onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “June, 2020”

28 Jun 2020

Amends are the worst! And also the best!

I have had a very hard week emotionally. I have been crying a lot. I have been thinking a lot. I have been trying to reconcile a lot of things. I have been restless, irritable, and discontent, as they say. And then yesterday I was a real asshole to two different people. A stranger and my husband. And I had to make amends.


Ugh! Making amends is the worst. But it is also, of course, the best.


I won’t go into details, because they are boring and would be filled my in-the-moment justifications for why, exactly, I acted like a jerk. But just rest assured that I did, indeed, act like a jerk.


The stranger let me have my way, not because I was right, but because it was easier for him to deescalate the situation. So I got what I wanted by being obnoxious.


Then later my husband and I got into an argument about a misunderstanding and a miscommunication. Because he has been frustrating and annoying me all week. But not because of him, or what he has been doing. But because I have been unhappy and frustrated and stretched thin myself.
To both my husband and the stranger, I admitted that it was me, and not them, that was the problem.


But amends are something else. Not just an apology. A mending. It’s right there in the name.


So for the stranger, I wrote a sincere note of apology. I admitted that I was entirely in the wrong. But I also left $20 in the note. Because I had gotten everything in that interaction, and he had gotten nothing. An apology, even a sincere one, doesn’t give him back his time. An apology wasn’t going to dry his clothes. In order for it to be a sincere amends, I felt it should cost me something. And while money is not the only way to make up for such things, it was the easiest way with a stranger.


With my husband, on the other hand, the amends has to come with a change in behavior. In order for it to be sincere, I have to hold myself accountable to being the kind of wife I want to be, even when I am sad, or hurting, or depressed, or struggling.


This morning I feel better, cleaner, freer, having taken responsibility for my own bad behavior. I am still not particularly happy. I still have a lot of things to work through and deal with for myself, but I have had a wake up call to show me that whatever is going on inside, I am still responsible for what I do and say and create on the outside.

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21 Jun 2020

My body is not an issue

I have been writing a short gratitude list every day for the past few months. And one thing that has been coming up for me a lot is how grateful I am that my body is not an issue.

A little over 15 years ago, I was doing some volunteer work for a self-help seminar. The idea was that you gave them your time and you got the seminar for free. I was poor and that worked for me. At a prep meeting, the seminar leader asked me what I wanted to get out of the seminar, and I said “I want my body to stop being an issue.”

Because for basically all of my life up until then, my body was on my mind, in some form or another, all of the time. I was obsessed with sugar and carbohydrates, and I was obsessed with my body. I was constantly worried about what it looked like to other people, what other people were thinking about my body. And what they were thinking about me because of the size and shape of my body. My own body was my enemy. I hated it. I was ashamed of it. And I was continually thinking about how to change it. Or perhaps it would be truer to say I was continually trying to figure out how to eat the way I wanted to eat, but at the same time have my body look/be socially acceptable.

Over the course of that one six month seminar, I went from being on a diet and in the first stages of being an exercise bulimic, to being an all-out exercise bulimic, to abusing laxatives, to making myself throw up, to giving up and eating myself 30 pounds heavier.

But on the last day of that seminar, I had my current boundaries around my eating in place, and I was weighing my food in the restaurant around the corner from the building where the seminar was held. In other words, by the time it was done, I had gotten what I had asked for. Or, if my body had not ceased to be an issue quite yet, I was doing the thing that would let me stop thinking and worrying obsessively about my body. I mean forever.

I don’t want to imply that I have *never* had body image problems since I put boundaries around my eating. When I quit smoking and gained at least 30 pounds, that sure did freak me out. And that was a difficult time for me emotionally.

But for the most part, in my daily living, I don’t think about my body. It doesn’t even cross my mind. I don’t walk around thinking anyone is looking at me in judgment. I don’t worry about someone saying an unkind, unsolicited remark about my body.

Before I changed my eating, I was eating myself to misery. I was harming myself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually with food. With addictive foods that made me feel crazy and unhappy.

