This Too, However Weird, Will Pass

I need one of those countdown keychains, like the ones I saw in a Greenwich Village tchotche shop which count down the days until we are finally rid of Dubya, except I could use mine to predict when whatever snit I'm laboring under will end. Like Whateverthehellthatwas I had for the last 2 weeks: I thought I was depressed, but then I started noticing definite physical symptoms: my asthma ticked up, I was light headed and my stomach was dipsydo-ing and when I exercised I felt like I had concrete blocks tied to my shoes. Even worse, I couldn't run for long before having to find a bathroom! Embarrassing and inconvenient. Finally I just took a couple days off from the running and didn't do much except read novels. Whatever it was would just have to pass.

But I still wondered if all the symptoms were psychological in origin. Then today, BFF, my travelmate for the NYC trip two weeks ago phoned and said, "I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm just exhausted and my throat is kinda sore and I keep thinking I should be doing stuff, but everything just seems so hard right now!" DING DING DING! Ha! It's not me, it's a virus!

This week is much better, almost night versus day better. Happier, more active, running again, food is very good. Hopefully I can keep more of a long-term perspective the next time something like this happens.

Suddenly, Light at the End of the Tunnel

Well, it took almost another week, but I think I'm finally out of my funk. I started coming up for air on Friday, yesterday was a normal good day, and today I feel pretty good!

It seemed to be touch and go there for a while. The food really started calling loudly. I think it was late Thursday night and I felt like I was just a hair's breadth away from a binge. There was a bagel, the last one of the dozen I lugged back from NYC, and it was calling, no actually, it was bellowing my name. I tried to remember why it is I don't binge anymore, and was coming up with nothing. Logic had left town. My prehensile Lizard Brain was completely in control. Somehow, out of the fog I managed to remember how bad I would feel the next morning. But I really wanted that bagel. But then I thought, ya know, if you pray, really give it over to God, the obsession will be lifted. So, I said a very quick prayer. I'm not sure it even had words. It was more like a thought of "OK, God, it's in your court. Take it!" And suddenly it was almost as if I had swallowed the obsession. It was gone that quickly. Lifted, bada boom bada bing! I felt great. I fixed a cup of decaf chocolate spice chai (my new favorite) and then went to bed.

I have had that miracle happen before, but not often in my five plus years working an Overeaters Anonymous program. Maybe ten times at the most. More often my food choices are more quotidian, not as strong or alarming, ie, will I have an extra piece of potato, or should I have pizza this week, and should I have another piece, that sort of thing. But it's those really strong urges to binge where I really feel like I am being kneecapped by my disease, actually it's more like being forced to my knees, because that's the position I need to get out of it.

After all, five years ago it was my inability to go more than 3 days without a good binge that forced me to seriously attempt OA for a second time after a few meetings that I had half-heartedly attempted. That and my therapist throwing up her hands, metaphorically. I think it was her desperation that really threw me for a loop. I was used to my own, but here was a gutsy smart woman who I had worked with for two years and really respected, telling me that beyond residential treatment, she didn't know what else to do.

Anyway, I can see now that Thursday night I intuitively performed the first three steps of the 12 step programme:

1)I realized that I was powerless over my craving, it was driving me nuts, aka my life is unmanageable.

2) I understood that the only hope of not throwing that bagel in the nuker and digging out the butter was to appeal to some power outside of my normal field of reference. In this case I called on God, whatever God is (still have no idea, not sure it's even important to be splitting hairs at this point - whatever it is, it's worked better than my own best efforts in the past. Three university degrees hadn't done it, I had regained gained over fifty pounds with my last cum laude.

3) I made a decision to say ask God to take my obsession.

And it was immediately gone. Before I even said anything resembling a formal prayer or supplication, I stopped salivating. A light went on, there would be no bingeing tonight. It was if my freezer had suddenly been transported to Outer Mongolia.

I still don't know exactly what happened, and will it happen next time? I don't know. I can't speak to the future, and I shouldn't. Living in the future and the past just makes me miserable anyway. So, here I am. Alive, and awed, and ready to fight another day. Something which has been reinforced is the knowledge that I need to regularly re-commit to the first three steps of the programme, they are the very basis of my recovery.

I still feel that pull back to old habits, sometimes the change feels tentative even after all these years. I guess my neural pathways may take longer to change. Or as a doctor specializing in addiction told me, he believes that the old ones never leave. They may weaken, but they are still there, dormant, waiting.

Brr. Sounds pessimistic, doesn't it? Maybe, maybe not. Vigilance may be the price I pay for liberty.

