Princess Either/Or

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Day 34.

Mmm, Succulent Rutabagas!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stands for: Believing in God Beats Our Old Knowledge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slippery

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

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

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

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

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

Visiting with half of the Two Fat Ladies

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

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

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

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

Blah Blah Blahs

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

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

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

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

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

To Give Thanks or Not?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Whiff of Sulphur

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

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

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

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

Scared

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toxic Either Or

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

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

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

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

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

Write, Dammit!

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

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

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

17 days and counting.

Taking Stock 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Checking In, Taking Stock

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

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

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

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

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

Gotta run! Life rocks!

Writing Works, So Why do I Hate it?

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

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

Places to Go, Things to Buy!

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of dates...

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

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

Wow. Is that a cool life, or what?

February 27, 2003

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

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

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

Staying on My Side Takes Work

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

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

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

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

Staying on My Side of the Street

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

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

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

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

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

Challenges, Challenges, Left, Right and Center!

Welcome to life on the Thin Planet: Every time you turn around there's another challenge. This was the life I signed up for when I decided to move here and if I'm going to stay here, I have to figure out how to cope with it, otherwise I'll be going back...home?

I have to say that Planet Fat (tiring of this metaphor yet?) still feels like home. I still feel the pull of my native Bingetopia. I think I'll always feel like an immigrant to the planet of those people who seem so effortlessly thin, but you know, it isn't effortless. I've been told (even if I don't really believe it) that even thin people have struggles. Amazing! And in one part of my brain I do know that, that would be the logical brain which is supposedly the most recent part of the human brain to evolve, but my stronger, more primitive brain, the part that is obsessed with my next bite, doesn't believe it for a second. So it's going to take some more work for that idea to really sink in.

Bingetopia seemed straightforward for me: Have a problem? Eat over it. Problem didn't get solved, but I got to eat! Thin people have these strategies that enable them to cope, more or less, with life, and they don't eat a whole box of chocolates on a semi-daily basis. Part of the coping is not feeling like every problem has to or can be solved and wrapped up neatly. Many times you just have to live and wade through the crap of everyday life.

I'm learning that lesson in my dealings with the board of a choir I sing with. There are over a hundred people in the organization, seven other people on the board with me, and an artistic director who is very talented and has an .... artistic temperament. (Note to self: how do I get one of those temperaments? Reply from self: Congratulations, you have one, just ask your husband! Oh rats...) Since I joined the board, we've done a lot of housekeeping stuff, but there are always interpersonal issues, within the board, in the choir, between the board and some choir members, between the AD and choir members, between the board and the AD, normal stuff, right?

That's the thing, it IS normal stuff! And after being on the board for two whole months, it comes and goes, and what seems maddening one week recedes after a couple more weeks, and then something else comes up... And I looked back and thought, wow, what was really bugging me in September just faded away when I was distracted. I didn't have to do anything about it, it was like water over the bridge. Then something else happens. It's like Gilda Radner said: it's always something. I don't have to fix it all. The compulsion to fix it is from my scared little primal brain, screaming "Eek eek, it's going to eat me, it's going to eat me!" Yeah, well, some day it might. But it usually doesn't. The bigger threat to me is actually what I do in the privacy of my own kitchen.

What feels like comfort food is actually a comfort weapon in the long run, a Weapon of Mass Addition! So, I have to cultivate those Thinnite coping strategies, and the helpful ones, not the self-sabotaging ones, because there are plenty of the latter out there, I just couldn't see them through my veil of fat: a myriad world of addictions or compulsive behaviours, controlling behaviour, rage...

The positive coping strategies are subtle and not sexy at all: I'm using one now as I write this. Prayer and talking it over with my OA sponsor and therapist and friends (including my best friend, my husband) are other ways, but boy, they are tough ones for me to learn. It has been my pattern to first isolate and then eat. But you know what they say, repeated practice is the only form of permanence nature knows.

So I have to repeat these new dance steps over and over, and occasionally step on a land mine. But I doubt it will be any worse than the old booby traps I laid for myself.

