onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “September, 2017”

30 Sep 2017
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You have no power over me

The other day, for the at least second, or possibly 3rd time, I had a particular guy from junior high pop on my Facebook feed. Not by mutual junior high friends, but by people that I don’t think know him personally. He is the significant other of some social media personality that I don’t follow, and whom I am not interested in. And this woman sometimes tags this guy, and waxes poetic about how wonderful he is. But this guy stands out in my mind as the fat shaming bully of my junior high years.

So, when I was seeing friends of mine reacting with thumbs ups and hearts to some woman going on about this guy being the hero who changed her life, I wanted to write to my friends privately, tell them my story, stop them from liking and loving, and fawning over someone who humiliated and shamed me. I wanted to tell the world, or at least my small corner of it, that I hate that guy. That he is a bully and an arrogant jerk.

What? Am I twelve?

Well, actually, yes. The girl who wants to do that is absolutely twelve. And fat, and awkward, and bad at navigating the world. And she wants to shame and humiliate a forty-year-old man that she has had absolutely nothing to do with for the past 27+ years, just like he shamed and humiliated her.

I decided to take a step back and look at my part, my mess. Acknowledge my own dust and debris, and sweep around my own front door, before I go sweeping around this guy’s. (A shout out to the friend who posted that song this week.)

When I try to think back to specific incidents where this guy shamed and humiliated me, I can only think of one. And the truth is, in retrospect, it was not earth shattering. And it was not directed at my weight, but at my weirdness. Which is something I can’t deny. And which, at 12, in the company of other 12-year-olds in the homogenous south suburbs of Chicago, was not the cute, quirky asset that it would come to be in my adult years. Being a non-conformist didn’t make adolescence any easier, I’ll tell you that.

There is that quote that is attributed to many people, but as far as I can find was by a guy named Carl W. Buehner.

“They may forget what you said – but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Did this guy make me feel ashamed of myself and my body? Absolutely. I still very clearly remember those feelings. Enough so that I wanted to rant about him at people who don’t even know the guy. Do I really think he was a jerk? I sure do. But he could not have affected me the way he had, if I had not already hated myself so much and been so ashamed of myself. Perhaps I projected my own fat shaming of myself onto him. I don’t believe so, but it’s a possibility. Or perhaps I remember the experience of his meanness clearly, and I have blocked out the more painful and humiliating particulars and incidents. (I have discovered over the years that I have blocked out many of the more traumatic parts of my childhood.) But either way, the only reason I was having such a strong emotional reaction was because I was not complete with myself, or him, in my own heart and mind. And I don’t need him to hear me or see me or acknowledge me in any way, in order to get complete. This is between me and me, and it always was. Especially since I have had zero to do with this guy at all for nearly 3 decades.

But it’s still hard. Because it still hurts a lot. So much that it has made me cry more than once in the past days. Less when I think about his cruelty, and more when I think about how scared and alone I felt those two years that I was in junior high. I think that those two years were the very worst, most miserable of my entire life. I would say that they were even worse than the years just before I got my eating under control, when I was in the throes of my most destructive eating disorders. Ok, maybe it’s a tie…

So I expect that my problem is not really this guy as a person at all.  It’s what he represents in my memory about those years: the loneliness, and fear, the feeling that nothing would ever work out, or be right. The fear that I was forever going to be shameful and ashamed. And that there would always be someone, like him, who was eager to point it out.

And I don’t know. Maybe he’s changed. I certainly did. I changed myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Maybe he really is an amazing partner and father. Maybe he is a good, kind man with a heart filled with love and honor. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s still a jerk and a bully and this woman doesn’t know the difference. Maybe he’s just better than her last one. Maybe she posts only the good and never the bad. She’s a social media personality, after all. I already know not to compare my insides with other people’s outsides. I, too, made sure I looked like I had my shit together when I definitely did not.

In the movie, Labyrinth, there is a line from a book that the heroine can never seem to remember. It’s a declaration, the kind of thing that most of us forget, conveniently or inconveniently, all the time when we are dealing with difficult people or situations. It’s a line I also forget, yet would do well to remember.

You have no power over me.

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24 Sep 2017
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Totally unprepared 

Ah! I did not write a blog this week. 

I have had one brewing and stewing in my head for days, but I never sat down to write it. I’ve been a little busy.

