Didja notice that yesterday I mentioned I was making cookies for a community meeting? I was asked, and instead of saying, can I wash coffee cups or set out chairs, I said, oh sure I'll make cookies! Did anyone find that strange? I should have! I should have at least considered whether that was a good idea to have several dozen cookies cooling in my kitchen, or what's almost worse, several dozen cookies worth of cookie dough, of which I nibbled on so much yesterday that I realized I had to go without my usual evening snack of chocolate. Also, bad idea to run with cookie dough in the tummy. Holy brick in the stomach Batman...
So, I'm a compulsive overeater and I offered to do the foodie equivalent of a drunk offering to make the holiday punch for a party. I'm wondering if I should do that again. I'm still in the midst of it, so it's good I'm writing. I'm trying to be honest, not gloss the struggle over. I ran out of time yesterday so I threw the dough in the fridge and I'm baking them this morning. 7 or 8 dozen cookies are spread over the kitchen, cooling. At this point in the day (it's almost noon)I've had 2 cookies. Samples, right? Yeah. So, it's early in the day and I've already had most of my allotted dessert for the day. How am I with that? Not terribly happy about it really. I usually save a dessert for the evening.
The irony increases, I'm supposed to meet my OA sponsee for our weekly chat in an hour. Do I tell her I was baking cookies? Yes. I have to be honest, and this has been a challenge to my sanity. I wonder if this is a safe thing for me to do. Am I tempting fate, am I thriving on the thrill of baking? It's true, I love cooking and baking as an anxiety release. It feels so homey, all those good smells. Maybe I'm trying to recover, or remake my childhood where so much of the good things were around food. Intersperse that with a constant diet. I don't know where all of this leads, it's just interesting to look at at this point. Will it take a binge to change me? Do I have to change? Am I wasting my time on this earth with comfort food rather than directing my phantom but considerable when occasionally tapped energies into more sane yet more risky avenues? No answers here.
17.10.06
2 Weigh or Not 2 Weigh...
... That is my question here.
When we moved... when was it, mid July, so 3 months ago, I finally threw out my peeling, chocolate brown, 1978 Sears bathroom scale. I haven't bought another one, I've been waffling.
'Twas a time when I weighed myself daily, or following the good old Weight Watchers regimen (fat lot of good that did me) once weekly. I could drive myself nuts with it. And more recently, I weighed myself monthly, after my period to make sure I was getting a more "accurate" (trans: lower) number. But I found that it was accompanied by great angst. Yet I had to do it. But if that number was up, I was in for a bad mood. And thoughts of dieting, which of course made me hungry. The Rooms of OA are rife with hilarious tales of weighing contortionists, the best one was my friend who used to take out her dental partial plate before weighing herself, or my friend who when she weighs herself, monthly, she does it 4 times, with the scale pointing in the directions of the compass! I'm not sure if she averages the number or does what I'd do and take the lowest one!
So, I thought, ok, this old scale is as inaccurate as hell and maybe it's just continuing an unhealthy obsession. It never agrees with my doctor's scale. I'll just rely on my clothes to tell me what's going on. Except most of my pants (I wear a skirt twice a year, roughly) have a certain amount of spandex. On a middle aged body, spandex in jeans means that I can still have a shape, things don't have to be baggy to be comfortable. But I don't trust the spandex to tell me if I'm still an 8. And what if the new pair of pants I bought last month are a funny fit. I can stew on this silly stuff forever, and it seems to happen every time I put on a pair of freshly laundered pants.
So it may be time to cry Uncle, just cut to the chase and buy another damn scale. I have to admit, the last nearly 4 years of weighing monthly, I didn't have any diet thoughts, except for maybe, ok, time to dial it back a little on the rich desserts last year. The number was pretty stable.
On the other hand, I have a physical in 2 days. Maybe I should just find out what that number is, compare it with the last number in my file, and see then what I should or shouldn't do.