Creaky Day

I had a pleasant creakiness last night after running. It made me feel like, yeah, I just did a big run with my group on a blustery raining night. And I rolled off the edge of the sidewalk onto my back (damage: where I think I dug my thumbnail into my middle finger) and survived it fine. Actually, the adrenaline of falling made the end of the run fly by. Iced my healing (I hope) plantar fasciitis. I am woman hear me roar, yadda yadda yadda...

Today, the creakiness has lost its smug allure. It's cold and grey, and I told myself I was going to the gym to do weights before lunch. Can you hear me pouting? Getting to the gym seems like the hardest thing to do today. I'd much rather go shopping, but I think I can drag this sorry middle aged butt in if I bribe myself with a Starbucks Grande sugar free Cinnamon Dolce Americano afterward. And then there is lunch, hooray

The glamour of the slim life!

The other tough thing I have to do is call a sponsee and see how she's doing. And while we are really good friends, I have to show some backbone and bring up her programme. Being a good sponsor is different from being a friend, and although I really do regard her as a friend, I am not doing her any favours by letting her slip through the cracks. A really big excuse for me would be to not push it because she's got some tough problems right now. Well, more than ever, she needs the structure to hold on to, otherwise it's just another unhealthy pattern that's dragging her down. Can I be tough? I guess I'll see. Tune back in tomorrow for another chapter of As the Stomach Turns...

Ignoring my Family at My Peril

Ahhh, my family... what a bunch of coconuts... We're not a close lot any more, and really, when my mother became sick and died, the bonds undid fairly completely, as they often do. My parents and most of their contemporaries are dead or unpleasantly doddering, and I'm not in touch with my cousins (I'm an only child). A couple have reached out but it's just too painful, there are too many ghosts. There are just too many bad memories, too few good ones to unite we survivors. That's what I feel like, more like one of the few survivors of some catastrophe like a hurricane or a train wreck. I'm lucky to be alive and as relatively unscathed as I am.

At the same time, I do have to look at my family in order to understand ways I have of dealing with the world. Some of them are quirky, some of them are unhelpful, some of them are downright harmful to me and those I love. Luckily, I have a very good therapist to guide me through this, and a supportive community of fellow sufferers both in Overeaters Anonymous and in group therapy. While most of my problems end up at the refrigerator, it's not always OA business that goes on in my work, so I need other avenues of support.

An interesting book recommended by a friend is Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle for Self . For a while, my therapist has maintained that my father's behaviour was narcissistic. Obviously, I was affected by his alcoholism, and diseases such as that have a certain narcissictic character, but there were other behaviours of his that were just as damaging to a child: his rages, and his unstated but very real attitude that his opinions must be my own. My mother and I were not his family, we were to be his harem. If that creeps you out, well, it does me too. The crummy boundaries stopped at the actual sex act, but just barely. And yet, I've seen this pattern reinacted over and over in the families of my friends (most are women) in recovery.

I've got a friend who is currently dealing with some very life threatening issues which are tied to her weight. It makes the diabetes and hypertension I had at over 300 pounds look rather like a walk in the park. I'm praying that she can deal with them and start dealing with the equally dangerous and possibly original threat that her family is posing to her life. I love this friend dearly, and she can be such a joy. She's warm and smart and funny. But she may not survive this.

I've got another friend who seems very depressed. In a phone conversation yesterday, every second sentence was a self-insult. Where did she learn that?

I had some very odd dreams last night. In the first one, we were moving to the center of Australia, buying a lovely house that was in a drought stricken area. In the next one, I was suddenly visiting a friend at a family home in another continent. This home was not the comfortable, prosperous one I'd seen in photos, it was a mean shanty in a dangerous city being run by tyrannical despots. And her elders were fairly despotic too, where the children could not speak or even be seen freely. We kept being shunted into the kitchen when visitors came. I was running home, to the relatively less frightening new home in Australia, but it wasn't certain that I would be able to catch my plane. Obviously, the dreams were exotic but dangerous. Of course, they were my dreams, which by nature are fairly narcissistic. In these dreams I feel threatened by significant dangers in exotic locales, and even when I flee it isn't back to real safety. I perceive a lot of danger to me and others. And I'm worried I won't be able to cope. I feel drawn to their problems, and I may be so worried about theirs, I lose sight of my self. It's an old pattern for me, back to my childhood when I'm worried about my yelling or drinking father and my fuming mother...