Painful Honesty Ain't

Awww, do I have to? Ugh, this is gonna hurt!

Actually, I'm not sure it's going to hurt. In fact, I'm fairly sure it's not. But that is my first impulse, where my thinking goes when my switch flips and thinking becomes painful. I've spent the last 4 days feeling really bad. It happens sometimes when I return from a trip, particularly one to NYC where I just get completely overstimulated and turned on by all the art and the riches of what is available to a casual visitor. So, my brain flips out and says, "Overload overload! Shut down, shut down, NOW!"

So I did. Spent a lot of time trying to sleep. Just completely overwhelmed. How was my food... ehhhh.... not bad... I wasn't getting much exercise but I ate as if I was, so more than I needed, but I didn't binge. So I guess I should be grateful for that. I ate fairly normally. Time was, I couldn't go more than 3 days without a binge. All I did this time was have my usual evening dessert without going to the gym that day. I guess I'll survive... Wow. I really do sound sad. Ok, times like this I need to be grateful that even if my food didn't feel overly "clean". I hate that term. It attempts to polarize food, and food is impossible to completely catagorize into clean or "unclean". That kind of thinking is too much like an anorexic obsession, (ie cheese is evil, lettuce is good) and it doesn't work.

Luckily, there were a few things that got me out of bed. My choir. A board meeting. My running group (all 2 or three of us, doesn't matter, got me going). And Fuzz finally returned from his business trip, so that helped. It wasn't just me and the cats. So, it's been tough, but it's improving. It shows me that I need structure to get me out of these funks. That is where my job as an artist hasn't been particularly helpful. Nobody yells at me if I don't show up at the studio. I just don't produce. And a great deal of shame wells up in my breast. Actually, I think it wells up in my stomach, and then I eat to soothe.

AGAIN, I find myself having difficulty with night time eating. You may remember that I had declared a moratorium from eating besides 2 designated snacks after dinner. It was successful, and then, I guess I became complacent. Decided that it was ok, I could just nibble on healthy stuff. Carrots, cucumber. And again the obsession has returned, and more food has been creeping in: a little hummus, some leftover veggie curry, and cheese.. When it starts looking like another meal, not just a snack, I think, hmm... that's not looking too good.

I think I have a fear of not being able to eat again this day. Every meal feels like the Last Supper, and I guess then every snack feels like The Last Snack. It seems to be a fear of not getting enough. Enough. I think that is a metaphor for the rest of my non-food life. Somewhere, sometime, I didn't get enough. And it got translated into food. I was actually happier when I wasn't eating in the evening. After some initial discomfort, and fear, the obsession faded, and I did something else. So maybe I need to recommit to that.

As for today, as they constantly remind us, that is what we have, today. I have today. And since it is Sunday, it stretches out in front of me, full of promise, and menace. What is it about my disease that a stretch of unstructured time feels bad? I look forward to it, but I hate it. I think it has something to do with the time filling up with "shoulds". I should do this, I should be doing that, I should be stenciling the driveway. And then it looks impossible. So much housework, yardwork, paperwork, it all seems ovewhelming. And then I shut down.

It is only when I can focus down a bit, and actually attempt the things that will make me feel better, do I feel capable of functioning. Housework, for instance. It overwhelms me, but if I take just a bit of it---putting away a little laundry, or just sweeping up the worst of the crud on the kitchen floor, I feel better. So I can take it on. And inevitably, I do a little more than I thought I could accomplish. And I do feel better.

Only by taking my day down to more manageable bites, do I seem able to get through it. And like everything in my life, when my day seems more manageable, so does my food.

Ugh. Thunk. Get up again. Ugh. Thunk. Keep going. I think it gets better. If I'm honest and look at my past 5 years working the OA program in my imperfect yet very human way, I do see that things have improved greatly. 5 years ago, obese and miserable. Now, not obese and usually not miserable, but it takes work.

Fatgrrl's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry

Back from a long weekend in NYC with BFF! What a great weekend! Despite fears of Papal traffic issues--- I didn't know that the Pope was visiting that same weekend, or I might have made reservations for a different weekend --- we had no issues with the dreaded "frozen zones" and enjoyed lovely weather for our visit to stores (oh so many more than we had planned), museums (The Met, the Morgan and the Neue Galerie) Central Park and a stroll over the Brooklyn bridge, avoiding being whacked by telephoto-wielding tourists and Italian MTV hacks for a pilgrimage to my favorite restaurant: Grimaldi's. Yes, deafening, no reservations, no plastic, waiters that act like they work for the Russian mob, having to sit half an inch from the table next to you, that Grimaldi's. I guess there's no better proof that I'm still obsessed with food if I still do all that for the perfect slice.