Such a simple and elegant solution, costs nothing, I don't have to shop for a new scale. Just what my crazy brain doesn't want: sanity!
When we moved... when was it, mid July, so 3 months ago, I finally threw out my peeling, chocolate brown, 1978 Sears bathroom scale. I haven't bought another one, I've been waffling.
'Twas a time when I weighed myself daily, or following the good old Weight Watchers regimen (fat lot of good that did me) once weekly. I could drive myself nuts with it. And more recently, I weighed myself monthly, after my period to make sure I was getting a more "accurate" (trans: lower) number. But I found that it was accompanied by great angst. Yet I had to do it. But if that number was up, I was in for a bad mood. And thoughts of dieting, which of course made me hungry. The Rooms of OA are rife with hilarious tales of weighing contortionists, the best one was my friend who used to take out her dental partial plate before weighing herself, or my friend who when she weighs herself, monthly, she does it 4 times, with the scale pointing in the directions of the compass! I'm not sure if she averages the number or does what I'd do and take the lowest one!
So, I thought, ok, this old scale is as inaccurate as hell and maybe it's just continuing an unhealthy obsession. It never agrees with my doctor's scale. I'll just rely on my clothes to tell me what's going on. Except most of my pants (I wear a skirt twice a year, roughly) have a certain amount of spandex. On a middle aged body, spandex in jeans means that I can still have a shape, things don't have to be baggy to be comfortable. But I don't trust the spandex to tell me if I'm still an 8. And what if the new pair of pants I bought last month are a funny fit. I can stew on this silly stuff forever, and it seems to happen every time I put on a pair of freshly laundered pants.
So it may be time to cry Uncle, just cut to the chase and buy another damn scale. I have to admit, the last nearly 4 years of weighing monthly, I didn't have any diet thoughts, except for maybe, ok, time to dial it back a little on the rich desserts last year. The number was pretty stable.
On the other hand, I have a physical in 2 days. Maybe I should just find out what that number is, compare it with the last number in my file, and see then what I should or shouldn't do.
Such a simple and elegant solution, costs nothing, I don't have to shop for a new scale. Just what my crazy brain doesn't want: sanity!
Dreadhead
I should have dreadlocks. I wonder where they got that name, cause the people who wear them seem so mellow, perhaps through the aid of certain recreational drugs. Ehhhh, no dread here, mon! I woke up with a head full of dread this morning. I still don't understand why that happens. Nothing particularly onerous today, I did have to deal with a doctor's office phone call about scheduling issues over my still distant spectre of a hernia operation, but that's it, and come on, it's not much. All I have scheduled for today is making cookies for a community meeting tomorrow night and running, and I had thought I would try to be in the studio a couple of hours today... is that it?
On the back burner, however, there does seem to be a lot of junky thinking on the simmer.... double double, boil and bubble... worries about money, about financial issues I need to deal with. I think it's high time I consult a financial advisor about some investments my mother left me that seem to not be doing so well and I think I have to look at them now because of some tax implications next spring. Oh ugh. It may be high time, but I don't feel any where near ready. That definitely makes me want to go back to bed. Can I set the snooze alarm to go off again in another 100 years or so? I feel so freakin incompetent when it comes to money. Julia Cameron (you know, the lady who wrote The Artist's Way, self help guru to the creatively constipated) says there are people who are addicted to poverty. I may be one of them. My family fought so much over money I freak out and run when I have to consider financial questions.
Today I can deal with the cookies. The studio? That's so hard. You see, the studio is where you go to access that inner stuff, and when the inner stuff is fear and loathing, it's not very easy. I wonder where my sketchbooks are? This is the sort of thing that may be easiest dealt with in a cartoon...