My sponsor has encouraged me to write about my caretaking of others in situations... I think I need some of that right now, going into the history of that in depth. Phew. This is tough.

Write write write...blechhhh!

Good ol' writing... how I hate it!

But it seems to be good for me. Damn writing, damn exercise, damn meetings... it all dovetails together. This morning I have a combination of all three: I started off the day with a phone call from my friend from OA where we discuss our food (and life). Later on I have a swim lesson then I'm taking my lunch over to my sponsor's studio (she's a painter too) and we talk about programme... and life. Then into the studio for a few hours. Alas, I'm going to have to use the minivan for transport as it's cool and wet and it's just no fun on my beloved scooter when it's like that. I'm going to have to put the scooter away for the winter soon, but it's pretty good that I've been able to ride it into November in Canada, yet.

I know I'm blathering on about life, and I won't blame anyone for skipping ahead. It's therapy, it seems. I just know when I don't do it, I soon find my appetite on the rise. I know, it seems strange, but that seems to be how it is working. My muddled sense of what happens is when I don't regularly give some vent to what may be minor, petty emotions roiling around unacknowledged in my brain, there is a sense of discomfort that rises to a point that something in my unconscious kicks in and does its damnest to smother the discomfort. And without even being aware of it, I start looking for stuff to eat.

Last night, for instance, not only was I feeling hungry earlier in the evening because of the time change, I just had a nagging case of the nibbles. After I had had my dinner and a snack, I pulled from the fridge, of all things, cooked broccoli with garlic. Then I had 4 nose clearing wasabi coated peanuts (all that was left in the can)... then a small amount of dark chocolate, sharing it with Fuzz, again polishing off what was left in the box. Then I had a small piece of cheese. Finally, I made myself a cup of chai which put a lid on it, and went to bed. I was the nibbling Dustbuster. Not really bad, but I know the start of a trend. If I'm not on my game tonight, that compulsion will return.

I don't live in a vacuum. I have a life. And I have to eat to live. But my compulsion to eat to quash the discomfort of my psyche is so strong I have to keep checking on the condition of my psyche, much as you would check on a small child that might be occupied with a task to make sure they are ok. As much as the phrase "inner child" makes me cringe, it really seems like I am having to develop the skill of reparenting myself to keep from continually falling into the trap of self sabotage.

Time to Limit the Food Porn

The American Institute for Cancer Research yesterday released a report linking excess weight to a higher incidence of cancer. Since I'm obsessed with obesity, I'm hardly surprised by the findings. I had long ago been informed by my doctor that my obesity might be influencing the growth of a huge uterine fibroid that I had as fat cells can produce excess estrogen.
I'm all for healthy living, and I strive for it myself. But some days it's tougher than others as my compulsion to overeat gets triggered without me even being conscious of it. I'm also worried that now that obesity has had the last nail put in its coffin to lay it beside smoking as a health risk, obese people will be subjected to even more judgemental scorn than ever, without getting the help that they need. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we know it's bad for us, we still don't have a cure for obesity.

Meanwhile, we are surrounded by constant images of what I heard a person in an OA meeting call "Food Porn". It's all those lovely tempting images of food that surround us from the front of magazines, and particularly in ads for prepared foods and restaurants. And it's the cooking shows. When we moved and ordered satellite tv, I made a conscious channel not to subscribe to the Food Network. My bete noir is cookbooks. I have cut back considerably in recent years, but I still have a small bookcase full of cookbooks, and I love to cook. I think I sublimate all sorts of emotions in cooking and eating. Despite my conflicted family life growing up, it was one thing we could actually find some common ground on, for better or worse.

I wonder if we are now going to start looking at all this food stuff like we now view smoking. Smoking ads are pretty well totally banned, and I haven't seen any smoking shows lately. And with the exception of that cigar magazine (is it even still around?), I haven't seen any ciggie mags. In my province it will soon be law that visible cigarette counter displays disappear. What would happen if they did that to the rafts of junk food in the convenience stores and you had to ask to get a big bag of cheesies? What if you had to be 21 to buy potato chips?

