planet fatgrrl

Fascinating...

2011-01-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

Yeah, and I'm Spock too... hardly.

What I find interesting is that it is almost exactly a year since I last felt the compulsion to post. And in almost exactly the same circumstances. Oh my, does that make me predictable? I think it speaks to how our lives can run in seasonal patterns. We haven't come that far since our medieval peasant ancestors...

One year later, and the morning after another midwinter choral concert. It was a great time, and I'm feeling the predictable letdown. I was in a sextet created just for the evening and I miss it so already. The studio after having a great fall, and so much progress in the last 2 years is feeling bleah again. Winter blues. I think I need to get out of town for a couple of days. I'm considering going to TO to visit my gallery representative.

YES!!! I have a gallery rep! I'm working in the studio five days a week. I was a featured artist on a national show in the fall, and I've got a gallery show in Toronto in the spring. Life is still a fucking bitch sometimes but at least I have a life now, so much more than I had years ago when I started this project. I was considering deleting this blog, but really, when I look back at how much my life has changed, I don't think I will. Even if nobody reads it, it reminds me of how much my life has changed since I joined Overeaters Anonymous almost 10 years ago (March 2002). And yes, I am still a healthy weight.

I have to run, ironically to get groceries, before the university students come to on the morning after and flood the market, but I will return soon, because I'm feeling the need to write. Cheers!

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

2010-02-08T11:31:00.002-05:00

Typical drama queen... it's not that bad, but that phrase is in my head due to a beautiful arrangement of that old Paul Simon song by my friend Jack, the interim director of our community choir...

I am feeling a little dark. Last week I was very excited about my new work schedule in the studio. I'm not a morning person but I realized I would get more work done if I came in in the morning. Besides, our adolescent puppy gets me around 7 anyway, so why not? I pull myself together, and after a couple of cups of coffee me and Bela (the dog) are off to the decrepit 60's dentist's office that is my studio. Last week I was high on how much more time I was getting in here. This week, the feeling has retreated to "same old, same old".

And I'm on the downhill slope from a high. We had our big choir concert on Saturday, and the group show at a local gallery closed yesterday and the participants had a nice dinner at one of my favorite higher end restaurants. So of course today I'm bummed. And it's 1130 and I wish I was eating lunch. There is a piece of two day old anchovy pizza trilling its siren song from my fridge, a 20 minute walk away. Again, typical! I knew the slump was coming, but it doesn't make it hurt much less. What I can do it remind myself (one minute at a time) that it will pass.

And I had the most incredible rush of grudges and resentments as I was setting out my paints. I'm guessing they tend to flood into the "now what" vacuum in my brain. So, in the face of hating the entire world, I had to dredge up my gratitudes, for the second time today. They came a lot slower than they had when I said my 12-step prayers a few hours before.

A ray of hope has come as I see that my recent goals have been realized and I may be on the verge of achieving one that I had only hesitantly dared hope for. So I need some fresh ones. That is cool.

Sometimes walking the walk takes you through rough terrain. But for me it all comes back to the food. If I can't put the food down, I'm crippled. I was an artist with a block that had even come back to haunt me last year, and I had to really work my recovery to not binge after a really bad episode a year and a month ago. And the recommittment got me back into the studio, better than ever before. And that was one thing that I didn't figure on, one of the gifts that I couldn't predict, but it figures that the unmanagability of my life extends way beyond the food.

Ok, back to work. Cheers. Just watch out if you see me and the dog trotting toward you about 1 pm --- I've got a date with them anchovies!

Shocking Revelation!!! Recovery is MORE Than What I'm (Not) Eating...

2009-10-05T13:26:00.013-04:00

You know, deep down in some part of my psyche this is still a shock. For over 40 years I equated my success in life with what I did, or didn't put in my mouth. I believed in the old saw that once I lost the weight, life would be perfect and I would be happy. As I look back now over the last seven years since I entered the planet of the thin and "perfect" (hoo boy, how thick am I???) I can see many times when I was still miserable, but I was thin, dammit. It continues today, but I think the misery is slowly, slowly thinning. No pun intended, but maybe it's apt. For the past 5-plus years, I've believed that the size of your weight problem is directly proportional to the depth of your pain. The only way I have been able to stay at a relatively stable and healthy weight seems to be by tackling the emotional misery I've been living with.

I think I used to mention my bed frequently when I began this blog. Even after I entered into twelve-step programs (yup, plural, I've been in a few different ones, although Overeaters Anonymous is still my main focus), I would spend a lot of time in a semi-depressed state where I wasn't binge-eating, but I was still spending a lot of time in bed either sleeping or reading, watching tv, hiding from the world, and hiding from my feelings which were usually some variation of "Ugh, I hate myself".

I still wake up some mornings with a variant of that thought. For a long time it would be expressed as "Ugh, morning. I want to die" or, "Just let me go back to sleep, God" or my favorite: "Ugh, I hate my life". Well, one morning it struck me that I didn't actually mean that last one. I like my spouse, my house, where it is, my friends, my pets, even my cramped little bedroom which is certainly cozy and warm on cold mornings unlike the drafty big one we had in our last house. I like my work as a painter. I even like my studio in a rather run-down building on a slightly seedy block. I like zipping around town on my scooter. Needless to say, I love my bed. It's just so comfy. So, what's left not to like? Basically, me. That's about the only significant thing left.

And that came floating back to me last week when I was attending the fourth in a cross-program 12 step study lecture a a local hospital auditorium. It was being conducted by a well spoken and charmingly self deprecating recovering alcoholic. We were looking at step 4, the "fearless moral inventory" step that strikes fear into the heart of almost every desperate searcher that ends up in those rooms. And it really is "ends up" isn't it? By the time we get to OA, AA, NA, any one of those A's, we're desperate. They call it "the last house on the block" because we've tried every diet, trick, every fad, every fix we could buy, and it hasn't worked.

Anyway, the AA guy was talking about warped thinking and how, in AA terms, being sober is about more than just not drinking, or not gambling, or not binge eating or not starving oneself. It's about, well, sanity. And I'm not sure how often I am truly sober, not running away from one uncomfortable thought or other. The last month or so, I think I have been running again. It's very uncomfortable, but at least I'm not back in the food --- yet. But I'm aware that I'm sort of miserable for a good chunk of my waking time, and even some of my non-awake time. I usually wake up for a bathroom break sometime after 4 am and I'm often aware that I'm in a fog of foreboding. The same foreboding I seem to develop a convenient amnesia about during the day when I might actually be able to deal with it.

I've got work to do about this, it's time to stop this before it, to put it bluntly, bites me in the ass. So, now I grab another cup of coffee, go offline, and deal with this bucket of crap. I'll eventually be back here to post what happens (in a nice distilled sanitized way, I'm sure) but I have to do the first part in private. However, before that, I have to contact my sponsor, who've I've been playing dead with. MIA. Or in other words, hiding from. Thank God I've got a local food buddy that I talk to 3 times a week.

She's got about 3 more times the years in the rooms than I have, and so she's been nudging me (ok, last time we talked it was a shove) about dealing with it.

Apropos of nothing except love and joy, please enjoy the photo of our new puppy (at present gently snoring beside me on the couch).

Still Here, Still Trudging the Road to F'in Happy Destiny...

2009-08-09T23:30:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in so long I can't even figure out how to get the font right, but really, that's not important. The important thing is posting. Something. Period.

Gakkk, I'm falling into William Shatner-speak. You know. That. Self. Important. Cadence.

Jian Gomeshi (on CBC Radio) does the same. Thing.

Anywaaaayyyyyy.... I'm back. I know, it was before February that I last wrote here, but what an interesting 6 months it's been! I'm still abstinent from binge eating. I've lost a little weight, I'm at least 10 pounds lighter than I was in January, but I can't really remember current details because other than this morning, I can't remember when it was between now and then that I last weighed myself. It's ok to be free of that crazy compulsion to weigh myself often.

Another odd thing: I've been not eating desserts or candy now for something like 3 or 4 months, again a little on the fuzzy on the exact time period. All that, my friends, is a freakin', well, MIRACLE. And I'm pretty cool about it, most of the time. Ok, I did wonder this very evening if I was ever going to eat my favorite brownie again, but decided not to go there. This abstaining from eating sugary stuff wasn't caused by so much a crisis in my abstinence from bingeing, it was caused by a desire for some peace of mind.

I've got some friends in the Program (OA) that refrain from eating much sugar, and I always pooh poohed it as extreme. But there was one day in the spring that I realized I was obsessing most of the afternoon over an ice cream cone. Not a really special one, just an ordinary Dairy Queen medium (or small, even more mediocre) dipped cone. For whatever reason, realizing how obsessed I was made me decide to take one more step back from boarding, or perhaps "being run down by" is more appropriate, the train to Crazyville. One. Day. At. A. Time. For today, I'm not eating dessert. Maybe I will tomorrow. The first week was somewhat difficult, but not as difficult as I had feared, and most days it's been pretty easy. You know what keeps me doing it, or not doing it, as it were? It's another one of those things that has made my life simpler. No hemming and hawing over amounts and should I or shouldn't I....

Jeez I gotta go to bed, I'm swimming at 8 am and it's midnight. I'll write soon. It's good stuff. Honest.

WTF?!? This is Actually Working?

2009-01-31T21:06:00.002-05:00

This has been as good a month as last month was bad. Well, December wasn't all bad, mostly just Christmas. Too much time in Crazytown, except Crazytown was me. "We have seen the enemy and they are us", isn't that the ancient quote from Pogo (don't bother trying to remember it if you're not a boomer)? But it did force me to actually go back to square one with my OA work.

Got myself a new sponsor, a young woman in another city hundreds of miles from me whom I have never met but found through --- get this, if this isn't going to some good lengths for sobriety --- the sister of a really strong sponsor of some people in the program I really respect. I had heard the inspiring sponsor speak at a celebration and met the sister at a retreat and they both had this look in their eyes. Really wide eyed, maybe enough to scare someone else, I dunno, maybe they were born with it, but their eyes looked so damn... clear. I wanted that. I didn't want to go back to Crazytown no more. I told Sister I needed a real Big Book thumper, I was desperate. Sister couldn't sponsor me, too many sponsorees already, but she found this other woman for me.

So, new sponsor (she just sounds so young and perky, tells me "no worries", I'll call her "Sponsorette") has got me starting the steps over with her. Yup, after 6 years of being in OA ---actually, it will be 6 years this week,yoiks --- she e-mails me step 1 questions. After a month, I'm not finished step 2 yet. But I don't feel like I'm really back at square one. I've received so many damn gifts in OA, that I don't regret... any of it? Is that true? Poking myself... hmmm... seems so. Sure, maybe I would like to take back some lunkheaded claims I've made in the rooms, but not much. It was just part of my process. And although I'm back on Step 2, I feel so great to be here, because I've got 37 days of the cleanest abstinence I've ever had. What's the big difference?

Oh shit, I don't know... desperation? I didn't hit a new bottom, but I possibly hit a better bottom, which forced me to really look at the spiritual foundation of my programme. I was tired of all the games I was playing with food. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had been doing much more "white knuckling" over the last few years than I wanted to admit: agonizing, obsessing about food, playing little games, tweaking the food this that and the other way. To copy from someone in the rooms (all my best lines are plagarized from there...I plagarized that from someone there!), it is not possible to deal with the problem of food by playing with the food. The recovery has to come from another area of my psyche, or in other words, I really have to work on my emotional and spiritual recovery. Particularly the latter.

Here's what Sponsorette has me doing:

Getting down on my knees and praying (serenity prayer and 3rd step prayer) EVERY FREAKING MORNING FOR TWO WEEKS!!!! Go figure, I'm still doing it after 5 weeks, don't plan to stop anytime soon, but it's one day at a time so I won't predict..
e-mailling or calling her (leaving message etc) EVERY DAY! With the goal of actually talking once a weekActually that bit was my idea. My last sponsor was a wonderful woman but our relationship was too loosey goosey and I need more help.
working on those step questions
sent her a detailled plan of eating
going to 2 meetings minimum a week. That was my idea, I've got 2 I really like, plus I tried a phone meeting for the first time this month. Not as good as F2F meeting but a reinforcement. It's in the early morning so I can listen via speakerphone as I try to wake up.

Anyway, it seems to be working. In spades. OH YEAH, I DID TWEAK MY FOOD PLAN ONE MORE TIME: no snacks. 3 meals a day. That's it except for beverages in between meals. That was a tough one to consider, but I tried it for a day, then another, then another... it has made my days so incredibly, stupidly simple. Have lunch. Then the kitchen is closed until dinner. Dinner happens, good dinner, maybe some dessert, and then, kitchen closed. I did not WANT to do this, I was forced to; Because I have had, particularly over the last year, such maddening trouble with shutting the refrigerator after supper. One little snack. A little nibble more. Oh just a taste, what the heck. Yes, all the hackneyed, cobwebby excuses came out of the closet. For the longest time i felt eliminating snacks was too draconian. But I simply got too desperate to hold out any longer. The late night snacks were getting bigger, leading to WTF binges. So. I had to. I was given no choice.

And the most amazing thing has been happening (well, you can easily guess, it's not that amazing): I have had the most peaceful month. Life has turned on a dime. I think it's the daily work, the reaching out to my sponsor, reading the daily readings from For Today and Voices of Recovery and considering that in order to have consistent recovery, I have to work on my spirituality, and look at placing my trust in a power greater than myself. This week it's called my higher power. Next week, who knows. Some days I call it God, but only in the vaguest terms. And I'm diving into the Big Book again, trying to glean new gold from those old pages.

So be skeptical. I would be. Damn, there is still half of my brain that is still skeptical, but maybe that's the sick half. For today, it seems to be working.

Oh yeah, just one more scary/spooky thing... I got back into the studio this month. Hadn't been there for months, I had been working on home reno, and it just wasn't coming. Now I've been there 4 & 5 days a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Suddenly it's flowing, and the fear is most times lifted, it seems easier, there's a new confidence, the old scary mean voices are much quieter. I think it's all related, oh who knows, I'm just going to ride this wave as long as I can.

Cheers.

Gotta Love this *&(^%$#@ Going to Any Lengths Stuff

2008-12-28T11:14:00.002-05:00

The holidays were not very good for my food.

Cooked too much, ate too much. Actually, they weren't horrible, perhaps I'm just more aware of how weird my eating gets when given the slightest opportunity. It wasn't until the morning of the 26th when I was eating cake and pan rolls for breakfast with a chaser of jellybeans that I said to myself, "ok, this is nuts."

The book Alcoholics Anonymous calls the disease of alcoholism "cunning, baffling and powerful" , and I think it applies just as well to eating disorders, which in my case is binge eating. In this case, I think my disease uses the lamest most hackneyed excuses to get me to eat, like:

I'll have just one, and stop. (Since when have you been able to do that?)
I have to taste it to see if it needs more...something. (But why do you have to taste it 13 times?)
They'll be upset if I don't have one. (Will they even notice, and if they do, what does that say about them?)
It's not what I usually eat but they haven't got what I usually eat... (Heaven forbid you die of starvation before the next meal)

Showing up

2008-12-18T10:50:00.003-05:00

Some days, like Woody Allen said (I think) 80% of success is just showing up. So, I'm here. I'm tired because I stayed up too late finishing off a pair of socks I was knitting, after staying late at the pub with some of my choirwhore pals. Ah, only days ago I was staying up too late finishing off a box of chocolates. Amazing the difference a few days of working the program can make: I forget how desperate I was, how I was lost in the grip of getting, eating, and getting more food. As can I forget, when I'm in the food, what it was like to be well.

Actually, that's not quite true. It's been said that being in OA really ruins a good binge, and they're right. When I have a binge, I keep seeing how crappy it really is, and after a day or two, really crave returning to sanity, so I get my ass to a meeting, or call someone, to get me out of the spiral. The real trick is not getting into that spiral. That's why I'm here. I'm really seeing these days how not dealing with my emotions leads me straight back into the food.

In one of the ironies of life, I have to go now to deliver 5 boxes of food and over two hundred dollars in cash that we collected for the local food bank at our choir friends and family event. That's the thing about food, it's not like alcohol. Unlike a recovering alcoholic whose mantra is No Matter What, Don't Drink, I don't have that option with food, that would be anorexic. Food is a basic part of life, so I need to learn how to deal with that part of living.

Bummer, dude. But it is what it is. I just have to keep believing that there is a point for my existence to give me strength to keep going.

Today's Gratitudes

2008-12-16T11:51:00.002-05:00

I know it sounds pollyanna, but it does help me feel better. So here goes, 20 of the suckers, done in pure stream of consciousness mode:

Fuzz
warm blankets
sunshine
functioning car
pumpkin color walls
comfy kitchen chairs
good lunch with creative friend
my running group that gets me out even when cold
my oa group that helps me pick up and go on
skating buddy
dinner for tonight already cooked
good friend back from Mexico
her cleaning lady
a home mainly paid for
my stained glass supplies turning up
tolerant friends and family
still hangin on
a good therapist I've had now for over 5 years (a record)
crazy cats
a great neighbour and BF and her hubby and kid who keep her sane even if she doesn't think so...

Insidious Oblivion

2008-12-16T10:33:00.002-05:00

Ok, it's painfully obvious that I will do many things to avoid writing about my feelings. This morning, for example, I've spent an hour on the computer tinkering with settings, browsing, reading and replying to e-mail and facebook posts, in short, anything but actually doing the kind of writing that will keep me away from the food. I was brought up short when, on the way back to the table from the loo I had a sudden urge to shave a sliver off of last night's tourtiere.

Purely for research purposes mind you, as I want to make some as christmas gifts, and had purchased a pricey boutique bakery version to study their technique (which besides the addition of a few nice spices seems to boil down to butter, butter everywhere...) Never mind the fact I had had plenty of opportunity to sample it as we had nice size slices for dinner last night. But maybe it would reveal some more secrets cold.... nope. No secrets, just guilt. But that's my disease, coming up with the most shameless hackneyed excuse for eating and then when I follow through on it, it's right there offering a heapin' helpin' o' shame.

But I'm not going to beat myself up over it. It wasn't a binge, it was a sliver. A small slip. I've got to avoid being so black and white in my thinking as in my food. Moderation. Gentleness. Tolerance. For myself and others. So... onward.

I'm feeling holiday pressure. In laws coming over on The Big Day. Eek eek EEEEEK. The last time that happened, which was jeez, over a decade ago, I panicked and cooked enough for at least 12 when there were actually only 5 of us. So this year, scaling down. I've even lucked into having my friend Carole's cleaning lady coming to clean two days before. But the house is a half painted, half renoed mess, but jeez it's so much nicer than it was. I'm paralysed trying to figure out what I should attack next, the crappy drywall in the bathroom, filling nail holes in the kitchen, trying to smooth out the kitchen ceiling... paint the stairs to cover the bare plywood, paint the front foyer and closet, the bathroom, the kitchen???? Aughhhhhhh! I went into a complete spin last week over this, went to bed, covered my head, and ate a ton. A bad binge. I'm just so lucky I had promised my buddy M a drive to the OA meeting that morning. It got me out of it.

So let's look at priorities:

Has to be being abstinent. Work my programme.
The house needs to be reasonably clean. Yay cleaning lady!
Work on my physical fitness this week, including running group, skating tomorrow and a trip to the gym on Friday.
I'd like to paint in the kitchen, maybe get the cupboards and ceiling painted for once. The rest can follow later
Put a tree up. No design questions, just put every freakin' ornament we own on the poor thing until it threatens to fall over.
Make some tourtiere to give friends as gifts.
Make a sensible Christmas meal, not the feast to end all feasts.
Un-stress. Enjoy the day. Cook the damn turkey the day before.

Ok, time to go work on more programme stuff. Do my daily readings, maybe look at some step work. Then lunch, and some spackle.

An Alien Amongst You

2008-12-15T10:24:00.005-05:00

One of the things one of my OA mentors has suggested is to reread twice daily pages 30 & 31 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous (known in our rooms simply as the "Big Book", a reference to its large bible-like size when originally published over 80 years ago). In my book, I've crossed out the references to alcohol and substituted words referring to food and compulsive overeating. Basically, the purpose of the passage is to make us realize that for us compulsive eaters, for whatever reason, be it nature or nurture or both (after years of puzzling, searching and asking professionals and getting conflicting answers I finally realize it may not really matter what the root cause is) we are somehow made differently from other people and it makes us react to food in a dysfunctional manner. I've begun to form a disease model around this tendency.

I thought I had grasped that. I thought my problem was I felt so hopeless I thought I might as well eat. But, and I've just made this connection, my original problem this last fall was complacency, as after 3+ months of a good fall where I had been doing the morning routine and life was going ok, I stopped the routine, and fell into a trap of my own construction. Or, to put it in a less self-judgmental manner, I fell into a trap of the disease's construction. Someone I quite respect who even so, half the time drives me nuts once said that her disease's most dangerous symptom is it makes her forget that she has this disease.

The forgetting makes me stop doing the things that keep me sane. I guess my disease model is of a mental disease with physical symptoms --- the compulsive bingeing.

Here's a bit of that passage as adapted for my purposes (my changed bits in italics):

"Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real food addicts. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from others. Therefore, it is not surprising that our struggles with food
have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy moderate eating is the great obsession of every abnormal eater. The persistance of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were compulsive overeaters. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

We compulsive overeaters are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating. We know that no real food addict ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals --- usually brief ---- were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a single soul that compulsive eaters of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, not better.

We are like those who have lost their legs; they never grow good ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make compulsive eaters of our kind like other people. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with eating disorders agree there is no such thing as making a normal eater out of a compulsive eater. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.

Despite all we can say, many who have eating disorders are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore non-addicted. If anyone who is showing ability to control his eating can do the right-about-face and eat like the normal person, our hats are off to them. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to eat like other people!

Yup, I recognize the demoralization part. Maybe, just maybe, this hopelessness and worthlessness I feel hanging on to me, like a Dickensian wraith, is a disease symptom itself. I have to put that aside and believe the others that value me... I'm going to make a list to make myself remember that:

Fuzz
my studio mate who's invited me out for lunch today
people who invite me to sing with them
BF who wants us to spend xmas dinner with them
Fuzz's folks who don't understand us but want us to have dinner with them
Mary
friends in OA
other friends

ok ok, I'm worthwhile, I get it... ah, that I really believed it. Perhaps this requires the "act as if" stuff they talk about in the rooms, that if I pretend I do enough I will actually start believing it. OK ok, for today, I will act as if my life has a point.

Coming Clean: REALLY Struggling with the Food

2008-12-15T10:04:00.003-05:00

I'm having troubles with the food. Big surprise, I'm a compulsive overeater. It just seemed to come to a head in the last couple of weeks. This was after nearly 90 days of sanity after attending a retreat in the fall where I latched on to a morning routine to get my feelings on paper. I was feeling so good, I stopped the routine. Possibly, I fell into complacency, subconsicously believing, "well, I'm fine now...."

So I slipped. And slipped hard, with 4 no-shit episodes of binge eating over the last month, precipitated by a persistant virus/cold that really made my emotions do a nose dive. Life seemed pointless some days. As of today, I'm in my 3rd day "clean". It doesn't feel particularly hard right now, but it can turn on a dime from sane to "fuck it, I'm shit, there is no hope, and I'm going to what I want to do, which is eat". One night I was in physical pain, I had stuffed so much food down my throat. Thankfully I did not feel compelled to throw up, because I feel that bulimia is another eating disorder even more serious than bingeing.

It always starts with the emotions for me. I don't think that the base problem is food in itself. The food, bad as it is, is "merely" a symptom. That's a pretty bad symptom. So the feelings must feel pretty big. Luckily, I've been staying in close touch with a couple of women who between them must have 40 years of experience in Overeaters Anonymous. And they've been helping me through this by encouraging me to stay in contact with them and work the OA programme.

But when I am feeling vulnerable, I hate writing. So, here I am, because it seems easier to blog than write. Of course, when blogging, I wonder about a tendency to gloss things over. Well, maybe, but it's better than nothing. I can always tell myself that not many people read this anyway...

I hate running! No, I love running! No, I hate running, no wait, I love running....oh pooh on it...

2008-08-22T13:09:00.002-04:00

Just one of the stories of my summer. I have this love-hate relationship with running. And last week I kind of hit a real bottom (like falling down the old rabbit hole) and tearfully told my coach I was quitting. He sort of talked me out of it, well, he just humoured me. I'm sure he's done it many times, but of course, I thought my misery was special. I really did do a number on myself, it was like I was 300 pounds again. It happens from time to time, I go back to that very dark place. I'll have a bad day, or a string of them, and suddenly I'm in that place where I'm a big lumpy failure.

