Unlike yesterday's visitors to my pool (above) I'm feeling a bit stuck in the mud today. Do you get that? It is absolutely a beautiful day, and I'm feeling like I should be doing something, God knows there's enough around here to do, and yet I don't really want to do anything. I feel stuck. But maybe, just maybe, my psyche is saying: do absolutely nothing. The weather is great, I can smell BF/neighbour's lilacs through the open window, I iced my sore foot (a bit of fascia irritation, I think) by sticking it in the still frigid pool and it feels much better. I can just write, I can just be here. I'm hoping the ducks will return, but if they don't, oh well, probably best for the pool chemistry...
I weighed myself this morning, and my weight is stable, and I feel physically pretty good, sore foot notwithstanding. It's been almost 4 months since my surgery, and I feel nothing spectaular, just generally well. It seems like my biggest activity lately is being a --- jock??? I was afraid I was becoming a compulsive exerciser, but I'm not overdoing it, I took 2 days off last week from it because of the holiday, and I'm just enjoying being fit, my body moves, I can exercise and get winded, but I'm ok, I'm not going to die. I bought a new pair of swim goggles with some optical correction, and I can see in the pool! And, they don't leak!!! Ok, ok, so I was limping along for way too long with old swim goggles. And speaking of limping, I think my foot is sore because I went too long with my old running shoes. It's so hard for me to listen to my body, it has to hurt for me to pay attention. When my foot started hurting, I discovered that my hamstrings were way too tight, probably exacerbating my foot, and that stiff back I thought was just another middle age symptom? Hamstrings again. Some regular stretching is really loosening things up.
Self care is tough. I got an OA phone call from a member who is struggling not just with food but with taking care of herself, and we just talked about our challenges. Shame, caregiving for others when we're really hurting ourselves, and did I mention shame? Biggest aspect of our disease. I didn't try to cure her. I just listened and shared. And tried to keep listening to myself along the way. Oops, time to ice again! And I thought I was doing nothing!!!
Social eating has to be the bane of most people who struggle with their weight. Mind you, I'm no stranger to sneak eating either --- it was one of my favorite binge methods, being able to eat continually while nobody was watching me. But I still struggle with social eating. Last night we were at a charity benefit for women in Afghanistan and I knew some good food was going to be served, so I went light on supper, just a poached egg on some braised cabbage (omigod, you gotta try the braised cabbage....go to Orangette's blog to get this fabulous recipe. Perfect accompaniment if you're already roasting something in the oven, and I cut down on the oil by almost half and it was still unctuously tasty. Go ahead, roast the whole head. The leftovers are even better!) so I could still sample the Afghan treats. But peril lies in the buffet table, because in large groups, I get very anxious. Honestly, I get anxious in small groups too. In fact, any group over 3. I just start eating to calm my nerves. The food goes in, and then faster, and faster... So I've got to watch it.
Last night was an interesting challenge. A number of fellow OA members were singing in the choir that entertained us. So there was my reality check--- they were there to ground me. But also in the choir was a surprise for me: an old friend that I had been very close to around fifteen years ago and then had broken away from because, well, she was emotionally and mentally ill and so was I. I felt like we were both going under, and I did what I do when I feel out of my depth, I disappeared. It's a recurring pattern for me. We hadn't talked for years. Well, my friend resurfaced and she wants to try to pick us up again. She looks really well. But I'm scared. I'm not sure I can handle this. More importantly, do I want to handle this again? Can we be friends in a way that is not co-dependent?
In the context of this blog, this is an important question, because I've learned that the more I stuff down my feelings and needs when I'm with others, I just need that balm of food all the more. It's like my security blanket. A security blanket with a bomb hidden underneath!
I can't figure it.
I just posted saying I needed to be honest about my weight and needing a larger size and then I bought a pair of size 8 denim capris because they just looked "right" sized when I held them up to me. I was at Costco and one of their "charms" is they don't have dressing rooms. If it doesn't fit you have to return it. But it did. I did try on a light jacket in a Small and it fit too. Maybe Costco sizes are, like everything else about the store, oversized, and/or I've gained muscle which weighs more than fat per inch size. After all, BF weighs about the same as me, but hates to exercise so she's a few sizes bigger than me.
Whatever. Obviously I have no clue.
I need to be honest here. I have to change my profile because I have gained weight. I can blame the surgery in February, or whatever, but the last couple of months when I've weighed myself I've been closer to 160 than 150. I'm mildly concerned. I'm aware that after my surgery I indulged in a few too many pizzas while not getting a lot of exercise. And maybe I've been letting the treat fairy visit too often?
And I had a couple of no-shit binges. One in January, and one in early March. So, my size 8 jeans are getting a little too tight, and I actually had to buy a 10 in the last pair.
I don't feel bad, but I'm concerned that this could be a slippery slope, and I wish my jeans fit better. So, I need to take some action. Get back into programme a little more. I already mentioned an extra meeting a week would be good. More journalling to keep track of how I feel from day to day. Cleave to what has helped me in the past, shake off the belief that I was safe, that I wasn't going back "there". Well, if my body's inclination is to return to a higher weight, I have to be vigilant. Sucks kinda, but it's really just a reality check. I have work to do.
Yikes, it's noon, lunch! Snuck up on me. Guess blogging may help too.
I've been reading exerpts of Gina Kolata's new book Rethinking Thin on the nytimes.com website, and it's a scary read. Because it reinforces that idea that losing and keeping off a substantial amount of weight is tough. Really tough. She maintains that studies indicate that my trying to stay at a healthy weight feels akin to starving, according to my body. And that does feel right. Another thing that feels accurate is this:
"There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation."
I don't like the terms starving or starvation, because it feels like entirely too dire a term to describe how I feel about 80% of the time, but yes, there are times, like last night, when I was dying for a bag of chips and it did feel a bit like I was starving. Although I had other, less calorie- dense and more filling snacks, my body was sending me messages like, "aw come on, gimme a break, can't we have something fun to eat, just this once?!" I was having nostalgic flashbacks of the days when Fuzz and I would mow our way through a large bag of chips on the couch in front of the tv. But when I actually thought about it, I remembered that only three days previous I was at a cocktail TGIF with BF and other girl friends, and I had had lots of rich salty treats: crackers, cheese, pate, dip, crusty bread... I'd had my treats, and it was too soon for another exception.
Actually, I've just realized that my body is still playing tricks on my memory. I forgot that I've got a disease, and it's perfectly reasonable for that disease to include a body memory that wants me to be binge eating. And from hard experience I've found that anything less than the calories that keep me above 300 pounds (or maybe higher, if I hadn't stopped in time) feels like starvation --- AT TIMES. I find that those strong cravings that feel so compelling often leave when I've decided it's not getting filled and distract myself with another activity and my mouth with a cup of tea.