Travelling and food is always a challenge. You can't get what you usually eat, so you improvise, with mixed results. We did have a kitchenette in our hotel room this trip which was worth it because we could make our own toast and coffee in the mornings and keep fruit, carrots and cheese, which at least one of our meals consisted mainly of, supplemented by local bagels. But when we did eat out, we didn't always make the best choices, not so much by ordering the wrong stuff, after all we actually ate at Whole Foods--- twice! But even though we were good about getting our veggies, I think we still had some portion inflation trouble. Nothing huge, but when my eating gremlin gets a little extra food, it just wants the party to keep going.

So, now I'm home, and I have to get some groceries because there's not much in the fruit and veg department in the house. Not to mention skim milk. I've had an abstinent lunch, a bagel, some cheese and turnip sticks and a couple of Tb of roasted sunflower seeds. But my demon wants more. It's a challenge, and Fuzz is taking off himself for a few days for a conference, so I'll be alone with my demon. Well, I don't have to be. In fact, the next few days are fairly busy in the evenings, with my running group, an OA meeting, choir rehearsal, more running, and a board meeting. So, my job is to get enough vegetables for nutritious meals, and deal with life rather than eating over it.

Because the food is often just a tool of obliteration. It's my method of self-soothing, or smothering my fear and anxiety. One thing I have to do is be vigilant about this technique which can so easily go awry. One simple technique is to replace the old old habit of bedtime eating with a hot beverage before bed. I've found a big cup of decaf chai gives me a comforting satiety but is not eating as such. And because it's not eating, it doesn't quite feel as satisfying, but it's better for me, and by continuing the habit, it becomes more permanent and replaces the less safe behaviour.

Grateful Despite Myself

I have a friend in Overeaters Anonymous who writes a fairly regular (maybe daily) gratitude list. It helps with complacency and maybe I should give it a try today. Let's try 5 things, just random stuff off the top of my head:

I'm grateful that Fuzz is taking care of himself enough to decide he needed a day off from work. The poor guy is upstairs in bed, he's exhausted.
I'm grateful for the woodpecker at the birdfeeder.
I'm grateful that rather than going to the gym last night for an hour and a half, I gave my sore muscles a break and spent the evening at home making my environment a happier place to be in: cleaning the butcher block of all the stray mail and detritus that gathers there, sorting out some papers, testing out paint samples for the kitchen, putting away shoes, just some tidying. It felt good.
I'm grateful for my studio downtown where I can do my messy work and I don't have to worry much about what I splatter or spill or stink up.
I'm grateful for my studio mate, J. She's very easy to get along with. My biggest worry with her is I've taken over too much of the space, but she doesn't seem to mind.
I'm also grateful that all the studios in our building are now occupied, hopefully keeping the landlord content and unlikely to kick us out for renovation anytime soon.
I'm grateful that I'm finally getting the knack of the Corel Painter program. I started using the Perspective tool yesterday. Handy!

Cool. That's six. Good enough Aha, there goes my Perfectionista: " Hmph! If you were really grateful, you'd do ten!" Oh, shut up.

I'm wondering what I am doing today that is fun? Well, going to the studio could be fun. But not that fun. Perspective is not fun, but it is satisfying when I can look at my finished paintings and enjoy that the perspective of the background works rather than detracts from the other stuff I find more important. Speaking of which, I think I'm going to work on that perspective now. Wow, I'm excited about perspective. Who knew?!

I Only Look Fixed

Wow, what a sucky morning. I did not didnotdidnot want to get up. At nine I turned on the bedside radio to try to get me into a state where I did. By ten I did rise, probably because I wanted my wonderful morning oatmeal. God, I love my oatmeal. I use steel cut oats, it makes all the difference in the world. No mush, more a consistency of brown rice, but better because it also has crunchy slivered almonds, raisins, dried cranberries, a bit of cinnamon and cloves and a good dose of ground cardamom. Yummmo. I've eaten it almost every day now for over two years, it's that good. I've even taken it camping and dried on road trips to cook up in a hotel room microwave... hmmm... note to self, maybe want to take it on my trip to NYC this week...

Anyway, food will get me out of bed where other things won't. I only look like I'm not a compulsive overater, but I still get crazy about food. And that tells me that I've still got this disease. And lately, I've been waking up miserable, but I can't quite put my finger on why I'm feeling so miserable. I've had a lot of "shoulds" floating through my brain. It may not be the things I'm "shoulding" myself about that are making me miserable, I think it's the "shoulding" that is making me miserable. Or in other words, it's those feelings of being overwhelmed, shame at being the imperfect being that I am, not the jobs themselves making me feel bad.