I know I'm pushing the metaphor here, but I think it's started to turn in that direction. Schools have started looking at their sales of soda, and last year my niece's grade 2 teacher asked parents not to bring candy or cake to the class.

Is TV inherently toxic?

At a meeting the other day, a friend who has been in the OA program a while said that she has been aware for a long time that when she is feeling negative about herself, she tends to get mysteriously hungry. That statement in itself was a "DUH" comment for those of us who have been pondering our compulsion to binge or just nibble continuously.

The really interesting thing was that she followed that observation up with noting recently that those negative self-thoughts surface whenever she is watching tv. She is a very active woman and no couch potato and even while watching tv she's doing something else. But still, after a while she sees the negative thoughts appear.

What is it about tv that does it? Is it the passivity of opening up your head and letting all those quick processed images in? Is it the physically perfect people with issues that normally are solved neatly within the confines of 40 minutes? Does a diet of PBS make you feel better, like a tossed salad for the brain? Is what we choose to watch on tv as indicative of our problems as our eating habits?

I know that the longer I avoid dealing with my feelings, the harder my life becomes, and the more tempting the food looks. I wonder if perhaps when I choose to spend time watching tv, I'm in the midst of trying to squash discomfort or anxiety (like I've done most of my life), and it backfires. Maybe not right away, but it adds up. It takes a real conscious effort to counteract this, and when I begin doing it, it's tough. It takes several attempts. Seriously. Several attempts. I have to remember that. The practice of a lifetime takes, well, a lifetime.

A Lifetime of Habits

I'm middle aged. Yuck! But there it is, don't like how that looks, among the many other things that look the way they do when one gets to this age. But it's interesting, as I look around the rooms where I attend my OA meetings and see that most of the other women (and it is mostly women most places) there are of that "certain age" too. Maybe it's because of desperation. We've done all the other stuff, it didn't work, and short of bariatric surgery, we've landed here in the basement of the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Last Resort. Actually, we've even got a few who've had the bariatric surgery that has not worked for them.

And I think that this is what makes it work for us - the desperation, the being so damn sick and tired of being sick and tired. You get so sick of the unrelenting pain that you will even risk our cult-like readings and give that whole, gag me with a spoon, GOD thing. Even God is better than another lousy diet. And you find out that maybe the whole God thing isn't what you thought it is. It can be a whole different kettle of fish if looked at with some creativity. Look at it as an entity completely different from that hackneyed image guy in the nightdress. My conception of God was so pathetically unevolved from my 2nd grade Sunday school, it was crazy! When I started looking at a higher power as possibly some force in the universe that was trying to keep me healthy and sane, things started looking up, no pun intended.

But it's hard to stay with that concept. Old habits die very, very hard. Only by repeating the new good stuff, and I'm not even talking about eating habits here, does the new stuff stick around. I have to do, as they say in the program, the DO Things: Write and reflect regularly (several times a week, daily is preferable but not always possible), omigod, I have to keep praying. I have to keep in contact with the fellow strugglers who lift me up, and keep slugging away at it. This is what long term success looks like, but it requires daily vigilance. I'm only as good as my last reaching out to what keeps me sane.

It's like.... hmmm....my diabetes. Luckily I'm in remission because of all the weight I've lost. My doctor says its gone, but I know would almost assuredly return if I regained that 150 pounds. But someday it might spontaneously return even if I didn't regain the weight, and I could have to take daily meds and monitor my blood sugar.

Look, in every fashion I can see my compulsion to overeat is a chronic disease. I HATE that. It is never going to be completely gone. Some days are easier, some are damn hard. So, I need this daily practice to keep me healthy. The funny thing is, it's got a lot of side benefits that have nothing to do with my waistband --- I do have flashes of , gulp, serenity. I've got many great friends that encourage me to take risks and keep growing, try things I would have never considered years ago. It's even helping my work. As an artist, I am now having the great experience of my creativity and scope of the possible opening up. If that ain't a great antidote for "that age", I don't know what is.