I don't count calories by the way, but I do have a fairly unchanging plan of eating, which includes regularly weighing and measuring foods I'm worried I'll eat too much of. And I'm having to relearn my life ---- emotionally, I feel I'm about 4 years old. I'm not a WW lecturer, but at times OA has been just as big a part of my life, I have spoken at many meetings, and I think that I actually need to increase the amount of time I spend on OA, maybe attending a 3rd meeting a week and doing more outreach work to my friends in the programme. Because I'm stuck with me, and I gotta work it if I want to keep where I am. And if that means relearning how to be in the world, well, right now I feel like I'm up for the fight. Ahrrr ahrrrrr, grrr.... ok, put up yer dukes!
While out shoppping with a friend yesterday I ran into an acquaintance. She was a Starbucks buddy, one of those people I would see regularly when I stopped for coffee and she or I would be parked in one of the few comfy chairs left in the store these days. She has a bright and "out there" personality to match her over-the-top raspberry hair and hip glasses, and she isn't the type of person that goes unnoticed.
I hadn't seen her for a long time, and honestly, I had forgotten that she had briefly attended OA, at least partly due to me spouting off about how it has helped me. Interestingly, I had forgotten she had expressed a desire to lose weight. She's tall, and I never thought she had that much to lose, but then from my frame of reference, anyone who wants to lose less than say, 80 pounds isn't all that fat in my eyes. Like many people, she didn't come back after a meeting or two. I hadn't seen her since then and self-absorbed kid that I am, hadn't thought about her recently. I had forgotten how desperate she was to change her life, and her health, and how out of control she felt.
Anyway, out of the blue she tells me she's scheduled to have gastric bypass surgery, roux en y, (because our government health plan will cover it, I believe, rather than the less drastic lap-band procedure) in New York later this month. I was shocked. I don't consider her the usual candidate for this operation, primarily because she doesn't appear to be morbidly obese. I know, it's none of my business, but it makes me sad that this dynamic woman struggling with her weight and depression decided this was her only alternative.
Was there more I could have done to help? Damn it, I don't know. Perhaps I have to be more aggressive in reaching out to newcomers. I do tend to retreat into my own shell o' shame. On the other hand, I have had episodes where I've tried to save people from themselves (I believe they call it co-dependency...) and it's gone badly. I do know that there but for the grace of God go I, and who knows? I could be in the same position some day if I gained back enough weight to make me that desperate. I know that the longer I stay thin the more the odds are in my favour, but face it, I know I've been battling long odds in this war.
I hope the suregeons know what they are doing and she gets good post operative care and counselling. I hope she doesn't have bad side effects now or in the long term. Above all, I hope she's happier. The woman I saw yesterday seemed sad and quite desperate, but very determined, but then she's a determined personality. I hope it serves her in good health to come.
Just ordered her from Totally Scooters in Toronto! Yes, she looks suspiciously like a Vespa but half the price (come on, we're talking scooters here, not Ducatis!), and I really dig that color, which is actually rather close to my hair color, I think. Somebody asked me if I had a name for her, but I don't yet. Naranja?
Of course, I'm not vain or anything... but I was madly scanning the web for accessories, wanting to be the perfect scooter girl. But then it hit me. I was sittting in a 12 step meeting having just whipped there on my bike, and I realized that what I was wearing on my bike would be just fine on a scooter. It's not as if I'm cruising the highway on a big beefy cruiser, I will be just scooting around town! I already own three old leather jackets and some sturdy boots, and I even have my old motorcycle gauntlets kicking around from when I owned my Kawasaki 440 ----gulp--- 25 years ago. Oh my lord, it actually has been a quarter century since "diverted" a year's tuition into buying a bike, completely without telling my parents (I always was a sneaky rebel). I kept the helmet but I need a new one, definitely, but the gauntlets have come in handy when it was time to prune those extra thorny old fashioned roses.
A friend of mine finished a reading on handling stress the other day with the saying "Some days you're the pigeon, other days you're the statue..."
I still cannot believe the way my brain works. I started today with the best of intentions for dinner this evening. I would make some tasty and fairly quick curries (chickpea with spinach and butter chicken, with most of the seasonings coming from jars of Pataks...) for an impromptu potluck with the family of best friend/next door neighbour and the family of her partner's best friend. Got that? Sort of a chosen family dinner. But it quickly got complicated: suddenly, they were hauling cute as a button hors doeuvres out of freezers and putting them into ovens: escargots, brioche, fancy cheeses, shrimp with garlic butter, salmon pate... it was like being mugged by Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa, Friend of Martha, etc.... Mrs. Stewart, I blame you for this!
So a simple supper got way bigger than I wanted. Food, food, more rich food. Stir in a soupcon of my ever present social anxiety because I don't know the other family all that well, and my hunger rises up to roar "moooooooorrrrrre!" The one thing we didn't make was dessert. Well, the grownups other than me were drinking wine. And we made coffee. But I realized that my insides really were expecting, nay, demanding a rich fancy dessert to go with the rich fancy dinner. Never mind that I probably ate enough extra calories just in butter between starters and main course for an extra meal! That gaping hole in my psyche was demanding more.
I ate a couple of marshmallows that the kids were eating, and had some of my usual dark chocolate and three silky Iranian dates with tea after we went home. Which was fine. Again, the episode was another reminder that my stomach does not work like that of others. So what else is new, huh? Once again, I feel like the statue, but I'm not quite as surprised finding myself in that position as I used to be. It's my reality, and while that craving is pretty darn irritating, after a while it lessens, kind of like a mosquito bite. Like a bite, I know that if I scratch it, it will only become more inflamed. I acknowledge I'm having an adverse food reaction and try to live well anyway.
BF's father, a recovering alcoholic, told her that for him, the first drink is always the easiest one to turn down. When I have those keep-eating cravings, I have to remember that stopping will not be easier after the next bite, but now, before the next bite happens.
Ok, so I'm going for a run. It's a beautiful Sunday morning, Fuzz is out of town, and I phone my running buddy to try and bludgeon her into running with me. She can't. Or she won't. What I suspect, no, what my stubborn brain believes in every inch of it's little codependent soul, is that she is too busy doing for others to do for herself. Running with me today might mean she wouldn't be so damn exhausted when we meet again on Tuesday for our engraved in stone running date. I am totally convinced she is self sabotaging. And I resent her for it.
Well, ya know, what my brain is doing to me is just as bad if not worse than what I imagine she is doing to herself. Here I am over in her yard, perceiving that she has more and uglier crabgrass than in my yard. And what do I really know about her, anyway? She may indeed have better things to do than heavy breathing with me. I get so pissed off and exhausted by the rage generated by my mental gymnastics, no wonder that most evenings it seems that the only answer to all this misery is collapsing on the couch under an afghan armed with a bag of Miss Vickies and back to back episodes of House, another real sane example for me!
Truth be told, I wish I had the company to run. But if I really really wanted her company, I could wait until this evening. But I want to run now when it's cool and fresh and then have the slightly achy but oh-so-superior feeling for the rest of the day when it's done and can happily collapse at a local Starbuck's patio with my 2nd iced americano of the season. But I ain't going nowhere unless I get myself out of my friends back yard and just mind my own business. I ain't the boss of her, and when I really truly learn that, maybe I'll feel better.