I have often noticed that when we harm someone, we have to do one of two things:
1) Own up, take responsibility, and make amends,
Or
2) Double down and make it their fault, so we don’t have to feel bad for being the jerk.

I did this to my body for most of my life. I fed it foods that are poisonous to me, and then blamed it for looking a way I hated. (Which, in retrospect was just internalized fat phobia.) Blamed it for my difficulty of mobility. Blamed it for being sub par and not as “pretty” or easy or socially acceptable as other girls and women.

But today, there I have a peace around my body that I never expected. And the even more unexpected thing is that it’s not about the size of my body. It’s not about how skinny I am, because I am not. It’s about how comfortable I am with the way I treat my body. My food is in line with my commitments to it. My exercise is to love it and care for it, period. Not to make it thinner, or shaped differently. In getting my eating under control I got to stop judging my body.

Basically, though it was fraught with difficulties at the time, I got exactly what I wanted out of that seminar. More! Because all I was looking for was to stop thinking about my body, and instead I got to love it.

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14 Jun 2020

Not dead yet…So expecting change

One of the most useful things about having my eating under control is my ability to change, often gracefully, sometimes less gracefully, but always with sense of well-being. If I’m not dead yet, well, then more will be revealed.


When I first put boundaries around my eating, parts of my life got very small for a while. I had to live through the withdrawal. I had to figure out how to reconfigure an entire life that had been centered around eating, specifically eating sugar and carbohydrates.


But then my life had all of this unused time in it. Time that had been spent pursuing and eating sugar. And my head had all of this new space. Space that had been taken up by my food obsession. And eventually I had both the capacity and the free time to try new things and think in new ways.


Change became a muscle I was building. It’s a muscle I continue to build. And it is invaluable in times like these. Times where flexibility and adaptability are currency. In times like the times we are living in now, people like me, who can get swept up in the current of a present in flux and an uncertain future, and just ride it until we get spit out onto the shore somewhere, are in a great position. We have the power that comes from being present in the moment. We have the power of freedom.


I have this gift because my eating is under control, which means my head is clear from both sugar fog and food obsession. I have it because upon getting the clarity of mind, I realized I had to live honestly and with integrity in all areas of my life, or I was going to end up back in food hell. I have it because I had to take on a way of life where I am rigorous with myself and deal with my own life, rather than looking to blame others. Even when others are wrong. Even when I am right and my anger is righteous. I have this gift because I got to move away from centering my life around what I want, and move toward the power of choosing what I wish to do with what I actually got.

I had to learn to make friends with my food issues. I had to learn to work around them, and make them work for me. And through that, I learned to make friends with what is so, and to not fight against the actualities of my life and my world, but use them. Or at the very least, learn to accommodate them.

Changing my eating and behavior around food also rewired my brain. In actively changing both my thoughts, and my actions, I changed a lifetime of compulsions and defaults. And I got good at change in the process. And it is a gift and a blessing that goes far beyond food or eating or the size of my body.

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07 Jun 2020

Turn and face the strange ch ch…

I have had a very busy week and next week is a busy week again.


We left Oklahoma for good last week. Hooray! And we have been in our home since Wednesday, which has been wonderful! But tomorrow we leave for a new job in Nebraska.


I am good at change because I have my food and my eating under control.


The world is changing. I am able to change with it. This is a blessing. Because when I say my eating is under control, I am not saying I am on a diet. Diets have never worked for me. Not to shrink my body and most definitely not to help me with my life. I have a way of eating that keeps me clear-headed and available, and a way of living that has me focus on what I can do to be the kind of person I want to be in the world.


I can examine my moods and adjust my relationship to my experiences because I have my eating under control. I can go with the flow of life because my eating is under control. I can accept that life is always changing anyway and act accordingly because my eating is under control. I do not have to hold on to the way anything used to be because my eating is under control.


If I am not numb, I am forced to look any and all situations in the eye and deal with them. If I am uncomfortable, I have to sit in it until I change enough to get comfortable.


The world is going to change. Always and forever. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small. But I am available to see it and meet it and change with it because my eating is under control.

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