Food as Oblivion

I was talking with a friend the other day about binge food. You know, as in what you choose when you really binge out. It's usually junk, but not always. High refined carbs are good --- pasta with butter is a favorite of mine, as is bread and butter. But it almost has to be a type of food that must be like hard liquor or shooting into a vein. High sugar. Lots of crunch, salt, grease. Enough to lose myself in.
I don't use food as a simple fuel, I use it as oblivion. I use it to block feelings, to blunt uncomfortable stuff like anger and envy and sadness. The more I work on feeling those feelings (oh, ugh) I see how much anger is there. It's quite shocking, actually. I've been struggling with lots of uncomfortable feelings since I was elected to the board of my community choir. 120 members. Lots of competing viewpoints, complaints, ideas. I'm feeling swamped. Twice over the last two weeks I came home and before bed ended up eating too much. Last week was the big show down with the leftover pork roast. Last night it was nibbling on the coq au vin. I had even made it to bed (safe, I thought) when I realized my oily paint brushes from work hadn't been washed out. So I went down to wash them at the kitchen sink and then, the fridge magically opened... luckily, I got it shut again before I did too much damage.
But it's incredible how automatically these feelings drive me to the food, and the fridge. I have learned to open the refrigerator before I'm even aware of feeling "off" or doing it. But my body knows what it wants and hasn't bothered to notify my consciousness. Right now I'm doing step work, a twelve step method of dealing with my feelings very popular in my OA programme. But it's damn tough. For over 40 years I've stuffed those feelings down with the food, and when I don't it all feels like too much. I don't have the luxury of blunting them with food. And so I feel overwhelmed. And I have to sit down and write about that feeling. It feels soooo uncomfortable. But if I don't deal with it, I'm just back at square one. So I try again, remembering the old OA maxim that if you have a problem and you eat over it, you now have two problems! Fuck. It hurts!

Still Hangin In---You?

It's been a great summer. It's been a lousy summer. I've had fun. I've felt very low. I'm full of love, I'm full of fear. I love my home, I hate my home.

And we wonder why a person can seem wildly different to different people on different days! Here I am, still hanging in. It has not been an easy season, I've had some minor, yet still challenging physical issues. Just getting back into running, very gently, with my 3 pals. One had sciatica, one lost her husband, and the third is totally unmotivated to run if we're not, especially in the heat of summer. And I had my plantar fasciatis and my hernia came back, hopefully temporarily. Honest. The surgeon said I have a 50-50 chance that it was small enough to heal spontaneously. Please God let that have happened. So, here we are out again at the local park, gingerly doing 1 minute run, 1 minute walk intervals. I was still hobbling around a bit later that night. Hopefully gently gently will be ok.

I've had some big food challenges. It's driven me to my knees, almost daily. I have to, in the words of a very funny friend, "pray like a bastard"! I need the willingness to uncover my issues, really work them out, and the best way I have found to do that right now, is go beyond my weekly therapy session and work them out on paper using the template of working the 12 steps of Overeaters Anonymous. When I can chain myself to the computer and (teehee) not be on the 'net, its a method that really forces me to face my issues. And I have to. The alternative is just too sad to contemplate.

I was able to attend the OA World Service Convention in Philadelphia earlier this month. It was a great way to end the summer and it filled me up for the work ahead. I bought a fridge magnet there, and it's my mantra for September: Face your stuff, or stuff your face!

That large iced skinny latte at 8 pm was a mistake

So it's 430 am and I'm WIIIIDE awake... ah well, what better excuse to blog than feeling like your eyes no longer have lids? Besides, it's been ages since I posted. Time to check in to the mother planet.

This fatgrrl was on a roll for a while, the new scooter (I call her Bella Vino) was pure fun for just over a week, and then I crashed it, doing a lame-o newbie maneuver coming out of the driveway, hit the throttle too hard + hit the curb = sore shoulder and scratched up scoot, and luckily, the worst damage was my ego. For 3 days I felt like the biggest idiot. It was all borne out of being rusty, not having driven a 2 wheeled motorized vehicle for over 20 years. Let this be a lesson: even if you're experienced, get a refresher course. Now I'm doing my own refresher course in a parking lot, because I realize I need practice doing things like tight turns, obstacle avoidance and quick braking. I'm also investigating how to do my own oil changes and bike maintenance, and I bought some snazzy new protective gear. My favorite is a surprisingly economical white and silver mesh jacket (tres cool for the hot summer) with protective armor in the shoulders, elbows and back.