What a beautiful day! Sun! Finally, it's stopped snowing and the dregs of that late few inches we had Monday have disappeared. I walked downtown with a light jacket for my final post-op check with the plastic surgeon who did my panniuclectomy. This guy does not have the greatest bedside manner, perhaps he has a touch of asperger spectrum disorder because you get the feeling he's talking to himself and you just happen to be in the room too.... It's a bit like having Eeyore for a doctor. He looks at my incision scar and said, ehhh, not bad, a little puckery here and there, a little uneven here...and I realized he wasn't critiquing me, but his handiwork! Then he told me that he could fix the unevenness in the scar in office with a local, but my tummy wouldn't be completely flat unless--- and then he grabs the skin on either side of my abdomen and pulls it back!--- we did a bigger operation with incisions that basically go almost all the way around my trunk!
No thanks. I'm quite happy with what's happened to my tummy, it's flatter than on most women my age, and the scar will fade, even on my white white rehead's skin. And the only one who sees the scar line is Fuzz or maybe the other chicks in the locker room at the Y. Geez Louise, I'm going on 46 this year and I'm very happy that I'm not 300 pounds any more. I'm not going for a bikini tummy, I feel rich having a whole rack of size 8 0ne pieces or tankinis to choose from. I'm just happy to have the flap gone along with the constant rash. Another benefit was a numb area of skin that never recovered from my hysterectomy was removed, and sensation in the new "landscape"seems to be pretty good. And I look pretty damn good in a pair of jeans!
That being said, I'm feeling strangely down. Is it the after effects of dealing with Dr. Eeyore? A feeling that life should feel more perfect than it is? Tax season? Studio anxiety? Just a bad case of life? What do I do? Maybe go to the studio any way. I've got over 3 hours before I meet my running group, I guess I could give it a go. I'm getting sick of the painting (a copy, just to get my chops up again) I'm working on so I should keep going on that, finish it up and get on with work that actually means something to me.
Sometimes ya just gotta keep going, even if it feels sucky. Oh yeah, I have to call my shrink...
Bless Oprah. A few days after I was complaining that the Appetite Awareness Workbook author didn't seem to understand my binge eating, I turned on Miz O (during lunch, of course) and she was having one of her semi-regular programs about addiction. After another one of the heartbreaking stories of one of her guests whose drug habit won out over their family, Oprah commented that the guest was obviously not stupid, to which the guest replied that intelligence didn't have any relevance to her cravings for the drugs--- they were beyond intelligence, beyond logic.
And then I had another one of those lightbulb moments when I thought, yup, that's how it is with me and food: my three university degrees and all the learning about nutrition, exercise and mental health got me close to nowhere. My cravings are not assuaged by my knowing that they aren't related to actual physical hunger. Fat people are not stupid! Knowing that the gnawing desire for cookies in the evening soon after a good meal is emotional in origin knocks the craving down by about, oh, .5%.... I learned I was an emotional eater around 1975 when I first joined Weight Watchers. It didn't really help with the diet and weight rollercoaster I rode for the next 30 years.
It wasn't until I started using the addiction model to describe my pattern of eating that I actually got anywhere with changing it. In the beginning I had trouble describing myself as a compulsive overeater. Yeah, I'm an overeater, but compulsive? Sounds too much like a form of mental illness. But then I realized that my behaviour did seem compulsive: my reaction to almost any life event or feeling was to eat. Celebration? Eat. Mourn? Eat. Bored? Eat. Feeling creative but going into the studio and painting too scary? I could create an elaborate chocolate dessert, earn praise of family and friends, and then eat 4 helpings of it in one evening. Repeat ad infinitum all the way above 300 pounds...
Paradoxically, it wasn't until I admitted that my eating issues seemed to be best described by using the model of an uncontrollable disease, was I able to get some help for them.
I bought a new book the other day. Sometimes I think I need a twelve step programme for those addicted to self-help books, and I'm having particularly severe buyer's remorse about this one. It's called the Appetite Awareness Workbook and I'm steamed, because after 4 chapters of this I'm gettting that creepy feeling that the author doesn't know what, or rather, who she is writing about, despite the claim touted on the cover that it has been clinically proven... on what? Rats eating junk food? Nah. Actually, the author does have some experience at an eating disorders facility in Colorado. However, for a book aimed at people with binge eating disorder (which I think I am), it is striking a rather hollow note with me. Hollow. That's how my stomach always feels...
The homework in this early stage of the book is to write down after every meal and snack how hungry you were and if you stopped when you were full. Well, it's been two days and, naturally for someone with an eating disorder, I have absolutely no clue when I'm "really" hungry. Other than, well, duh, I'm always hungry! The only time I know for sure when I am authentically hungry is when I'm really past a mealtime and I'm so ravenous I get nervous and cranky. I tried to "feel" my hunger before I started my oatmeal this morning. Nothing. No rumbling, no discomfort. I even, as suggested, and feeling like a dork, placed my hand on my tummy (you remember, the part that's still numb from surgery... making it feel like even more of a futile gesture) and thought... does this abdomen feel empty? No response. Not even a teensy growl. But I polished off my usual hearty portion.
The other question is, did I stop eating when I was moderately full. This one is also a real headshaker. The only way I know for sure I'm full, is of course when I'm really full, or stuffed. And that doesn't kick in easily. Maybe after a large bag of chips and a pint of ice cream, and a hamburger with gravy on the fries, but oh boy, there's chocolate...
For crissake, IF I COULD FEEL WHEN I WAS FULL, WOULD I BE BUYING this STUPID BOOK?!? So, I'm disconnected from my stomach feelings. I'm just not feeling too confident these people understand the nature of my beast. I'm feeling like some new species of animal just discovered by science, being observed in a lab by people with clipboards quizzing me in gibberish. I think this is a classic case of failure to communicate. I'll bet these "experts" even have cookies in their cupboard at home that go stale before they polish off the box! Mars and Venus, baby, Mars and Venus.
On the other hand, I went to my usual OA meeting on Saturday morning. Now they are talking my language. They know my disease, better than they want to, because their demon is my demon.
It's funny that as recently as a year ago I thought I was fine with my stomach. Let me clarify: that part of my stomach that, due to gaining and losing weight many times over 40 plus years, had lost most elasticity and hung like an apron over my pubic area. Doctors call it a pannus, but people with it commonly refer to it as their apron. I thought I would just live with it, but when I found out that I had to have a hernia repaired in that area, I also did some research with a plastic surgeon and discovered that because of the nearly constant rash and skin irritation I had under the pannus, our provincial health insurance would cover the surgery. If I wanted it.
Did I want it? Well, surprisingly, the answer wasn't initially "Hell, yes!" I really had resigned myself to living with it. I looked at my apron as one of my battle scars, along with the stretch marks, and flappy or saggy bits on other areas of my body that showed the war I had been through. I was not a twenty something twig, I was a middle aged woman who had lived and fought and kept going. But the rash was not going away and I would arguably not likely be in any better shape to recover from a surgery than now. And of course there was that part of me that wondered what it would be like to have a flat tummy. Why not enjoy it now? In fact, while I was waiting for word back about whether the province would cover the surgery, I decided that I would be willing to find the money to pay for it myself if they didn't. Better now than years from now when I could be old and weaker with and the rash compromising my health more.