On the back burner, however, there does seem to be a lot of junky thinking on the simmer.... double double, boil and bubble... worries about money, about financial issues I need to deal with. I think it's high time I consult a financial advisor about some investments my mother left me that seem to not be doing so well and I think I have to look at them now because of some tax implications next spring. Oh ugh. It may be high time, but I don't feel any where near ready. That definitely makes me want to go back to bed. Can I set the snooze alarm to go off again in another 100 years or so? I feel so freakin incompetent when it comes to money. Julia Cameron (you know, the lady who wrote The Artist's Way, self help guru to the creatively constipated) says there are people who are addicted to poverty. I may be one of them. My family fought so much over money I freak out and run when I have to consider financial questions.
Today I can deal with the cookies. The studio? That's so hard. You see, the studio is where you go to access that inner stuff, and when the inner stuff is fear and loathing, it's not very easy. I wonder where my sketchbooks are? This is the sort of thing that may be easiest dealt with in a cartoon...
16.10.06
Surprise, I ain't no Flo-Jo!
I got a call last night from one of the organizers of a series of group therapy sessions that I have been interested in joining since my Addictions Doc left town. Unfortunately the session is scheduled for the same time as one of my 2 weekly group runs. I told the person that I would have to get back to her today, that I had to think about it. And I did. I talked to Fuzz about it, but I kind of knew all along I would, regretfully, have to turn it down.
Because I love running, and I love running with the people I run with. Mind you there is only 3 of us right now, sometimes just the 2, but we are there for each other and it feels so good. I have to qualify my love for running: Sometimes it feels so good only after we've run, on those nights when it feels like my limbs are concrete blocks and my blood is thicker than mortar. But actually, even those nights aren't totally bad. The struggling usually lifts after about 10 or 15 minutes and suddenly I'm flowing.
I've got crappy lung capacity, maybe it's genetic, maybe it's because I was sick a lot as a kid and I still have some latent asthma, or maybe it's because I was very sedentary until I was nearly 40, but I'm never going to be a super athelete. I doubt I will ever attempt a marathon, that's just too much pain, but I feel pretty amazing and amazed when I can run for a half hour. I finally get what that runner's high stuff is about, feeling totally physically spent and my whole body is glowing, feeling as if the exertion has pumped blood into every last bit of my being. I actually feel good that I'm sweaty.
That's a change. When I was over 300 I did everything I could to avoid getting all sweaty, partly because it didn't take much movement to make me sweat, and I was so full of shame at my physical condition that my mind was consumed with doing everything I could to not appear sweaty and flustered. Which was impossible, so I would shun people and situations where that might happen, I grew more isolated, and more ill.
Sometimes we run at the same time as the university track club that our coach also coaches, and it's amazing to watch these kids who just seem to effortlessly raise their heels so high they're practically kicking themselves. Of course I start to compare, but I have to stop that, because I'm not them, and comparing myself to others is one of those things that gets my head into a bad space.
Fuzz has this Yogi-Barraism he likes to say which is "I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in", and I like it. At 45, and after all I've been through, I'm doing pretty damn good.
Because I love running, and I love running with the people I run with. Mind you there is only 3 of us right now, sometimes just the 2, but we are there for each other and it feels so good. I have to qualify my love for running: Sometimes it feels so good only after we've run, on those nights when it feels like my limbs are concrete blocks and my blood is thicker than mortar. But actually, even those nights aren't totally bad. The struggling usually lifts after about 10 or 15 minutes and suddenly I'm flowing.
I've got crappy lung capacity, maybe it's genetic, maybe it's because I was sick a lot as a kid and I still have some latent asthma, or maybe it's because I was very sedentary until I was nearly 40, but I'm never going to be a super athelete. I doubt I will ever attempt a marathon, that's just too much pain, but I feel pretty amazing and amazed when I can run for a half hour. I finally get what that runner's high stuff is about, feeling totally physically spent and my whole body is glowing, feeling as if the exertion has pumped blood into every last bit of my being. I actually feel good that I'm sweaty.