The irony is with the shoulder injury, doing serious swimming (ie the crawl hurts) has been off my list for the last 2 weeks. So I'm basically not doing any real exercise right now. Because of my hernia and plantar fasciitis, I'm not able to run, weight train, or bike strenuously for at least this month, when I get rechecked by the doctors. Because I have a scooter, I'd rather just use it rather than bike around town. So I'm worried. Will I gain weight? Well, in the short term, it seems not. My weight seems stable, but it has only been 2 weeks. But I figure in another week I can pick up swimming again.

I'm trying to be sane about eating and exercise, but I think it's just as easy to fall into compulsive exercising as compulsive eating. Sometimes, if I'm honest here, I think I exercise to avoid doing things that might help me more with my life issues, ie such icky things as meditation and writing. It actually might be a gift to be among the walking wounded at least temporarily to make me see that I need to do some more in depth work on my emotional issues.

Right now I'm continuing in weekly sessions with a therapist, and I've just started another group therapy session with other former patients of a gp who specialized in treating people with addictions of all sorts. He moved to another province, but we're still going. After 2 sessions, it seems to be helpful in me addressing painful issues I want to look at and also cutting myself a mental break. I beat myself up a lot mentally, I think I learned that one from my parents who could be cruel to themselves and me too, with the best of misguided intentions. This is not easy stuff, it's painful to look at, but if I want to stay a normal weight and not be a raving nutter, it seems I have to do it.

Zoom Zoom Redux

I'm chuckling at myself today. I see the signs of a midlife crisis everywhere: not spending much time at work in the studio, busy injuring myself doing sports, and today, I should be able to drive my new scooter home (Insurance Gods willing, but I'm having a hard time being patient). Call it my mini-menopausemobile!

(Warning! The following rant will only be of interest to the severely two-wheel obsessed!)
I finally gave up my fruitless quest for the TNG Lowboy, because despite its low price and cute styling, the parent company seems to be behaving like jerks, screwing up the importation of the model into Canada every which way, and I've heard so many horror stories about how they treat dealers and customers that after the second delay I decided to ask for my deposit back. I feel sorry for the dealer in Toronto, they seem like very nice, professional people, but I think they chose a bad company to represent.

So the last couple of days, to cheer myself after the hernia mishap (see previous post) I went scooter shopping. Since there were so few available in this area besides the pricey Vespas, I broadened my search for lower cost, lower gas guzzling transport into small motorcycles (under 650 cc) and found a couple of really nice little Hondas and Suzukis. Then my friend the Reverend Brian, who just bought himself a nice Kawasaki, (I call him the Rolling Rev) suggested the Yamaha dealership a few miles out of town. I checked it out on the web and voila, they have a lovely little retro styled scooter, the Vino, in a nice 125 cc size: enough power to scoot around town with a little juice leftover. Ain't she cute? The silver color is a little understated for me, but I'm sure I can figure out a way to pimp it out a little.





















Now I just have to be patient and wait for my insurance agent to call me back. Not one of my strong points, as I seem to have that addict's tendency to want everything, and want it RIGHT NOW! But then by that criteria, most of North America would be addicts. Maybe we are?...

Crappity, Crap, Crap!

Ever heard of Julia Sweeney's show "God Said, Ha!"? It's about how the best laid plans in your life can suddenly go sideways, particularly if your health and/or that of a loved one suddenly takes a dive. Well, last week was one of those weeks that made me wonder, ok, God, what's the plan NOW? It wasn't a life threatening event really, just my femoral hernia, the one I thought was fixed in February, made a sudden dramatic return. I had gone for an hour long, mildly strenuous bike tour with a group, and that night I was popping a tennis ball sized lump out of my groin. At one a.m. the next morning Fuzz was driving me to the Emergency room. Within an hour I was in a bed in the ER with an iv drip and some lovely morphine running through my veins. Somewhere around 4 a.m. the little sucker in my crotch retreated and all felt fine.