Now, in my running group, I can safely say I am one of the slowest. We do these interval trials on a small route fairly regularly, and I'm always being passed by these younger, fitter, genetically different atheletes. And then there was the night when we did a 5 k to see how fast we could do it. I was dead last and not having fun AT ALL. It was hot and I wondered why the hell I was putting myself up for this misery. My head was throbbing and my chest couldn't get enough air.

All that was fine and good, I was within reason to be frustrated. What happened next was where maybe I crossed some sort of mental line into crazy. Emotionally, things got very, very dark. I was a loser. I couldn't do this. I quit. Give up, uncle. This life is for others, not losers like me. After the run was over, I walked to a quiet area of the park and cried for a long time, until I figured out I had marooned Fuzz at the parking lot without the car key.

I was in a bleak mood for the rest of the night. The miracle was I didn't eat over it. I had a long e-mail conversation with my coach about it, and I'm still processing it. I'm not feeling nearly so bad now, I'm back to regular running, but the whole event has been interesting as a demonstration of where my brain can go, possibly when I'm not careful about my mental hygiene. It's likely no coincidence that this happened while both my sponsor and my therapist were out of town, and I was only hitting one meeting a week due to holidays and home reno.

Living with the Fear

2008-06-20T12:11:00.002-04:00

I was finished running last night, on the way home with Fuzz and looking forward to having a dinner of excellent leftover curry, garlic broccoli and basmati rice. But I was in a funk. Why? Well, it was my non-dessert night. A while back, I decided I really did not need dessert (usually an ounce of 85% chocolate) every night, and since I'd like to be about five pounds lighter, Itried doing it just every second night. I realized I was bummed out about that. And then I thought, "How pitiful is that? Is my life so meaningless, that the highlight of my day is dessert?!" Turns out that was the least of my problems. Whether it's allergies or a cold, I spent all evening sneezing and going through wads of Kleenex. Not eating dessert was easy. Walking and talking, feeding the cats without banging into things quickly became less so. I went to bed early, comforted by reading about David Sedaris' boil.

I don't know why I'm surprised at my chocolate funk. I'm a compulsive overeater! Oh duh, that again. Someone has said that addiction (and I include food addiction in this) is the only disease whose primary symptom may be forgetting that you have the disease. Just look at my history: Food, at many, many times of my life, has been my primary occupation: getting it, making it, eating it, getting more, over and over, ad nauseum. It has only been the last five years, since being in Overeaters Anonymous and working damn hard in therapy and in support groups that I have been able to craft much of a life outside the food. So yeah, it figures that I'm bummed I'm not having dessert. As many times as I tell myself, this isn't my last supper, I will eat again, on some level I still don't believe it. I'm actually mildly surprised that for two weeks I've been able to survive every second day without it. Interestingly, there was a time I wasn't eating sweet stuff much at all, so how did chocolate become a daily thing again anyway? I think it was probably with the publication of those studies saying that extra dark chocolate might be good for you. But as a friend pointed out, if you're doing something daily, it goes from being a treat to being a lifestyle.

I've written here about my issues with the midnight nibblies. I think it becomes harder to escape the food in the evening when I'm supposed to be relaxing. During the day there's work, chores, a schedule. At night is when the greeblies come out to dance on my brain. I've been aware for sometime that I have this baseline level of unfocused fear that starts murmuring at the back of my consciousness even before I wake up. I think that has something to do with it. I talked about it to my therapist tomorrow and we discussed just being aware of it. I guess that's the first step, and therefore the first of the 12 steps could be easily applied to it: I admitted I was powerless over it and it's making my life unmanageable, or in other words, the fear makes me bummed out I'm not going to have dessert. Hm. More shall be revealed, I'm sure... My sponsor's back and there's gonna be writing...

It's Official: I'm a Geezer

2008-06-19T00:40:00.002-04:00

This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I turned 47 a couple of weeks ago.

No, what happened is, I bought a Wii a couple of months ago, and it's been fine. Cute, fun. But, not all that I had hoped. It doesn't really require much physical prowess to become a Wii bowling or tennis expert, and even the cow racing lost it's allure after a couple of weeks. I suppose I could buy some better games for it, but I've got a new interest: golf. Yes, that's right. Golf. The game of a million geezers. I know, I know, and Tiger Woods, but face it, it's like riding a Harley. It's mainly played by geezers.

I've just played a little, but now I want my own set of clubs. And noticed they had a women's set at Costco for about what I paid for the Wii. I then had the idea that selling the Wii to my neighbour would pay for the clubs.

Why does golf appeal to me more than the Wii? Well, so far, I'm finding it more fun. And actually better exercise. Outdoors. Even if it is on such neurotically groomed grass. Who can believe that stuff is actually real? It should be an offense to make grass that behaves like astroturf, Still, being outdoors for 3 hours with my friends and then dinner beats the experience on the couch hands down.

I never thought I would play golf. Just one of those new discoveries.

Life is Pretty Good

2008-06-09T07:54:00.003-04:00

Sorry I haven't been around much lately, but life has been pretty good. And I've been busy. Maybe a little too busy? Certainly I haven't had much time for introspection, but I still seem to have time to be a couch potato. This morning I'm only here is because I couldn't sleep. So, I've done laundry and had breakfast, done the e-mail, and so... it's either this or go to work. And I don't want to do that for another hour.

Interesting things I've discovered:

Doing things like planting stuff and cleaning up can actually make me feel better.

Sweating will not kill me.

It's possible to get through a night without chocolate.

I need to schedule regular appointments to talk to people in program about program. Not about golf or travel...

I might actually like golf. A brand new discovery. Mind you, at this point I haven't actually played a round, only been on the driving range.

Sometimes the easier way is ok. Not everything has to be done from scratch.

Just because I'm eating healthier, it doesn't mean meals can't sometimes be fairly quick and simple.

Every meal is not my Last Supper.

Lying on the deck with your feet in a still too-cool pool is almost as good as being in the pool.

It's never too late to go back to bed. Which is where I'm going right now.

Coming out the Other Side

2008-05-19T08:59:00.002-04:00

This has been an emotionally rocky month for me. I've really had this persistent malaise for most of may and it's been tough. But today, the only day that matters, I'm doing ok. Despite the fact it's a holiday Monday here in Canada (Victoria Day), I got up at the usual time and phoned my food buddy. We rarely talk about anything earthshaking, just how's your food, but it's one of those regular aspects of my OA program that I've come to rely on. It just keeps me closer to good habits, and keeps me fairly honest about my food. Nothing earth shattering, just a new, healthier habit that helps with my sanity.

Amazingly, although I've felt like utter crap some days, I haven't binged over it and I've got almost 2 months with no binge. So that's great. But if I'm going to log some serious sanity time with the food, I need to do some more footwork. Today, my mood is such that it seems possible. I've had a great week, and I think it has everything to do with the healthy relationships I've formed with the people I've met at OA. I went on my first ever organized hike with a group because of my sponsor yesterday. 10 km, which at times felt like it was 10 k straight up and then 10 k down... my toes is sore today, but we did it! Which reminds me.... I've got to phone an OA buddy. My sponsor and this woman helped me move 3 cubic yards of topsoil I had delivered this week and we're going to repeat the favour for another OA friend who's been ill and unable to work in her garden.

Ok, I've got to go, but I just wanted to check in. Later today I'll post some more. I need to do some writing about long term abstinence. I think it's needed... Today, I've got some access to joy in my heart. What a gift.

This Too, However Weird, Will Pass

2008-05-06T16:58:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-04T12:00:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-27T11:39:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-22T11:32:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-15T10:49:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-14T11:04:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-11T11:59:00.002-04:00

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.

These Good Times are Hard on Me

2008-04-10T09:44:00.002-04:00

I went to bed last night and my brain was just spinning. Monkey mind, a 12-step friend calls it, although I think she got the term from Bhuddists trying to calm their minds in meditation. So, I did my version of meditation. I silently repeated the Serenity Prayer over and over until I went to sleep, which felt like an hour, but I doubt it was more than fifteen minutes. I had had a great couple of days --- I drove to Toronto to meet up with Fuzz where he was at a conference. We had a great thali at our favorite Indian dive (decor by MacDonalds, food by Delhi) and then a concert by the Finnish acapella group Rajaton --- wow! We stayed at Fuzz's hotel overnight and when he returned to his meetings, I continued the Scandinavian theme and took off for Ikea and spent a great morning buying baskets, rugs and hooks and a big new hutch for our kitchen. Then I drove home at breakneck speed for our choir rehearsal which went really well (unlike last week --- that was the topic of the last post) and I felt good.

Of course, travelling I ate a little too much and I had a really rich brownie at the social after the rehearsal. The sad thing was I was talking with another painter at the same time so I didn't even taste the brownie. I really regretted that. It was a good brownie but I just inhaled it.

I think there was a fair bit of subconscious anxiety going on though. And it made me wonder what was going on, as it seems to fuel my compulsion to overeat. I went to bed although I wasn't very sleepy, but it was self defense; I knew that staying up later would be dangerous, food wise. Which explains a bit of the monkey mind.

For some reason what floated into my mind when preparing for bed was an image from over a quarter century in the past: I was a junior in high school and had a part in a play, and I remember buying a box of crackers and eating a lot of them, in secret. It was a very happy time (I loved acting) but I know there was a lot of social anxiety on my part as most of the other actors were older than me and I really felt the odd girl out. It seems like performance, acting, or singing, activities which I love, also raises big worries ... the old Sally Field thing: "You love me, you really love me!!!" But there's also the worry that maybe people are looking at me, silently mocking me, or even worse, thinking me too proud and despising me for it. In other words, I'm being uppity and I'm going to get my comeuppance.

Hm. That's interesting. I think that can explain that tendency to overeat when things are going well. At least on the surface, they are going well, but underneath, like a cold stream flowing through my veins (or at least my digestive tract) is that anxiety. I'm not sure what, if anything I can do about that beyond doing what my therapist (and a meditation teacher I once had) suggests, but just notice it. Honour that I have that feeling. And then let it go. It will return, I'm sure, but I think the awareness of it alone robs it of some of the power to control me.

Skinless

2008-04-03T10:54:00.004-04:00

I felt very raw yesterday, as if I had no skin, and every activity felt like I was getting a pin stuck into me. The day didn't go all that well initially, involving some plumbing problems that ended with water coming through the light fixtures on the floor below. Shit happens, and plumbing follows. At least the flood was clean water. As a result, my plans for the afternoon did go pretty much awry, but at least I got an hour and a half in the studio. Then there was choir practice, and I felt raw again, because there were issues that as a board member I got stuck in the middle of. Or rather, perhaps I stuck myself in the middle. There are many board members, but I think I made it my responsibility to deal with some issues, and then I felt overtaxed.

Oh well, at least I got reimbursed for some expenditures I had made, that should help with the plumbing expenses. But by the time I got home last night, I felt wilted, bagged. And I ate a big heaping bowl of coleslaw. Lowfat coleslaw, but just the same, an odd choice for 10 pm. Then I had my regular chocolate and decaf, and I felt full, and sheepish, but I had to admit, I still felt just like one big raw nerve. I comforted myself a bit by wimpering pitifully and leaning on Fuzz's back while he brushed his teeth, making comforting sounds, and that felt better. It would be good if I just did that first, without the food being my first port of call.

I'm still thinking about that whole victim thing, particularly as I publish these cartoons about my earlier life. I don't know where this is going, but I know I feel overly responsible for things.

It's a beautiful spring day outside, and I think I'll go downtown to do some errands before a therapy appointment and going to the studio, maybe treat myself to a sandwich there at the same time. Getting outside may get myself out of my head. Speaking of which, here's another random memory from my kidhood...

Diggin' in the Dirt...

2008-04-02T12:16:00.003-04:00

The last week has been interesting. It's quite amazing to be in the position of being grateful that I had a food incident, my "bingette" of last week, because I seem to have been given some revelations about some aspects of my... what would you call it? A modern term for it would be my "operating system", but you could also call it my unconscious philosophy of life, or my schema if you will, my concept of the world and my place in it.

I had a breakthrough like this a few months ago when I realized just how controlled I was by my worries of other people's opinion of my work in the studio, and this kind of fits with it, my feeling of being a victim, something that dates back to my early days with my family. Somewhere I really identified with this and I have a feeling that by working with this old, and pretty outdated image of myself I can actually get a measure of peace.

So much of my inner work of the last 7 years has been looking at my experiences in the early years that have shaped my viewpoint. It's just been the last year or so after a fairly intense few months of depression that I've been able to address how those experiences color my present life and how they actually don't fit my life now, allowing me to put them aside to have a clearer view of reality. More specifically, I can see how I'm not the victim I used to be, and so don't have to still act like one.

Maybe when I was a kid I ate excessively to comfort myself in the face of events that I had no control over. Now that I'm an adult, I have control over much more in my life, and I don't have to eat like I'm still a victim.

Adventures in Ancient History...

2008-04-01T12:21:00.004-04:00

Stepwork Sinks In, Slowly

2008-03-31T09:25:00.004-04:00

"Stepwork". That's the process of using the 12 steps of OA, AA, NA, whatever 12 step program you like, to help me work out issues in my life. Sound like fun? You're right, it's not. It's tough slog, but I work the steps because I haven't otherwise learned a good way to deal with life's issues without regularly stuffing myself with food.

Lately, I've been trying to work on an issue in a relationship with a friend, and it's been interesting. I've written on it a couple of times (not here, it's too private and my emotions too strong to really be honest about them here--- yes, believe it or not, I don't post everything I think), and some revelations have come to me, particularly as I mused on step 4, the "fearless and searching moral inventory". It took a few weeks and a big food slip for me to get to this place, so it's not a quick fix. Step 4 is where I looked at the issue, who was involved, and what emotions this issue was raising . What I found was fear, and the origins of that fear, namely, how this issue sends me back to early life as an only child with an emotionally absent mother and physically absent father --- he travelled for work a lot when I was young. I also had very few friends. I was a very lonely, sad and frustrated kid.

I began to see that it wasn't so much that I was responding to a friend who I saw as abandoning me (I knew she would be away a lot when we got to know each other) as I was responding to my parents who weren't there when I needed them. Old fears were being triggered, and I was responding to those as much, if not more, than my present issue.

The other thing that came to me in the last couple of days was my part in the matter: I didn't think I had any control over how much I saw my friend, but I did. I have had opportunities to spend more time with my friend but have chosen not to for various reasons. And I didn't exactly burn up the phone lines trying to reach her. I made a few late attempts, just enough to make me feel good and smug in my victimhood. Oh dear, it's not pleasant to discover how much more comfortable it is to feel cheesed off in my default position as lonely, abandoned child victim.

I also forgot that in my life now, I have lots of friends. I am no longer that lonely child. I have many healthy relationships in the Overeaters Anonymous program, and friendships outside of the program that have been strengthened because I can work the steps rather than be a loose cannon fuelled on excess food. Then, I start feeling grateful, and a modicum of peace dawns on the horizon. Amazingly, that seems to have a fairly direct impact on my eating: I feel like I have more options, and the gnawing hunger diminishes. When I am stuck in the dead end alley of feeling used, victimized, eating seems like the only thing I can do to make myself feel better. This is a new thing, seeing how I let myself slip into that victim mode, and I'm sure it's not going to be the last time, but it's a really hopeful start. Not only can I see the importance of being more in touch with my needs and expressing them, but now I see how valuable it is to question my self image, particularly the one where I see myself as the constant victim.

Uncomfortable Emotions, Eating, and Happiness

2008-03-27T10:19:00.005-04:00

There's an old saying that floats through the Overeaters Anonymous rooms: "It's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you", and I'm a big believer in that. I think that most of my food cravings come when I'm hurting, emotionally, or spiritually. A couple of other sayings related to that, seen on fridge magnets, are "The answer isn't in here" and "Face your stuff, or stuff your face". They all point to the importance of dealing with uncomfortable feelings so A) I feel better and B) so I don't eat. Interestingly, I only became aware recently that A) feeling better was the ultimate goal of all the therapy, support group meetings, writing and prayer that I've been doing.

Like most desperate compulsive overeaters, all I could see for the longest time was the goal of not eating like a crazy person. Only recently has it dawned on me that yes, that is a great and admirable goal, one that many of us struggle fruitlessly to achieve, but the ultimate goal is feeling whole, having a richer and fuller life, where food is not the point of living. You know, it's that eating to live, not living to eat maxim, and I think it's only starting to sink in. Obviously, I'm still having trouble with the compulsion to eat in an unhealthy manner. I was a dieter for most of my 40- some years on this planet, obsessed with losing weight, and I believed that if I could only be thin, I would be happy.

Well, if that were true, I would have been happy enough to stay thin all those times throughout my life when I had managed to lose large amounts of weight, instead of regaining the weight plus more each time. Through working the OA program and doing therapy I am now a healthy weight, but as Fran Kuffel so cleverly put it in the title of her poignant memoir Passing for Thin, I am only "passing" as a thin person. Inside I am still a compulsive overeater whose relationship with my emotions, and any sense of real hunger is tenuous at best.

Yesterday was fairly hectic, but I realized that in the light of my "binge-ette" three nights ago, I needed to spend a few minutes processing my feelings. And what I found was an old resentment that I had only partially dealt with a couple of weeks ago. So I did some writing on it, and today, I have to do some more, otherwise, I have learned at my peril, it will come back again to, frankly, bite me in the ass! Emotions are clever things, they always out. Even when I think, "I've dealt with that already!" it can come back. Just like the bhuddists say when they talk about life being not a straight line, but a spiral, where the same issues will often come back repeatedly in different guises or intensities. I guess by dealing with them, I can at least follow the spiral path, and not wear the same old circle in the grass, chasing my tail (or Oreos) over and over.

Was it a Slip or a Binge?

2008-03-26T12:11:00.003-04:00

That's the big question for me today. But you know, it's not really important. Adding up the days of abstinence are nice, but they don't matter as much as me figuring out what happened and what I need to do avoid unhealthy actions. Two nights ago I started to eat after my husband went to bed. I justified it as a snack. But the snack did not end. I had a few almonds, and then some leftover turkey and stuffing, and then some more almonds, and some frozen chocolate, and then a slice of bread and butter. I didn't think I was bingeing but I might have been deceiving myself, because when I finally went to bed, my stomach was a little sore. The next morning, I got my usual oatmeal and looked at it and went, "ugh". I was not hungry, in fact I felt physically ill, just this side of barfy. Not a sign of culinary health.

Finally, I decided that I had broken my abstinence. My definition of abstinence is no bingeing and lately, I had narrowed it to no eating after dinner and my one or two planned snacks in the evening. So, technically, I would have broken it the moment I ate those first almonds. If I had stopped after the first handfull, I might have just given myself a pass and said, ok, that was just a slip, and not declared a break in abstinence. But the problem is, and the reason I have recently defined it so narrowly, is I have a difficult time stopping after just one bite. In fact, it feels nigh on impossible. Am I setting myself up to fail here? Am I being too black and white about it? That's a good question. I don't have a good answer. Except I do know that I did spend a lot of time "cutting myself a break" over the last couple of years, and I was gaining weight. When became more hardline on my definition of abstinence, about 5 months ago, I stopped gaining and even lost a little. And then I talked to some OA friends about it, and I went to a meeting last night. That was great. I was honest, and I heard the hope in my voice. I don't care how many days or minutes of abstinence I have, I still am WAAAAAY ahead of where I was five years ago.

There were a couple of interesting things about this break in abstinence: One, it wasn't one of my "classic" binges. The food consumed was less, and my stomach wasn't nearly as full (when I binge it usually is until I am so full I am in pain) Two, I wasn't hungry the next morning. I was really off my food. But by lunch time I was overhungry, and maybe a little hypoglycemic; I was feeling a little spacey and dizzy by the time I ate lunch. I think I was actually feeling physical effects from what I had eaten. Historically, I was so distanced from stomach & hunger cues that I can't seem to feel "true" hunger (rather than constant hunger) or anything less than greatly overfull. So, that was interesting, and maybe some progress.

But if I'm making this progress, why the binge? What happened? Well, it feels as if I was running from my feelings. I can tell right now that I'm waking up anxious. It seems I haven't been writing enough, I hadn't posted anything here for three days. I'm still feeling like a loose cannon after being sick and March break, I haven't been in the studio much at all. It all feels like my head and body aren't connected. I'm not getting the emotional/spiritual nourishment that I need. My sponsor is hard to reach, and I still have a hard time reaching out to others in the programme when I'm feeling glum, angry, whatever. Never enters my mind to call someone rather than have "just a little" nibble.

That's how it starts, with Just a little. And just a little would be fine, and I think that's where normal, non-compulsive eaters don't get those of us who can't seem to stop after just a little. They say, ok, well, have just a little, then you'll be sated, and stop. But it doesn't seem to work that way. There is a gnawing inside that instead of being calmed by a little bite, seems to wake up from a dormant state and roar for more. Either that, or it's been roaring for some time, I just don't become aware of it until I've fed it.

Anyway, I'm back on the horse, and I know I am on the right track. I'm not perfect, but I've had the true experience of another freakin' growth opportunity, and for that, I'm grateful.

One Foot in Front of the Other

2008-03-21T12:32:00.003-04:00

Some days I don't feel like continuing, but I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, sometimes literally, say if I'm exercising or reluctantly dragging myself to exercise, or sometimes metaphorically, say, well, here. This is my personal work, and it's important, because even if not many people look at this blog, it's mainly for me. Keeping me out of the "existential angst" as a friend of mine observed this morning as the place we so often get mired up. I guess that can be seen as a possible pitfall of the "artistic" temperament. Maybe that's the problem with many of us COE's (Compulsive Over Eaters)... we're artistic temperaments caught in a world that is hopelessly wedded to the concrete.

So I gotta do the footwork, which feels like I'm humouring myself. But the alternative seems to be greater or lesser degrees of misery. So... putting it that way, if the alternative is to do some writing here, then go into the studio for a couple of hours, it seems like an ok tradeoff. So what if I'm not making much money right now? We're getting by. No cartoon today, I want to spend the time painting this afternoon. I don't think... alright, well, let me see how long it would take to post one...

And again, it takes me two hours to clean up, arrange and post a cartoon. Oh well, I still have time to get a couple hours in the studio. Enjoy...

Dealin' Wid the Feelin's

2008-03-20T13:19:00.003-04:00

If Moses Were In OA...

2008-03-16T18:48:00.006-04:00

Yeah, I'm just grumpy today. I was this way yesterday too. But it happens. I think I need to get back to work. The week off was nice, but I need to be working in order to feel I have some purpose. Does that make me a workaholic? Maybe. I'm certainly married to one, but mine takes a more subtle form. I don't work a lot, but I worry about it a great deal. Sounds like my perfectionism acting up. Again. Ah, the hindsight benefits of years of therapy and just over 5 years of being in Overeaters Anonymous. Oh rats! That's right, I forgot: I've been coming to the rooms 5 years the first of this month! It's been kind of like my marriage: I was never sure I'd be around this long and then I look back and marvel how it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long. It feels simultaneously as if I've been going to OA meetings forever and just a few weeks.

It was at a meeting yesterday that I remembered why OA works for me when all other things hadn't. It answered the question a sponsee posed earlier in the week. And that answer is... drumroll... spirituality. And the Group.

You were expecting bright lights, wahoo, yipee diet secrets, a burning bush, maybe? Yeah, well, that's what I was hoping for too, but no bushes are burning when I open the fridge door. I have to admit I'll still pick up the latest diet book trumpeting life changing secrets at the book store too, but usually I'll do it gingerly, read it for about half a minute and put it back with the rest, because I'm no different than most people. I'd love a quick fix that works. None has. Just look at all them books...

I am one of the last persons who wanted a spiritual program. I'm a fairly virulently lapsed Catholic, and the last thing I wanted to hear was anything resembling church talk. I am still close to agnostic, but here's what happened: I was desperate. I couldn't go three days without a binge, and I was so full of fear and angst, I could barely work. When my therapist sent me back to OA (her other choices were inpatient treatment and bariatric surgery was a very distant third in my books), I was desperate enough to think maybe, just maybe I didn't have the faintest idea what was good for me, and just trying a little faith in a higher power, might help, well, what did I have to lose? Other than the obvious 150 I so desperately wanted to lose...