Does it sound like I'm equivocating here, just justifying a vanity choice? Perhaps, but really there is no black and white answer to this. Vanity entered into it, but also my health was a concern. And, as the surgeon said, having the two procedures done at once is less risky than having than having another surgery later and another 6 weeks of recovery time. Drat, I hate grey! So much of life falls in that grey area. One of my big problems in life, dealing with those dratted greys.
So, it's been about 8 weeks since I had the surgery. Healing pretty well, but the scar is very long, like someone drew a rather uneven happy face from one hip bone to the other. It will fade. I got a brand new navel in the process, a teeny little cute one because the other one had sagged so low the surgeon removed it with the skin and gave me a new one, except I can't feel it. I'm still pretty numb all across my abdomen in that area, but sensation is coming back slowly. My gp, who herself has had a cesarian and hysterecomy cautioned me that some sensation could take a year to come back, and some may never. To which I responded, oh well, guess I can't cook in the nude any more! All together now: "EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUU!!!"
Sometimes the area tingles, like when your foot is falling asleep. And the wierdest feeling, which I've only started experiencing this last week with the return of some sensation, is the one of "feeling" the missing pannus. It might be a little like phantom limb sydrome. Not painful, but occasionally it feels as if I still have the pannus. I'll roll over and bed and almost feel the skin that isn't there any more shifting.
As Count Floyd used to say "Spooky stuff, eh kids?" Wierd. But neat too.
Yup. I feel like crap. I've got this non-food related issue I'm not dealing with and I'm feeling like a total schmuck. Hopefully, I'll soon get so sick and tired of feeling, well, sick and tired over this that I'll do something about it. Right now, I'm living in this twilight limbo of hating myself. I say it's not food related, but really, when you're a compulsive overeater, emotional eater, whatever, it always relates back to food. I had some cravings last night for comfort food: saltines with peanut butter... you know, the stuff your mother would give you (or you wish she had) when you were feeling low.
Of course, in my family, at some point it felt as if my mother went from being my comforter to my jailer. I know she was only doing what she felt best, but I did feel as if she started monitoring my food. I remember when I was a kid, around 10 or 12, and they had bought some kind of canned chocolate milkshakes. It was Friday night, and I was watching TV with my parents, and I thought the milkshake tasted like heaven. My mother said I could have only one can that night. Well, I snuck out to the kitchen at some point, sat in the dark hallway outside the livingroom and watched tv through the door while drinking the second milkshake. If my mother knew what I was doing, she never gave any indication. I can't remember if I tried to hide the "evidence", the can, that time. That was for later years when I was in high school, at a "healthy" weight, dieting and bingeing in secret or with my friends who didn't care what I was eating. In most other respects, I was a pretty squeaky clean kid. Until I got a boyfriend and discovered the joy of making out at the ripe old age of 18, food was my big rebellion tool. Mind you, cigarettes and booze didn't have a big appeal because my father always sounded as if he was going to hack up a lung every morning, and my best friend and I both had to cope with alcoholic dads. Food was our comfort, our outlet, plus it was socially sanctioned. Except around my Mom.
So, last night, how did I deal with this? Well, I ate the snacks I usually eat in the evening, a fruit, some yogurt, decaf coffee and an ounce of 76% chocolate... ok, and a little extra: I split the 1/3 of an ounce left of the bar with Fuzz... and then I went to bed early , at 11 pm. Which is early for me. Safe in bed. Away from the fridge.
I was meeting with an OA sponsee yesterday, but I don't think we don't have the "classic" sponsor/sponsee relationship... whatever that is. Everybody does it differently, just like everybody works all aspects of their 12 step programme differently. In fact, one of the only universals in 12 step programmes that I've found is the belief that there is one right way to work the programme and we likely aren't the ones doing it "the right way"!
My sponsee has stuck with me through my recent relapses, just as I stayed with mine as she had hers. When you find someone whom you have so much in common with, you tend to stay with them even if they don't have "perfect" abstinence from compulsive overeating. I meet with my sponsee once a week and we just chat about stuff. Not all OA issues, but our lives. Actually, most life issues are OA issues. For those of us who call ourselves compulsive eaters (overeaters, undereaters, and those who eat too much and then purge or starve) we see that our eating is affected by our moods and coping mechanisms with those moods.
The depths we go to with this disease can be truly humiliating. A lot of sneakiness happens. When I was a child, I used to steal change from my mother's purse to buy candy. When house sitting for a family member, I plowed through tons of bread and cheese. A member who is a retired supermarket clerk talks about how she used to steal food and money from her till to buy food. Amazingly, she has actually had the courage to approach former employers to apologize and reimburse them for what she stole.
But with the exception of shoplifting, overeaters rarely are charged with serious crimes directly related to stealing for their food "habit", unlike alcoholics or drug addicts. Yesterday, my sponsee and I were practically rolling on the floor with the mental image the two of us wearing masks to hold up our favorite bakery. She'd go for the scones, I'd take the butter tarts. Thank god for large mercies.
My friend M offered to drag me to her Monday morning yoga class. I don't like yoga much, but I figured it was a better way to start the week than huddled in bed hating myself, so it was ok. Some good stretching, some opportunity to meditate a bit, and the woman instructing gave me this great lower leg massage while my legs were propped up in the air. Since we're all friends, we sat around and chatted over coffee afterwards. I don't think yoga will replace other forms of exercise, but there are much worse ways for me to spend time, like: worrying, watching useless tv, or eating. So, this week is turning out to be much nicer than last.
Fuzz is off school, on March break. He's really had his head buried in work (teaching and taking courses) since Christmas, so he needs some down time. We have no travel plans, but it's nice to have him around. We decided we would try to get out for a good long walk every day, but it's hard for me to fit that in even though I'm still off sick. I'm not even back to work yet, but there's always stuff to do. Today I meet with my OA sponsee, and then I'm going to babysit while Fuzz and my BF bottle a batch of wine they made.
Sometime this week I'm going to get back into the studio. It's been 4 1/2 weeks since my surgery --- a femoral hernia repair and a panniculectomy --- and the recovery has been fairly uneventful, but my mood has stunk. But it's generally been a difficult 6 months emotionally. Regular writing helps, but I think my old coping mechanism of stuffing the feelings down came back. One of the other artists in my studio building seems to have had some sort of breakdown. Part of me really feels sorry for him, but another part of me is hopping up and down and going "YES! Another artist is having problems!"
Since the black mood retreated last week I've been to 3 meetings of 3 different 12 step fellowships, OA and two others. Compulsive overeating is still the bugaboo that feels the most dangerous to me, but I have issues with alcohol and money, so I also go to the odd AA and Debtors Anonymous meeting, and since they are all from the same AA routes, they have the same message and the same techniques to try and live a healthier, saner life. Basically, they give me opportunities to reflect, share, and write about the problems bedevilling me. Trying to follow a 12 step way of life is about putting habits into place that make my life easier, not harder. But the change takes work and regular recommitment because I'm trying to change the self-sabotaging habits of a lifetime, some of which started before I even learned how to talk.