That's a change. When I was over 300 I did everything I could to avoid getting all sweaty, partly because it didn't take much movement to make me sweat, and I was so full of shame at my physical condition that my mind was consumed with doing everything I could to not appear sweaty and flustered. Which was impossible, so I would shun people and situations where that might happen, I grew more isolated, and more ill.
Sometimes we run at the same time as the university track club that our coach also coaches, and it's amazing to watch these kids who just seem to effortlessly raise their heels so high they're practically kicking themselves. Of course I start to compare, but I have to stop that, because I'm not them, and comparing myself to others is one of those things that gets my head into a bad space.
Fuzz has this Yogi-Barraism he likes to say which is "I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in", and I like it. At 45, and after all I've been through, I'm doing pretty damn good.
11.10.06
Hang in There, Baby!
Oh gawd, that awful poster from the seventies! That poor cat! But that's the way I'm feeling. I'm hanging on, and some days, it's like I'm down to my last claw on the branch. It's not white knuckling, not with the food, anyway, which is pretty good, pretty quiet, not calling out to me from the fridge too much.
If there is white knuckling going on, it's to do with my faith in recovery. Things are ok. Nothing is really wrong, things are "fine", but mentally, I wake up feeling like a wall just fell on me. Or more accurately, is about to fall on me if I dare to get out of bed.
I've written (some may say bragged) about how life has been so cool with food "sobriety", and it is, many times. I'm on day 633 since I had a binge, and there are some great moments. But right now, as I write this, my stomach is feeling kind of clenched up, like my jaw, and since I'm not stuffing food down my throat to smother that physical manifestation of anxiety, I can experience that feeling fully. Oh joy. Thankfully, it isn't as intense as a craving, and the discomfort often fades quickly after I recognize it's there.
It's different from a craving, this time I was just feeling and recognizing that discomfort in my gi tract that before probably I would automatically try to smother with food. I guess you could call this a pre-craving, with the craving right around the corner.
I had a craving earlier this morning. I was in a large grocery store early, a time I usually don't go shopping, but I had just dropped my BF's daughter off at school and I needed milk. Honest, I needed milk. I had had a great breakfast, a big helping of my mega chunky oatmeal with nuts and fruit, but it's a cool rainy day, the rest of the day is sort of undefined because I could do this, could do that, could do the other thing, and of course what hit me was the smell of the bread from the in-store bakery... Suddenly I needed bread although I knew full well I had at least a half a loaf in the freezer. The bread I usually buy wasn't there. But boy, did I give the other stuff there a once over, including for the umpteenth time, this olive rosemary sourdough that for me is like crack... One slice, even cut an inch thick from a large round loaf, is never enough.
I needed comfort. I know that. I needed reassurance. Comfort food, in the extreme. My problem is what starts as self-comfort slides into self abuse. I'm not comforting, I'm stuffing.
If there is white knuckling going on, it's to do with my faith in recovery. Things are ok. Nothing is really wrong, things are "fine", but mentally, I wake up feeling like a wall just fell on me. Or more accurately, is about to fall on me if I dare to get out of bed.
I've written (some may say bragged) about how life has been so cool with food "sobriety", and it is, many times. I'm on day 633 since I had a binge, and there are some great moments. But right now, as I write this, my stomach is feeling kind of clenched up, like my jaw, and since I'm not stuffing food down my throat to smother that physical manifestation of anxiety, I can experience that feeling fully. Oh joy. Thankfully, it isn't as intense as a craving, and the discomfort often fades quickly after I recognize it's there.
It's different from a craving, this time I was just feeling and recognizing that discomfort in my gi tract that before probably I would automatically try to smother with food. I guess you could call this a pre-craving, with the craving right around the corner.