I was also assured that OA was not a religion. But they do talk about God a lot. Yup. No arguments from me on that point. But it's a fairly ecumenical God, using the word as shorthand for a higher power. Twelve-step programs, originating with AA, came into being in the early part of the twentieth century between the world wars, when most Americans identified as believing in God. So, the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which still is the basic text for most 12 step groups, does mention God a lot. But after initial discomfort with it, I accepted it as a shorthand for a nebulous higher power I can feel in those moments when I plug into the universe, detaching my idea of a God/ higher power from the one I was raised with. To steal a phrase I heard in a meeting, I was able to stop thinking of God as the stereotypical old guy in a nightie, sitting on a cloud and shooting lightning bolts at me.

I just let myself give the whole God question the benefit of the doubt. Look, I'd fucked my life up pretty good here, what did I really have to lose by that? It didn't seem like a cult, because they didn't want much money, just some coins in the basket at the end of the meeting. I didn't even have to buy any of the books, I could just use the group copies or borrow someone else's to read during the meeting.

I don't think I can explain it here, at least not today. I'll take another crack at it tomorrow. I just know that even on a day, today, when I've been fairly grumpy (yeah, that again) I haven't overeaten. This afternoon Fuzz and I braved the treacherous slushy sidewalks of downtown for an afternoon walk --- the sun was wonderful --- and had coffee and split one of the world's yummiest brownies at our local young commie veggie joint.

On the way home I told Fuzz I was a bit grumpy at the thought of having what's usually an evening treat in the afternoon, kind of making me feel like there wasn't much to look forward to for the rest of the day. Then I said, well, if I really wanted, I could have some dark chocolate this evening in place of my yogurt and fruit snack. A rare exception to my rule of getting 3 fruit and 2 dairy every day. But tonight, I didn't eat the chocolate. I went for the yogurt and a banana. And it was ok. It was the healthy choice. And I don't really have a clue why I can do this now and not before. Except when I was in the meeting yesterday, I felt great. That keeps me going.

The Continuing Adventures of Fat Maggie

2008-03-14T16:15:00.002-04:00

Well, this has been an interesting day. This has been a fairly unstructured week, as Fuzz is on March break. A couple of hours ago I was a little depressed because I felt like I wasn't accomplishing much today, but now it's nearly 6 pm and I think I maybe I needed a day of not doing much so I could clean up the cartoons above to post, and while adjusting them, I thought about how much my life has changed just from when I originally drew them in 2006.

I don't actually spend many days in bed anymore. In fact, I don't think I've done that in months. Not that there is anything wrong with that.... I still may spend the morning there, reading, having breakfast, or writing, but I don't hide there so much any more. I guess I'm dealing with life a little more. It's not perfect, but when I can stop, turn around and see where I was and where I am, there has been a definite shift. I've worked on changing and it's often little habits that I have to change: Not hanging onto grievances, letting stuff go, cutting myself a break. I'm starting to appreciate the value of being a little flaky and having a bad memory, and how strenuous physical activity can ground my brain when it just wants to float around in a worry-filled ether.

The other day a sponsee asked how I did it. She meant lose all that weight and not regain much of it. And I replied that I could be in dangerous territory again tomorrow, it's not like I suddenly got a get-off-free pass. I haven't been able to get hold of my OA sponsor to talk to her about it yet, but I did briefly touch on it with my therapist the next day. She replied that maybe I had developed a good enough appreciation for how my feelings could control my eating. Perhaps. But I am constantly in danger of forgetting that, it's a slippery one, and that selective memory is the nature of my beast. That's why I have to keep working on it, going to meetings. I think about the only way I can ensure that some things stay in the past is work on the present

Step Work Works. Dammit.

2008-03-07T13:55:00.008-05:00

I'm not sure what happened, but yesterday went from blecch to pretty good. I did some of that step work, and not a lot, just a page or two of writing listing all the people I had resentments against. Interestingly, what came up a couple of times was I was angry with myself for letting myself down. Then I had a chat with my therapist to talk about it, those high (impossibly so) expectations I had for myself, and dealing with negative feelings. Then I had a great day: spent a couple of productive hours in the studio, went to a lecture on Rembrandt at the local university, went on a tough run, and then after dinner, gently dragged the now-on-March-Break Fuzz to see Persepolis, the movie, because I really like the graphic novels.

Dealing with the feelings is more than just finding a new coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms are like fixing a leak with a bucket. It's not a real solution, just a quick fix. Eventually the bucket overflows or drives you crazy with the dripping noise, and meanwhile, the water is rotting the ceiling and eventually you have a huge problem on your hands. I ate, still eat, to smother uncomfortable emotions, anger, fear, and even joy sometimes. But it backfires, and it inevitably gets worse.

When I first came to OA, and even for the majority of the last five years, I've thought, well, I have to deal with my feelings in order to not binge. Well, that is true, but that is not the bigger goal. My therapist suggests that The Big Magilla (I'm guessing as in the cartoon ape), is to deal with the feelings so I can be happier. Oh. Nothing to do with food. Nada. Zip. The food is just a side effect. That's a bit of a surprise, isn't it? Well, it is to a compulsive overeater.

I don't like doing step work. It wouldn't be far off to say I detest it. It's very uncomfortable, and it's hard to change the lifelong habit of seeking to blot out rather than deal with pain. But when I am finally ready to do it, it usually helps, and my mood rapidly benefits from it.

Just Call Me Craphead

2008-03-06T09:30:00.008-05:00

I've been dealing with a lingering bad mood, a funk that flourished in the light of this virus I've been recovering from, but not recovering from fast enough for me. It's been over a week, and I'm mostly normal, but still a bit draggy. It feels like a lot of negative feelings, resentments and fears have been able to flourish because I'm not busy enough working or working out. I feel like I have a real head full of crap. Dealing with that crap without resorting to food is what I think of when well meaning professionals talk about when they mention "coping strategies" to deal with life when you're trying to survive an eating disorder. The people in OA would say "Time to do step work."

Blech. I hate stepwork, but I've gotta stop behaving like a sick person and shovel through the shit if I want to get rid of it. To paraphrase Paul Anka, "resentments, I've had a few..." Unfortunately, I can't spill them all here. Maybe some of them eventually, but it's a little too private. So I have to do that offline.

Instead, how about another installment of the Continuing Adventures of Fat Maggie...

Enough Snow, Already!

2008-03-05T17:36:00.005-05:00

As I shovelled/chipped my way through the layers of snow, ice pellets and frozen rain, I realized I was officially sick of shovelling. It took a couple of hours for both of us to do the sidewalk, the walkway and driveway, and the snow was so hard it shattered into chunks as I chipped at it. It was kind of like shovelling blocks of wood that were either too heavy or slipped off the shovel as I tried to lift them. My shoulder hurts and I wonder if I need some physio for it. It's the same shoulder I hit when I fell off my scooter last summer.

And just yesterday I saw that guy riding the blue Vino! Sigh....at least the sun came out just before it set. And then there is daylight savings this weekend, hooray! I guess there is a light at the end of this snow tunnel. Almost nobody was working today, even Fuzz was sent home to get some much needed sleep. I took another day off on my extended sick leave from that virus, read a book for a while and then curled up with a kitty for a long nap. Those bits of winter are damn fine.

Back on My Sneakers

2008-03-05T10:12:00.005-05:00

After spending the day waffling, I finally decided I would try running with my group, all 3 of us, last night. Thank God we were running last night when it was breezy but not too cold, and not today since the latest round of snow/ice pellets/freezing rain was unleashed upon us overnight. I was still coughing, and one of my group cracked "jeez, have ya got pleurisy?" I was coughing so much at one point, but despite the hacking and wheezing, the rest of my body felt great, and I was able to keep up and even lead the group at points. Halfway through the run I wasn't coughing much. After nearly a week of this virus making me pretty sedentary, it was really GREAT to be moving again.

It reminded me of that goofy Mel Gibson & Helen Hunt film that came out several years ago, What Women Want, I think it was, kind of a rip-off of the old Rock Hudson/Doris Day formula where a womanizing misogynist hit by lightning gains the ability to read womens' minds. Gibson plucks an idea from his ad-exec colleagues mind when they are trying to come up with a new campaign for Nike, and the tag line that stayed with me is "The road doesn't care..." As in the road doesn't care what you're wearing, how much you make, or what part is too big/too small/sagging...

When it works, running is simple. Just put one foot in front of the other. Really, so is walking. I walked several kilometers daily for years, and that was the good thing about it, just putting yourself on autopilot and going forward. Running is the same, but I think it's the intensity that hooks me. Yes, it's simple but it requires every ounce of energy, including brain space. The only thing I'm thinking is, "ok, make it to the stop sign, then we're done, oh man wanna puke, keep going, keep going just a few more steps...." and at the end I feel physically drained but mentally filled, as if mental space has been opened by the exhaustion. Maybe this is the endorphin rush, but whatever it is, everything feels quieted.

Omigod, it's an orgasm!

Maybe that thought will make the shovelling easier...

Day 126!

The Continuing Adventures of FM...

2008-03-04T12:12:00.005-05:00

I'm just getting over a nasty virus that did the circuit of my head and chest, and I also got way too caught up with some volunteer activities this weekend that, surprise surprise, involved me organizing the food to feed 160 hungry choristers. Food ended up taking over my whole day. Well, not really. Part of the problem was I was a little too sick to sing, so maybe it was that it gave the food the opportunity to take over more than it would have otherwise. A lesson learned, or rather, RE-learned again for the hundredth time: keep the food in its proper place. That's the nature of my disease: selective amnesia.

Anyway, here's the next installment of Fat Maggie.... Our story so far: I started this in 2006 when I was suffering from a mild to moderate depression, and feeling very artistically blocked. So, I went back to the cartooning I used to do when I was a teenager, trying to combine drawing and writing a journal to help shed light on my issues. Today we have a glimpse about how hard it is to be an earnest artist trying to sell what is essentially oneself in a tough world...

So Far, It's not Looking So Hot

2008-02-26T10:31:00.003-05:00

I'm in a funny mood. Publishing my sketchbook isn't helping, actually, so the therapy might not be helping. Maybe I'm missing my sponsor. I should call her, she's off skiing somewhere, but judging by one of my last posts, I may have a bit of a resentment of people who are travelling. Probably because I'm not. And I could, I could find the money to get away, but I'm not really trying to do it. It's much easier to sit and be ticked off. Hm. There's the nub of it really, I just want to sit and hate everyone. Ah. There. I've said it. It's much easier to sit in the kitchen, drink coffee, and hate the world than to do what I've got in front of me begging to be done. Go out and arrange for the food for my choir get-together on Saturday. Start painting the big canvas that is lurking in my studio and scaring the bejeezus out of me. That's much harder. Ok, so I guess there's not much to do but do it. After lunch. First, I want to make a nice vegetable soup for lunches this week. A good thing for a snowy day.

There it is again, food as comfort. It's cold, it's grey, and I want to hide. So, I'll make soup. I guess there are worse things to do: like get a bucket of chicken and eat it. Or a box of chocolates. Why am I not still 300 pounds? Because getting a bunch of food and eating it just isn't an option any more. I know where that leads. But I need to do some emotional work in order to keep myself from getting so desperate that bingeing becomes an option again. And that can happen in the blink of an eye. I have to reach out to others, but who, I don't know... Hm. Maybe another friend from the programme. Gotta chop. And get my phone out too.

It's 3/4 of an hour later, and I've got the giant stock pot on the stove (the one that doubles as an outdoor lobster pot on the propane cooker in the summer and has the flame marks on the side to prove it) and 2 trays of chopped vegetables roasting on the oven. All my anger and fear is chopped up with the turnip, leeks, garlic, celery, parsnips, carrots, onions and mushrooms, roasting with a good coating of oil and italian tomato paste. And the house smells wonderful. This is where I still go with food. I'm making something nourishing and tasty, and that is where I get my food jollies these days.

The food has been really good lately. I seem to have a surfeit of willingness. Funny sentence that first one, speaking of "the food" in the third person, as if it has a personality... Food with a capital F. Well, I guess that for a compulsive overeater, it does have a personality. A very intimidating personality, usually. It's a very polarized relationship and it can be extremely dysfunctional: I love Food and I hate it for what it has done to me in the past. I guess I'm trying to work on my relationship with Food here. And I have to, because I need Food to survive. It's not a substance like alcohol, that I can abstain from. Anorexics try to abstain from eating Food, it's their enemy, and it can have fatal results. My challenge is to put Food in a place where it doesn't rule my life. And I have more or less success on a daily basis.

Chefs, gourmands and the like often like to say they live to eat. Well, that doesn't seem to work for me. In my case, I was dying to eat. Because when I approach food in that manner, I can't stop. So I have had to pray for breaks to be put into my faulty operating system, and I have to change things, to build the breaks in. Write. Share. Reach out. Look in. Honour myself. In my case it is often the challenge to reverse the old Biblical admonition to love myself as I do others, because I think that one of the big triggers for overeating is making myself a doormat. And I do it so automatically.

The Continuing Adventures of Fat Maggie... or, Writing therapy for the fat in my head...

2008-02-26T10:04:00.004-05:00

A Rant about Damn Boring Snowbirds

2008-02-25T17:39:00.005-05:00

I like winter. Honest, I do. Mostly. Some days suck, those grey dreary ones, but I like snow. I like shovelling it, in moderation, and I like to snowshoe and ski. If I didn't, I wouldn't be living in Canada. I like that for once, we're having a real winter, with enough snow you can have fun in it. Yesterday Fuzz and I were snowshoeing on a bay on very frozen part of Lake Ontario. It was sunny enough we had to take off our windbreakers and tie them around our waists. The sun was warm and bright enough for sunglasses. Thursday night while running, I enjoyed behaving like a nine-year-old and tromping on those little ledges of ice at the edges of snowbanks that crunch when you walk on them. Almost as much fun as trying to splash my running coach in spring by running straight through the middle of puddles!

What I don't like about winter is the boring people who vacation down south and then return to go on and on about how wonderful the weather is there and how this place is so depressing in the winter. They're the same type of boob who talks about how botox or a Harley Davidson has transformed their life. I've seen that those events are often a harbinger of an impending marriage breakup. They're bad enough to listen to when they and their leathery tans plunk themselves in my path, but an hour ago I actually had a call from one of them in Mexico who was "reaching out" to someone from home, and proceeded to go on and on about how nice their place in Mexico was and how next winter they are going to spend the whole winter there instead of spending time in boring old Florida too.

What did I learn from this experience? Well, first, some people, no matter how much recovery work they've done can still be insane. Two, I can cut short calls with boring people by saying absolutely nothing. And three, I gotta get better at screening my calls. BF calls it "Call Suspect" for a reason!

Something Old and Something New...

2008-02-22T15:37:00.003-05:00

Obviously the graphic below is a little too small for most people to read. I'll make the next one more legible. In the meantime, just click on the cartoon to view a very enlarged version.

A little background: Almost 3 years ago, I experimented with doing my daily journal in my sketchbook, and this was the result. Although I only did a few, I still think they're important in my examination of how I got to this point. I lost the sketchbook after we moved, and just found it recently while preparing for those life drawing workshops I facilitated. The other day, I scanned the pages into my laptop, and I'm using Corel Painter to digitally clean up & update them.

The seem a little dated to me; for instance, I'm not spending nearly as much time in bed as I was just in comparison to a year ago, so some things are different. I'll try to catch up the story once I finish with the initial drawings. To be continued...

Allowing Myself to Waffle

2008-02-22T14:06:00.003-05:00

Waffle, so I don't EAT waffles!

I went to my group therapy session this morning, and I was thinking that this would be the day I withdrew from the group. Well, I'm not so sure any more. And, even more difficult, I'm going to try to NOT beat myself up over not making a decision immediately. I'm going to give that decision more time, because this morning went well, and I didn't resent the two hours I spent there. And I realize that I work in an isolating field (studio artist) and have a tendency to isolate beyond that. So, I'll give it some more time before making a decision. I waste much more than two hours daily watching TV. This morning I was reminded that I do learn things about myself through other's sharing so it's still worthwhile.

This afternoon I was trying to decide whether to go to the gym or do this. And I settled on this. I ran with my group last night and I was sore enough going to bed that I took a muscle relaxant and ibuprofen so I would be able to sleep, so taking a day off from the exercise is actually more healthy than doing it. I take at least a day off each week, so it can be today. Then I'll hit the gym tomorrow afternoon. It's usually less busy then, anyway. But it's funny how I feel rather guilty about not going today. Or maybe it's that I enjoy the feeling after a workout, kind of a cleansed feeling. Guess it's the endorphins.

I guess working through other stuff just doesn't give one the endorphin rush. But I need some balance here, so best spend some more time on what I need to do. Back soon, hopefully with a more "graphic" post. You'll see...

Managing my Day

2008-02-20T10:35:00.002-05:00

Ok, here I am trying to plan out my day, and food is not the huge part of it it once was, so I have to figure out what else I am going to do rather than obsess about food. Welcome to life post-food. Warning: What follows is rather stream of consciousness... expect repetitiveness and circular thoughts...

I'm not sure how to do it. I've got a studio project on hold because a piece of equipment I'm going to use isn't available until the weekend. That leaves time to work on other art projects. What to do, what to do? I could scan some sketches into the computer, the old cartoons I found, and prep them to post here. I have a very long choir session tonight, but I might not stay for the whole thing. On the other hand, what else do I really have to run home to do, watch TV? Face it. Good point. I want to get some exercise today, I guess at the gym. Ok, that'll take a couple of hours. That leaves me a couple to do something artistic. I suppose I could go to the studio and lay out some paints and work on that old painting copy that I thought I was finished with. But honestly, I'm not sure I am. On the other hand, I could do another hour or so of composition on the new project.

Ok, what I'm seeing here are I could do an hour or so on a number of small projects. That seems pretty good. I wonder if I could spend an hour on some housework too? Maybe less, like sweeping the kitchen floor or putting away some things. I am trying to break life down into smaller, more mentally manageable chunks, because if I don't it just seems too much. And I want to eat. The food has been good since Sunday night. I think I just had to scare myself and reconnect with my committment to changing my eating. Since I've been practicing the Overeaters Anonymous life for the last almost five years, I have slowly been gaining an awareness of my default assumptions and habitual behaviours around food.

Recently, I've been looking at my fear of NOT eating at night. It's been a real security blanket for me. I have supper often late and then a snack, and until recently it was always a little nibble of something, or another snack... I think I was afraid of not having something to eat after dinner. I think unconsciously I thought I would die if I didn't have something to eat after dinner. Well, the first thing to go was the extra nibbles. And now, in order to lose that five or so pounds I've been whining about for the last few months, I'm considering whether my evening snack --- a small bar of very dark chocolate, has to go too. I think my meals are good, healthy and balanced. So, the snack is a perk, a treat, an extra. I don't think I even have to eliminate it entirely. I could choose to reduce the frequency of it, have it every second day. Or, I could have a half bar daily. There is also a mid afternoon snack of a small bag of almonds that I have most days when I've been exercising. But to be honest here, I'm not sure I need it either.

Like most compulsive eaters (over or under-eaters), I am not sure when I am hungry. My default switch was always stuck at hungry, no matter how much food I had eaten, or how long ago I had eaten it. Last night, for example, like most of my Tuesdays lately, I don't have supper until after my running group and an OA meeting, so it's often 830 or later. But I realized during the meeting that I wasn't sure if I was hungry. I heard the odd growl from my abdomen, but honestly, I couldn't actually feel any hunger. There seems to be a total disconnect.

At the same time, I am one of those eaters who compulsively must be doing something else while I have my meal. Not doing other tasks as such, but most often it's watching tv with dinner or reading the paper while I eat breakfast or lunch. Fuzz does that with me too. And I need to ask him again about how he feels about doing that. I think for me, it is some sort of comforting mechanism, an attempt to blot out the world with food and something visual that takes my mind away from my worries. Am I actually tasting the food? I think I am, I seem to take a lot of pleasure out of it, but I seem to have the fear that the food alone won't be enough. I need extra distraction. As I said at the meeting last night, I'm not sure I want to do anything about this right now, that I have the willingness. Or is it even broke? Does it need fixing? Am I being perfectionistic about my eating. I don't know, I just have the sneaking suspicion that confronting this kind of automatic eating/comforting behaviour may help me with compulsively eating, helping me be more in touch about my eating. It's something to examine, not necessarily change yet, or ever.

Day 112.

A Lesson Learned... er, RElearned...

2008-02-19T09:29:00.002-05:00

I knew I was going through one of those "pink cloud" stages with the food. Two weeks ago I had changed my definition of abstinence to include no food outside of scheduled snacks in the evening. Then, Sunday night, I almost lost it. I got complacent, and I had not stayed in touch with my feelings. I had spent Sunday evening watching television, continually. Not a good thing. My mood was bad enough that the food could not be far behind. I was re-watching "Pride and Prejudice" for the nth time. Why? I think it reaches back to that princess/rescue syndrome so many women have...phooey. What a lousy place to be in.

Having stayed up too late, Fuzz already gone to bed, I decided I should make the morning's oatmeal at 1230. Ding ding ding!!!! That's what should have been going off in my brain. But no, it was like I had pressed some sort of override switch. And I just about lost my abstinence. I knew going in to the kitchen that I wanted to nibble on the almonds that I put in the oatmeal, but I ignored the warning signs. I had almost gotten through measuring out the ingredients, made it through the almonds, when, not thinking (I think!), I put some of the dried cranberries in my mouth. It seemed totally involuntary. I didn't spit them out, but I chewed them in shock. What was I doing?

Was it a break in abstinence I wonder? Maybe, but I'm going to give myself a pass on that one. It was, after all, only a few dried cranberries. (hmmm almost typed cramberries...Freudian, wot?) And I really didn't realize I had done it until I did it. But, I realized, I was in a very, very dangerous place. Crocodiles, oh those are just little harmless logs floating there, aren't they?...

The voice in me, fuelled by some deep longing I didn't want to recognize, howled "Mooore! Moooore!" and I realized that was my inner demon waking up, and I was in a very vulnerable spot. Just then it seemed like the most logical thing in the world to open the fridge and start digging for something... anything. I tossed the oatmeal together and threw it in the microwave. Then I hightailed it to Mr. Darcy in the living room, only coming back out to that very dangerous place to stir and then put the lid on when it was done. Then I fled to bed.

Lessons learned:

It only takes me two weeks to get complacent.
I WILL get complacent, and that's when it's dangerous.
Not writing is trouble, and a sign of complacancy.
Staying up late is trouble.
Too much TV is trouble.
I will stay up late and watch tv and then wonder why I'm having trouble.
Being in the kitchen when Fuzz is asleep is dangerous.
Being in the kitchen when Fuzz is asleep, I've watched too much tv, and it's late is practically suicidal.
I've gotta call my sponsor.

Maybe I'm Just Getting Better?

2008-02-15T22:08:00.002-05:00

I skipped out on my group therapy session again today. For the second week in a row I got as far as the parking garage, and instead of heading west into the hospital for the meeting, I headed east to the Starbucks. Actually, this time I was prepared: I had my laptop and a manual for the Painter program I'm yet again trying to learn, this time with more success, probably because I'm trying to do something specific with it, and this time it's more trial, less error. Or at least it was today. Tomorrow it could be the opposite... Rather than two hours listening to people's issues, I spent the time sketching on my pen tablet, exploring grains and scratchboard rakes and (digital) electronic pens. And drinking cinnamon scented coffee.

Anyway, I didn't feel a big urge to go to the meeting. And, I'm wondering if I really want to go anymore, period. The main reason I didn't want to go this morning was I already had a meeting with my sponsee scheduled for the afternoon, and I felt like I wanted to get some of my work done first. I get to two Overeaters Anonymous meetings a week, I see or talk to my sponsor, I have a sponsee and I have a weekly therapist appointment. So, really, I'm working my programme. And I write on a daily basis, here, and privately.

Since I did some work this morning, I was able to make a lunch date with BF, after which I phoned Fuzz and arranged a rendezvous to go snowshoeing before dinner. This has been a great winter, we have so much snow that reminds me of my childhood in New Brunswick. Today was one of the first really sunny days in a while, and it was getting cold but not too windy, lots of fresh powder, and very few people at the park.

It was a wonderful day. I'll have to call someone from the group and tell them I don't think I'm coming back, but I don't think it's such a bad thing. Unlike a couple of years ago, I don't think I'm running away from something, I think it's just there are other things I would rather run toward.

Just Type, Dammit!