This week has been awful. And it's all been in my stewy brain. Nothing bad happened except I fell into the black pit on Monday and gave myself over completely to the binge rottweiller. I've been struggling with a big fear of dealing with some investments left to me by my mother years ago and because of some changes in them I have to deal with them this tax time.
Monday morning I felt incapable of dealing with these and I'm so horribly furious with myself for not dealing with this and feeling as if I mismanaged my money and all is horrible. I know it seems drastic. That's my drama diva brain. I abandoned all hope and retreated to bed except for regular trips to the refrigerator. There are 8 messages on my answering machine from friends that I couldn't bear to talk to. The fact I am writing right now means I have clawed myself back to the lip of the pit, and I'm sitting on the edge, swinging my legs over the abyss, contemplating the pit versus getting back into the world of the living again. I don't truly know if I clawed my way out or what happened last night when I popped out of the top.
I just know that last night in the wee hours (ok, it was after 4 am) I was lying in bed hating myself and that awful stuffed feeling in my stomach and suddenly I had this rush of gratitude. It seemed very profound then, but then, don't 4 am thoughts always feel profound? Profound Thought went something like this: "Here I am, in a cute little house that needs a little work, with a loving wonderful man, and I have good friends and some interesting things to do and two great cats and enough money. The only thing really wrong in my life is how much I hate myself. The rest of the stuff is minor. "
Click. Life seems worth living suddenly. Two things I am considering: Today I need to go to a meeting. Any 12 step meeting will do. Number two, I think I may benefit from some a residential treatment programme. I need to give this default self hatred switch a good scrub, and maybe look into turning it into a dimmer switch... It's so fucking drastic.
I believe that there are possibly many fat and happy people out there. I just know I was never one of them. My experiences with food have led me to believe that for every 50 pounds of excess weight most people carry, they have that much emotional pain that they are carrying around inside them. Or, on them, as it were. Some day we may have such sophisticated imaging equipment that we will be able to see the pain inside that inch of fat, and say, "oh, look, there on the left lateral abdomen, there is that incident from 1983 when your father slapped you and called you a lazy slut!"
Of course it's more complicated than that, because even when you dig down and see the suspected source of the pain, it doesn't mean you will immediately feel better. I believe then you have to try to counteract all the little distortions in thinking that followed that. Self knowledge then has to be followed by a massive change in mental habits of thinking, and behaviour. It's not enough for me to distract myself with a crossword puzzle when I feel hungry. I need to challenge the black dog of the soul and affirm that all is not lost, and I do not need comfort and oblivion in food.
I could become the fairy queen of the beautiful cupcake, but all the admiration of my fans will not help my pain. It's too hard wired. I cannot earn my own self love.
This may seem oblique to many, but if you've suffered from the black rottweiler of the binge, you'll probably understand.
Things happen. I sunk into a funk. The toxic thoughts got the best of me. I stopped going to OA meetings because even they seemed toxic to me. I got too deeply enmeshed with some people without even trying, but by being unable to say "no". Tried a new antidepressant which initially REALLY knocked the stuffing out of me. The depression itself didn't get worse, but I slept a LOT. And I had the cold that would never end, so I wasn't able to exercise much, which was the loss of a major mood elevator. But after a month I finally started to feel better.
The most amazing thing then happened: In early January I got back into the studio. Recovery sometimes is so subtle, you don't even notice it's happening, and in this case it was nothing dramatic. A couple of days after New Years', I got Fuzz to help me put up some blinds in the studio and I unpacked a few boxes that had been sitting in the basement. Then it was just a few hours a day, working on a Van Dyck copy I had started years ago when I was studying in New York. Before I knew it, I had spent more time in the studio in January than I had during the whole fall!
Unfortunately, some old habits resurfaced: The toxic thinking, the isolation, and last to come, I had a food issue. Aka, a binge. It happened in the first week of the New Year, and my eating had gotten kind of sloppy over Christmas, you know, the usual, a little bit of this and that, a bite of that and the other thing, more dessert more often, and it got harder and harder to stop with a healthy portion. Then there was one night when I just didn't want to stop eating. So, I didn't. I ate until my stomach felt like I had swallowed a bowling ball.
Luckily, it only lasted one day, and I was back to sane eating again, but I have some emotional work to do.
Maybe I'm too quick to dismiss this whole Seasonal Affective Disorder thing. The weekend was sunny and I felt better. I've also cranked the light box up to x-tra high, and leave it on for an hour or so. I don't feel so bad. I think I'm at about 65%. And then there was a news item on the national news about how doctors are seeing a big increase in people with low moods this fall, when the east coast has had one of the most overcast fall seasons in almost 60 years.
I'm tired of the guilt, of the shame of feeling like I'm doing something wrong. To HELL with it. Now I have to try and live that out, and stop slinking around with my tail shoved under my butt. I wish humans did still have tails. But only involuntary ones that wagged or sagged in true response to one's feelings. I keep up a good front when I'm not so low I have to take to my bed. Unfortunately, it's mostly a front.
Thank god the food is ok. I've not been going to any meetings, I've just felt too low, too vulnerable, yet I fear that this is going to catch up with me. But my support group doesn't feel like a support group any more. My disease is using it against me. I can't go to them for support, I feel like as an "old-timer" I think I have to be the support, and I don't feel up to it. I've got to change something here.
I've been depressed for the last couple of months. The weather here has been horrible and grey. Oh for a nice white snowfall! I gave in to the opinions of my therapist and GP and finally bought one of those light boxes, and I've been taking my vitamin D faithfully, along with an antidepressant, but it doesn't seem to be taking. It's not just the weather, this has been a problem off and on for me since early adulthood. I believe that my long and torturous history with the food is also linked to this mental turmoil. Researchers have long theorized that substance abuse may be an attempt to self medicate mental illness.
Mental illness. The term just sends a chill up my spine. It sounds so final, so damning. But actually, if I can look at mental illness as something chronic but treatable, like, say, diabetes, it can remove that whole layer of shame and guilt.
I've been looking at my manifestations of depression. Often it consists of staying in bed for long periods because I feel so overwhelmed by the everyday world. But I am starting to wonder if it isn't so much a depressive mood as a reaction to extreme anxiety. When I wake up in the morning, I have a thousand thoughts coursing through my brain, and if there are too many, I just hit a threshold where I feel I have to shut down. It's almost as if a fuse blows. My tortured brain decides it's hopeless, I give up, and retreat from the world.
My father suffered from terrible anxiety. It was obvious in his case: He trembled, he would talk in his sleep, if you happened to touch him (ours was not a physically demonstrative family) he would practically jump out of his skin. And, oh yes, he was also an alcoholic.
Of course, I grew up vowing never to be like him. But I now see that what he did with booze, I did with food. And although I try to come across as a relaxed, fun, funky chick, I am really quite tense inside. Social situations are tough. I come home from choir rehearsals fantasizing about mowing my way through a big bag of kettle cooked chips. But I hide it well. Joking and laughing and trying to be Ms. Social butterfly. And I'm an artist.