I had a craving earlier this morning. I was in a large grocery store early, a time I usually don't go shopping, but I had just dropped my BF's daughter off at school and I needed milk. Honest, I needed milk. I had had a great breakfast, a big helping of my mega chunky oatmeal with nuts and fruit, but it's a cool rainy day, the rest of the day is sort of undefined because I could do this, could do that, could do the other thing, and of course what hit me was the smell of the bread from the in-store bakery... Suddenly I needed bread although I knew full well I had at least a half a loaf in the freezer. The bread I usually buy wasn't there. But boy, did I give the other stuff there a once over, including for the umpteenth time, this olive rosemary sourdough that for me is like crack... One slice, even cut an inch thick from a large round loaf, is never enough.
I needed comfort. I know that. I needed reassurance. Comfort food, in the extreme. My problem is what starts as self-comfort slides into self abuse. I'm not comforting, I'm stuffing.
3.10.06
My Talk (Long)
The Saturday Overeaters Anonymous workshop went well. Although I had already heard 3 of the other 4 speakers, I heard something new from each of them. I imagine they sweated as much over their talks as I, but I believe I also heard what I needed to hear at that particular point in time. I am often pleasantly surprised by the sense of ease and relief that comes over me at OA events, because I forget how much healing and understanding there is in the fellowship of others who understand the hell we can go through over "mere food".
Here's what I finally came up with to say. It's long but it might help someone:
*****************************
A doctor who studies obesity was asked in a radio interview, 'If the government could do one thing to stop the obesity crisis, what would it be?'
The man paused, and said, 'That's the trouble. There is no one thing you can do. You have to do ... everything."
That is the task in front of us, and it sounds daunting. It should sound daunting! We will likely have to reach further than we may have ever done before to combat a disorder that requires nothing so much as a complete change in our personality. If we are successful, our true friends will tell us that we have changed beyond appearances, our whole being will be transformed in a way we could not have predicted.
I wonder what I can tell you that will make you believe this task is possible. Ok, here is my journal entry from one of the lowest points of my life 3 ½ years ago:
So, here I am. February 28, 2003 (9:28AM) And I am typing. I got a kick in the butt yesterday from Trish, who told me that a condition of her continuing to see me would be me attending OA. I don’t know how to take that. Flattered that she cares, offended that she gives me the ultimatum---- I’m paying her for that? Relieved that I may get jolted out of the self destructive rut or is it a spiral? - that I am in... It was enough to make me stop bingeing yesterday, although I don’t know how long this will last. I guess attending an OA meeting would make it more likely to last. Oh sigh... I don’t want to go back.
Trish is my therapist and she didn’t know what else to do with me. At that point I was about 8 months out of graduate school, a painter with my own version of a writer’s block. And I couldn’t get more than 3 days under my belt without a binge. I was around 270 pounds, on my way back up to over 300, it looked like. I was on blood pressure drugs and my type 2 diabetes was creeping back. 3 years before that I had been 180. 6 years before that I had been over 300, I don’t know how much over, I kept my eyes closed when my doctor’s assistant weighed me. I first realized I was fat when I started school and my first diet was sometime before age 10, and I was up and down continually for the next 30 years. In my pictures you can see when I was practically anorexic when a teenager, and I can see at times my eating patterns have followed that of classic bulimia with compulsive exercising and stringent dieting followed by binges. Ah the binges, at heart I’m a binger, that’s the stuff that I still can sniff a pull from the underworld clutching at my throat, just driving by KFC turns me into one of pavlov’s dogs.
So, I’ve got a long track record of eating and undereating here, and right now I’ve got 622 days of back to back abstinence, that’s about a year and a half after being in OA for just over 3 ½ years. My abstinence is still pretty new here, so forgive me if I don’t consider myself an expert at abstinence, I am no expert on overeating, I'm not even an expert on myself some days because I'm often the last person to be able to tell you what I am feeling. All I can give you is my story as I see it right now.