2008-02-14T14:22:00.002-05:00

This morning has been a classic case of Internet Time-Wasting Syndrome. There's something very Rube Goldberg-esque about my path through the internet; 1) read favorite comic strips, 2) check New York Times and Kingston Whig Standard headlines, read a couple of stories, oops look at review of new 2nd Ave Deli location... mmm chopped liver...look up proper pronunciation of kreplach vs. rugelach. Read and write posts on Chowhound about the smoked duck I bought @ Costco, including artistic license (aka little white lie) about resorting to scotch when trying to figure out what to do with duck whom I christened Murray, even though I don't drink any more... Look up the time of the improv show we're going to tonight--- nothin says romance like LMAO... answer e-mail, oh great another choir task to do... look up lyrics to Lydia the Tattooed Lady and look at sheet music possibly for choir or at least for our in-house coffee house in a couple of weeks, checked out the YouTube Muppet Show version with Kermit and a porcine exotic dancer... look up recipe for duck confit...but maybe I should look up rilettes...

And in the midst of all that, BF popped in for a chat, had coffee, made duck stock, and made lunch. Then called shrink. And I wonder why I don't get started at work until almost 3 pm! I've obviously been busy! The internet can be a real time waster, it's like living in your head, and because nobody reads this stuff, you just get a bigger brain to live in!

Sometimes Life is Just Blah

2008-02-11T08:45:00.000-05:00

This is something I have just recently learned happens to almost everyone. You get an attack of the blahs. I battled with depression for so many years, I began to think that every day that felt a little off was a return of the black dogs, but now I'm thinking that maybe that's not so. It only took about 6 years of therapy for that big revelation!

Today, I'm a little blah. I've still got a touch of that virus or flu that's going around, yesterday morning I felt sore and achy, and hot. Hot was bad. I never get hot in the winter, particularly on a day when the outdoor temperature was plummeting. So I took some muscle relaxants and lay on the couch for a while. In the afternoon, I felt better, so Fuzz and I did some shopping, and then I fixed a kick-ass chicken curry for supper (with help from Patak's vindaloo curry paste), and actually went to the studio for a couple of hours in the evening to work on my composition issues for my latest painting. Then home for some chai and dark chocolate.

Amazing, but it's been a week now since I vowed to not eat anything after supper but my evening snack (that would be the 33g bar of Lindt 85% dark chocolate), and those crazy evening cravings have been lifted. Why did it work? I think I was really ready, and I also committed, to my sponsor and food buddy, my almost 100 days of abstinence to this goal. In other words, evening nibbling = losing my abstinence from compulsive eating. At present, I am not concerned if I nibble or lick a spoon during the day, because it doesn't seem to be a problem then. It was the night where it was threatening to take me off the deep end into a no-holds-barred binge.

A theme that came up at my Saturday OA meeting was that we forget we have a problem with food at our peril. In fact, many of us would go as far as calling our problem a disease. Many disagree with that concept, but what has happened for me is it keeps me aware of possible pitfalls. It would be nice if I could have a little nibble of this or that in the evening, for a long time I thought I could, but then again, after a couple of bites last week, I felt what was akin to a giant sucking black hole in my stomach wanting me to consume MOOORE! Each extra bite didn't satisfy, it just seemed to strengthen the craving, the scanning of what to eat next. So, I've lost my right to eat like "normal" people. Because I can't, it seems. So I have to come up with alternate strategies.

I was thinking about those strategies this morning considering the experience BF had while visiting Disney World with her family a couple of weeks ago. Saturday night she moaned that she thought her clothes were tighter than before she left for the trip. I wasn't surprised. She had some sort of inclusive meal plan that came with dessert. Hmmm.... seasoned food fighter that I am, I could have seen that one coming. Travelling is hard. The portions of food are usually larger and higher in fat than home prepared meals. I have to plan in advance as to how I'm going to handle it. These days I look for hotel rooms with refrigerators and microwaves so I can fix my own healthy breakfast, and often will brown-bag lunches if possible. In our trip to Las Vegas in December, Fuzz and I actually ended up splitting entrees and salads at more than one meal because there was just too much food.

The irony is, BF's young daughter has multiple food allergies, so she does a lot of advance planning for the girl's food. Unfortunately, she doesn't prepare the same way for her own eating challenges.

Two Potato

2008-02-10T13:09:00.000-05:00

Without meaning to, Fuzz has dropped almost 30 pounds since I came to OA. I hate people who lose weight unintentionally, but I'm married to him so I can't beat him up too much. I guess. I never thought of him as fat, but as I see in old photos, he was looking a tad pudgy. Except next to me, he didn't look so bad. When you're morbidly obese, and even now that I'm a "normal" weight, anyone with less than 50 pounds to lose doesn't quite register on my radar, or fatdar as it were. I guess it's kind of fatgrrl snobbery: Don't complain to me how hard it is unless you've got at least a hundred to go!

Of course, I would never actually say that to anyone, and I'm exaggerating a bit here, but it is hard for me to really understand those who battle with smaller amounts of weight. Not to mention anorexics and bulimics. I get that they have a similar disease, unhealthy compulsions with food, but I don't think I really come close to truly understanding them. I'm just glad that my disease doesn't come out in those ways, because they can be pretty brutal too.

Anyway, I was talking about potatoes. I don't know when I loosened my grip on potatoes. Somewhere in the process of accepting that my own best efforts had availed me nothing, my eating habits changed. First the quantity, but somewhere potatoes mostly left the scene. They were never on my binge list, which actually only contains a couple of items, and a couple of situational items. It was probably when I started reading about high glycemic index foods, those foods that can really throw your blood sugar for a loop, and since I'm a type 2 diabetic, I started cutting back on those foods, or modifying them: stuff like eating more whole grain breads and pastas, and substituting sweet potatoes because they had some good extra nutrients. I'm not rigorous about it, I just started changing things up more. I used to do the meat, potato and veg meal thing commonly. And pasta and rice seem more versatile, when you can whip up a healthy stir fry or pasta with a little meat, some vegetables, and lots of garlic. Potatoes just started taking a back seat. And now, we'll maybe have them maybe 4 times a month. Often in a soup, like salmon chowder, and I do like vichyssoise.

It's not a big deal. But it's interesting seeing how things can change without it being a big deal. The non-food aspects of my behaviour changed, and then I think the food fit in with that change.

One Potato

2008-02-09T09:42:00.000-05:00

Someone was talking about funny things we've done with food over the years. Or more accurately, the absurd things our obsession/compulsion has made us do over the years. It was prompted by a couple of paragraphs in the OA 12 Steps and 12 Traditions (the "12 & 12") book where they do a quick summary of all the things we might have done for food: eating spoiled food, eating frozen food, stolen food, etc. etc. We reminisced about doing drive-throughs pretending you're ordering for several different (imaginary) people, having that unique experience of eating food simultaneously too hot and frozen because you can't wait for the microwave to thaw it properly, buying food for guests, making sure there was "enough" so you could have much more (eaten alone) than they would ever get, or want, and that idea that seems to have originated with Louie Anderson, having to buy the extra "almost home cookies" ---those are the ones that you polish off before you get home!

We were laughing our guts off. I used to go through the donut shop drive-through and I would even order donuts I wasn't as fond of, because it would look too suspicious to order a dozen of the one I really liked. Besides, after eating 4 of one kind, it's nice to mix it up a bit before you go on to the rest! Eventually, what floated to mind was potatoes.

Yes, potatoes. I'm half Irish and the rest mostly Scots, so the potato is practically a birthright. It was so important in my family, it should be on the family crest. My father would complain if we didn't have potatoes at least six meals per week, and I seem to remember having them for lunch and supper when I was pre-adolescent.

When I married Fuzz and started cooking regularly, the potatoes came too. I would buy at least the five pound bag, but often a bigger one, particularly if they were on sale. Now, two people shouldn't be eating all that many potatoes, but I had a thing for potatoes. I was always worried that there wasn't enough. I think it was because the potato was my hunger buffer, the way it was in Irish families. Not enough meat, veg looks a little weak? Plop on those fluffy potatoes with extra butter!

And if I was cooking potatoes, two potatoes did not a pot fill. Too much water, too much room, they'd get too watery, it was wasteful... so I'd peel three more. Just to fill up the pot, don't cha know. And if the Canadian Armed Forces dropped in unexpectedly, well, we'd be good! I'd plop extra potatoes on Fuzz's plate. "I don't want that many potatoes!" he'd whine. So I would grudgingly scoop them back into the pot. Truth was, I wanted that many potatoes, and so I needed an eating buddy...

Oops, I have to be at a meeting in 15 minutes... gotta go! I'll finish this later.

Surviving the Evening

2008-02-08T09:01:00.000-05:00

Interesting that my prompter shows me that I have started three other posts with variations on the word "Survive". Sometimes that's how it feels with the food. Like I'm in a life and death struggle with it. I guess I am. I know there are lots of people whose health suffers because of compulsive eating, and I have been one of them. Luckily, I found a way to stop the march of my hypertension and diabetes, and eventually even roll back their progress to where, at present, they aren't there any more.

But I need to keep in the front of my consciousness that these things could come back if I start to slip into those old, very seductive habits. Make no mistake, my disease of compulsive eating has the ability to, apologies to Hobbes (the philosopher, not the cartoon tiger) make my life "nasty, brutish, and short". I'm only a few bites away from tumbling down that slope of despair. Sure, it would take a number of bites to get me back over 300, but the trend can start much earlier, and once it reaches a certain momentum, there is no telling how possible it is to turn it back. So I really want to keep myself from getting there. I think of BF's father who has struggled with alcohol for over fifty years and is about ten years sober. He says, "the easiest drink to turn down is ALWAYS the first one".

I've only got about 15 minutes to type before I head off for a group therapy session, an unmoderated group started by the addictions specialist that used to practice in our town. It's an interesting group, people have many different or multiple issues, some suffer from, like me, those pesky DSM not otherwise specified eating disorders. It's another thing that ticks me off about how compulsive eating behaviours are treated by the medical establishment and most of society as a moral failing unless we're too skinny then it's a specified disorder. And yet binge eaters (still lumped under the non-specified disorder catch-all) and others who have unhealthy behaviours around food have been found to have a much, much, higher concurrent incidence compared to anorexia and bulimia among people who are being treated for other psychological issues.

And there are bulimics there too and for a while we had someone who was exhibiting all the signs of anorexia. Plus people who have problems with alcohol, drugs, relationships, and money. It's interesting having a multi-faceted group, but sometimes I find it hard to share about my drawing lines around my food when there are bulimics and anorexics in the room, where doing that very thing may be something they have to avoid.

Akkk, gotta go!

Anyway, where I was going when I started this post was: Since I drew the firm line in the sand at eating after my evening snack on Sunday, announced to myself and my sponsor that I was doing this, the food in the evening has been fine. The obsession seems to largely have been lifted. To be safe, I'm even limiting going into the kitchen after supper. Fuzz brings me my snack, makes tea, and feeds the cats. I stay anchored to the couch and watch tv or play on the computer. Often a cat helps me out by deciding that the best place to warm up is by sitting on my --oof-- chest. My food buddy said it seemed like a situation of asking for willingness and the willingness came. Go figure.

Woohoo! 100 days since a binge!

Draggin' my Knuckles...

2008-02-07T17:18:00.000-05:00

I figure I've spent at least 6 hours shovelling this week, and my arms feel both really long, and soooorre... All this snow is great, but I'm running out of places to put it. But otherwise, I like shovelling. Honest. It feels great to look back at what I've done. We've got over two feet of snow on the ground, so once you've moved some, you can really see it. Not instant gratification, but fairly instant. Feels much more rewarding than vacuuming. Worth the sore shoulders, wet feet and cold thighs. And then I get to be justified in coming in and collapsing in a chair and enjoying a nice long coffee. And oh boy, in ten minutes I have to get changed to go running in it! I must be nuts! What was your first clue? Even I think I'm nuts.

I'd slack off but I know there are going to be at least two other people at the meeting place, so I want to meet up with them. Misery in numbers, and all that crap. Ow... thank god I don't have to lift anything while I run...Well, the nice thing about being sore is you know you're alive. And when I get home I can plop down on the couch and be a potato for the rest of the evening.

I haven't been doing as much writing as I feel I should, but I did spend a lot of time playing with my paint programme today, and I think I'm close to the final design for my newest painting. I'm learning how to utilize the layers and getting some pretty exciting results. It feels like cheating, because I'm manipulating my photos, but at least they are my photos... people like Damien Loeb are regularly sued for appropriating other's photos for their paintings.

Ok, gotta go layer up... me, not the composition. Anyone seen my tights?

A Breath of Fresh Air...Michael Kors' Anorexic Look!

2008-02-06T21:25:00.001-05:00

Golly gee whiz, Mr. Kors, It must be hard to find just the right girl that has that perfect je ne sais quoi of an anorexic adolescent without any discernible curves or even breasts. Next fashion week, save yourself the trouble and just have boa constrictors model your clothes... but best keep those pesky NYC rats away from them, one big meal and the lines will be ruined!

I don't know why I let this stuff get to me, but it just does! Every dress should come with an eating disorders tax...

Hooray, My Sponsor's Back!

2008-02-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

My sponsor just returned from a trip to Mexico, and I'm so happy! She's a good friend too, and we've had many fun times together, but I have to be honest, I'm relieved my sponsor is back. Why? It feels as if she's become a touchstone for me. She's been in Overeaters Anonymous about twice as long as I (I've been going now, wow, it'll be five years the end of the month!), and she's in a place with her recovery that I want to be in. Counting days of abstinence (I'm currently somewhere over 90 days at this point, wait, I'll check myself on the AA Sobriety Counter...I'm at 97!), I'm not sure who is ahead, she's had some slips, but I really admire her spiritual fitness. And her physical fitness is pretty good too. She's in her sixties, but she's very active, interested in healthy aging, and wants to be skiing for another twenty years. She invited me to join her running group three years ago, and I'm still doing it, after two operations and my now-you-see-it, now-you-don't hernia.

I just knew that I needed to talk to her, particularly about the issues I've been having with the nighttime nibbles. And I think that the issues of the nibbles are much more than the food. Evening I look on as relaxing time, but when I relax with nothing particularly pressing to do, that is when the cravings come out to play. Last night went well. I had a skinny latte at Starbucks after doing some shopping, then my regular snack around 9, and a cup of chai before bed. I did feel some cravings, but I found that if I kept myself out of the kitchen for the most part after dinner (Fuzz prepared the snack and the chai, while I played around in the living room with a graphics program on my laptop, bless his furry little heart), I could close the door on more food for the night. Now that it's part of my abstinence, it does feel as solid as a closed door between me and it. Or at least it did last night. Today is a new day, and since this is a new habit, I have to be prepared to be firm about it until it feels as natural as the other changes I have made over the last few years.

I think I have some fears to address. Career and money seems to be what leaps to mind. That means doing some step-writing about it. My sponsor is very methodical, dare I say in my more cynical moments, dogmatic, about step writing. Admit I are powerless around the issue, give it over to your higher power, and do an inventory around the issue. What emotions are being dredged up (fear, definitely)? What scenarios are there lurking in my brain? Past events coloring how I deal with it in the present? Ugh. This stuff is hard. And despite my desire to splash my life over the blogosphere, I think I need to keep this stuff private. I'll give you the summary eventually.

On a related topic, while prepping for those art classes I taught, I found an old sketchbook that I had actually cartooned out a bit of my story in, just before I started this blog. I've been looking for that since I moved a year and a half ago, because I want to scan some bits of it to post here. Sounds like fun... None of this is making me any money, but I think it's part of a process that just might end up being profitable, but obviously in a way I can't predict. I guess it's not my job to predict where this path might lead, just walk it, and let it reveal itself to me. Trust in a higher power.

Oh, that again.... puke!

Upping the Ante?

2008-02-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

I'm tired of a behaviour and I'm wondering if it is time to put a lid on it once and for all. Night-time nibbling. Actually, all nibbling, but after dinner nibbling is the part that worries me the most. I've always been a nibbler, and continued doing it all during the time I lost 150 pounds. But I've gained some weight, and I would like to lose 5 pounds, so I've been examining my eating. And I've seen that the eating behaviour that should be the easiest to eliminate is the nibbling. And I think the nibbling must add up, which could take care of those extra pounds.

But it's been damn stubborn to eliminate. It leaves for a day or two, and then it comes back. As it did last night. Fuzz had gone to bed very early because he has a cold, and so I was on my own, and there is that damn attractive leftover ham in the refrigerator. And I shaved off a little slice, and a little slice more, and THEN, I had a few spoonfulls of leftover corn. I finished with a couple of mushrooms. And I felt stupid. What was I thinking? What part of "I'm not going to do this" do I not understand?

Well, I know for one thing that there is a prehensile part of my brain that doesn't do logic. So, it doesn't help to beat myself up over it. If logic alone worked, I wouldn't have been forced to resort to Overeaters Anonymous, to admit that I was helpless in the face of this disease. As a good friend in the rooms once said, "I didn't want to be here when I first came; WHO DOES?!" None of us wanted to have to join this club. I was desperate when I first came. As I learned, the level of desperation was a good thing. It motivated me to give it my all. I weighed in the high 200's, and all indicators were pointing to me heading back up to, and probably beyond, my all time high of somewhere over 300 pounds. I couldn't go three days without a binge, I had hypertension, and was testing blood sugar indicating the appearance of type 2 diabetes.

Now that we're here, though, the alternative we've been given certainly beats the past experience. My life has improved in many, many ways, and I think it's because the food was only a symptom of my larger life being out of whack. I think my legacy from my screwed up family (see my previous posting) had driven me to a point where I couldn't see anything but a dead end. I was lucky. I chose to fight. Many don't, and sink into their addictions. The alcoholism of my father translated into my inability to cope with life without constantly eating. Honestly, though, the more I ate, the less I coped.

So, fast forward to today, and what seems like my relatively more benign problem with "the nibblies" (makes them sound like small gremlins). I read something the other day that reminded me to look back to how far I've come, not at how much further I had to climb. Doing that does make me feel good. Like yesterday. We had a foot of snow fall on Friday, and I'd done a lot of shovelling, so that my arms were quite sore. But I still hadn't shovelled a path back to the composter at the back of the garden. One of those times when I wish we did vermi-composting.
But I tried the technique, and it was satisfying, when I was half-way to the compost, about twenty-five or thirty feet down the yard, to look back at what I had already shovelled. And I could take a moment and enjoy the beauty of the late afternoon sky, and how the fresh snow makes everything look so wonderful. The last half seemed to go much faster.

Ok, so what does this have to do with me and the nibblies? Well, I've come a great distance. My life is pretty damn good. But it's not perfect. I think I've got a lot of underlying fear and anger still simmering below the surface. So, there's some areas I can do some step work processing on, writing about those issues. And if I am really bothered about the eating, and I certainly was last night, I perhaps need to make a commitment to change the behaviour. One alternative is to put nibbling into my definition of abstinence. This behaviour is causing me more grief than I want to live with, so it's something I'm leaning toward. The other option would be to move my evening snack to just being my dessert and then eliminating all eating after that point in the evening. That was suggested by my food buddy this morning. That part I'm resisting. I think the idea of the whole evening without any food is a little frightening. So... I need to think more about this, and it's also time to talk to my sponsor.

A Whiff of Sulphur on a Cold Winter Day

2008-02-01T22:14:00.000-05:00

My mental alarm bells went off when I first heard that sentence on the radio news, “The child was wearing a diaper and T-shirt.” What had simply been a tragic story of lost children in a bitter Saskatchewan winter night was suddenly tinged with that unbalanced, and yet too familiar feeling of something being terribly wrong. Where was the little girl’s snowsuit? What kind of parent would... shit. I caught a whiff of that old familiar sulfur. Of course. An unbalanced parent, likely with a substance addiction. Most commonly, a child is put in harm’s way by a drunk or otherwise addicted parent, which is how the sad saga on the Yellow Quill First Nation Reserve seems to be playing out. It’s a scenario that I, as the child of an alcoholic, am more familiar with than I would prefer.

I’m also a recovering alcoholic myself. It’s not something that I tell people outside my closest circle of friends, and truthfully, I was a fairly “high bottom” drunk: I stopped when I realized there were clear signals I was turning into my father. I haven't had a drink in almost three years. Unlike my father, I never drove drunk. I’ve been to enough AA and Al-Anon meetings to hear the stories of the other children whose parents regularly put their lives in physical and emotional jeopardy while in the throes of their addictions.

Thanks to the efforts of organizations such as MADD, we know the stories of people whose lives have been destroyed by intoxicated strangers. But it’s only been in the twelve step meetings where I’ve heard the tales of the kids who were regularly terrorized by their drunk parents, often by being helpless passengers in a car driven by that parent. Children of alcoholics often survive by being overly precocious, as will attest those who were forced to drive while still kids for a drunk parent.

Only a small percentage of alcoholics fit the stereotype of the street wino. My Dad was only typical in that he was the typical closet alcoholic: On the surface, one of the pillars of his company, his church, member of the hospital board, a hometown boy who made good. But by the time I turned twelve, my dad turned into a closet binge drinker, a kind of jekyl & hyde drunk: He’d seem fine and then when you would least expect it, he’d turn up so inebriated he could hardly stand up.

One crisp winter’s night when I was sixteen just won’t leave my brain: I had been at a high school hockey game with a girlfriend when my father showed up to drive us home. It wasn’t until we had gotten into the car and were leaving the arena parking lot that we realized that something was wrong. My father was so drunk he couldn’t put a coherent sentence together.
Luckily, he had been late picking us up, so the road wasn’t busy and he was driving slowly toward my friend’s house. Neither my friend or I knew how to drive, and we didn’t know what to do. I can still remember holding my breath as we drove across the bridge over the highway, praying that my father could hold the large 1976 Buick between the railings. After what seemed like a very long time, but wasn’t much more than a mile, we made it to my friend’s house where we coaxed my father in “for a cup of coffee.”

I was panicked, yet my first reaction was to shield my father from the fury of my mother when I phoned her to tell her what was happening. I think I was simply overloaded by the situation, and if my mother was angry, it felt like it would tip my world over the edge into the abyss. My friend’s parents ended up driving us the seven miles home. That was the only time I can recall that my father drove drunk while I was in the car, but it wasn’t the last time he would drive drunk. Years after I left home, he was mostly on the wagon, but had at least one brush with the law when he took out a stop sign. The code of silence was still in effect in those days in small town New Brunswick, so the story didn’t make it into the local paper, likely because it was his “first” offense... but really it was only the first time they had actually caught him.

The only other scary tale I experienced with my father, the booze, and the car was the day we were to deliver me and all my possessions to Ontario for my first year of university. My father announced he couldn’t drive because he was too nervous. What he really was, was very hung over, with a bad case of the shakes. Since my mother didn’t drive, I would have to do it if we were to arrive on campus in time for freshman orientation. I had had my license for all of one day, and the next day I was white knuckling us down a six lane highway for the first time, through Montreal en route to the 401.

The crazies that day just kept coming: On my way through the lobby of my residence, burdened down with luggage, I dropped a plastic shopping bag, breaking my father’s bottle of vodka. The smell of the alcohol seemed to completely fill the hall as the elderly ladies at the desk rushed to get the mop. I was humiliated and running on my last nerve when I finally met up with my boyfriend. Once I could ditch my parents, we had one hell of a freshman week. Likely I was in shock, but after the frenzy of the trip, I felt bulletproof and ready to have a rockin’ time to blot out the drive from hell. The first time I ever passed out was a Saturday night that month.

You’d think I would know better, wouldn’t you? Sadly, logic has nothing to do with it. If the craziness of an alcoholic family isn’t genetic, the loopy logic of surviving the latest bomb blast in an addicted household seems to make us vulnerable to those same demons that haunt our parents and bedeviled our childhoods. Dumb luck was the only reason I saw the signs before I drove through them.

Ironies Abound

2008-01-31T11:18:00.000-05:00

Of course, after writing that I had to write in order to survive, I didn't do it for four days! The perfectionist in me wants to don the hair shirt, but I'll stifle that. It's just life.

I had a really busy day on Monday teaching the art classes, and then was out the door early Tuesday for my dental appointment. Yesterday, I had to get at it fairly quickly to do what I had to do, making photocopies and working out at the Y, as a big storm bared down on us and I was wondering if we would even have power later in the day. The power held, and in the evening I was on deck for our community choir post-concert debrief/coffee house. I ended up MC-ing and also helped to provide a suitable ambience through several living room lamps and a few dozen votive candles that turned the cavernous church hall into a cozy cafe. The individual talents in our choir that we don't get to see most of the time is truly amazing... Plus I had a lot of paperwork to distribute and collect for the debrief. I really did A LOT last night. Next year it might be a little different. No, next year it WILL be a little different. I'll leave the paperwork for someone else. And work on the ambient lighting more. I liked the mood. I enjoy hosting the party, particularly because it's not at my house!