And now I am rushing through a breakfast before 2 days on the road with my life in boxes again, and a cooler of all of my food for those days packed and ready to eat sitting on my passenger seat.

So my bad. I don’t love screwing up on a commitment. But I am taking the time right now. Because there is effing up, and there is saying eff it. I don’t believe in eff it. It’s what you say when you want to pretend you don’t care that you screwed up but you did.

I screwed up. I care. I’ll be back next week.

Posted in Uncategorized
16 Sep 2017
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Not as convenient as it seemed

I fly relatively often. It’s part of my life on the road. And even when we are not flying home from my husband’s job for a family visit, I still go to New York about once a year.

I have noticed in the past year or so that I have been getting stopped by TSA and they have been swabbing my bag every time. Every single time. Even after I got TSA Precheck. I have asked why, but in general, TSA is not very forthcoming about the reason for these stops. I get it. They don’t want to make it easier for people to do bad things by telling the public what they are looking for.

But thankfully for me, one woman at the San Antonio airport, before my most recent flight to Chicago, told me that my food looks like explosives in the x-ray machine.

Ooooooooooooohhh!

I have mentioned before that I tend to travel with complete meals made into compact little loaves. They are generally made of eggs, wheat germ, pumpkin or carrots, cinnamon/spices, sweetener, sesame oil, and sometimes sesame seeds. And when I cook them in the microwave, which I usually do (as opposed to a conventional oven) they become a chewy, rather wet muffin of sorts. And I can imagine that in an x-ray machine, they look like the kind of thing you would see wires coming out of in an 80’s terrorist movie like Die Hard.

So when we left Chicago to fly back to Texas, I decided to try an experiment. I opted against easy to carry, compact loaves in favor of slightly more bulky and cumbersome meals of cooked vegetables and proteins packed in leak-proof Tupperware.

And I did not get stopped at all.

I had been thinking all this time that I was doing myself a favor by having these tiny little meals that were easy to carry. But every time I got stopped, I was frustrated, And more than that, I was afraid that someone was going to take my food away from me. (I know. I need to get a doctor to write me an official letter stating that I have special food needs.) It was slightly less convenient to pack a meal of cooked vegetables and protein. But the benefits of not worrying about losing my precious meals far outweigh the extra prep time and carry-on space used.

I am not saying that I will never get stopped again. I have been stopped for other things as well. My food scale, and my knitting needles and crochet hooks all come to mind. But it had been worrying me that I was being stopped every time I flew. And that is a stress I don’t need. Any stress is stress I don’t need.

And to be honest, I was packing those particular meals because I thought they were convenient, not because I found them particularly delicious. (Not that they were terrible…But they were dense. A lot of food in a little loaf.) I eat different things when I am at home than I do when I am travelling, either by plane or car. Some foods just don’t travel well. But I now know that those little loaves are not as convenient as they seemed. And now that I have that information, I can adjust accordingly.

 

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10 Sep 2017

Life doesn’t care if I am comfortable with change.

Because of the trouble with the hurricane in Texas, we had to come back to Chicago for a stretch. We were told on a Tuesday and had to fly out on a Wednesday. And we thought that we would be here for another week at least, but found out we will end up having to head back to Texas sooner than we had planned. No complaints. Chicago is cold right now. But the quick turnaround has meant being able to fly by the seat of our pants. It means being able to be flexible.

When we got here to our home in Chicago, we noticed that we had some stray kittens living under our deck. They had been abandoned by their (stray) mother, and were starving. They were not going to survive long, and most certainly not a Chicago winter. So I fed them until a friend of mine could help me capture them and take them to a shelter to be taken care of until they were old enough to be adopted. It meant being able to do something that I had not expected or planned on. It meant being able to fly by the seat of my pants yet again.

I hate flying by the seat of my pants. I like plans. I like routine. I do not get bored easily. I can read the same book over and over. I can eat the same foods every day. I can listen to the same song on repeat. I can find something new in old things. I like nuance; I am interested in fine distinctions. I understand that variety is the spice of life for some people. I very often find variety to be the source of anxiety, and worry. But I have my food under control, so I can go with the flow. Or roll with the punches, but I prefer flow to punches…unless it’s zero calorie fruit punch. That I like a lot…

If I were in the food, I would not have had the energy to take care of those kittens. I would not have had the wherewithal to deal with them one step at a time. First feed them, then call the shelters, then catch them, then bring them in to be taken care of. I would have gotten 500 steps ahead of myself wondering how I was going to get them to the shelter, would have gotten completely overwhelmed, and I wouldn’t have fed them in the first place. It’s not that I am a more caring person now that I have my eating under control; I am simply much much better at dealing with unexpected situations.

