and with tears streaming down my face at their cruelty about my being fat, I would run home and cook up a large soup pot of hot dogs and beans and chow down, vowing to one day show the world that I wasn't just a joke.

By the time I was 13 and beginning high school, I was anorexic and bulimic. I struggled with these eating disorders until three years before I gave birth to my only child. Now, I am a lot healthier, work as a personal trainer and nutritional specialist, and eat well instead of just out of emotional cues. Sometimes I have a flare-up of anorexia if I allow myself to get too busy and too stressed, but I see food now as utilitarian and something that needs to be ingested to maintain health, and not as a means and a ways to cope with everyday stressors.

Eating should be done to live, not living to eat out of a sense of filling an emotional void. If you feel that eating for you has become a problem, please seek help from a competent and compassionate mental health professional who can get you back on the right track to eating because it is healthy and not a means and a ways to cope with the 9 - 5 work day world of ups and downs.

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