But it's a ruse. I'm full of anxiety, I need long periods away from people, and I haven't been in the studio for ages. I worry, I worry, I worry. The social anxiety is the worst. I worry about what people think of me, and I get into these toxic situations where I throw my own mind out the window and get overwhelmingly occupied with what the other person wants or needs. Most of this happens automatically, without me being conscious of it. Habit? Probably at least partly. Growing up in a fucked-up family, a kid gets pretty good at sussing out what they need to do to appease the family members who are acting out. Unfortunately, I grew up with a warped idea of how relationships work.
So, on with the therapy, but I think it's time to talk to the doc again, maybe get a referral to a psychiatrist. I want to investigate some different medication options.
For years, food has been my life. Love food, love cooking, love expressing my love for others through food. I've even worked as a sous-chef and volunteered in a soup kitchen. Then I realized that if I didn't change things I was going to die sooner rather than later, and likely not in a pleasant manner, developing hypertension and diabetes at age 36.
Fast forward nine years. Right now the food feels manageable. I've got so many good support systems in place, it is working: a plan of eating that is sane, nutritious and not punitive. A support group of people who I meet regularly at OA meetings and socially. A regular routine of exercise. A small group I run with twice weekly. A weekly therapy session. Support of family and friends. So the food is good. For the first time in my life it feels fairly sane.
But I'm at a new stage in my battle with the food. I've been a stable weight right now for a little over two years, and that initial euphoria of losing all that weight has faded. I've struggled with depression since I was in my late teens. And right now, it's the rest of my life that feels unmanageable. Last week I was very depressed, and it felt like it was impossible for me to get my life together, to do for that part of my life what has happened with my food.
This week I have a little more perspective: The other parts of my life are not as out of whack as my eating was. So I may be struggling with handling money, interpersonal relationships, and my career, but face it, who doesn't??? I've got to take it slowly, not keep heaping coals upon my head. It's not as if the rest of it fell apart when I got the food under control, it was always this way.
So, this is what life is when the food sits in its proper place.
Is anyone like me and a big fan of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine? I just love those pidgin english speaking crocodiles who just can't help it, their nature is to eat zebras, and their fraternity (Zeeba Zeeba Eeta) is located in a nice suburban neighbourhood in a bungalow right next to a zebra. Maybe they need a 12 step programme... "Hi, me name Larry and me lika eating deelishus zeebas"... Needless to say I feel a certain affinity for them...
Anyway, on the roasted vegetable front, I was next store at BF's house last night and we were doing one of those very informal potluck things where we go, ok, I've got a bit of this and that in the fridge and if you have some of this, so we ended up with 2 different frozen pizzas, some soy-mushroom burgers, and carmelized cauliflower and turnip fries.
Yes. Turnip Fries (ok, rutabega actually, but in my end of Canada we rarely see white turnip and so the yellow fleshed purple skinned rutabega is called turnip here). I know, it sounds gross, but they were really tasty. BF hates turnip and A while back, when I discovered carmelized cauliflower via Orangette's blog (see my links list I'm too lazy to do it) I realized that if you sliced almost any vegetable fairly thinly, tossed it with some coarse or sea salt and olive oil and roasted it in a hot oven (400 to 450 F) until it had some brown and crispy bits it would taste great. Watch it closely after 10 minutes if it's the first time you've tried this with a particular veg, and some vegetables, like sweet potatoes have a lot of sugar, and thus quicker browning.
So...BF had this turnip literally rolling around her kitchen after a very, very, long visit from her mother. And the damn thing was starting to sprout and it was bugging her. She peeled it, and cut it up into french fry size, sprayed it very generously with her nonstick spray (in my books it's the same as tossing with a little oil if you spray for more than 10 seconds!) and sprinkled on some of that Herbemare seasoned sea salt. Then baked it on cookie sheet until it was tender and had lots of browned parts like a dark fry. Amazing. In fact, I'm going to try it tonight when I roast a duck I bought on Saturday, as the duck takes a high heat too. Yum.
Ok, in contrast to the last very serious post, here's something light and fun.
Earlier this week I realized I needed to do something with all the root vegetables and squash heaped in a corner of my kitchen and in my fridge crisper. Sometimes I get overambitious in the organic vegetable aisle, probably because this time of year a lot of the winter vegetables look really good. And I am sick of salads, too cold for salad, I want good, sturdy cooked vegetables. But then you get them home and get busy with something else and you suddenly realize that many of these lovely vegetables are starting to look a little funky and if you don't move soon, all that will benefit from your good intentions will be the compost pile.
So three nights ago, I rummaged around and gathered up these errant veg: a butternut squash that was developing a soft spot, a rutabega, half a celeriac (celery root, tastes like celery minus the strings), a purple kohlrabi (taste a lot like broccoli stems), some really big old carrots, and an onion. I took the whole lot and peeled (and peeled and peeled) and chopped them into half inch cubes or sticks. I heated the oven to 400 degrees F, oiled two large cookie sheets with about a Tb of olive oil each and a tsp of kosher salt sprinkled over each and rolled the vegetables around in the oil and salt and then stuck them in the oven. Now, these vegetables don't all cook the same. The sweet squash became pretty mashingly soft very quickly, but it took a good part of 40 minutes for the rutabega and kohlrabi to be tender crisp. I stirred and flipped the veg around with a big spatula a couple of times and kept my eye on it to make sure the browning didn't go overboard. I purposely wanted a few browned bits that added some interesting carmelization to the taste. Some of it's very sweet, some not so sweet. When cool, I dumped the leftovers into a big plastic container to store in the fridge. We've been living off them for the last few days --- I had a couple of poached eggs on toast for lunch today with a side dish of those roasted vegetables on the side, and they tasted so good just cold straight from the fridge I had to force myself to heat a bowlful up in the microwave. Last night was a salmon and broccoli stir fry served over noodles and some of those roasted vegetables added in near the end for interest.
If we don't eat them all up in the next day or two, I think they will make a great pureed soup after some more cooking in chicken stock, maybe with some curry paste added or grated cheese on top.
I love it when I can do stuff with food that's good for you. Having tasty, ready to eat veg in the fridge is like having giftcard burning a hole in my wallet!
I was lying in bed early this morning feeling ambushed and overwhelmed by all the "had to do"'s for today, feeling utterly ashamed of how paralysed I felt. So I went back to sleep because I didn't feel able to cope. Blessed unconsciousness.
But then I remembered that I was expecting the UPS guy. So I got up, and I've been sitting around the house for the past 4 hours waiting for him. Mind you, if the UPS guy wasn't coming (I didn't actually expect the order to come this soon) I might just be sitting around anyway, but feeling worse about it. I'm really struggling with a depressed mood the last few weeks. This way, at least I'm doing something useful when I sit around. Actually, I'm doing some other stuff too. I'm writing something for a talk I'm supposed to be giving tomorrow. I've had a healthy breakfast and lunch. Somedays the blessings seem small, but I have to try to count them.
Having to stick around the house lowered the bar for me today. I'm not feeling totally paralysed and useless.