The teaching on Monday, eeehhhhh... it wasn't so much fun. Nothing bad happened. We had some kids that needed reining in during the afternoon session, but their teacher arrived and she basically sat on them. I don't know. It is something I am slowly digesting. I was surprised at the student's lack of skill in some respects, but I guess that was bound to happen. I've spent a lot of time in an ivory tower, and so to see what kids are doing (more like aren't doing) in schools where the arts have been really given short shrift was a bit of a shock. I would like to work with small groups (ie 6 kids) on the finer points of art, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. I can talk with my friend the organizer when she returns from a trip. But not another large group. Too much crowd control while I'm trying to give them an intensive dose of art.

Too much activity, too little thought. Now I'm talking about me. I watch my mood slowly sour when I do this. Plus my sponsor has been away in Mexico, so I'm missing our weekly talks... And my sponsee has been sick so I didn't see her either. Yow! I'm in a dangerous place here! I'm amazed that my food hasn't been worse than it has been. If I don't change something, I'm going to crash.

How has the food been? Not too bad, but I'm still struggling with the nibblies. Nightime nibblies, a bit of ham or a few strands of the spaghetti I'm putting in the fridge in after dinner cleanup. And it bugs me. I would like to be about 5 pounds less so my size 8s are more comfortable, and I've seen the nibbling as the best place to make a change in my behaviour. And yet I haven't really committed to changing that, ie putting it as part of my abstinence definition. I guess I wonder if I'm becoming too much of a weight control monk. How big an issue is this? I'm not sure. It's hard not to be too much of a nazi about this. I'm also wondering if I need to weigh and measure more. Again, it's a question of degree with this.

Or do I just need to keep a more conscious contact with my higher power and let the food fall where it may? Will the obsession be lifted from me? I know I'm powerless over the food, but where does my higher power want me to go with this? I think I need to do some more reading, listening, and talking with my fellow sufferers on this point.

Interesting that while I often collapse on the couch in the late evening and I think of myself as a night owl I rarely write at that time. Just now I think that before making any big changes in my food plan I should write down what I have been eating. When I'm aware of what I've been doing, maybe I can see more clearly if & where changes could be made. Ok, that I can commit to. Write it down for a week.

In other parts of my life, I'm working on Photoshopping some of my photos for a new painting. However, learning to use the program I've selected is often like, well, picking up my laptop and whacking myself on the forehead with it! It took an hour of playing around to simply stitch a couple of background shots together. (One of the less successful attempts can be seen to the left...)

Hm. Since there is such nice light today, I could try taking some more reference shots. I have a rather ambitious plan for one, but I'm not sure that I'm not biting off a little more than I can chew here....akkk, always the food!!!!

Stopping in order to stop

2008-01-27T12:54:00.000-05:00

I have to write if I'm not going to eat compulsively. But I can't write if I don't stop, and sit down at the computer. I can get so caught up in my daily schedule that I can let it slide more or less completely, but when I do that, within a short period of time I can find other things sliding until I may find myself in a desperate place with my emotions. I get pissy, pessimistic. That inevitably ends up with me craving more food. It's like a black hole in my psyche opens and starts sucking my optimism into it. And the food is like a branch that I have always clutched at when I feel myself even slightly slipping over the brink.

That branch reminds me of a book I read a long time ago at the suggestion of my doctor, Eating in the Light of the Moon, and the author likened eating disorders to a log that you might have clung on to, floating in a flooded river, in order to survive a challenging time in your life. Yeah, I guess my childhood, even with its nice middle class veneer could fit that metaphor. Whatever happened, I seemed to need a crutch, that log. And eventually, in order to get to the shore from the flood, you have to let go of that log and step out on to the shore. I guess that's what you would call getting grounded. My problem was, I had latched on to that log for way too long, and the attachment to my log was threatening to drown me in physical and emotional problems.

I don't remember anything else much about the book, it didn't really seem to help with my binging problem at the time, but I come back to that log metaphor often.

So, I have to stop and write in the middle of my day in order take some stock of what is going on in my savage breast, or more likely, my fevered cranium. Lately I've been noticing people in 12 step meetings talking about all the chatter that goes on in their head --- you know, the committee that never takes a coffee break, just goes on and on and on, so much so that you can't hear much of what's going on around you. The committee is quite happy to construct an alternate reality for you, with very little input from what's actually out there, a rehash of past events. Of course, everyone's reality is subjective. But I think my reality is sometimes so subjective, it's unhealthily distorted. I think it's just a question of degree, where I fall in that continuum between being very aware of my surroundings to off living somewhere in my la la land head. I guess that's what the weather is like on Fatgrrl. And Planet Fatgrrl often ain't exactly a happy place. Well, some bits are, but there seem to be a few too many sketchy neighbourhoods for my taste!

Sorry for the maelstrom of metaphors here, the planet with neighbourhoods, and logs, and rivers and committees, but it's interesting to see all this gushing out of my brain. I think it's just a small sample of what's constantly swirling around there. It's one of those planets with a very thick atmosphere that threatens to obscure the sun. Speaking of obscure, hooboy...

ANYWAY... it's got to all work together. Understanding why I eat is not enough. Reading good books is not enough. Going to meetings is not enough. Talking to others is not enough. Telling myself I am not going to eat something is not enough. Writing is not enough. Praying is not enough. I need all of it. And still I am tempted. I have to work my butt off working my program. And I also have to literally work my butt off because the physical exercise has to come into it too because I want to feel physically good in my skin and not have to eat only lettuce sandwiches. Reading all this is daunting, but if I have anything to share with you , it's that doing all this stuff? ---- it's thrilling.

Gifts

2008-01-25T22:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I got another gift from working the steps this week: I was able to try teaching again. This is pretty big. I used to teach, but badly, and well over ten years ago. I didn't think I was cut out for it, but I've been thinking that maybe I just wasn't ready for it. I don't actually want to be a regular classroom teacher, I don't have the drive for it that you need to be a good one, and despite the fact it pays lousy, I still want to be an artist. But I might be able to do some art teaching, possibly in a school or at my own studio, or a combination of the above.

How do the steps help me with this? Well, it's helping me deal with the maelstrom of emotions that teaching conjure up, particularly the big FEAR that has been enveloping my mind when considering it. I can't eat over it any more, I know where that sad storyline goes, and I want to try to pass on some of that information I've collected through twenty years of being an art student. Unlike the studio, teaching is, duh, not a solitary occupation, and that's a nice change. I think I can see that if I can make this work, it could be very rewarding.

In some respects, I think I've been allowed to mature, develop some skills that weren't possible for that scared little kid inside me. Working through the fear, I can start seeing the joy. I used to eat to suppress that fear. Note to self: doesn't work. It might make it easier to nap for an hour but then the fear returns, refreshed by the food, and being stuffed to the gills makes it even harder to deal with it.

The other thing that working my program has shown me is that sharing my fears with some people that I trust (which, BTW, I have learned is not necessarily everyone I meet in the rooms) in OA helps me to work through the fears. They may or may not have suggestions, but by just sharing it, I feel some support, and sometimes while sharing, an idea will leap to mind, or I'll gain a fuller perspective. This is all new stuff for me --- I didn't get it growing up, although I'm sure that if my parents themselves possessed these skills, they would have passed them on to me. It's not their fault nobody told them.

I guess it's true that this way of life is not just about the food. In fact, the more I practice this stuff, the more the food retreats into being a part of my life, not my whole life.

Opening the Clam

2008-01-24T12:51:00.000-05:00

My mind is like a clam. If I don't open it up and look at it regularly, it slams shut and threatens to never open, not even if I take a sharp knife to it. In order to keep it opening, I have to practice doing so regularly.

This morning I didn't write. I napped, I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher. I even bagged up the recycling for tonight. If that isn't a sign of procrastination, I don't know what is. Why do I even try opening the clam? Well, for the simple reason that I have to. If I don't want to slide into compulsive eating. It took me a long time to make that association, sure, my OA meetings are full of people who say that literature, meditation and prayer on a daily basis are what keeps them sane, but I really didn't believe it would work for me. Or I didn't believe that I could keep it up for a long period of time. After all, I was Miss Try Anything Once, but ask me to keep doing it, fuggeddaboutit.

But at some point I was tired of the craziness. Tired enough to try doing it differently at least. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Then sanity is going, ok, maybe I should try doing it differently if I want my life to be different. I don't think I'm that unlike the majority of people who can be told something by people about a million times before it actually takes, and only really believe it when seeing and feeling it ourselves. Well, I've found a couple of things that I used to enjoy aren't so enjoyable, and in some cases, I now prefer the sane behviour/substance. I'm just do it because told it's good for me, the sane choice actually feels better.

For instance, some junk foods I rarely eat any more because they are so damn unsatisfying. Donuts are one of them. Like Louie Anderson says, you don't even taste that first one, it's chomp, chomp, and slurrph, you've inhaled it and aren't even sure you actually ate it. Not positive my teeth actually made contact on the way down. It just paved the way for the next one. Ones. All one doughnut does for me is set up the craving for more. On its own, its particularly unsatisfying. I'd much rather have an ounce of really dark chocolate and a nice cup of a very good decaf coffee or chai. It takes as long to eat, actually longer because the chocolate demands savouring, and I can stop with one.

It's kind of like that with the writing. Invariably, I will feel better after doing this. And that feeling better sets up the craving to repeat those good feelings. No, it's not the same as a good binge (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), but I'm starting to savour the long term benefits of emotional sanity. And I'm talking beyond the obvious pleasures of being able to fit into the same normal sized clothes year after year that I don't have to go to the fat people ghettos to buy.

Less obvious is the sheer pleasure of physical exercise. For a while was I just did it because 1) I was "skeerd" of dying and bad health and 2) it would help me lose weight faster. I really disliked it at first. Initially, all I could do was take a hour's walk at night (less people who would see me) with Fuzz before bed. Now, this has taken over five years, but I have to say that now exercise gives me a high. In addition, I'm now fit enough that physical challenges like moving house, walking a distance to explore someplace on a trip, sprinting through the airport to catch a connection, or setting up a campsite when the weather suddenly turns really hot won't throw me for the loop it used to.

Of course, none of this on its own is what keeps me out of the food. But it helps. It all adds up. If I can do the footwork, shore up my dykes, it can help me from being swamped when I'm having a bad time and I can feel the clammy wet fingers of a food flood threatening at my toes and my tastebuds, when my mouth says, more, and I know it's not because I actually need more food. The thing is, those moments can come upon me so suddenly, when things seem to be going well, and suddenly taking an extra bite seems like a good idea.

Like last night. After choir practice a bunch of us go for a "postlude" at the pub across from the cathedral we're performing at on the weekend. The fact that I don't drink isn't much of a problem, I easily order my diet coke, and they nicely give me an extra large one with a slice of lime. The hard part is the pub grub, for this is a very traditional pub that specializes in deep fried everything--- with a side of mayo! I was so glad that the guy in our group that ordered those hand cut fries was sitting at the opposite end of a long table and that when he offered to send them down our way, there were two of us (one a man who I know is battling some weight and health issues) who were able to wave it back the other way. But it was that close. I could have had a few. Maybe. Or I would have had a few then ordered another basket "for the table". But I know damn well who would claim the lion's share. Or should I say "what" would claim its share. My disease, my gremlin, my freakin' starvin' inner child. Whatever lives within and always needs more.

Oh, I saw my optometrist this morning re: the floater, which I can't even see any more. He did all the stuff: dialation, photos, etc etc, and nothing seems amiss. Then he showed me retinal photos of his floaters. Awesome!

Aging Sucks!

2008-01-23T10:44:00.000-05:00

Well there's a newsflash for you... don't you just love all these boomers who act as if nobody ever got old before? I think it has something due to being hippies, delaying maturity, so it's such a shock when you start experiencing all the aches and pains of your parents.

Last night after going running with my faithful friends in a snowstorm I was feeling so strong, so like a green beret able to brave sleet and cold, so alive, so... smug. I loved running, and I hoped I could keep it up for many years. Maybe I could be one of those people still running in their seventies.

This morning I was staring at my computer screen in the very bright, sundrenched kitchen--- the storm of last night had turned into a very cold, white, sparkling bright morning. And what did I discover floating across my computer screen, no, not my screen, not my very dirty and scratched glasses, no... it was my eye. Rats. I have a floater. A tiny one, a mere speck, but there it was in the field of vision in my left eye, moving every time I moved my eye. Yes, no, maybe, yes, there it was again. And I panic. "STROKE! ANEURYISM! BLINDNESS! DETACHED RETINA! OH GOD HOW CAN I BE A BLIND PAINTER???"

All that stuff went through my brain in the space of oh, 10 seconds. Surf medical sites, google it, wiki it... ah, likely just another symptom of middle age. Oh great. Reminded again. Not a joy filled kid, but an occasionally joy filled middle aged woman. I started feeling creaky. I made an appointment with my optometrist just to check it out. Had another cup of coffee. Phoned Fuzz. He made comforting noises, said he had one a while back. He did??? Why didn't he say anything? Just didn't think to. He is so unangstful at being 51 it makes me feel sheepish, when it doesn't frustrate me completely at his unflappableness. That's him. God, I'm hungry. It's an hour to lunch. What's up with that?

Aw fuck it. I'm going to the gym. Enough retina gazing.

When In Doubt, Run

2008-01-21T09:53:00.000-05:00

I'm having a hard time writing today. I hadn't written since last week because the last few days have been pretty busy. Some of my friends in OA get up before dawn to do their writing and meditation. One of them, a teacher, actually complained this week that she had slept in to 7 am and so wasn't able to get her regular writing done. Well. As an inveterate night owl, I'm still struggling to come to at 8 am most mornings and am quite proud that I am now in bed before midnight most nights, so I'm not quite up with the dawn league yet. And when life demands that I show up before 9 am, the writing usually doesn't get done.

So, here I am, but it's like the hinge on my psyche has rusted shut and doesn't want to open. I think there's something in me that is screaming "I don't wanna, there's things in here that are gonna huuurrrrt!" I think that's my problem in a nutshell. Growing up I was told, keep it in, keep it in, don't show, don't share, it's not what ladies do, it's not what adults do, stop being so damn emotional, we don't want to see it. My mother would tell me I was too sensitive. So I learned how to keep it in, shut it down. What better to shut it down but with the food?
Writing the last two paragraphs has been like applying some oil to that hinge. Slowly the pandora's box of my brain opens a crack, and I catch a whiff of the sulfur of fear. I'm afraid. Tomorrow I go to a school where a friend is teaching to talk to her students about what it's like to be an artist. Wow, that brings up big issues, like: self confidence! I've got to spend some time today amassing some images from the web, like artists I really like and some drawing examples... And I have to go to the studio and get some materials to show them what I work with.

I think I also have to work my 12 step programme too, to deal with this fear, and my flippy ego. I have to take my ego out of this equation: I am going to this school not to talk about me, but about my experiences with art. Can you see the difference? These kids do not want to know about me, they want to know about what it's like being an artist. Taking my ego out of the equation defuses a lot of the fear. I'm a conduit, not the subject. I've got lots of really cool pictures I can use, and cool stuff I can show them. I think I'll pick up some vine charcoal today and a leather chamois that can be used for erasing. Maybe I can talk about creating the finished product starting from sketches. Sketchbooks! I'll take my sketchbooks, and some of my preparatory drawings for my final project. Now the juices are really starting to flow!!! Okay, now I'm feeling better. The whole thing starts to look do-able.

This stuff doesn't look like it should have anything to do with my eating. But it SO does, because so much of my eating is emotional! I had a dust up with the food, albeit a minor one, on Saturday. It was after another tiring pre-concert rehearsal with my choir. A lot of standing around while the technical issues of dealing with an unfamiliar performance venue got worked out. I had lunch with Fuzz and a couple of friends from the choir. At the end of the meal, something in my brain had decided it wasn't sated, that I have somehow been deprived. When Fuzz and I went to the health food store to pick up some steel cut oats for my world's best oatmeal, they had some of those baked "healthy" Guiltless Gourmet tortilla chips on the sample table. Something in my prehensile brain (stem?) decided these were fair game. So I went back not two, not three, but four times to the table to sample all four varieties. I went so many times I'm surprised I didn't get the hairy eyeball from the clerk when we finally got to the cash. I felt bewildered and ashamed when I got home. And amazingly, still hungry. I grabbed a handful of baby carrots from the fridge, thinking maybe my hunger was because the lunch was a little light on veggies. The hunger stayed.

Finally, I took a nap with Fuzz. He was tired from work and fighting a bit of a cold, and it had felt way too early when I dragged myself out of bed early that morning to hurtle off in a snow squall to the church for the rehearsal. It was a delicious nap! One of those ones that make you feel a little guilty, but very refreshed. Then I gathered my gym clothes up and went for a workout. And that felt really good. Somewhere during the nap, my attitude switch got reset. And then, the workout really flipped it into a good zone. The food was quiet the rest of the day, and then yesterday it was fine. I'm not so good at this self care stuff, my first reaction when feeling like I need some comfort is to eat. The good thing, is when I discover that I have other options in the self-nurturing department, it's a new discovery. New discoveries in middle age are a good thing.

My Car Prefers Chips to Chai

2008-01-17T09:42:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday was one of those days that slowly but surely grated on my nerves by the end of the day. It was subtle, but by nearly 10 pm when I was driving home from choir practice, I felt as if my emotions had been rubbed raw. I felt really “crabbyassed” as my friend calls her 9 year old when she's having a bad day. As I passed the 7-11 on the corner I felt the old temptation to grab a very large bag of chips and do some serious eating with the molars that were clenched in a rigor mortis-like grimace. Invariably I have this craving driving home from choir. It’s something about the stress of a choir director who is talented and trying in equal measure and the other (I kid you not) 120 people in the room! Instead, I kept my hands tight on the wheel (do I have a car that magically wants to turn into the 7-11?) and when I got home five minutes later grumped about my day to Fuzz, but not too much to because he was still doing work on his laptop. He works so hard I don’t feel like I can lay too much on his plate. So I started brewing some chai for us. It's still consuming something, but I substitute the urge to eat into a more benign track.

I like it done chai-wallah style, where the tea is boiled with the milk, making a strong, spicy, sweet brew where the milk mysteriously never seems to curdle despite if I forget it and let it boil too hard. Stick to the bottom of the pot, maybe, but doesn’t curdle. I wonder if there’s something in the tea, like the tannins, that does it?

Then I started folding the laundry Fuzz had started,while I called my friend M just to talk about the new policeman on Law & Order. I caught the chai before it had boiled down too much, added more water, fetched us our usual two small bars of dark chocolate, and watched the rest of the show with Fuzz. By the time I hauled my very tired butt to bed, I felt better, likely due to a combination of being able to vent a bit to Fuzz and M, make the chai, watch one of my favorite shows, and make up a basket of well folded laundry. Self comforting, my shrink calls it. In ways other than consuming that party sized bag of chips.

Another thing that got to me was a meeting earlier in the day with my OA sponsee. I’m very worried about her. She’s white knuckling it through a week of abstinence, but boy, it’s a tough slog. Her health is really bad and she has to lose a significant amount of weight for it to improve. But she’s not making it any easier on herself, isolating big time and while she can make it to the minimum amount of work necessary and to church, she isn’t going to meetings. Her recovery is tenuous. But then, it may have to be this. She’s lonely and unhappy. Maybe it's a good thing that she’s freaking miserable. That makes a good bottom, and maybe this is the one that is going to make the recovery start to stick. She’s talking a lot of rubbish, but I don't try to interject with advice. I’m not one of those sponsors who “save” their sponsees from their self made prisons just to live in one of my construction. I’ve seen sponsors do this and frankly, while it may work temporarily, I don’t think it usually has a lasting benefit. They may seem like our children, but they are not. They are thinking adults who have a streak of self-destructive insanity. Despite my best co-dependent adult child of alcoholic intentions, I have to let her follow her own path. That's not easy. It's wearing, frankly.

Stop the Clock!

2008-01-16T09:41:00.000-05:00

Rats rats rats, where does the time go! I've got so much on my plate today...

Yesterday was a great day, despite the worries that plague me. I think this teaching opportunity has dredged up a lot of old ghouls, but it's interesting in that I am reminded of a similar frame of mind when I was in Grad School in New York, around the turn of the millenium (creeeak, sound of wheels in time moving)... It was damn hard work, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to do it. I would wake up early in the morning so I could walk for a half hour or so just to clear my head before heading down into the bowels of Manhattan to catch the 2 or 3 express to school . I guess you could call it a buzz. I feel challenged and it makes me a little squirrelly but alive. It also makes me think, that just like grad school, it's a really good thing to do. There were a lot of other less constructive behaviours that I indulged in during grad school, so in order to avoid lapsing into those very familiar and seductive patterns I have to work a different one, not white knuckle my way through the very large hole that is created when I stop the destructive behaviours. That's where working the steps come in: creating constructive coping mechanisms that actually encourage growth rather than retreating into fear.

I am so grateful for the Tuesday night OA meeting I go to. There are some women there who are really working the 12 steps in their lives to change the old negative patterns and create new and fulfilling ones. They are making new lives for themselves that have surprising amounts of joy rather than deadening, enveloping fear self abuse. And I think that this is how I have to work these challenges that I've taken on now: How do I approach them in a healthy way leading to joy, rather than with the old stunted (fear suffused, self-flagellating) approach I learned from, well, who knows, my family, the culture, the ether, whatever. Doesn't matter. Work the steps. Acknowledge that I am filled with fear and ask for help from a higher power and my friends. Spread it around, gather strength to me, not try to work it in a fear-created vacuum which only supports the growth of more fear. Look at my expectations, tone them down, start small and build.

I've just had an idea of a visual aid I can use. It seems really simple, but I think it will work. I've got a good friend who wants me to work with her class, so we'll try it with them. I've also got an idea about a buddy exercise. Things are starting to flow. It seems slow, but I've still got prep time.

Ok, despite the fact that I am luxuriating in bed with a furry purring lead weight between my ankles, it's time to get to the gym and move my body, see what other positive energy I can stir up. Man o man. I can't believe this is me some days.

The Struggle is the Lesson

2008-01-15T12:25:00.001-05:00

I've got a dear friend who appears to be dealing with a fairly major depression. The usual symptoms, or at least the ones that I've had: an inability to get out of bed many days, listlessness, pessimism, basic self care is an effort. I just went through one of those last year and I feel for her, but I know I can't do much more than be her cheering section when she can't.

One of her favorite sayings is "This too shall pass", but she says it with a heavy sigh implying that she is suffering and maybe doesn't believe it. I felt that. But I think I was driving somewhere the other day, between a couple of errands, and I realized that not only will trying times usually pass, but we have to go through them in order to develop any level of maturity. As a food addict, daughter of an alcoholic, my emotional maturation got frozen at some point. In order to catch up, I think it's gotta hurt, or at the least life has gotta be felt, and then you add in the rest of the big and small dings you get in the parking lot of life.

I've been through some biggies and also the usual ones: parental illness and death, my diabetes and hypertension, the depression, relationship issues, career brick walls and u-turns is what comes to mind. But I've come through them and I'm still standing, and some days I feel like I've been left standing taller and stronger, not worn down. I find my place is someplace I'm rather amazed to be.

I think of the plants at the greenhouse I worked at for a couple of years: the proverbial hot house flowers. In order to toughen them up, we had to subject them to some stress before they were planted. It's common to run a fan across seedlings to toughen up and thicken their stems, or before planting them outside to gradually introduce them to the climate. The plants suffer little cellular micro tears to ther stems when the breeze hits them. Just as when you lift weights, and not big honking ones, but something a little heavier than you may do daily, your muscles are subjected to microtears that heal and strengthen the bone and thicken the muscle.

I think that the stuff that "too will pass" does for my emotional strength what weights do for the body: I get the opportunity to grow from these things. For instance: I'm still all riled up over my upcoming choir concert and the classes I'm going to teach. I woke up from a lovely sexy dream way too early by the worrying. So I spent all this morning doing stuff to prepare for the things that are weighing on my mind. When I do that, the load seems to lessen.

I couldn't have done this, or it would have been much harder if my first action this morning was to take something to suppress the anxiety, run away from it. Even with all my supports, I still wanted to eat a piece of cheese after breakfast this morning, likely due to the anxiety. I didn't, because I knew it was insane after a very hearty breakfast, but I'd been down this road so many times before: I have fear, then eat something to smother the fear, fear returns. Fear has to be dealt with with in a variety of ways: doing what I fear or changing the scenario, or I go into a hole and eat to forget the world exists. The eating doesn't make it easier. I still have to face what I fear or choose to drop into oblivion. After 1 piece of cheese or a half pound of 4 different cheeses, plus bread, plus chips, plus chocolate... the same hard choice is still there for me to make. I used to not make the choices and instead bury it in an endless round of food.