How did I get abstinence? The real turning point was when I actually put my desire to live ahead of that awful sucking gnawing craving and picked up the 500 pound phone to call Leah. It was about 5 days after that journal entry and I wanted to eat so bad! I remember it was a Sunday afternoon, I hate Sunday afternoons and I was alone in my studio and all I wanted to do was run into the house and eat something anything to relieve that awful gnawing. I called Leah. We talked, she suggested I chug a big glass of water to relieve that impulse to swallow. The water worked, but the reaching out was what really worked. I was desperate enough to try reaching out and somehow it broke the chain of self damage.
I wrote, I read all the OA literature I could get my hands on, and I shared at meetings. Just going wasn’t enough. I had to share, and it seemed the more I shared, the more my feelings sorted out. Sometimes I was just entertaining people with my stories of disease, of wanting to snatch the last morsel off my poor unsuspecting husband’s plate, of feeling like I was going to throttle her if my mother in law asked me one more friggin time if I wanted a piece of her damn pie! I had to reach out. I had to share my pain, frustration, and amazement that I could pass a week, a month, two months, oops, a day a week, two months, three months and more without a binge.
And I did the stepwork, the first three steps particularly in the beginning for the first couple of years, and many times even today — Over and over again, like a recovery waltz: steps one two three, one two three, one two three... A pessimistic agnostic praying to a higher power for the strength to see past my own self will run riot. I tried this utterly foreign concept of trusting in something beyond myself, and instead of trying to comfort myself with another foray into bulk food, I learned that I could last through the pain which really was fleeting — the disease tries to tell me that the pain will last forever if I don’t eat something NOW! But it lies. If I don’t eat something, the feeling slinks away while I am momentarily distracted.
I’ll get to my plan of eating in a minute, but I have to say that I firmly believe that right now what I specifically do and don’t eat seems no more important than my spiritual fitness and working on my emotional health, because if I am doing well in those areas, I am so much less desperate and less compelled to eat.
I am full of fear and its corresponding emotion, shame. It takes daily work for me to not succumb to those character defects, for they are so ingrained that they are already in place waiting if I don’t work to have faith. I am no expert at this and my programme ebbs and flows. I isolate, I stew, I worry, then I luckily get good and miserable which right now seems sufficient to drive me back into meetings, talking with other members and my sponsor, writing and regular prayer. I forget. I slip into old habits. I feel ashamed and then I am amused because aha, there I am believing that old lie that I must be perfect.
I can tell you that all this work is paying off. I am happier than I have ever been in my life, and I feel more real and awake than I ever have in my life, and I expect to continue seeing things to unfold in a wonderful surprise.
Here’s the definition of abstinence I have:
I don’t binge.
I get regular exercise.
I follow my plan of eating as I can, but deviations from it, within reason, I accept. I am not on a diet, and right now there are few foods I say I will not eat. There are however, foods I have not eaten for a very long time because I know from bitter experience that they just make me feel worse and crave more and it’s not worth to eat it. Cheap candy and chips are a couple of those. Donuts don’t taste any good in quantities under a half dozen and that would just be wrong, so I don’t go there any more. They just aren’t worth the grief, and none of that stuff is kept in my house.
If anyone is interested in a more specific plan of eating, I have some copies you can get from me later. It’s around 2000 calories according to a dietitian I saw a while back, and I seem to be able to maintain a healthy weight of around 150 for about 2 years with regular exercise and activity and without excessive cravings. This may change utterly if it stops working. I can only tell you what seems to work for me today.
Being gentle with myself is part of my definition of abstinence. Until OA I was always on a diet or eating uncontrollably. If I do not follow this plan of eating to the letter, I try not to beat myself up over it. It is not a diet. It is a blueprint, and part of my abstinence that seems to work right now is avoiding that self punitive, rigid diet mentality that I suffered from for many years. If I want a particular food I don’t usually eat, I often pray about it. I ask my higher power: is this food going to make me healthier (mentally or physically) or is it going to make me more obsessed and unhappy? Is it worth it?