Do one thing at a time. Don't overplan. I keep telling myself, but somehow it just gets added to the coals that I heap upon my head. Life in my head is tough right now; all those coals aren't that easy to bear. Sometimes I'm ok, sometimes I'm not. But I'm still here.
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.
... 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!
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...
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.
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.
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:
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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.
I'm a fill-in speaker at an Overeaters Anonymous workshop in a nearby city tomorrow, I only have to speak for 20 minutes which really isn't all that long, but you know, having spoken a couple of times at local OA events I'm wondering what to say that most of them haven't already heard already. I'm trying hard to keep my ego out of this. Of course, I want to be "Captain OA" and save everyone from themselves, but you know, that isn't possible, because I don't know how to save them, jeez louise I don't even know how to save me most days. Sooo.... ok, got an outline of what they want me to touch on. Touch on??? Holy crap, look at these lightweight issues:
1. Outline the depth of my desperation before I came to OA. Ooooh, fun fun fun that one! How mizerable wuz I???
2. What were the paths I took toward abstinence? That's going to take some work, digging up those memories, and make them coherent...
3. Weight loss nitty gritty. The numbers. Easy one. Pictures to back it up... hmm... I should scan a couple of photos.
4. Clearly define food plan and how it fits with my abstinence... that's a little harder, because my food plan is by definition a bit vague. Or not vague, gentle. I'm not knocking myself over the head because I had one cookie, or a handful of chips. And how does it fit with my abstinence? I guess it's a gentle fit.
Well, I guess I have some writing to do. Offline. I'm sure I'll post bits of it here but that's later.
It's been an up and down week, but overall not bad. I've been a depressed slug in some ways, but in other ways I've been pretty alive. I've been interacting with people, always a challenge when I feel lousy, and sometimes it's like dying a thousand deaths to pick up the damn phone, but I made it through. Some days it has to be enough to be enough.
Ok, I’ve got like 10 minutes to write.
First a prayer from page 68 (I think) of the AA Big Book. It helps ground me: God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self so that I may do thy will. Take away my difficulties so that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. And the bit I add: God, show me what it is what you had in mind when you made me.
My life was out of whack. It still gets off kilter, witness the last month or so. About 3 ½ years ago I was pulled kicking and screaming (or at least muttering and swearing) into spirituality. It was the spirituality borne of desperation. I wasn’t quite a fox-hole Christian, but I was close. Nobody was shooting at me, I was killing myself. My disease made me desperate. I was cornered. I had nowhere else to go short of bariatric surgery, and I knew that was not the answer for me. The only concept of God I could hold on to was whatever force kept the sun coming up each morning despite our best efforts to stop it. It was actually a good way to begin rebuilding my life. I didn’t have to adopt someone else’s cliched or rigid image of a higher power, although that is the one that does come up in my brain when my imagination is starved or lacking from spiritual malnuourishment. (The food metaphors just keep coming, don’t they?)
I reverted to old habits, not nurturing myself. Running from the fear instead of facing it head on. Trying to escape, but it didn’t get better. I got more and more miserable. If I hadn’t been buttonholed by someone from OA needing my assistance with a sponsee I might still be there. Still, I fought it. I made soup, I read mystery novels, I watched endless hours of tv. I stayed up until all hours of the night, avoiding life. I had an incredible couple of days of anxiety. But I finally faced the fear. I met with the sponsee, I met with my sponsor to ask for her guidance.
Today has been an incredible day. I feel so good. I feel like I have some power again. I didn’t do anything remarkable, went downtown on my bike to meet BF for lunch, made fresh pasta, planned Fuzz’s birthday cake, and did some emergency babysitting for BF. My organic food order arrived with some fantastic tart apples, basil, purple kohlrabi (never tried that before) and mammoth yellow tomatoes. Tonight is running group and dropping in on a birthday party for BF’s kid. Great day. I am not alone any more. I now can appreciate friends other than chocolate. Or kohlrabi.
Just in the last 2 days I really embraced the role of a sponsor in OA. A big new thing that I've been dancing around for over a year (does that still qualify it as new?) but have finally gotten, excuse the pun, my teeth into. Gotten down to the meat and potatoes (oh yum I love meat and potatoes, particularly pot roast, hem hem...) of the matter. Really working with a sponsee.
Well, I have another one, or rather I had another one. I talked with her, e-mailed her a couple of times, and now she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I should call her. Sigh, I get great phone anxiety and I hate to call someone who I think might not really love talking to me, but she should have been back from her Europe trip long ago. That happens with sponsors/ees: people go missing and unfortunately it's usually not a good sign.
Anyway, I got a shove from another member who has sponsees coming out her ears and she observed that I seemed to connect with this woman, and now we're working together. I was pretty angry with the ubersponsor initially, because I felt she was pushing herself into my business, and she may do that in other matters anyway, she's that kind of personality. Now however, I think she did me a favour. I saw this person struggling with her eating who needed me and seemed really ready to work on it. I saw myself in many of the things she says. I really admired her, she's very intelligent and articulate and most endearingly, has a great sense for the comedic. What wasn't to like? I'll tell you --- I was as intimidated as Hell, and didn't feel I had anything to offer her. Oh woe is me, think I'll go eat some worms... It's amazing what utter bullshit I can convince myself of when I'm sunk in my sour cesspool of self loathing.
So I felt a little trapped. I wanted to help, but as Miz Oprah says, I felt "scured". I said yes, I'll sponsor, but I'm really afraid. And then it made me do something I've been putting off for next to forever: actually phoning my own sponsor and making an appointment to talk.
As this all was happening, I was having incredible anxiety: funny dreams, sleeplessness, social anxiety, I really wanted to bolt from a meeting where I was seated between my sponsor and my sponsee. But I didn't. I gave in. I gave up to it. Once I did that, the pain passed. It's incredible how I can get so upset and obsessed with my anxieties and then they can suddenly evaporate. I ugh, prayed. I said, ok, I can only do what I can do. I let go. Phhhht. The anger and anxiety, the feeling I've had for the last 2 months of feeling distanced from OA seemed to evaporate over a couple of days. I feel better. That's the basic benefit of sponsoring, that by confronting these issues, I end up feeling better. My sponsor tells me nearly every time we talk how good it makes her feel. I actually can feel that working.
No, this isn't a tabloid story or saga on the Dr. Phil show. I'm admitting a guilty pleasure, right up there with mystery novels and Kraft Dinner (you 'mericans call it Mac & Cheese) with wieners: watching Dr. Phil. Right now I'm on the couch and just reveling in all that mud being thrown, enjoying with the schadenfreude of the voyeur. I think I've said it before: it's got all the titillation of Jerry Springer but with higher production values and the gloss of the upper middle class with more SUV's than life skills. Notice how none of the Phil guests ever seem to live in low end housing whereas most of the Maurys or Jerrys sound as if they are one step removed from a cardboard box.
Come on, Dr. Phil is voyeurism in the guise of therapy. Reality tv is just a less scripted form of soap opera. It's basically gossip. Why is that so pleasurable? Does it take the focus off our own problems?