It seems that life did conspire early on to stunt my growth, but I can still do a lot to recover from that, and have a pretty good life in the meantime.

Gotta Type

2008-01-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

There's no way this blog is ever going to make me famous, but I've found over and over again that daily writing here seems to keep me more even. Maybe it lets out some of the sourness that tends to build up in my soul. Rather disturbing to think of internal sourness, in our society we don't want to acknowledge the darker feelings. In fact I used to think I was aberrant in that I have those feelings, but I have come to believe that everyone does, it just differs on how we deal with them or don't. I think that my aberrant behaviour that came out in my overeating and my inability to work without crushing anxiety had something to do with my inability to face these hard feelings, the anger, the fear in particular. Everyone has those feelings, and you can't just smother them. You have to deal with them. The longer I do 12 step work and therapy the more I see that there are many, many people who don't deal with them very well. We suppress them at our own peril, because they don't just go away, they can grow and explode in devastating ways, destroying lives and families. Slowly, or quickly, with a bang. Sometimes literally! Sometimes, as in my own case, slowly smothering the natural joy until life seemed no longer worth living.

Whoa. Heavy stuff this morning. Maybe because I hadn't posted for a few days, and I've got a lot on my mind. A lot has happened this week, the first one back in town since the Christmas holidays. A lot of fun with friends, and some hard stuff too, helping a sick friend, and witnessing another one spinning out of control. And I've got some stuff on my plate. A couple of classes I've committed to teaching over a couple of days. Oh man, my stomach just did a flip flop there. I've got to firm up what I'm teaching and talk with the coordinators of the classes. It's been a long time since I've attempted to teach, and frankly, it's scaring the willies out of me. I think I've got a deep vein of pessimism about it, mixed up with some hope and joy if I do manage to pass on the fun stuff. After lunch I'll spend some time in the studio and maybe ground myself a bit, maybe dredge the dollar stores for some visual aids. Oh man, my stomach is really churning up. Ok, first things first. They need a bio to give to parents and students, bleah...

Well, got that done, I think. Now I have to look at what I want the kids to do with their 90 minutes and how to do it. Easy peasy, huh? The irony is I used to teach for a living, but I'm out of practice and that was several lifetimes ago. There are a couple of real differences here: I'm a different person than I was then, and I am teaching something I really really want to pass on well, because I love the subject. So I have to do this in a way that conveys that. I love life drawing and painting, but it's really hard work, and as frequent readers of this blog know, I've had a lot of hangups about my art, having just gotten back in the studio after a block that kept me out of the studio for most of five years. Well, that's not true. I did do a couple of paintings during that time, but I did spend a lot of time running. Hm, well, looks like I've stopped running here. Good omen.

Yahoo! Lunch time! And tonight Fuzz and I will hit the gym, so the day looks good! Work, self care, and physical exercise.

Lessons Learned

2008-01-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

I thought I should update my photo, so you would know what I look like now, as opposed to 2005 when I started writing this... So there I am. How do you like my airbrushed dark glasses? I got tired of the Dame Edna look, although you can still see them on my old photo from 1995. Maybe I'll modify that someday too.

I'm much calmer than I was when I wrote the previous post. Life has returned to normal, I'm back at work, choir is back in session as we prepare for our concert in a couple of weeks. A bunch of my OA friends are having birthdays (not OA anniversaries as such, what my friend M distinguishes as "bellybutton" birthdays) so there has been absolutely no post Christmas celebration come down. Just the opposite: it's kind of like, oh enough of the celebrations! But only because I am so aware how social eating and the portion/richness magnification can send me into a tizzy (See my previous post).

I wonder if there is a plan I can put into place to counteract this. I think I'll talk to my food buddy to see what she has to suggest. Or maybe, ooh boy, here's a concept!... Talk to my OA sponsor! What can I do about the food portion magnification? That craving for more...

When I eat a normal meal at home it is a discrete portion. There's just Fuzz and me (I don't know what I would do if I had to cook for a larger family) and yet I don't always just make enough for one meal, but the leftovers aren't generally a problem, usually because I can just save them for another meal. However, there is nibbling that goes on, I have to be honest. And I usually don't stress out over it. Maybe I have to be clear and tolerant of my emotions and behaviours and say that often I will eat a little more, whether it's while cleaning up or during preparation. And since my definition of food abstinence is to not binge, I'm ok.

On the other hand, I'd like to lose a few pounds because my size 8 jeans have been a little tight since the hernia/tummy tuck surgery last winter, and I've even bought a size 10 pair in the spring. So, if I want to lose weight, the nibbling is maybe the obvious thing I want to look at. On the other hand (how many hands do I need here? Maybe I should move onto feet!!!) it's not an easy habit to change. It's so easy to slip a little something into into my mouth while cooking, or say, hey, I want a little piece of cheese... It may be "just nibbles", but it will take work to change it. It's so automatic, I still find myself with the refrigerator door open in front of me before I know what I'm doing! This I do need to talk to my sponsor and other programme people about, because while I want to change this behaviour, I don't want to turn into a hair-shirt, self flagellating, weight loss nun.

I know my psyche is all in a tizzy about a couple of arts workshops I'm doing with kids in a couple of weeks. I have to do some prep for these and also prepare myself emotionally for it because kids care me silly. (Don't tell them, they can smell the fear!) Yesterday, I was freaked out enough about it, it woke me up before dawn. Today, having prepped a bit for it, and interestingly, discussing it with two friends who have spontaneously offered to help me with it, I'm feeling much calmer. I have to do the groundwork here, and it's amazing how the fear shrinks as I reach out for support!

A Social Eater, or Closet Eater?

2008-01-07T12:27:00.000-05:00

I'm back after a hectic but fun Christmas vacation. For the most part. It had a less than soft ending as my host for a ski weekend ended up having to go to emerg after a fall, and we spent some not so tranquil hours waiting waiting waiting in the ER. Then 5 1/2 hours of driving in the dark to get home, racing the clock to beat the snow. The end result was I felt pretty exhausted and drained when I finally got home. But there were great times, with many highlights: hiking in a Nevada canyon (never been in the desert before), seeing a wonderful Cirque de Soleil show in Las Vegas, and hiking to the top of a small mountain in Quebec with my fancy new snowshoes, on a blindingly bright -15 degree day. That last one was done alone, and I might have given up if I was hiking with someone else, but since the trail was clearly marked and my friend knew where I was going, I was ok. It was amazing. After admiring the view from the top, I had to hightail it back down because I would soon run out of light, so I practically ran down the steep path. In snowshoes yet, who knew? They are made for it, though, they have these big mean looking crampons on the bottom for gripping slopes which certainly appeared to me to be at least 60 degrees! I couldn't have done this five years ago.

The eating went pretty well, considering we travelled a lot. Of course, when travelling, due to restaurant portion inflation it was hard to not eat more than usual, but Fuzz and I often split an entree, salad and an appetizer. And many times lunch was brown bagged because we were staying in a hotel room with a kitchen and a friend's house.

Actually, it wasn't until I got home that I ran into trouble. I was tired and a little depressed. That night was a friend's birthday party. Some of the people there were OA people, some were not. There was way too much food. And for whatever reason, I don't know why, it just seems to be the nature of my beast, my MORE monster came out roaring. I was full. But I wanted to keep eating anyway. Of course, because my OA friends were there, I didn't overeat in front of them, always careful to keep up the appearances, but once I got home with a package of leftovers, I began to pick at them after Fuzz went to bed (of course). It wasn't a binge as such, I stopped before that happened, but I still felt like an idiot the next day thinking that I had eaten too much in total that day. I felt overstuffed, and ashamed of myself.

The next day I was back to normal, but I was highly aware of the claws of the monster appearing out of the abyss wanting to drag me down. ARgh argh argh. The nature of my beast. I've had this before with eating with others. And I'm not sure what I should do about it, because it feels gross. That's the only word for it. I get too full and I'm mad at myself.

The out of control eating, that emerges is after social dining but it's definitely done in secret. And it feels out of whack. And I wasn't writing. I think all sorts of uncomfortable stuff was going on, and so the eating came out. Yet again. I have to learn these things over and over, at a deeper level I guess, so this time I got away by the skin of my teeth (no pun intended), but just barely. Grrrrr. Spit.

"Just" Saying No Takes Work

2007-12-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

I had a dust up with a bunch of cookies Fuzz's mom cooked last night. I had a couple too many, and in retrospect I should have come up with a number which Fuzz and I agreed was good --- him being my biggest support and fan --- and stuck to it. But I only ate 2 more than I think I should have. Not a big issue. The bigger problem was the damn gumdrop cake she insisted on sending home with us. It sits glowering in the freezer. It would be under the bird feeder feeding the squirrels right now if Fuzz didn't like it so much. My plan is to let it sit there for 2 weeks and then send it to work with him.

I just dodged a bullet an hour ago: I had tentatively planned to join BF for lunch but then I found out it was a buffet. And it wasn't going to be just us, some of BF's family were coming and it just sounded like a recipe for overeating. Amazingly I was able to say, no, sorry, I have a hard time with buffets. So now I'm off the hook, which feels better. But boy, it's hard to just stop and say no when confronted with hard food situations.

Part of it is the difficulty in remembering that I am someone who has problems with food, who is constantly compelled to eat too much. That's where the steps come in, constantly reminding me that I'm powerless over the food, one of those "Duh, oh yeah, compulsive overeater, forgot that!" moments.

And I've told my mother in law this, and still she offers me food. Well, I guess if I forget, then she can too. We don't want to remember this, it means I'm different, and food becomes a dangerous substance. Who wouldn't want to forget that?

Oops, gotta go for my group therapy session. Not a barrel of laughs although some days it is.

Day 51 since a binge.

Ironic Christmas

2007-12-20T10:30:00.000-05:00

Last night my choir had our annual open sing, inviting the community to come and share a rehearsal with us, doing Christmas and other seasonal music. It was a really well attended (I'm sure the room had more people than the fire code allowed) and lots of people pitched in putting out extra chairs, passing out songbooks, and collecting donations for the local food bank in lieu of an admission charge. It was a great evening, one of those ones where you really think, "This is how Christmas should be!" It even gave a nice glow to the snow falling softly outside.

Now, sitting on my kitchen floor are 6 big boxes of non-perishables and just over 250 dollars in cash and cheques that I volunteered to drop off at the food bank before lunch time. We had to lug the boxes into the house because I didn't think it would help the cans and jars to freeze in the van overnight. The sight of all that food on my kitchen floor struck me as rather ironic; I am a compulsive overeater, after all, and there are six boxes containing many of my drugs of choice, waiting to make someone else's holiday nicer or at least survivable.

But is it really ironic? Besides the fact I have a van, probably one of the reasons I volunteered to take the food to the food bank was I am so comfortable around food. It is almost like a virtual friend to me, indeed, I've used food as a friend substitute many a time. I used to work in a restaurant, I volunteered for a soup kitchen, I know food. I talk foodie. I'm familiar with how to handle it safely, I know the conventions, I'm one of those people friends ask "How do I cook x, y or z?" I can pronounce quinoa, I can make a very authentic tasting southern pulled pork, I've had a cookbook just for tofu, and one on the history of russian cuisine. I've eaten chicken feet and sea blubber in Hong Kong, and actually know that the latter is a type of jellyfish. I'm much more comfortable working with food than with people. I have a couple of phone calls I've been sitting on because I'm so uncomfortable talking on the phone with people I don't know very well. Food doesn't talk back, unless you count the times I've gotten food poisoning!

But last night went well. After we got the hall cleaned and closed up a few of us headed off to the local watering hole to have a drink. In my case, the drink was diet coke. Didn't partake of the chips and peanuts going around (fortuitously, none of them actually got passed under my nose this time) and just enjoyed being able to sit and chat with people. I drove home fairly hungry, aware that my social anxiety might have been making my stomach feel very very empty, but then realized it had been 5 hours since dinner, so hunger was not an unusual response. I had my usual snack of almonds and yogurt and went to bed. It had been a good day and I was aware of how content I felt and how grateful I was for that contentment.

Ok, so now the grateful compulsive overeater is off to the food bank with her loot, and it's been 50 days since a binge!!! If it's not ironic, it's at least funny!

Battling the Grey

2007-12-19T09:33:00.001-05:00

No, this isn't one of those essays about hair color, it's about One of Those Mornings. Winter grey, the sky heading for leaden, I think we've got some snow coming. I actually like that leaden sky you see on some winter afternoons, you know, the one that looks like it is made of something more substantial than vapour: velour, or some other weighty fabric. If I'm out trudging around (what else can you do wearing all that heavy clothing and coping with the uncertain footing?) It reminds me of Bruegel or those other northern European artists who did those paintings of life in winter. Imagine what life was like then: certainly much harder as survival to spring was not assured, and for some reason I think of how much smellier it must have been. But this morning is one of those ones where it's hard to get going. I just want to hibernate. Did our ancestors have that luxury? I felt so heavy, I switched on my daylight therapy box even before I got out of bed.

Thank God for Fuzz, he brought me a cup of coffee.

I'm finding that I really have to keep up with my physical activity right now in order to not go completely comatose. I'm going to have to wrap up this right smartly in order to squeeze a gym visit in between driving here and there on errands and the studio before an early supper and off to choir practice. My head goes "oooh can't we just go back to sleep for a little while?" and I punch another 30 minutes into the light box timer...

I am definitely not a morning person. Right now, my body is sagging to the left, as if every molecule of my torso is feeling gravity very, very, strongly. My eyes want to shut. Agh...losing power...

That was close. But a dustup with my smartphone (aka "stoopid phone!") woke me up. One good aspect of malfunctioning technology is I had to figure out what was wrong and swear at it. Ok, that's it, I'm outta here. Hopefully, a round on the elliptical machine and some weight training will wake me up enough that I'm not dragging my butt through the day. If not, at least I can have a lunchtime nap with a clear conscience!

Day 49.

Ya Gotta Fall in Love

2007-12-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

My best friend is so in love with her daughter. You know how parents look at their newborns and just fall in love? You look in the kid and think how funny looking newborns are, but they are hopelessly smitten. Well, my friend is still smitten, after 9 years and a difficult nine it has been at times. The poor mite has had all sorts of trouble with serious food allergies and asthma, and it's been a struggle to just get her to eat enough to grow well. And she's got some learning issues which have made homework time often times of tears (young un) and gnashing of teeth (mom). Just last night however, BF turned to me and said of daughter, "Isn't she just wonderful? She's getting to be such fun!" She's said something similar to me only, oh, a million times. Clearly this is a woman in love.

I've already written about my breakthrough in getting back into the studio. I had an epiphany and realized that I was so consumed by the fear of what others would think of my painting, that what I was suffering from was an extreme form of people-pleasing. That attitude was strangling my art, and filled my hours in the studio with anxiety. Something clicked, and since then I've been able to regularly work there.

And nearly every day I've had at least one --- albeit brief --- moment every time where I take a close look at the strokes on the canvas and I fall in love. "Look at those beautiful colors!" I think, even if the overall design isn't yet to my liking, I still can find bits of the work that give me a thrill. I love the mark of the brush, the way distinct colors unite to make a greater whole but up close can dissolve into bits of lovely color. I think that love is what keeps me coming back.

I think that works with the struggle with food too. The last few days have been a little rough. I've had lots of cravings for junk food, strange salt cravings that have made me have odd snacks like raw turnip and carrots sprinkled with kosher salt, or a nighttime beverage of hot chicken stock. I've groaned about it when Fuzz and I stopped in to the late night market to pick up some yogurt and I walked past the aisle display of 23 million different flavors of potato chip. But I don't do it "just once" because I know that down that path lies oblivion, that, to paraphrase a friend in AA, the first bite is the easiest one to turn down. Each subsequent one is harder to say "enough" to.

I'm a compulsive overeater. More and more I see that spontaneous eating is dangerous for me. That I have to have some sort of plan in place to keep me safe. There are times when rigidity is necessary. Not buying junk food is a fairly iron clad rule. I might have a little at a party, or where I can have a small discrete amount. Occasionally Fuzz and I might split a small bag of chips, but boy, is that ever not satisfying. I think I build it up in my head and make it into CHIPS!!!!! But it's just chips, not the fountain of youth. There is some part of me that expects it to be the holy grail, and I'm disappointed it's not. But instead of saying, hm, that was no fun, what my inner voice roars is "MOOOOOORRRRE!!!!" That's pretty nuts, expecting that the holy grail will be revealed after another couple of bags.

What keeps me just two steps ahead of that insanity is my love of what I've got now: good health, loved ones and friends, and fun. The more I give into the compulsion, the less I get of those other things. I don't want to give that up, that's what makes me buy lots of veggies and make sure I've got a good dinner waiting when I return from running and my OA meeting tonight. I'm vain. I like how I look in my jeans right now. But the basic thing has to be love. Love of how my life is right now, love of how the mystery just seems to keep flowering and showing blooms where before there was none. I know I'm getting a little new-agey-misty-tinkly-woo-woo here, but that's how it feels. Whatever works.

Midwinter Groaning

2007-12-17T10:21:00.000-05:00

In the deep midwinter... so goes the old Christmas carol. I've been doing a lot of carol singing the last few days, a small group of us braved the storm of the year yesterday to stand in the shelter of the porch of a local health food store and sing for an hour to a few brave shoppers before going to soak our feet in vats of hot coffee, and then last night I actually took the car out to go downtown (the drive was more like tobogganing as I prayed I would get through the drifted intersections) for another session of traditional British pub carolling. That's where we sing archaic songs about boars heads, yule logs, wassail and all that stuff. Too bad it's not winter yet. Officially. That doesn't start until Saturday. The 30 cm of snow (about a foot) that fell yesterday didn't count, I guess.

Yesterday was active and kind of fun. Lots of shovelling and the social stuff around the singing, and we actually got the house a little tidied up because otherwise we sure weren't going anywhere. This morning, I woke up with an "ugh". Not sure why, the sun is actually out, and I look forward to an afternoon in the studio. I think it's just because it's Monday, and I've got a list of irritating little things I have to do.

I made a decision to not to make a decision a couple of days ago: I'm going to sit on my application to go into treatment. The winter is actually going well, and the past two winters I was recovering from surgeries, so I think I'm going to see how it goes without hospitalization or recuperation.

I'm still nervous about my food and the holidays. I guess I'll have to do some planning around that. I need to keep up my contacts and routines, so it's time to fire up the Treo and start scheduling how I will do that. I'll be missing at least a couple of my regular meetings, so I guess it's time to finally try some phone meetings. They've got a fairly comprehensive list of them on the Overeaters Anonymous website.

Something that's just surfaced in my consciousness now is that I may not do as much traveling as previously scheduled. My guts are telling me that I may be tired enough that the New Year's get together at a friends chalet about 3 hours away may be too much when the time comes so I'm going to let her know that I may not make it. I need to be good to myself. Feeling tired and grumpy is no good.

Food Bribery

2007-12-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've used food for many things that aren't really healthy: as a substitute for friends or misplaced self-comfort. But I think I just realized that I use it regularly as bribery. Love my food, love me, goes the crazy logic in my head. It's a pretty common tactic in our culture, and hey, it works, to an extent. Witness the business lunch, or the breakfast meeting: food makes it more palatable. Look at all those holiday ads with yummy mummies and adoring children baking together. The Norman Rockwell-esque family gathered around Granny, and even more importantly, that giant turkey!

I think the reason I have an entire bookcase full of cookbooks is because I have this semi-permanent fantasy loop about making wonderful dishes for my family and friends. The reality is we rarely have people over except our oldest and least critical friends because the house is in a permanent state of semi-reno.

A couple of days ago, I heard a radio feature about a woman who makes her living by baking wonderful pies. As American as apple pie, they say, it's such an iconic image for us. I had such a craving to be that woman, although I knew it was a very unrealistic fantasy. I've worked in food service, and for a while I indulged in the fantasy that I would be chef to all, universally adored.

Oh boy, it's such a seductive trap for me. Through hard lessons with food, however, I've discovered that it's more dangerous than helpful. I end up eating too much of the "special" food myself, and I usually get so wrapped up in the food that I don't fully experience being with others. And this morning I realized the fragility of my ego, that feels if I don't offer food, people won't be attracted to me. As if I have to stuff some warm muffins down my bra to increase my attractiveness! There's the food addiction: where I don't feel right without the food. It's the compulsive overater's equivalent to an alcoholic needing a drink to lubricate their daily work, take the edge off.

Crave Routine, Stop the Craving

2007-12-13T11:29:00.000-05:00

I know what I want for Christmas: good old boring routine. No Christmas meals, no special desserts, no big parties, just my routine. Now, I know that isn't possible, because for one thing, there is going to be travel a couple of times around the holidays, and I'm going to have to stay on top of my food during that. Part of it will be relatively easy, because it's going to be New Years at a ski chalet in Quebec with some dear friends from OA. But other days, well, I don't know.

I'm worried, so I need to do some prep work to make sure I don't fall into dangerous territory. I just realized that my last slip was after I returned from Nashville and all the fatty starchy food there. I told myself it was ok, I was on vacation, but I really hit the skids when I got home because my disease didn't want the deep fried catfish & biscuits party to stop. And I had a binge. A smallish one as they go, but it was enough for me to declare a break in abstinence. So, what can I do differently?

Well, one thing I can do is keep up with meetings. I'll be missing my regular meetings, so I need to either find meetings where I'm going or by phone/online.

The other thing is bring my food with me. Breakfast is easy, because I take my oatmeal. I think I need to make an effort about lunches and make them abstinent. Which will be tricky.

I need to take regular time each morning to write. I may not be able to get online.

Keeping in regular touch with my sponsor, sponsee and food buddy no matter where we may be. Make firm appointments when to call.

Praying like a bastard!

On a related matter, the saga of the chicken bones has gone into hiatus. They've sat in the cupboard two whole days and I haven't touched them. Life has been fairly calm, so I'm wondering if that is my answer right there: life is better without the candy. Have a couple and life gets .... wierd! My whole thinking seems to skew. For my peace of mind, I think they may be leaving soon.

Day 43.

Scheduling Sanity

2007-12-12T09:01:00.000-05:00

I just did a little browsing at my posts, few and far between that they may be, from this time last year. I am definitely in a different mental place then I was then, and I'm not sure exactly why that is. I've settled down into a regular meeting pattern, two a week, and I did give away all my Overeaters Anonymous service positions with the exception of my pig-headed sponsee who just likes me too damn much, and me her. Yet I have taken on the role of treasurer of a small meeting. It feels manageable, except I realized last night I had forgotten to pay the church the November rent, whoopsie...

My life is just generally more regular right now. I wonder if that is the simple difference between this year and last. My sponsor and I have started meeting weekly, and after a few nasty slips this fall, I decided I had to write regularly for my own sanity, and that's what happening here. I'm in the studio more days in a week than not. I'm not recovering from any surgeries or athletic injuries right now, so my exercise routine is just that, routine. My generous running coach pushes us gently. I do weekly group therapy. I phone my therapist.

Am I in danger of being bored? That's a good question, because I think that I can be an excitement junkie. So far, however, routine feels ok. Excitement is provided by the studio, my choir, social stuff with some of the women I attend OA with, and some travel. And my darling scooter, Bella, unfortunately now put away from the ice and snow. Mental note: buy a big work light so I can get down in the basement and tinker with her. I'm still toying with the idea of painting her a nice faux leopard skin...

Last year life just felt out of whack, spinning out of control. Now I feel like a planetary body back in a regular orbit. Still spinning, of course, but safely.

I have to get going. Stop at Staples and the art supply store, and get to the gym before lunch. I don't think I'll have much time to practice before choir, but some things are just going to have to slide for now.

Revenge of the Chicken Bones

2007-12-11T10:34:00.001-05:00

Rats. Now the other stuff I ordered from that candy company is causing problems. It may have to get sent out the door with Fuzz just like the chocolates did yesterday. (They sit in his office lying in "weight" for the co-workers at his next meeting...evil laughter ensues) But I'm grumpy about this. But they are a problem. I had two after lunch yesterday. Then two after dinner. Then two before bed... and all the broken ones I could find. (They don't count, right?) And today I can feel the radioactive glow from them where they sit hidden in the pots cupboard. Grr, spit... I forgot. I assumed I was a normal eater. This happened last year with the christmas cake I made, supposedly for gifts, and it was really appreciated, but I kept too much for us. Here's the twisted logic I followed: Christmas cake is nice, but it's not chocolate, or cheesecake, one of my favorite desserts, so I would be safe, right? Nope. I kept shaving off slices, just the way I used to shave spoonfulls off the top of the ice cream. It's never just one. Or, it might be one the first day. Not the second.