So I wake up with that damn shame. Well, I guess this is A JOB FOR CAPTAIN STEPWORK! (cue trumpet fanfare). Rats, no trumpets. Just a response of "oh, ugh, that..." Yup, seems like the only hope for cure from misery is to pick at that scab. No, it's worse than picking, it's all out surgery I'm performing on my psyche when I do stepwork. That's why I loooooove it so. But my only alternative is more misery. So, it looks like I really don't have a choice... but I do:

In step 1 I admit that I am powerless over food. Almost forty years of the fruitless diet & binge cycle finally convinced me of that. In steps 2 and 3 I decided to try the idea that there was a power outside my consciousness that might be able to help me and chose to reach out for it. Lo and behold, it actually started to work. I still am not able to pinpoint the exact moment it started, I just remember a point in early recovery where it dawned that if I could tap into this group of people who seemed to be having success and whatever power keeps the sun coming up in the morning (despite what seem like our best efforts to prevent that) it might work better than what I'd been doing to myself for so many years.

In "working the steps" I'm trying to bring this approach to the mental undertow that threatens to suck me under, for the main reason that I know that all turmoil in my head takes me back to the food. After five years in OA, I still don't think that working the steps is magic, or quick cure from God. I'm still enough of an agnostic to think that stepwork may just be really a handy system for examining what is driving me nuts: fluffing up my mental compost pile so it stops driving me so nutty with its stink, much as I do when I talk to my therapist weekly. It's sort of DIY talk therapy but it's writing.

Then there is step 5 when you share it. Just like I share my thoughts with my shrink. She helps me examine the thoughts, turn them over, fact check, look at how they fit with my present reality, or maybe where I was when they were appropriate if they don't seem to fit my life today. Which is where I think a lot of my crazy thoughts originated: in my crazy past with my workaholic, alcoholic, frightened family.

So, enough explaining, maybe look at this shame and actually work on it a bit. You know, I'm going to do that offline, because I can just do stream of consciousness writing, and then share what parts I'm comfortable sharing here, or with my sponsor, therapist, or whomever. Interestingly, I've been having some issues with my sponsor lately (she is human, and so am I), which I have not shared with her. I've been talking to my therapist about them, and I may eventually share them with my sponsor too, but that comes later. First I have to write. Dammit! Alright, alright, I'm going...

Postscript: I've done less than a page of writing, and already I'm feeling better. A couple of things have come up: I'm starting to see how I learned powerlessness growing up, and how I'm carrying that into my adult life in my day to day actions (feeling like I have to do it all, NOW and perfectly) and in being very passive, avoiding asking for what I need. I'd write more but I'm meeting with said sponsor for a nosh and need to get dressed and pack my lunch. This is really interesting to see working, for what I'm seeing is some evidence that I can change. And that's very hopeful. TTYS.

My Hungry Ghost

I had a devil of a time getting my butt out of bed this morning. It could be an easy day, I have absolutely nothing scheduled. But when I have an unscheduled day, it seems to be hijacked by my "shoulds" and I feel like crap. I finally struggled to life while half listening (& half snoozing) to a radio interview with the doctor and writer Gabor Mate. He works with addicts in Vancouver, and they also interviewed residents and other staff at a residential hotel for addicts and street people. I woke up when I heard the phrase "step work" and it piqued my attention, because I thought, "Hm, I feel like crap, I should be doing step work." More shoulds but maybe it's true.

I listened to Dr. Mate talk about his idea that the addict is trying to self soothe. I know that feeling, the one that thinks, if I can just eat this, buy this, get this, do this I will feel better. And it works. For about 2 seconds. And then it starts over again. He uses the Bhuddist concept (again with those Bhuddists!) of the hungry ghost that can never be sated. As a compulsive eater, I can certainly identify with that. Dr. Mate also talked about the complicated trail of genetics and early experience that sets us up to be addicts (of substances or of behaviours), that brain scans show that our brains have been definitely altered, and maybe that alteration was not due to the addiction, but actually caused the addiction. I don't know if it has been done, but it would be interesting to see any study of random images to see if it were possible to predict who would become an addict.

His book is called "In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts" and I plan to pick one up. Maybe I should do it today. It might inspire me. I need something, I feel like a total lump. Ok, get dressed, get out into the rain, pick up a couple of things, and get into the studio. I'll feel better then. I hope. I'm trying to self soothe, but it's tough.