Guilty pleasures like gossip, junk food, or trash novels are ok in small amounts, but I can go overboard with them way too easily. I've been reading a ton of mystery novels. I've been running from the fear, the dread that...? The best I can say is it's a fear of not being enough. I met the most recent challenges but it never feels like enough. That's the time when I feel the most like eating, giving up, flaking out in front of the squawk box and turning off my brain. And yet when I can confront that fear, after a few moments of terror, I feel so much more alive and capable. It's been a difficult month, and I feel as if I'm just coming out the other side but I'm still frightened. I rented a studio almost 3 weeks ago, and after moving most of my junk in, turned the key and left. Haven't been back since. It's all part of the package.
Hey, I don't understand this stuff, I just write it down.
I know I'm not alone in this: The day after Labour Day feels more like the new year than January. I think it's the same for anyone who has spent a lot of time in school and/or has kids. There's usually a more tangible sense of another year starting than at that bleak time in midwinter after Christmas.
This fall is one of those few when I'm not starting a new course of any sort, but I am trying to return to some old healthy habits. I drifted away from my 12 step meetings and regular gym attendance over the summer when we moved into the new house. It might have been equivocation, but I did feel truly too overwhemed with everything for two months and those things got shoved onto the back burner.
But lately I've been feeling pretty stressed out, although the stressful part of the move is mostly over. It was my overactive brain stirring up worries and obsessions to torture me with. And the decrease in my exercise routine combined with a particularly social summer means the jeans are fitting a little tight. I think I've gained 5 pounds or so. I'm not sure because I threw out the old scale. What is the difference between jeans that feel shapely on my middle aged abdomen and "hm, a little too snug"? That puppy was really old --- I'm thinking Sears circa 1980? I doubt it was too accurate any more. I'm not sure if I'll buy another one, oh, likely I will, but maybe for now I'll just let my clothes be my guide. Since I started OA I usually weigh myself only monthly, but in the past I was one of those obsessive weigh myself daily types, so I'm not going to rush. And it isn't as if a new scale is going to pleasantly surprise me right now any way.
So, 2 OA meetings in the past half week and a trip to the gym this afternoon for the first time in several weeks. It felt good. I hadn't lost much strength, lightened up some of the weights a little or did a few less reps, and it did feel good afterward.
Amazing how many times I start a post with the title "Back...". Guess that's the theme of life. It's not linear, it's actually more resembling a circle, or more aptly, a spiral. You get up every morning, do mostly the same stuff, it all seems so routine.
Except I've been out of my routine lately. New house that's actually about 80 years old. New town that I lived in twice before, the most recently about 16 years previous. Plus ça change... anyway. And then I fell into the gmail/blogger/beta trap and accessing my account for a couple of weeks was tortuous. I just stopped bothering, and I think part of it was I was feeling depressed enough that I didn't feel like trying. After all, who would want to hear what I was going to say?...
Today I feel like I've been in a total funk. Got very very little accomplished unless you count reading mystery novels (Gail Bowen gets better and better) drinking coffee, and playing Luxor. Oh yeah, and phoned my shrink and moaned and sniffled for 3/4 of an hour. She, as usual, encourages me strongly to attend a 12 step meeting. Oh ugh.
I know she's right. But right now I'd rather do anything but. I think the honeymoon stage with OA is certainly over for me. Right now it feels like that part of your marriage when you look at your partner and think "Fuck, aren't we in a rut. Who the hell are you??" Hey, I just passed year 21 married to Fuzz a couple of weeks ago. I've seen this pattern before. Over and over. There are ups and downs, big and little. And you stick it out.
Sigh. I'll let you know if I ever got to that meeting. I've got more chance of going running tonight. Anything to avoid confronting the problem directly. At least I'll get some exercise, get some endorphins going.
For a while I wondered if I would be picking this blog up again. But over the last few days I've been just settled enough in this new house to feel really restless again, and I thought, hm, time to write. Then I tried navigating the new beta/gmail sign in. Yowza. What a pain. Somehow I managed to sign in with a whole new account and then couldn't get here. There's now two me's and one of them doesn't seem to want to talk to the other. I had to trace a whole electronic breadcrumb trail to get this far, andI don't know what's going to happen the next time I try to sign in.
Anyway. I'm here. I'm fine. Fine. Freakin' &%#$@ fine. Fuzz says I'm exhausted. What does he know, he's exhausted! He's on another one of his endless strings of minor colds which happens when he gets overtired--- one day he's achy, the next he's sneezy, then it's his head, then his stomach... So I guess we should be taking it easy. We cancelled out a big trip we had scheduled to the other end of the province to attend Tiff's wedding. I'm crushed she wasn't crushed when I called to tell her. I guess I'm very disappointed. I won't get to see all the wonderful results of her meticulous planning. Part of me just said, oh hell, just get a plane ticket to Winnipeg and rent a car and go yourself, but I can't afford the extra debt.
Maybe I am exhausted. I know I'm pissed off. At everything. Our dream urban cottage needs a lot of reno. There's a constant fight for space. The bedroom is so squished I can't get my bedside table to open properly without hitting the bureau. When I try to dig in the front garden I hit a solid mat of tree roots and I have all these perennials I wanted to plant. I guess I can throw them in the back yard somewhere, well, I have to before fall... Fuzz has decided he desperately needs a garden shed and although he says he's exhausted, guess what he's doing right, now, building a shed. I keep bonking my head when I'm working in the basement. It smells damp despite the dehumidifier. I'm off my usual exercise routine and just barely keeping up with the running group after a few weeks off during the big move. The new matress and boxspring are so high I feel like the princess and the pea. We still have a lot of crap in the storage unit because we don't know what to do with it. And mouse poop just showed up in a brand new kitchen cupboard! Why do I even bother owning a cat? Just to keep my chairs shredded and give us litter to scoop, obviously!
On the other hand, I am enjoying the delights of an urban library system that actually has books I want to read. Life isn't so bad. I think it's time to make the cupcakes I've been planning for a dinner we're going to tomorrow night. Oop. Not enough time to shop and bake before running, but I can at least shop. When in doubt, spend more money.
I didn't expect to be off this long, but then I've never done the sold house/buy house combo. I gotta say, the lawyer and even the real estate agent have earned their money. Our lawyer, also a friend, showed up Sunday at the house with the closing papers on our old house because she wasn't able to make our appointment on Wednesday. Tonight she and her husband are coming over to help with the final panicked dump into boxes. Ok, they're also friends, it's not part of the contract, but it's been wonderful to have the help of so many friends, especially since, of course, this is one of the hottest, stickiest weeks of the summer.
Ok, so, the movers come tomorrow. We've been breaking down walls, shovelling out dirty basement, fixing plumbing, painting... all that fun stuff. Man, I haven't been this dirty since working at a greenhouse! And the fun will continue in fairly high intensity for the next few days, while we find things, get the dsl and wireless hooked up, etc. Hopefully, I'll be regularly blogging before August.
Life is great! The new house comes with a small pool that I've been challenged to learn how to care for, but have had great enjoyment of with good friends and their children. Pool + children = joy. Food is good, all of this would never have seemed possible a few years ago. Thanks to the universe, including all of you.
See you soon. Keep punching. We're all in this together.