The funny thing is, these treats causing me the agro right now are called Chicken Bones, of all things. They sound yukky but they are these pink hard cinnamon candies filled with bittersweet chocolate. They are pinched off at both ends so they look a little like bones, I guess. If you're from Mars!

So. I have a choice. Either I schedule them in to my daily snacks, replacing something else like my nighttime dark chocolate with them, and bag them up into finite amounts with no extras, or I send them off with Fuzz. The latter would likely be the saner choice, but I'm not sure I'm willing to do that yet. On the other hand, do I like them enough to replace my 85 % chocolate with them? In addition, I really do think that the sugar in them makes me crazy. After my chocolate bar is finished I am a little disappointed, but oh well, it was nice. After chicken bones, like those chocolates, I was craving more, more more! And they were sooo sweet...

Well, for today: I'll bag up an ounce of dem bones and try them tonight.

Work Hazard (or The Post in Which our Author Goes All Scrooge on Feasting)

2007-12-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

If you work with the spouse of someone in Overeaters Anonymous, it may be hazardous to your health, or at least add some calories to your days. I did the bad-food sendoff with Fuzz again this morning, after a night of musing for too long on a box of chocolates. When will I learn? Food + sentiment/nostalgia = big trouble. I saw this piece on tv about this small chocolate company down east where my great grandfather used to work, and I found out they had a website and ordered some treats from there: one type is a fairly easy one for me to eat in small doses, but the other was chocolates. My old favorite binge food. I could eat a half a pound at one sitting, no sweat as part of a larger binge, where I would alternate sweet and salty, crunchy and gooey items. I had an inkling these would be trouble, but I didn't listen to that small voice and ordered them.

So they came yesterday, and last evening Fuzz and I each had three. Then I put the box away in a cupboard I don't open often, but for the next couple of hours they loomed large in my mind. I finally went to bed but I was already thinking about tonight when I could have three more. A big question floated in my brain: would I be able to make it to the end of the box parceling out a few at a time, or would the number grow until I finally threw caution to the wind and polished off the rest? I felt like I had dynamite in the cupboard.

Early this morning I was doing my regular phone call (3 times a week) with my food buddy, the OA fellow sufferer I talk over food challenges with. And I told her about the dynamite, even calling it that. "Should you get rid of it?" she wondered. I groaned.

"But they were so expensive!" I whined. "I'm too cheap to just give them up like that."

"Expensive enough to sabotage your eating and your peace of mine?"

She had me there. Compared to the cost of an hour of therapy, this was a cheap lesson. I started to see in my mind a vision of the box floating out the door with Fuzz as he took it to work. And the picture came with a sense of relief. By the end of the phone call I was convinced, possessed even, by the prospect of sending the demon in the beribboned box out the door. I scrambled down the stairs to catch Fuzz before he left. I did take the step of putting 4 chocolates in a baggie for my evening treat tonight. Notice it was 4. I rationalized that two of them were small ones. See how slippery it is?

Fuzz, bless his heart, did offer to just keep the box in his car and bring it out again tonight, but honestly, I was relieved that it was leaving. There is something about chocolates that aren't really really dark (85 percent cocoa solids minimum) that just set off my cravings. I have a growing suspicion that it's more the sugar than the chocolate itself that sets me off. So it will be a relief when they are gone. I wonder if I might even give Fuzz those chocolates I set aside this morning and be more content if I just had my usual dark chocolate with my cup of decaf?

The holidays are such a minefield for emotional eaters. Last year didn't go so well. This year, I haven't done any baking, no christmas cake. Because the family has conflicting travel plans, I don't think we'll even get together for a turkey dinner. Thank God I don't work in an office like Fuzz's. There's all sorts of crap floating around there and I feel a little guilty about contributing to that. But I am being reminded that the more I try to eliminate "exceptional" eating from my diet, the better I feel.

Which leads me to a larger question: In our excessive society, we can feast any time we want. But the concept of the feast originated in a time when, where there was feast, there was usually famine following somewhere. We don't have to gorge on the fatted calf in order to survive the rest of winter. Just as we work to make famines a thing of the past, I think feasts are also becoming obsolete. And what is a binge but a distorted feast response to distress?

Oh yeah, day 40 since my last binge.

Trauma, Dissociation, and Compulsive Eating

2007-12-07T09:18:00.000-05:00

So call me Trauma Girl this month, I'm all about the original trauma and it's relation to my eating disorder, as I contemplate going into residential treatment for the trauma. Lately I've been looking at my behaviour patterns, other than around the food that are part of the same package, my coping techniques and personal style that I developed as a response to early trauma

My friend and I were bitching about some people who drove us nuts, twelve step divas who go on and on and on about every little issue as part of their "healing" and you get so sick of listening to it that you want to leap over the table and shove your Big Book down their throat. We of course, fit into the other camp of the stoic watchers who learned early on not to bore others with our problems, but just shut up and take it.

The Divas go on and on about situations and people who "trigger" them, so much so that "trigger" is one of my less favorite words, but then I realize that they are triggering not me, (that would just be bad grammar) but a trauma response in me. I suffered at the hands of a rage filled narcissist. So narcissistic behaviour drives me to a level of distraction that is often stronger than warranted in the present. It figures. You know how evocative smells can be, summoning up instant images of things long past? I think that is what the rage and frustration summoned up by those people is like. It's visceral. I am starting to notice these things. I guess this is progress.

Now, how do I become my own twelve step diva? Where did I put that feather boa?

A Little Stunned

2007-12-06T11:00:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I saw my doctor and went over the admission form for residential treatment at Homewood Health Care . I'm a bit stunned that I can actually go. A couple of days before that, Fuzz called our insurance company and they readily agreed that I was covered for a semi-private (what a euphemism for shared) room. I expected much more of a fight from them but they didn't bat an eye. Now, depending on how long a wait there is for treatment (I don't believe it is long), I can expect to leave sometime in the next few months for a 2 month stay.

Surprisingly, I'm not going for eating disorder treatment. I'm going to be treated for trauma. After some consideration and discussion with friends in OA and my addictions therapy group, my therapist and gp, I decided to try the trauma treatment. I never considered my life experiences particularly traumatic, but as someone in my therapy group said, growing up in an alcoholic family is traumatic enough.

Ironically, I'm feeling hungry right now. Actually, I've felt that way for the last couple of days. I have to go downtown and do some banking, and then I have to call my shrink. Oh joy, oh bliss. I've been out of my routine with the studio, I haven't been there since last Thursday for one reason or another. I wonder if that has something to do with the hunger? I feel guilty and restless. Irritable and discontent aren't far behind.

Alright alright. Gotta get my butt out of bed and the jammies and put one foot in front of the other. And then I get the reward of lunch, and after I finish with the shrink I get to go to the studio. Some days I have to use the food as a carrot. Going to the studio, I get my mid afternoon snack of almonds (single serving size package, it's safer) and a fruit. After we run tonight we get supper. I am still obsessed with food, but some days its a useful tool.

Day 35 since a binge.

Princess Either/Or

2007-12-04T10:51:00.001-05:00

Hmmm, that header sounds suspiciously like "Princess Eeyore" and sometimes it feels like it too. I just read a short article about the links between perfectionism and compulsive behaviour and addictions in the NYTimes. As my dear therapist has so damn often pointed out, life doesn't always have to be either I'm great or I'm doomed. It can be many shades of grey in between. And oh, I hate it when she says that!!! I'm not sure what I hate more, the concept, or my very imperfect ability to grasp when I'm doing it! (Fill in weary guffaw here)

The article points out that being a perfectionist can be especially tricky for someone dealing with an addiction or an eating disorder. I can take that a little further and say that when your eating disorder seems to be well described by the addiction model, it can be really tricky. Because with food as my drug of choice, I can never be 100 percent "clean" because I have to eat, I can't and wouldn't want to live on a constant diet of Ensure, Slimfast, or Jenny Craig meals.

Is weighing and measuring every last morsel an answer? Or is it just trading compulsions? Perhaps it boils down to harm reduction. I know there are people who swear by completely weighed and measured food and if that is what it takes, then maybe that is what they have to do. I just know from my experience that I did that for years on Weight Watchers, alternating with blow out binge eating. But then again, I'm only a month and a bit past my last binge, so I cannot claim definitive success with my present plan of eating.

Today I'm weighing and measuring some things. I measure out the ingredients when I make a batch of oatmeal that lasts me and Fuzz for three days of breakfasts and we can cut in wedges to warm up in bowls in the microwave. If we're having rice or pasta with dinner, I measure out about a cup. I have to say "about" because if it's a particularly holey pasta, I'll add some more for the airspace volume. I'll usually measure out a couple of ounces of protein (cheese or meat) to have with my lunch. Sometimes single servings packages just make it easier to have a reasonable portion: a small bag of smokehouse almonds, a small bar of dark chocolate, a small container of yogurt.

Last night I nibbled before bed--- a couple of teaspoons I think of cream cheese. I kid you not. Strange, huh? I don't feel really "clean" about it, but I think that it's important to not be crazy perfectionistic about this... even if I do have that compulsion. I want, I want, I want a squeaky clean abstinence here! Ain't gonna happen. Unless I seal myself up in a bubble. I've told myself over and over that it isn't the two teaspoons of cream cheese (or the cracker at a party)that got me to 310, it was the binges.

How different is my compulsion to diet from that of a compulsive hand washer or the tv detective Adrian Monk, driving everyone around him nuts by his compulsion to organize everything? The fear feels similar. I am so afraid of going back out there but then a switch gets flipped and I'm not just nibbling, I'm shovelling it in. Perhaps the shovelling is a response to the fear, that it feels as if I need some sort of assurance that I know where I'm going. Bingeing is familiar, with a predictable, if unpleasant result, and the knowledge that if I do it for an hour or two, I will be drugged into sleep and that at least is certain, if miserable. And then the fairy tale of "tomorrow will be different " kicks in, right on cue. And there we have it, I'm back at fear.

I am always struck by this sentence in the AA Big Book when they are discussing fear:

This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our lives was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune that we felt we did not deserve... Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble.

I'm used to being a compulsive overeater. The crazy response to a crazy world feels very, very familiar. I've worn that corrupt fabric, shot with fear, like a shawl all my life. When I get too self-righteous about how I don't look fat any more, I remember what the fat is about --- that if I could see every little nano-particle of an inch of that fat draping a body, I would see sub-molecules of fear, trillions of them, and I am amazed at the sheer psychic, non-physical weight this person is battling. I am battling. This is not meant to be a depressive thought, it is actually awe inspiring and a reminder as to how serious a battle this is.

Day 34.

Mmm, Succulent Rutabagas!

2007-12-03T10:27:00.001-05:00

Ok, I like good old rutabagas a lot, raw, cut up in sticks, oven roast with a little oil and kosher salt, cooked in stews, and in the old standby mashes with potatoes, butternut squash and a touch of brown sugar and butter. But succulent? Just not what I'd call it.

Heavens knows, restaurant menus do that sort of hyperbole all the time, and research has shown that when people are given those type of over the top descriptors of vegetables, they will eat and enjoy it more. As much as I smirk, maybe I should try it on Fuzz. He's not so fond of rutabagas, but if I hide it in something, like a good stew, he doesn't object at all. I blame whoever called it rutabaga. Turnip (which much of us call them anyway, because it's simpler to say than "rooot-a-beggah", even if it is a misnomer) isn't much better. It just sounds ugly, doesn't it?

I made a conscious choice last night to have a veggie dinner because of my cheese hangover. Dinner at the BF's house the night before was takeout pizza from the joint around the corner, which is the most cheese laden one I've ever had. Luscious but as BF's partner calls it, a real "gut bomb" afterward. But still, I was compelled to steal pretzels from the kids afterward. What is it about a really rich meal that fills me up and yet makes me want to keep on eating afterward? Then brunch yesterday and I inadvertently ordered a meal that was mostly cheese again. By then I felt like I'd eaten an anvil. My tummy is so iffy I think I might have a bug and I think I pulled something around my scapula at the gym. So dinner needed to be something that felt really healthy. Spicy curried lentils with sweet potatoes and spinach on basmati really filled the bill. With a side order of robaxacet...

I discussed the gut bomb and other "gnawing" issues this morning with my OA food buddy. She had had one of those weekends with socializing that made her eat a little more food than she was comfortable with, and she felt a bit hung over on things like some extra wine and gossip that made her generally feel unwell. Socializing is such a minefield for us compulsive eaters. Why???

Well, I think my social anxiety is a big part of it, and that makes me eat more and be less aware of what and how much I'm eating. Eating in restaurants is usually where portion magnification happens, or when you eat at another's house or at a potluck, we bring and eat more food than we normally eat because we want to be generous and celebrate with a bounteous feast. Food and celebrations have been around forever, but I think we nibble or sip more than ever. Travel cups of coffee or bottles of water are ubiquitous: while we're driving, shopping, coffee time after the church service, the water bottle in the gym, everywhere! It's gotten to the point where we have to ask just when are we not putting something in our mouths?

I am particularly to blame about coffee. It's usually at least half decaf, but a coffee cup or travel mug is usually to hand, even while I'm working in the studio. I had a prof who used to yell at me for putting the handle of my paint brush in my mouth when I was thinking or needed to put it somewhere. Very Bad Habit, because it makes it more likely that I'll ingest small amounts of paint. Maybe I should consider the same thing about the coffee cup.

I guess it's good that we're more aware of our eating patterns. Now the question is, do I need to change anything about it?

Day 33 since a binge. I hate writing and the phone (my expression is like that of someone given some of that nasty Buckley's cough syrup) but that, in conjunction with regular meetings with my sponsor (not so nasty) are helping. I think. Damned if I know exactly what is, the feelings are that divorced from my actions, but that is all I can pin it down to. If you've read this stuff, you can see it's not exactly deep revelations, but whatever it is, it seems to be keeping me present on some level.

B.I.G. B.O.O.K.

2007-11-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

Stands for: Believing in God Beats Our Old Knowledge.

I came to Overeaters Anonymous out of sheer desperation. Desperate enough to make a decision, just for that day, to suspend my disbelief, to dare to hope that maybe, just maybe the answer might lie in me trying it in a totally different way than I had previously done. My old knowledge had led me to a slow suicide with food, to a place where I couldn't go for three days without binge eating, "living" in my bathrobe, hiding out from the world with my best friend, food. What I was doing wasn't living.

So I decided, what the hell, could it get any worse than this?

Today, if you ask me do I believe in God, I think I am still somewhat agnostic. It is probably my unconscious default position. Old habits die hard. But I am willing to try believing that I am not God. By giving a twelve step programme the benefit of the doubt, I have received many gifts I didn't think possible, and I'm still surprised when I see the gifts that have been gently revealed to me. Sometimes I do feel that presence of God in my life. I know that when I can imagine the existence of some power that wants me to live and grow, I feel much more content and as if I've been given a small springboard to try jumping towards some goals. Not long ago, I was afraid to have any real goals, afraid to dream. Now I'm more tolerant of other's faith in God, because as long as they aren't hurting someone else, who am I to say what lifts them up doesn't exist, and would it really hurt me to believe?

I think sometime very early on in life, I learned to not believe, that risking hurt too much, until the not risking, always turning away from life toward the comfort of endless food turned me in on myself and the coping technique became downright dangerous to my health. By feeling there is something in the universe that wants me to thrive, I can take the odd risk, try a little more, slowly. I begin to see there are alternatives, that possibilities exist.

Today is day 29 since my last food "incident" aka a binge. When I binge, it's usually a "fuck-it" moment. In that moment, my mood has descended to a point where I'm feeling pretty hopeless. I don't want to feel hopeless, but I do want to recognize that I'm powerless when it comes to dealing with the food. The distinction is that when I see that the issue isn't "just" food, it's a very powerful, insidious compulsion that has dangerous consequences that I must deal with, not minimize. Food is a substance that if I let it, takes over. And yet, it is merely a substance. It is a symptom of a much larger disease. What I have to do is everything in my power to not get to the point where using the substance seems like the logical alternative. That's what all that "spiritual fitness" stuff is about: dealing with things before I jump off that cliff with the cake in my hand. When I'm low enough to feel that a binge is an answer, I've managed to sink to a pretty low and dangerous point. It's almost too late at that point to change, to turn and stop that train bound for the refrigerator at top speed. I have to do things to catch myself before I've even left the station, switch myself off the track leading to self destruction, and keep going toward self preservation. The new knowledge I develop through working these new habits of living are the best way I know how to do this.

I'm writing all this not to preach (ok maybe a bit, as it is a public blog) but mainly to remind myself that as I get a month between me and the last binge, that I have to keep doing this stuff to keep me out of that dark place. It can always, always, ALWAYS claim me back.

Slippery

2007-11-28T12:36:00.000-05:00

Some days you slip into old patterns, like today: I slept very late and then wasted a lot of time surfing the net and playing new trial games on my new Treo (Who can resist Mars Needs Cows? Particlarly when I couldn't seem to stop the game without resetting my device). and now it's afternoon. I wanted to go to the gym, have lunch, and then get to the studio before choir tonight and I'm realizing that one of those things may have to go. Or not. I suppose I could pack a sandwich and eat it at the studio after going to the gym. I may have to do that. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? I suppose not. But my house is a wreck, the dust bunnies are stampeding, and the laundry hamper looks like it's thrown up all over the hall floor.

Meanwhile leftover pizza with anchovies calls seductively to me from the fridge. And it's freaking freezing out. Yesterday was easier, I had my running group to buoy me along, although we only had 4 of us show up again, and nobody had a digital watch so we couldn't time our intervals properly. I ended up just counting strides, and it went ok, I was only a couple of minutes out when we got back to the fitness center. It was a crappy lousy night. Wind, rain and snow. The footing was threatening to freeze and our feet got wet so we didn't get to the OA meeting we usually go to afterward, but the run was good. The crappier the weather, the better I feel after. I think it has something to do with feeling like a road warrior. Although it may backfire on me in some way because after runs like that I turn into an utter slug for the rest of the night, so there is probably some sort of metabolic karmic levelling (how's that for a mixed metaphor?)

That reminds me of this NY Times article about the differences in exercise results they found in people in one study: some people lost weight, some didn't, some even gained over a short (3 month) period. Keep in mind this was a very small, short term study of 35 people. Those of us who have been around the weight loss track a few times realize that 3 months is no indication of long term weight gains or loss, or sadly, both. The researchers theorized that the variations may be because subject's eating changed in response to the exercise, or even more tricky, people's resting metabolic rates may change in response to the exercise as the body tries to conserve calories.

Darn that old survival instinct, anyway. Maybe some day our bodies won't try to hold on to every last calorie to survive nonexistent famines, but that may take a few millennia, and who knows what our world will be like then?

Alright, gotta go, can feel my metabolism slipping! Creeeeeeakkkk....

Visiting with half of the Two Fat Ladies

2007-11-27T12:25:00.002-05:00

Well, a virtual visit, via exerpts from Clarissa Dickson-Wright's new-ish biography on the Daily Mail site. In the mid 'nineties we used to love watching the BBC series where she and Jennifer Paterson roared around the UK on a vintage motorcycle and sidecar, stopping to cook in those oh-so-quaint examples of moneyed old England, the kitchen always equipped with a massive Aga stove. drooled over those enamelled giants, my love affair with them only ending when I realized that a stove that stayed on ALL THE TIME was not suited to summers in southern Canada, not to mention the cost (then starting around 2K) being somewhat prohibitive.

Like many others, I also enjoyed their very non-pc attitudes toward smoking, midday martinis, ogling young men from the edges of cricket fields, and best of all, veritable vats of butter for everything they cooked. Ah, it was food porn at its best for me, a youngish fat lady myself. The series lasted for three seasons until Jennifer died of lung cancer.

Now up pops Dickson-Wright's new biography Spilling the Beans . Surprise, surprise she has a background of awful, awful, deathly family alcoholism and a very abusive father, well hidden by a very wealthy privileged family. She's a recovering alcoholic herself and has absorbed many of the life lessons from AA, and yet... I have to wonder if for all her candor (not to mention some deliciously evil digs at Tony & Cherie Booth-Blair), she has looked at how food has filled the gap of her life that alcohol once did.

I guess I'm caught in that paradox. I admire her no holds barred attitude towards life, someone has to champion our right to eat foie gras at least once in a while, but I don't want to trade my life for hers.

Blah Blah Blahs

2007-11-26T10:33:00.001-05:00

I didn't post much last week. Three posts that I had in the edit stage stayed there because they were just whining about how blah I felt. The November blues hit with a vengeance last week because it was a particularly grey, cold one with lashings of freezing rain and ice pellets and finally a little snow. And my poor scooter was sitting forlornly outside the kitchen window and I felt guilty, like a neglectful pet owner. I sat with my blue light box to try and blast the blues away, kept up megadoses of Vitamin D, but it didn't seem to work. I felt like a schmuck. I slept more, I played hooky from the studio. But I talked to others about it, and surprise, surprise, they felt the same way! I wasn't some depressive dolt, everyone else was coping with it more or less the same way I was, ie, dragging their sorry butt around.

Finally it thawed out yesterday enough that I was able to slough the ice off the scooter and Fuzz and I manhandled it down the back steps to the walk-in basement, so it's now at least warm and dry. I still have to remove the battery and change the oil, but at least I can do it someplace minimally warm, which is what the low ceilinged, not much more than a crawlspace area at the back of the basement is. I'm actually looking forward to tinkering with her over the winter, and I might decide to remove all her plastic cosmetic bits (which is almost all of the painted areas --- my Bella is in essence a scooter made of Tupperware, LOL!) to do some sort of fancy paint job on her. I'm thinking a leopardskin effect, maybe using some cool paint with metallic copper flake in it and incorporating some ultra reflective stickers for better visibility at night.

And strangely enough, yesterday, although it was a Sunday, was a really good day. Have I mentioned before that for some reason, I loathe Sundays? Often I look forward to what is usually an unstructured day where I can just read the paper, putter around, etc. but then I just become glued to the couch or bed and get quite depressed. But the last couple of Sundays have been good, and I think it has something to do with the fact that I have been putting some structure into them, ie, making plans for that day. And I don't mean planiing depressing stuff like laundry or other housework, although it usually fits in somewhere, but last week Fuzz and I walked downtown for brunch, and then I had a rehearsal with a group of people who I'm going caroling with. This Sunday was the scooter move, which had to be done early because Fuzz had a folk festival meeting at noon, so then I went to the Y for a workout. Then lunch and another caroling rehearsal, and then supper and we watched the Grey Cup (Canada's Superbowl but with much less hype --- oh so Canadian!) and so I didn't turn into a total slug until 8 or 9 pm. Not bad. I think this says I should plan stuff for Sundays, including phyisical activity and social things, or I get depressed.

Still, I pushed it too late last night. I was entering all my data into my new Palm Treo. Then I got the munchies. Well, like that couldn't be predicted... Staying up late after Fuzz crashes often ends badly. But the good news is, I ate leftover roast cauliflower and just about a tsp of cream cheese. I finally heeded the voice in my head yelling "OK, get your ass to bed NOW!" I'm lucky I got off with just that! Jeez Louise, it's not like this stuff is brain surgery, but it takes such a long time to internalize these things. I just have to keep repeating these lessons over and over again until I believe that late night + isolation = trouble every time. The problem is that enough times it's not trouble, but only enough that I lull myself into complacency just in time for the next slipup. That's why I have to keep telling myself to not do it at all. It seems extreme, but I have seen the alternative enough times that it has to be this way.

On the good front, it's Day 27 and no binge eating.

To Give Thanks or Not?

2007-11-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

American Thanksgiving (which is what we call this day up here in Canada) is accompanied by a storm of articles about how to celebrate it, the usual turkey tips, and navel gazing that comes at a holiday celebrated in the middle of a particularly blah month. Canadian Thanksgiving is long gone by now, celebrated last month, back when it felt like fall. Now it just feels like winter, and to make its point, we've got freezing rain and ice pellets. I'm glad they're feeling thankful to the south, but I'm not so much up here today.

To make me feel better, it seems like the New York Times crafted an article about writing one's gratitude down, in a journal. Seems there is some research out there that says they can make you happier, over the long term. Unfortunately, the article ends by listing how grateful a friend of the author was for her Thanksgiving feast's creamed onions! However, it's just to point out that even the most mundane thing (boiled onions with cream cheese) can make one feel grateful. It's just that that example ain't the greatest one for someone who has food issues!