The surgical resident told me it may be just a small tear and there's a 50/50 chance it will scar up and heal itself closed, but I have to be careful for 6 weeks. And I still may need further surgery if it comes back after that. No running, no swift biking, definitely no weight training. That leaves me with gentle biking around town, slow and low up hills, and swimming. Phooey. For 3 days I was severely bummed. Angry. I've just discovered this whole new life of physical activity, I made it through a hysterectomy last year, this winter the tummy tuck and the hernia patch, and I thought I was in the clear for a while. Well, there was the plantar fasciitis in my left foot, but it's healing. Am I suffering from Boomeritis (symptoms include a return of adolescent illusions of immortality) or what?

Anyway, I slowly came to terms with it and after a week I'm ok with it. Unless I end up injuring myself swimming. Is that possible? The scariest part of this hasn't been the threat of further surgery, it's been the possibility that if I can't exercise for the hour each of 5 or 6 days/weekly that I've been doing, will I have to eat less? That feels threatening. Cut off my leg, but don't take away my food!!! What is the sane way to handle this? Good damn question, I wish I knew.

Surprise! This is a Life Long Battle

Ok, this sounds pessimistic, but it isn't really. Well, sometimes it does get me down. I suffer from a compulsion to overeat. I thought that one day I would lose weight and all the hard stuff would be over. No more dieting, I would be one of those people who just sat at a healthy weight. No extra effort needed, I would just be like normal people and get on with the rest of my life. Lost weight, tick that one off the to-do list. Yeah, right. The bad news is, it seems to be a chronic issue. I still struggle with my compulsion to overeat. I still have food thoughts, I still get waves of nostalgia for old binges.

The good news is, I have so many more things going on in my life that I didn't have when I was morbidly obese, and so I have less time to dwell on the food. All in all, my life is better, but it isn't an, excuse the pun, cakewalk. I need to work on this new life, and when I take time daily to recommit to living a better life, it is easier. It's like the antidepressants I've been taking for years, I have to remember to take them every morning. Or the antihistamine I have to take daily in the spring to keep me from sneezing my head off with seasonal allergies. I have to write, here and privately. I have to think, I have to pray. All of this is necessary for me to deal with the chronic compulsion I have to eat. Through lots of therapy and lots of Overeaters Anonymous meetings over almost five years, I have come to believe that my disease has much to do with using food to comfort myself, deal with life when it feels unmanageable, which is often. The twelve step model offers an alternative way of dealing with my issues which seem insurmountable, and I have plenty of people in the meetings to mirror myself and my insanity back to me.

Often it is very frustrating, ok, often people in meetings piss me off! And usually, when I analyze why someone is driving me to the point where I want to stick my thumbs in their eyes, I find that it's my disease that's being triggered: I may need to stick up for myself, or just remember that I am fine and I don't need them to tell me I'm fine. Just because I didn't get that reinforcement when I was a kid does not make them responsible for my happiness right now. I don't have to love them, spend time with them outside a meeting, I just have to be there and be present in my own skin.

I recently had an issue with someone in the OA programme that was upsetting, but I drew a boundary with this person and I'm very comfortable with it. The other person did not take it well, and while I was angered by the pettiness of her response, it was affirming for me to know that drawing a clear boundary with this person was a wise decision. More importantly, I did not try to save this person from her disease, because that's an old pattern in my life---decades in the making---I want to stop repeating.

There's one of those 12 step maxims that seems self evident, but today I quite treasure it: Nothing changes if nothing changes. If I want freedom, I need to change a few things, things that I never thought had anything to do with me & food. Admitting that I was wrong about that assumption makes it possible to shift things that have felt unshakeable.

