You are getting the barest of minimums today. I am writing this while scarfing down my breakfast before a 2 day 20+ hour trip back home.
I have all my meals packed for the next 2 days. I have some audiobooks downloaded and I am ready to go! Ok, I’m not. I still have to clean out this refrigerator. Any way, next week, friends!
I have had an ever changing body throughout my life. My size, shape, muscles, weight have all shifted and transformed based on the ways I shifted and transformed.
Physical changes, even ones I consider good changes, often mean short term physical pain for an adjustment period. Generally more acute than the pain it is correcting. Like when I got my wisdom teeth pulled and my bite shifted, my teeth no longer fit together the same, and the readjustment of different teeth banging together gave me headaches. When I quit sugar, my body was so used to only eating processed foods that I had bad digestive issues for over a year. When I quit smoking I got sores in my mouth and on my gums from the healing and new growth where the smoke had damaged my tissues. When I have changed my center of gravity because of something like weight changes or new muscles, I will bang into things for a while and get bruises on my hips and thighs. The list goes on. But the lesson for me is clear: Change is worth it, but it hurts.
The lift in my right shoe has been transformative. Muscles and joints that have plagued me for decades are pain free. There was a knot in my butt, just below my hip that I haven’t felt or had to massage for weeks, and a tight area in my groin that is now just easy and comfortable. I don’t limp first thing in the morning anymore. I don’t have any doubts that I need to be walking with a lift in my right shoe all the time. The pressure I am relieving on my joint and all of its connections is a blessing. I am so grateful for the relief.
But it means there are other muscles that are not used to their new work. And they are tender. I am sometimes bruising myself with my massage roller to loosen them up. And they tire quickly.
I guess that’s the good news, right? Working to exhaustion is the best way to build new muscle. But it does not FEEL good. It just is good. Delayed gratification.
This too shall pass. But I am happy for the reminder that change is painful; and also the only way to get all the things I want out of life. So I am stretching and massaging when I need to. And taking some naproxen sodium to relax my muscles when I need that too. But moving forward with the lift. Because the only way out is through.
Today is 12 years with my husband and our 9th wedding anniversary. He was my only boyfriend ever. And he didn’t come into my life (back into my life – we were childhood friends) until I had my eating under control for 7 years.
SEVEN YEARS! And I was GORGEOUS! And 35 and single that whole time. And that sort of frustrated me, and made me angry at Life. Like I did the thing to be socially acceptable and I wanted my “reward.”
But as I mentioned earlier, I had had my eating under control for years. And those years really do accumulate in terms of clarity and self-trust. So I knew better than to decide that just anyone would do.
I chose a partner who would grow with me. Maybe not at the same time or at the same rate, but by their own standards and choices. And I could do that, see and choose that, because I was growing the whole time I wasn’t eating compulsively and high on sugar. And he was either going to like that and choose to stick around. Or he was going to be disappointed and leave.
That is what I have learned the most clearly from having my eating under control: My life is the most fulfilling when I am unapologetically myself. I attract MY people. I repel people who are offended by me or the fact that they cannot change me.
I won’t imply that I am not physically beautiful, because I certainly am. But I am also weird. And loud. And ridiculous. And purposely annoying. And I live 300+ days a year in yoga pants and an oversized men’s hoodie. And I leave a trail of either yarn or hair or both positively everywhere. And I sob until I’m dehydrated, sometimes because I’m desperately sad and sometimes because the character in the audiobook I’m listening to has been grievously betrayed and humiliated. And I am also not a spectacular housekeeper.
But I AM a quality partner and friend. A person my communities can count on. Honest, honorable and generous. A person of integrity. An empathetic and loving companion. Because I have my sugar addiction and my compulsive eating under control.
When I was eating compulsively I only thought about how things would impact me. How they would hurt me. I didn’t care about the impact I had on others. And I would throw anyone under the bus to “take care” of myself. I would not have been a good partner. I would only have been looking at myself. But I was still very upset that I was not a “girlfriend” or a “wife.” That I had not been chosen!
Being a member of the community of men and women who support one another in keeping our sugar addiction arrested taught me that being of service is its own kind of self care and spiritual nourishment. And because of being active in my community I know that allowing someone to be of service to me is also part of love and community.
When I asked a friend in my community how she found her partner, she said she stopped looking for a partner and became the kind of person she wanted to date. Basically, don’t wait to be someone’s partner to start to learn how to be a good partner. A sort of spiritual Be Do Have.
I am very grateful for my husband. And for 12 years of partnership. And for all of the ways we have inspired each other to be better for ourselves. But also very much for my own willingness to trust and be trusted.
Throughout my life I spent a lot of time being told “the way it is” about so many things. And really just not believing. Just deciding that I was going to do it my way and see what could happen.
I definitely did not choose the path of least resistance. Kind of ever.