I was sweating over this talk yesterday. I didn’t feel perfect enough to be talking to you. There goes the ego again. But however imperfect I may be, I am a stable healthy weight for the first time in my life. It feels so tenuous. Two years I’ve been at this weight, two years out of 45. It still feels odd, and why not? This has been the exception in my life, neither gaining or losing, neither bingeing nor starving. I feel like the 9 time divorcee who finds herself in a stable marriage for the first time, still not sure how I got here.
I griped to my husband last night about how odd it was to be at a stable weight. He gave me one of those even, wide eyed looks that quiet people give you sometimes and said: You’re just stable now, period.
Here's what I finally came up with to say. It's long but it might help someone:
*****************************
A doctor who studies obesity was asked in a radio interview, 'If the government could do one thing to stop the obesity crisis, what would it be?'
The man paused, and said, 'That's the trouble. There is no one thing you can do. You have to do ... everything."
That is the task in front of us, and it sounds daunting. It should sound daunting! We will likely have to reach further than we may have ever done before to combat a disorder that requires nothing so much as a complete change in our personality. If we are successful, our true friends will tell us that we have changed beyond appearances, our whole being will be transformed in a way we could not have predicted.
I wonder what I can tell you that will make you believe this task is possible. Ok, here is my journal entry from one of the lowest points of my life 3 ½ years ago:
So, here I am. February 28, 2003 (9:28AM) And I am typing. I got a kick in the butt yesterday from Trish, who told me that a condition of her continuing to see me would be me attending OA. I don’t know how to take that. Flattered that she cares, offended that she gives me the ultimatum---- I’m paying her for that? Relieved that I may get jolted out of the self destructive rut or is it a spiral? - that I am in... It was enough to make me stop bingeing yesterday, although I don’t know how long this will last. I guess attending an OA meeting would make it more likely to last. Oh sigh... I don’t want to go back.
Trish is my therapist and she didn’t know what else to do with me. At that point I was about 8 months out of graduate school, a painter with my own version of a writer’s block. And I couldn’t get more than 3 days under my belt without a binge. I was around 270 pounds, on my way back up to over 300, it looked like. I was on blood pressure drugs and my type 2 diabetes was creeping back. 3 years before that I had been 180. 6 years before that I had been over 300, I don’t know how much over, I kept my eyes closed when my doctor’s assistant weighed me. I first realized I was fat when I started school and my first diet was sometime before age 10, and I was up and down continually for the next 30 years. In my pictures you can see when I was practically anorexic when a teenager, and I can see at times my eating patterns have followed that of classic bulimia with compulsive exercising and stringent dieting followed by binges. Ah the binges, at heart I’m a binger, that’s the stuff that I still can sniff a pull from the underworld clutching at my throat, just driving by KFC turns me into one of pavlov’s dogs.
So, I’ve got a long track record of eating and undereating here, and right now I’ve got 622 days of back to back abstinence, that’s about a year and a half after being in OA for just over 3 ½ years. My abstinence is still pretty new here, so forgive me if I don’t consider myself an expert at abstinence, I am no expert on overeating, I'm not even an expert on myself some days because I'm often the last person to be able to tell you what I am feeling. All I can give you is my story as I see it right now.
How did I get abstinence? The real turning point was when I actually put my desire to live ahead of that awful sucking gnawing craving and picked up the 500 pound phone to call Leah. It was about 5 days after that journal entry and I wanted to eat so bad! I remember it was a Sunday afternoon, I hate Sunday afternoons and I was alone in my studio and all I wanted to do was run into the house and eat something anything to relieve that awful gnawing. I called Leah. We talked, she suggested I chug a big glass of water to relieve that impulse to swallow. The water worked, but the reaching out was what really worked. I was desperate enough to try reaching out and somehow it broke the chain of self damage.