Zoom zoom

So I weighed myself this morning, all seems well, I'm at a little over 156 pounds, and I feel pretty good, wise, except for my left foot (see below). I was a little worried about my weight because I haven't been able to run for a few weeks; it seems that I've developed plantar fasciitis in one foot. So, while I'm doing physio and checking out orthotics, I've been using my bicycle and swimming more. After being ticked off by being unable to run, I'm now actually grateful that I've been forced to use my bike for longer and more aerobically challenging rides rather than my usual short trip downtown to pick up something. I grew up overweight, and completely non-athletic. Gym class was awful, and I just wasn't an athletic kid. I had a bike but I never really used it much. So now I'm discovering that it's kind of fun to go on a long ride, and I'm gaining confidence on my bike, a cheapo mountain bike type from Costco. I've got friends with snazzy road or hybrid (road/trail) bikes that cost at least 4 times mine, but all I need at this point is something durable that has a range of gears to make the big hills manageable. I did have a coaster bike that had actually been my moms, but she didn't know how to use it. And on a hill, well, I would just die.

Last week, I had a number of times on my bike when I felt ike a kid. Not like a kid again, because I don't remember ever enjoying it this much when I was young. Honestly, I'm having a hard time finding time to work in the studio, because I'm having too much fun. Yesterday the scooter shop phoned with bad news: my new scooter, on order now for over a month, has been further delayed because of import delays involved in introducing a new model to Canada. Now it looks like it may arrive in August. I'm disappointed, but maybe I'll hang in rather than just caving in and buying a much more expensive, but readily available scooter like a Vespa. Maybe it's a good opportunity to get friendlier with the old bike.

Living is Tough when it's Good

Today I feel like a truck ran over me. It's Monday. Ugh. But yesterday was almost the perfect day. I went on a bike trek with some friends along a hiking trail on an old railway bed between 2 points about an hour each way and had a lovely lunch at the end of the first half at a great restaurant in a little town. It was great: Sunny and just the right temperature. Fairly flat terrain but the gravel could be loose enough in spots you had to keep your wits about you, and only one big hill which we walked up. Trees and lakes, swamps and lily pads, with all the smells of nature in early summer. It was great, just great. I was well aware of a voice that said, "uh huh, couldn't do this when you were 310." Not surprisingly, all my companions on this trek were OA people.

The physical stuff was easy, the part I find hard is the interpersonal stuff. I crave being with other people, but after I'm with them for a fairly short time, they begin to grate on me. I think everyone finds that to some degree, don't they? But I wonder if I have a way of presenting myself that makes it worse? Do I swallow my needs and wishes excessively when in the presence of others? Is this why I feel so dragged out?

Or am I just feeling a natural letdown after such a nice day? I wanted it to last forever. How do I get more of that? Maybe I just get back on my bike? I'm going to a DA meeting at noon, I'd better get moving. Maybe that's the answer for now, I just have to get moving.

Apologies to Gary Larson

In For the Long Haul

I chaired an OA meeting on Saturday, always an unnerving experience for me for I so easily take responsibility for everyone else at the meeting. I just have to keep giving it away, telling myself, "nope, not my issue, not my issue...". I had another one of those "wow" moments during the time when as chair, I had to qualify myself as an oa member, or in other words, one who wishes to refrain from compulsive eating (under, over, unconscious, whatever problem eating issue one has). And I realized I had been attending OA for four???? years!!! I did a quick check with D, sitting beside me and she nodded yes because she had been there about the same amount of time.

Four years. It kind of feels the same way as when I think about how long I've been married. Simultaneously it seems like a very long time, ok, like forever, and almost no time.

So, how am I after 4 years? Well again, I feel very different and yet not changed at all. I am not where I want to be in my life with my career, which seems to be on hold right now, but I am enjoying days where I feel physically well. I am physically fit, foot injury not withstanding. As I start physiotherapy, I'm picking up the pace of my swimming. I am trying to be healthy, exercising moderately, but not become a compulsive overexerciser.

I eat a balanced diet, but I do have treats. But the treats have an interesting was of biting me in the butt. I notice that the day after having a treat --- say a nice dessert or a bag of chips (BTW, which came in a single serving size, but is it my imagination or are small bags of chips getting bigger?), I will feel deprived and crave another treat, as if I had been subsisting on a diet of celery sticks, when I most definitely had not. Yet if I just have my usual evening treat of a small bar of dark chocolate, my cravings just stay at their normal level (always there in the background, but not very strong). The nature of my beast, I guess, I'm built differently. Aren't I? What do "normies" feel? I'll have to ask one. Maybe they do the same thing.