Gratitude journals often come up in my OA meetings. Some people swear by them as ways to combat "stinkin' thinkin" that can lead to disordered eating. I'm not such a big user of them, but occasionally they do help with a day when I'm feeling sour, or, even more toxic: useless.

Excepting the massively egotistical, I don't think there are any of us who don't at some point wonder if our existence is really making a difference, who don't feel like some insignificant pixel on the Google Earth photo. That's part of being one of billions of humans, by definition it is hard to think of something that distinguishes from our fellows. A humdrum gratitude list, well, it doesn't make one feel all that special, but maybe, as the article points out, there are some unique things that can make one feel particularly grateful. So, what have I got?

Well, I'm grateful that Marie and her 9 year old daughter have invited me to go out to lunch with them.

I'm grateful that even with the occasional fractiousness, my choir still can make a beautiful noise together.

I'm grateful that I have a large cat that likes to snuggle up to the back of my knees in bed, only occasionally cutting off all sensation, and another that is known to abscond with anything made out of fur, suede or even fake fur or hair. He has been seen trying to escape with Hallowe'en clown wigs twice his size. I am my quirky cats and they are me.

I'm glad that I've got some excellent, and easy vegetable recipes. Honest. Try these two I've found on Orangette: Worlds Best Braised Cabbage and Carmelized Cauliflower. You won't believe how much of these vegetables you will eat, and you can also easily reduce the amount of olive oil in each by at least half.

I love my scooter. Even if at the present moment it is coated in ice. I also love to bits the brand new white and faux leopardskin leather jacket I found at NewEnough.com, a great online store with deeply discounted motorcycle gear.

I love my running group. They keep me going out there even on days like this afternoon at 6, when, unless the roads are completely impassable, I will be out running with them. I am also deeply grateful for our coach who has taught us a low stress running technique that we can even use on ice.

I am so grateful for how tired yet pumped I feel after a run on a particularly pukey day. I really do feel like a road warrior. That's why idiots like me are doing it when you are staring at us from the car wondering why why why?

I'm grateful for my studio. The building is rundown but it's warm and it has fairly good north light, and I've got a good stereo with some excellent Canadian Broadcasting Co. radio (our version of NPR) and a coffee maker in there.

Holy crap, almost time for lunch! I'm grateful when a mealtime surprises me. Something must be working. I must come across as the world's biggest Pollyanna at times about this whole food thing, but the truth is, there are times when this new life works seemingly without effort. That being said, I would really be happier if I were five less pounds, but I think that for the time being, I just have to keep doing this and see if it works. I know one thing, for the last month I haven't gained any weight, and that alone is quite amazing considering how the rest of my life went.

By the way, this is day 23 of no binge eating.

A Whiff of Sulphur

2007-11-21T23:04:00.000-05:00

I had one of those flashbacks tonight that gave me the willies. It was 10 p.m. and I was at a drugstore buying chocolate. Yes, this sounds like a bad thing for a compulsive eater, shades of binges past, but it wasn't really. At least that wasn't what I had planned. Honest, Ma!

I've never completely given up chocolate. I did stop eating it much for a year or so. But I found that instead of eating large quantities of the cheap stuff that is mainly sugar, if I had an ounce (weighed --- it keeps me honest) of really good stuff, at least 70% cocoa but preferably over 80%, I had a nice evening treat with a warm beverage like chai or decaf without leading to bingeing. However, we had run out and so I stopped into the drugstore after my choir practice to get some more. I picked up a carton of milk and found my dark chocolate. I was browsing around the Christmas decorations (Fuzz and I have become LED Christmas light obsessed) when I stumbled on boxes of my favorite binge food: chocolate pecan caramel clusters.

I had a wave of craving not so much break over me, but lap at my feet, and I realized I could be in a dangerous spot. The weather today was cold and wet, a comfort food type of day. I slept too much this morning and frustratingly didn't get much work done in the afternoon. At that moment I felt tired and had issues from the choir where I'm a board member (ie slightly vexed. Did I mention that we have almost 120 people in the choir? So there's always some issue or other...), and I was in a convenience store, which is for all intents and purposes what drugstores are now. This is where, five years previous, I would be availing myself of a salty, crunchy, sweet, and gooey smorgasboard of junkfood. Memories of Hagen-Das and Asian Party Mix from the 24 hr deli in Brooklyn Heights as I ate my way through grad school... I got out of that aisle and fairly quickly paid for the milk and chocolate, headed out into the foul night to my car and contemplated how far I had come, and yet how close the nuttiness can be at times.

I feel really lucky that a binge just did not feel like an option tonight. I would like to say I don't do that any more, but in reality, I am only a hair's breadth from one. That whiff of sulphur was enough to make me feel a little scared and a lot lucky.

Scared

2007-11-20T10:40:00.000-05:00

I don't watch the amazing Miz Oprah much as I've realized that turning on daytime tv is just too convenient a drug for me, but I still like how she says the word "scared" --- it comes out like "Don't be scurred" or is it "skurrd"? More like the latter I think. And I just realized the similarity of "skurrd" and "scarred". And I wonder, perhaps I get skurrd because I'm scarred. I look around the rooms and consider the good friends I have made there, and the people I really can't stand, brave warriors of the food wars, all of them, and how we are battling ghosts that feel really, really, concretely threatening.

When I got home from the studio yesterday I was not in the greatest mood anyway. I'm quite sick of the painting I'm working on, I fear it isn't improving much after many many hours of work, and I have an illustration project that's worrying me a bit (will it be a lot of effort that comes to nothing?) although I haven't even started it. I've got to get some practice in before choir on Wednesday night, and I don't know when I can do that.

Then I got a message from a friend who is a teacher of 10-12 year olds and wants me to do a portraiture lesson with her class, and it just filled me with dread. Scary, heart grabbing, stomach-dropping-in-air-turbulence dread. It's not even logical, because, you see, I used to be a teacher. I have wrangled entire classes of kids. And I wasn't bad at it even when I was wrestling with this awful self image and at least a hundred extra pounds. And portraiture is my bag. I've got an MFA majoring in that type of painting. So why am I so scared? I can't explain it, I don't think it has anything to do with logic, I think it has more to do with some scar that is acting up. Kind of like Harry Potter's, except this must be some scar on my soul. Something that flares up when accidentally touched. Maybe it's in the shape of an...ice cream sundae?

I think there is a lot of fear here, and my therapist might tell me as she has many times in the past that it is a fear of my own power. I wasn't able to access my own power when I was a kid growing up in my crazy household. In fact, I was systematically undermined, made to feel like it was hopeless. I know this was likely unintentional, I may have just breathed in the fumes from two people who were locked in their own feelings of hopelessness.

And that hopelessness feels so powerful right now: I can physically feel this dark ache in the center of my torso, with its grey tentacles reaching out to my limbs to drain them of their movement. Wow. I am really feeling pretty awful here. I can't deny how bad this feels. And yet I know that if I can get into these projects, this horrible feeling will likely dissipate like a bad odour.

I've been struggling with this stuff my entire life, but it wasn't until I really threw myself into the twelve step stuff about five years ago that I really started rebuilding my life. It feels like forever but it has only been a few years.

Last night I was tempted to spend the evening on the couch or in bed to hide myself from my
skurridness, but an hour after dinner was finished I gathered the courage/momentum/resolve/whatever to get myself to the Y for 20 minutes on the elliptical and my weight training. It took me a half hour to get out the door, and I was back in an hour and a half. This is the second time I've done an evening workout in four days and I kind of like it. If I hadn't gone to the gym I probably would have watched tv or just read the paper and craved food. Housework? I don't think so! Doing it in the evening means not only means I get to go to bed earlier feeling more tired with a happy virtuousness (ok ok, you can call it smugness), I have more time during the day to do other things, which I need because I'm in the studio most afternoons now. And I've discovered that I have to do this writing for my sobriety's sake.

We don't talk about "sobriety" much in OA, but I need to do things to keep my thinking from going squirrelly, because it almost always precedes a slip in food abstinence (ie bingeing behaviour). So I need to develop those habits which keep my thinking from slipping into insane territory, in other words, cultivate sober thinking. The terms insanity and sobriety probably shock those who think it's "just a weight problem", but oh honey, if you get something here, please believe that for me it is so much more.

Toxic Either Or

2007-11-19T10:05:00.000-05:00

I have a friend in Overeaters Anonymous that I call or am called by Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We are "food buddies", rather like co-sponsors, and we talk about our food, how it's been, any challenges we see coming up in the next few days. I think we are similar enough that our challenges often figure around social events. You know, parties or receptions, business lunches, that stuff. I know that in my case, and likely hers too, the anxiety that lies just under the surface in those situations can cause me to leap onto the nearest plate as if it were a life raft and I a drowning, starving shipwreck survivor.

We're both aware that the holidays (and face it, now that we're getting Christmas carols blared at us in the stores and the traffic is just short of gridlock as we herd in panic like plastic-laden lemmings: it's the holidays!!!) can present big problems for those of us with eating issues. She works in an office. Just as she has managed to get past Hallowe'en unscathed, the December treats/landmines start to pile up. As an artist, I don't have that problem, but there's still the parties, dinners, and generally, all that seasonal food that makes a reappearance whenever two or more people appear.

Last year just after Christmas it all got to me and I had one of those "what the hell" episodes, and it took most of this year for me to feel like I was recovering from fairly regular slips. I was never one for the black and white approach to my food, I said I could have almost anything in reasonable quantities, but the frequency of these exceptions to my usual plan of eating went up, and so did my weight. And one night I said, oh the hell with it, who am I kidding? And then I REALLY did some eating.

I had just set myself up for a big fall. And this is where I think I differ from other people. I had built up such a quantity of shame over how much I had eaten, I figured I might as well give myself a good binge to REALLY have something to be ashamed of! That little final kink in my thinking is what really sent myself over the edge.

So. I guess that I have some choices to make, to make this season o' merry landmines a little different. And maybe a little difference is all that is needed. I would dearly love to be the abstinent nun with the hair shirt, I've been playing that game off and on since I was just out of the single digits, and look where that got me. The messy nature of real life is much more difficult. How to handle this with a finesse I can't seem to manage on my own is the question, and I think I need the help of a power greater than myself with it. Whether that is my sponsor, my food buddy, my husband, and that nebulous higher power I'm not sure. It's almost certainly to be some combination of the above or other factors I haven't considered. What I'm doing here is putting the question out there and seeing what comes of it, because my best plans, well, they haven't worked out so well. This is a real challenge to one's creativity and needs a resourcefulness that I've never really considered before.

Write, Dammit!

2007-11-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

Amazing how many things that can keep me from this, and I notice that a number of them have to do with food and cooking. Right now I've got a pot of leek soup on the burner in my flashy new red enameled Le Crueset knockoff. It cost fifty bucks, which is about half what the real thing would, but at that price my pot roasts better taste a damn sight better. Sometime in late October my hot liquids alarm was triggered for the season and coffee became not just a tasty caffeinated drink, but also a hand warmer. I dream of hot soups and stews. Last night I made a shrimp creole that practically singed our eyebrows off and forced me to gulp down around 32 oz of water with it. I fantasize about inviting my analretentive relatives over for chicken with dumplings that will warm their hearts enough to overlook my unpainted drywell in the hallway and the rickety stairs.

I guess it's because somewhere along the line I swallowed, hook line and sinker, the idea that food= love and comfort. Maybe because there was such a paucity of it in my house as a kid. My mother was depressed and isolated, her closest friends, wait, her only friends were her feuding family, and my father was a workaholic -alcoholic that couldn't find interpersonal warmth with a map. The only time I really felt love and belonging was dinnertime when my mother poured all her frustrated ambition into the mashed potatoes and roast beef.

Sad, huh? Yep. It is. But it's a pattern of thinking that frequently grabs at me, and I fall down the rabbit hole, or at least realize I'm hanging onto reality and food sobriety by my fingernails. If I'm lucky I'll catch myself before I fall into the abyss.

17 days and counting.

Taking Stock 2

2007-11-16T09:34:00.000-05:00

I have just felt so rushed this week. And I've been running late for a lot of things. It seems like I am cutting every appointment down to the last minute, even that hair appointment and giving blood this week. I was late for my group therapy session (again) last week and late seeing my therapist, again. After pointing this out (gotta love her, this is why I pay her those bucks), my therapist wondered if maybe there was something in me signalling that I needed more time doing things that were unscheduled.

So, what's up? Well, I checked my Palmpilot and yes, I've got a lot of things booked. I'm doing a lot of recovery related stuff, I've got the choir which I'm not doing enough rehearsal for, and I'm getting physical exercise 6 days a week. I'm also in the studio a few hours every weekday. The studio time isn't feeling like enough. I think I'm going to try for 3 hours a day rather than the 2 or 2 1/2 hours I get. That's still only about 15 hours a week. I have to remember though that studio time isn't your average job. It's not possible to work so intensely for 8 hours a day. A maximum workweek would be about 20 hours a week. I need extra time for creative wool-gathering to feed it. So the 20 hours a week your average office worker spends at work, I need to be spending in creative regeneration.

I realize that the evenings I'm not at a meeting or choir I'm parked in front of the tv. And I'm not sure if I need that for that creative regeneration or could I devote an hour of that to doing something else--- like maybe I should go to the gym and free up the rest of my day? Or just spend a half hour of that time in some sort of meditation. I think tv may be like letting my brain run in neutal: it's still running, slowly burning gas. If I meditated or did some other similar thing, then there might be some sort of creative regeneration that could be filling me up again

I phoned in sick to my group therapy session this morning. Rather than talk more about my recovery, I just need some more time for myself writing here and an opportunity to get to the studio for an hour or two. Then I figure I can go to the gym and have lunch before another couple of hours there this afternoon.

So, now I'm here and this is pretty sweet. It's cold out, barely above freezing, but it's very sunny. And I'm at the table in my rather rustic kitchen with the laptop and the sun is lovely. I , I, I, I just don't know what I want. Except I want more time. Time to do absolutely nothing. And yet, I've noticed, that on Sundays, when I have a "clear" day, my pattern is usually to sleep in and become depressed. And it's also usually a rocky food day. My therapist, Trish, suggested that I maybe do an OA phone call or some other form of reaching out. But I came up with a better idea: Fuzz has been incredibly busy with work, so why don't we go out for breakfast on Sunday morning, and I can spend some time talking to my best friend about things?

Our local vegetarian dive has a great Sunday brunch that isn't so leaden as traditional ones, and I love their coffee, so we can linger for a while. My OA food buddy has found that some exercise on Sunday morning, a run around the neighbourhood or something while her husband attends church is what lifts her up. So, I suppose we could walk to the restaurant, it's only a 15 or 20 minute walk to there, isn't that one of the reasons we moved to town, so we could walk places rather than have to get in the damn car all the time? When I first realized I had to get exercise years ago Fuzz and I would go for a walk nearly every night. Now we do the more intensive, more flashy exercise with our running group or at the gym, but we don't get the regular bonding time of our walk any more.

I know this blog doesn't get many hits, possibly because I'm a boring writer, but the sad truth I am coming to believe is, losing weight may be an obsession for the media and many people, but the nuts and bolts of keeping it off is a less exciting and more quotidian prospect: It's just doing little things, one day at a time and letting those days accumulate. It's living life, like putting a few dollars by every paycheque. Not flashy, no magic cure, but as I do it, I am often amazed by how a little here and there can add up.

16 days of untroubled food. 1721 days OA has been saving my life.

Checking In, Taking Stock

2007-11-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

I've only got 45 minutes before I've got to be downtown for a hair trim... Hm. I should try to get in the shower, maybe I can do that... yipes! Ok, quick check in:

Yesterday was hard, felt like I was working way too slowly in the studio. Interesting how my psyche raises the bar on me. Before it was I wasn't getting to the studio enough, now I'm not getting enough done! Jeez, no wonder I overeat: I've got this constant critic harping on my shoulder. Well, no matter how slowly I work, if I don't get to the studio at all, I won't get anything done and if I do a few hours most days I will get a surprising amount done when I look at it a year down the road.

It's like my workout diary: When I started weight training at the gym over 2 years ago I started tracking what I was lifting so I could remind myself between visits where I was at. I realized yesterday that the small notebook was almost full. I did some math and I've been to the gym over 200 times in that time. That's cool. One workout at a time, one day at a time, it adds up.

It's like when my friend contemplates getting fine art instruction, and I look at what instruction I've had --- somewhere it all added up. I look at my cv and go, wow, I've got a lot of experience here, even while continually feeling like I don't know enough, I haven't done enough. I go through the piles of drawings I've made and realize that it has become a considerable amount.

That's why I wear my "brain bucket" when I ride my bike: I've invested too much time and money in this noggin to waste it!

Gotta run! Life rocks!

Writing Works, So Why do I Hate it?

2007-11-14T09:15:00.000-05:00

Funny how that happens... I know that since I've been regularly posting to this blog my food has been much quieter (If you don't think food speaks to you, maybe you shouldn't be here) and yet I still have a hard time doing it. I'm not sure what the mental process, or maybe the block is, but I just don't want to do it this morning. Well, does it have anything to do with what I'm thinking about? I know I woke up preoccupied about something that's of a sticky interpersonal nature, that could be something... I'll bet that is it. This is an old pattern. Once again, I've unnecessarily taken on a lot of personal responsibility for something. I get myself into these situations where I think I have to do something for someone else's benefit and then my insides turn to molasses because I feel trapped by this internal "have to".

Well, I don't have to take on this responsibility. I'll do something to fulfill my word, do what I said I would do, and then there my responsibility ends. I need to stop the "what if"s, and just do it (it's only a phone call), so I can have another one of those great days where I have what seem like limitless possibilities.

Places to Go, Things to Buy!

2007-11-13T08:48:00.000-05:00

Wish I could have finished that with "people to see" but no, I've got stuff to get done that of course entails seeing people, but I'm not going out with that express purpose. That being said, I've just talked with an OA friend and e-mailed two. The internet is endlessly useful for OA types but I'm old enough that I don't always think about it. I've got to try some of the online meetings again, because it's been a couple of years since I tried one and the technology wasn't nearly as good as now.

It's a lovely day so I hope to get one last day on the scooter. The weather forecast for the rest of the week is not looking good, rain and then lots of freezing temperatures, so I guess it's about time to put her away for the winter, alas. It's such fun but I don't want to get near ice on it.

How am I feeling? Quite good, actually. I'm going to give blood in a half hour, my second time. Until I had my hysterectomy I was always anemic enough that I couldn't donate, so it's a happy side effect. Then I have to do some shopping downtown for art supplies and birthday presents and cat food, then make a big pot of soup for lunch and some happy hours in the studio before going running. Yesterday I didn't get a lot of painting done but unearthed some old notes and color copies of paintings I really like and it brought up a lot of ideas about what I would like to paint next.

Then later today I'm meeting with my running group, and then an OA meeting. My food has been very quiet the last couple of days. I'm thinking it has to do with all the writing I've been doing here. Blogging is one of my OA program tools!

Some days, life just seems full of fun and promise.

Speaking of dates...

2007-11-12T10:05:00.001-05:00

I just checked, and I've been posting to this blog for just over two years! Another milestone to add to the list of benefits & supports I've developed over the last few years. Thanks, Blogspot! Now, I have to do something else besides write: I've got a full day scheduled, and I don't think any of them would be happening if I were still in the food:

11 am: swim lesson
1230 pm: lunch with OA sponsor
130 pm: pick up coffee and computer
2 pm - 5 pm: paint in studio

Wow. Is that a cool life, or what?

February 27, 2003

2007-11-12T09:30:00.000-05:00

I was updating the header for this blog because it's been another year and I had to recalculate how long it's been since I've been granted entrance to the world of thin people. I had to check my journal entry to see what it really was , and it was February 27th 2003 that my therapist gave me an ultimatum that either I give OA another try (1st time didn't really take) or she wasn't sure what else she could do for me. So it was March 2003 when I got scared back into the rooms, and thankfully, it took. Several months after that I started "passing" as a thin person.

I say passing, because my head still slips into fat thinking. "Fathead" takes on a whole new meaning in my world. But right now, I'm celebrating the longest period I've ever had of physical thinness, and that in itself is an example of thin thinking. I'm taking stock and giving myself a pat on the back. These four plus years in Overeaters Anonymous have not been without their problems, and right now I have just under two weeks having gone without a binge, but I am in a very good place still.

Last night, I was telling Fuzz about the concept of spiritual fitness, a catchphrase you see in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. And he asked how mine was. And I had to make an evaluation of mine. What I started to do was listing off all the things I do to help that, and I listed the two OA meetings a week I regularly hit, my therapist, my group therapy group, and my OA friends. I basically listed my support system. But did I answer the question? Then I went on to say that I don't usually notice how my life has improved until I actually list it on paper or relate to someone. So that's why I'm here. Please God, let me stay.

Staying on My Side Takes Work

2007-11-12T08:44:00.000-05:00

So last post I was going on about these friends I was worried about. Well, one called me back, she was away at a conference and I had totally forgotten about it. Much easier to catastrophize! I have to laugh at myself. Still not much news from my other friend so my unconscious is still making up stories. I can't remember the exact details, but I know I dreamed about her and her family last night, something about sharing a hot tub with her brother, and a distinct feeling about being in her house when I shouldn't be. I think it's a pretty clear metaphor about me being in her headspace where I had no business being.

Maybe I could give her another call when I finish this, and stop all this speculating. I know she's probably okay because she has a roomate who would have found her if she wasn't. It is quite amazing how preoccupied I am with her. I almost wrote her an e-mail last night and then something stopped me. I wasn't sure what to write. "Are you mad at me"? That just seemed too lame. But maybe I should.

When in fact I am still angry with her in some part of my brain. In some part of my brain I am mad as hell, even if I don't want to feel it. The wave of feeling possibly doesn't have a lot to do with the present. I think it's harking back to some early anger and fear with my parents when I felt emotionally abandoned by them. I have this vision of being some age around 10, alone in an upstairs room in this cavernous, somewhat decrepit victorian house we rented from my father's boss, writing this letter/journal entry being angry and sad and confused because my father was away on business so much. I felt abandoned. I also felt guilty about being so angry, like I was betraying my parents, making too much out of nothing. After all, materially I really wanted for nothing.

But emotionally, I wanted for a lot. I was starved for love and friendship. Enter food. Now that I'm trying to put food in its proper place, I am left with the wreckage of my stunted life skills. I don't know really well how to live here, so I have to rely on the twelve steps as a prototype for living in this world. It's really a how to for how to live your life more effectively, but it's not foolproof and I keep forgetting to do it this way. I keep circling back to my old ways of living: isolate and stew, which doesn't work so well, and then I grab back onto the steps, right myself again and try to resume walking straight again.

Staying on My Side of the Street

2007-11-10T09:44:00.000-05:00

I've already said, I think, that I have a couple of friends in "the rooms" that I'm worried about. Well, that and ticked off at. Why ticked off? I guess I feel like I'm being a better friend to them than they are to themselves. And I got worn out. I needed to work on my life. So I didn't phone them for a few days because of that. Then I called them both yesterday and then this morning (in a fit of "get over it") and nobody answered. So I'm trying not to make a federal case of it. I am not their entire lives, I have my life to live, and so do they. I have to stop making up stories in my head about what is going on with them, stay on my very cluttered side of the street.

Food wise, the last week and a half has been good. The nibbling monster is being starved of sustinence, and that means I'm safer from any big binges. The last couple of months have not been good that way. I had several months of abstinence from binge eating and then lost it. Then I lost it a couple of months again after that. And then it was a couple of weeks, it was getting shorter and shorter. Scary stuff. I was starting to get very afraid.

Then I had one of those classic Halloween candy blow-ups. Moral of that story: we're now going to give out juice boxes, no candy. It's deadly for me. On the good side, Halloween is now my abstinence date, which makes it easy to remember.

So, while I'm still a healthy weight, my pants are still tighter than I want them to be and I don't want to keep sliding down this slope. I hate writing about this! My perfection monster is all over me, not wanting me to show this very imperfect side. There is something about showing imperfection that kicks up a lot of fear in me. I think that is a very old trait instilled in me by my parents: if I don't talk about it, it doesn't exist. Classic for the child of a closet alcoholic.

So, rather than get all riled up speculating about what is going on with my friends, I can't do more than I've done. And I have to keep my head on this body here, not fly off trying to save them, because if I'm immersed in doing that, my own disease will come up and bite me in the ass as it's done many times before. I know that feeling that comes after living for someone else: that emptiness and that gnawing hunger, and I know it has the possibility of becoming fatal.