I wrote, I read all the OA literature I could get my hands on, and I shared at meetings. Just going wasn’t enough. I had to share, and it seemed the more I shared, the more my feelings sorted out. Sometimes I was just entertaining people with my stories of disease, of wanting to snatch the last morsel off my poor unsuspecting husband’s plate, of feeling like I was going to throttle her if my mother in law asked me one more friggin time if I wanted a piece of her damn pie! I had to reach out. I had to share my pain, frustration, and amazement that I could pass a week, a month, two months, oops, a day a week, two months, three months and more without a binge.
And I did the stepwork, the first three steps particularly in the beginning for the first couple of years, and many times even today — Over and over again, like a recovery waltz: steps one two three, one two three, one two three... A pessimistic agnostic praying to a higher power for the strength to see past my own self will run riot. I tried this utterly foreign concept of trusting in something beyond myself, and instead of trying to comfort myself with another foray into bulk food, I learned that I could last through the pain which really was fleeting — the disease tries to tell me that the pain will last forever if I don’t eat something NOW! But it lies. If I don’t eat something, the feeling slinks away while I am momentarily distracted.
I’ll get to my plan of eating in a minute, but I have to say that I firmly believe that right now what I specifically do and don’t eat seems no more important than my spiritual fitness and working on my emotional health, because if I am doing well in those areas, I am so much less desperate and less compelled to eat.
I am full of fear and its corresponding emotion, shame. It takes daily work for me to not succumb to those character defects, for they are so ingrained that they are already in place waiting if I don’t work to have faith. I am no expert at this and my programme ebbs and flows. I isolate, I stew, I worry, then I luckily get good and miserable which right now seems sufficient to drive me back into meetings, talking with other members and my sponsor, writing and regular prayer. I forget. I slip into old habits. I feel ashamed and then I am amused because aha, there I am believing that old lie that I must be perfect.
I can tell you that all this work is paying off. I am happier than I have ever been in my life, and I feel more real and awake than I ever have in my life, and I expect to continue seeing things to unfold in a wonderful surprise.
Here’s the definition of abstinence I have:
I don’t binge.
I get regular exercise.
I follow my plan of eating as I can, but deviations from it, within reason, I accept. I am not on a diet, and right now there are few foods I say I will not eat. There are however, foods I have not eaten for a very long time because I know from bitter experience that they just make me feel worse and crave more and it’s not worth to eat it. Cheap candy and chips are a couple of those. Donuts don’t taste any good in quantities under a half dozen and that would just be wrong, so I don’t go there any more. They just aren’t worth the grief, and none of that stuff is kept in my house.
If anyone is interested in a more specific plan of eating, I have some copies you can get from me later. It’s around 2000 calories according to a dietitian I saw a while back, and I seem to be able to maintain a healthy weight of around 150 for about 2 years with regular exercise and activity and without excessive cravings. This may change utterly if it stops working. I can only tell you what seems to work for me today.
Being gentle with myself is part of my definition of abstinence. Until OA I was always on a diet or eating uncontrollably. If I do not follow this plan of eating to the letter, I try not to beat myself up over it. It is not a diet. It is a blueprint, and part of my abstinence that seems to work right now is avoiding that self punitive, rigid diet mentality that I suffered from for many years. If I want a particular food I don’t usually eat, I often pray about it. I ask my higher power: is this food going to make me healthier (mentally or physically) or is it going to make me more obsessed and unhappy? Is it worth it?
I was sweating over this talk yesterday. I didn’t feel perfect enough to be talking to you. There goes the ego again. But however imperfect I may be, I am a stable healthy weight for the first time in my life. It feels so tenuous. Two years I’ve been at this weight, two years out of 45. It still feels odd, and why not? This has been the exception in my life, neither gaining or losing, neither bingeing nor starving. I feel like the 9 time divorcee who finds herself in a stable marriage for the first time, still not sure how I got here.
I griped to my husband last night about how odd it was to be at a stable weight. He gave me one of those even, wide eyed looks that quiet people give you sometimes and said: You’re just stable now, period.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)