Then, as I said before, on Friday, my husband called in the middle of the day and said that we had to head back to Texas a week earlier than we expected, as in, we had two or three days to be ready. I told him I would be ready when he needed me to be ready.

I can do that because when I have my eating under control, I can do one thing at a time, and take care of the next right thing. I can think straight and think ahead, without getting ahead of myself. So I am writing this blog, and then I will go to the store and make sure I have enough food for my trip back.

It turns out that life does not particularly care how comfortable I am with change, especially at a moment’s notice. And I don’t have to take that personally. But I do have to deal with it. And I am grateful that I am able to do that now.

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02 Sep 2017
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An apology to the managers

I was talking to my dad the other day and he mentioned that in another post (this one here) I wrote that if you have never been able to successfully lose, or keep off weight, that I recommend that you give up sugar, or your personal binge foods for good. I said that I didn’t know anyone who had once been fat and both lost weight and maintained that weight loss by “managing” their binge foods. And he said that I knew him, and that he manages his food.

This is true. I know that he was bigger when he was younger and is not now. And I know that if he notices that he is gaining weight, he restricts his food intake; he stops eating dessert. I said to him that I wasn’t talking about “naturally thin” people, and he said that he did not consider himself “naturally thin.”

So I felt like I should touch on this again. At least clarify. Because perhaps what I am talking about is the ability to learn a new lifestyle. My dad had the ability to lose weight because he changed the way he ate every day. I had to change the way I ate every day in order to have a new body, and I am pretty sure that is true for everyone. If the way you were eating before your diet made you fat, then if and when you go back to that way of eating, you will be fat again. You actually have to change your entire eating lifestyle to maintain a long-term weight loss. Getting the weight off once does not “stick” unless you “stick” with the new food plan.

For me, when I was eating compulsively, I had two modes, dieting or eating. (Mostly eating, by the way.) When I was dieting, I was restricting the number of calories I was taking in. I was eating boring, bland food. I was eating everything steamed, and low fat, and “lite.” I was eating foods I hated, because they were “diet” foods. And then, when I was off the diet, I went back to eating the way I had eaten before because I hated the way the food I had been eating on a diet tasted. So I gained the weight back. And then some.

If you lost weight by changing the way you ate, and then never reverted back to the old way of eating, then you would have successfully changed your relationship with food. You would have successfully taken on a new lifestyle. If, in that new lifestyle, you let yourself eat like crazy on Thanksgiving, but then spend the rest of your time eating balanced, nutritious meals, and don’t take “Thanksgiving eating” into the New Year, then you could be said to be “managing” your food, it’s true. If you eat a sugary, or “binge food” treat twice a week, and the rest of the time, your food is clean, and your weight is steady, you could be said to be “managing” your food. And I do know a handful of people who have learned to do this.

But I would say, that if you have lost 30, or 50, or 75, or 100 pounds, only to gain it back, possibly more than once, then I am going to guess that you have a problem with sugar, or a problem with your binge foods, and that the answer is abstinence.

I, personally, have never been able to manage. And I would suggest that if you have been on Weight Watchers, or Nutrisystem, or any other diet, lets say 3 times, and you have not learned how to eat in any way that helps you maintain a weight that you are content with, then perhaps you cannot manage either, and you should consider abstinence. If it doesn’t register for you that you have to change your eating habits as a whole in order to maintain your weight, then perhaps you are an addict, and you should consider abstinence. If you know that you don’t want to gain weight, and you know that you should not eat that cookie, but you cannot not eat that cookie, then perhaps you should consider abstinence.

Ultimately, my point is that in order to lose weight and maintain that weight loss, a lifestyle change is necessary. But I could not change my lifestyle because sugar kept sucking me back in. It was only in choosing abstinence from sugar, grains, and starch that I was able change my eating as a whole, and maintain my weight long term. So if you can manage, then by all means manage. But if you have given managing a good, hard try, and you repeatedly fail, then perhaps you should consider abstinence.

And an apology from me to all of you “managers.” Just because I could never do it, I ain’t mad at ya!

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