But when it came to my body I *never* believed there was any other possibility than the very narrow one I felt confined to. I was fat. I had a certain shape. That was just the way it was.
When I quit sugar and carbohydrates and started to weigh my food 19 years ago, that was the very first time that I felt like I had any control over my body. Before that my own body had felt like a curse and a force of nature. I could lose weight, but I could never really stop eating. Every weight loss felt like a lie. I KNEW that it was unsustainable. Until I stopped putting my drug in my system.
So ok. That was amazing. I could stop eating sugar and I could be “not fat.” But I still had a very specific shape and it was “weird.” I had to dress to “hide my flaws.” My weight distribution was all up front. I had big belly. I had wide hips but no butt. My shorter right leg (from when I was born with a club foot and they put me in a full cast from hip to toe) was bigger and stronger and so was/is my right foot. I carried almost all of my weight on it all the time. My right hip hurt constantly. It was just the way it was. And it was still a more comfortable and easy body than when I was eating compulsively.
And then I started walking stairs and as my butt got bigger my center of balance moved way back so I was no longer balancing on my toes. And my belly got smaller as my balance shifted back. But as my legs got stronger and stronger my back started to get tighter and I had to spend a lot of time stretching and massaging my leg muscles to open my back up.
So a couple of weeks ago I started using a lift in my right shoe to accommodate the full one inch difference between my left and right legs. And that ended up making a huge difference in my back.
In less than 2 full weeks it has reduced my back and hip pain and significantly increased my range of motion backwards.
None of these things ever felt like anything I had any kind of power over. They felt predestined and set in stone. But I just didn’t know anything. And when people or media or movies told me about “how it was” with bodies like my body, I just believed them in a way I didn’t for almost anything else.
I was ashamed of myself and my body when I was in the food. Ashamed of my fatness, ashamed of my shape, ashamed of any anomalous aspect. And that kept me from even thinking of simple fixes. I would have to be worthy of that. I would have to just be in need of a little help. Not irrevocably broken…
But now that my eating is under control, I love my body. The beautiful, the weird, and the weirdly beautiful. And by loving my body I have a shot at taking an action that leads to me loving it more. Like putting a lift in my shoe.
I am trying to remember every day and in all things that there is no “way it is.” There is only the way it has been and my choice of what to do next for myself and my community. And I’m trying to remember that I did not know what was possible before I started any of these things. I just did the next thing and hoped it was the right thing.
I don’t spend a lot of time with people other than my husband. And I like it that way. I have certainly set it up that way for myself. We often live in a different city every year or two and I am not out and about making friends.
I am at the grocery stores and the craft shops or at home cooking and crafting. I talk to my friends on the phone who are mostly out of state anyway.
But my husband turned 50 this week! (Yay!) And his grandma turned 90 the same day! (Wow!) So we flew from SLC home to Chicago for a few days. We drove to Indianapolis to visit his grandma. Plus he got to reunite with his step daughter and meet his step grandson for the first time. Not to mention hanging out with the usual suspects when we’re home for a few days. And the neighbor cat was convinced to love me again with (multiple) treats!!! So there was a lot of face to face interaction. With lots of people. Some new.
But it was easy. And the reason is because when I have my eating disorder and sugar addiction under control I don’t spend my time worrying about what other people think of me. I like me. I act and think and behave according to my own heart. And when I don’t I apologize and make amends. You either like me or you don’t. It’s not really my concern.
And that leaves lots of room for connection. The people who love me and whom I love are MY PEOPLE. And I don’t have to do anything to make them like me. I don’t have to contort myself. I am just the most authentic that I can be. And in all that freedom there is so much room for friendship, camaraderie, community, laughter, mourning, and love.
When I got my eating under control 19 years ago, I didn’t have a lot of sense of community. Actually I felt like I knew what community was. I came from a big family. But they felt very unwelcoming to me. And I had friends, but in retrospect, many of them were also unwelcoming. Jealous or snide or mean. And I was some side of that coin with many people. There are very few people from my past that I am friends with. (I have new friends. In my food program and out.)
But then all of a sudden I had a food program and these women (and men but mostly women) who wanted to help me keep my commitments to myself. And they were willing to give me their time and energy and wisdom, because someone had done it for them. And I was expected to do it as well when called upon.
And the thing about community, even when there are people I don’t like, because there are definitely people in my food program that I don’t like, is that it makes for quality connections. And connections make us feel necessary. Seen and acknowledged. And that feels good. It even feels good to do something helpful and generous for the people you don’t like sometimes. Very proud, at the very least.
It has been a joy to be around these people this week. Laughter and tears and intimate conversations and stupid stuff too.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m exhausted. I can’t wait to go hide in my SLC apartment and craft like the goblin I am. But this week has been a wonderful reminder of how much love there is in my life. And I only have it and feel it because I am not compulsively eating drug foods.
onceafatgirl 