onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Inspiration”

05 Aug 2017
1 Comment

If I end up in the political correctness slammer, please don’t sneak a file to me in a cake…

Perhaps you read the article in the New York Times this week called Losing It In the Anti-Diet Age. If not you can read it here

I found it interesting. Especially because the author is, herself, a fat person who can tell you first hand what it’s like to be a fat person in America. I too know what it’s like. I know how it feels to go on a diet, and lose weight, only to gain it all back, even though you don’t want to, don’t mean to, would literally do anything to not, from sticking things down your throat to make yourself throw up (something I did personally), to, say, getting your stomach removed (something I did not do, but know people who have). I know what it is like to be made fun of and have people talk about you as if you are a thing, with no feelings. To have them question your goodness, your honor, your worth; a fat person must be lazy, stupid, careless, and pathetic, or they would deal with their weight. I was struck hard by the author’s mention that a commenter on another article she wrote said, “Why doesn’t she stop eating so much?” As if we hadn’t effing thought of that ourselves already. There is talk of willpower. A doctor talked about getting an individual down to a goal weight with medication so that they could make a fresh start, but then they were going to have to get willpower. (Seriously? Screw you.)

All of this sounds to me like thin people who have no idea what it is like to be fat, trying to solve a problem they don’t even understand in the first place. Thin people don’t need to figure out how to stop eating. They already don’t overeat. That’s like having a person with a lot of hair try to cure baldness just because they have hair and bald people don’t.

But another issue in this article that I wanted to address is the change in the language of dieting in the culture. Words like “diet,” “dieting,” and “weight loss” are becoming taboo. We want to talk about “health,” and “strength.”

Except that we only want to talk about them. Ultimately, we want, as individuals, especially fat individuals, to not be obese. I didn’t want to be fat. I still wanted to be treated like a whole, worthwhile human being, fat or not, but I did not want to be fat.

Perhaps this is where the disconnect lies. See, I hate this new cultural phenomenon that I call “the feelings police.” We don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, so we don’t talk openly and honestly about difficult subjects, for fear of being branded politically incorrect, hence heartless and out of touch.

But not facing these things head on is not helping anyone. Strike that. It’s helping the sugar and junk food industries. And it’s helping companies like Weight Watchers. Who are still selling a diet, but are marketing it, in true politically correct fashion, as a program for getting healthy.

Here’s the problem: Weight Watchers never changed the barometer for how you would know it was working. It’s the same barometer. Did you lose weight? If we were truly having a conversation about health, we would have a different measuring stick. Stress test results, for example. Getting off your diabetes medication. Being able to run with your dog in the morning. If you are calling your program “Beyond the Scale,” perhaps you should measure success with something other than the number on the scale.

But I am not actually condoning that; I am merely pointing out the problem with consistency. If you want to be healthy, and you don’t care what your weight is, and you use some benchmark other than weight for your own happiness, good for you! You go! Do it! I am all for fat acceptance. I will not judge you for loving yourself at any and every size. In fact, I encourage it. I truly believe that it is in loving ourselves without caveats and conditions that we can begin to make changes that are both healthy and lasting. But I think that if you want to lose weight, really, you are going to have to look at it for what it is. You have to stop worrying about political correctness. You may have to deal with a late night knock on your door from the feelings police telling you that you have violated statute whatever-whatever stating that you will not say anything that could, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt the feelings of any person, or group. You are going to have to get real.

The author talks in the article about going back to Weight Watchers for a third time in her life. And perhaps you are asking why. She already knows from her own experience that it does not work, so why yet another attempt? I don’t have to ask why. I already know all too well why. Because if you hate being fat, you will do whatever you can, whenever you can to stop being fat. And you will hold out hope against hope that this time will be the special time where the thin “sticks.” And also, because, in my experience, programs like Weight Watchers tell people that if they are “good” they will get results. If they get some willpower, they will be thin. As if willpower is out there to be had, if you are lucky enough to run across some, like a perk in a video game. You have acquired willpower. Lose 100 pounds and level up.

But here’s the thing that I found lacking in the article, perhaps because the author doesn’t have a context for it: when she talks about going around the Obesity Week conference she says, “…it [made me sad] because if you have this many hundreds of smart and educated people trying to figure this out, and nobody has anything for me but superfood and behavior modification and an insertable balloon and the removal of an organ, it must be that there is no way to solve fatness.”

To this I say, abstinence from processed, and sugary foods. Or, perhaps it is better to say, abstinence from your personal binge/trigger foods. (I know a man who knows that his personal trigger foods are “the guy foods,” like barbecue ribs, as opposed to me and cake.) Total and complete abstinence. To my mind this is not behavior modification, because that term seems to imply that the problem is with my hand, rather than my brain. “Doctor, my hand just keeps grabbing donuts and shoving them into my mouth! What should I do?” This article in no way addresses food as an addictive substance, or mentions any modification in diet (specific foods as opposed to portions) as a lifestyle change. The author talks about Thanksgiving as a kind of food hell for dieters. But of course it is! It’s a room of foods that trigger our reward centers and create a craving for more. If you go to Thanksgiving and you eat the things you have not been eating for the past week/month/year, and they are back in your system, so are the cravings.

I cannot think of a person that I have met who has had long-term weight loss by “managing.” In fact, I believe it is exactly this “managing” that keeps us in the cycle of losing and gaining it all back, feeling like this time we can do it, and then feeling like failures. If you cannot or will not give up your binge foods, then I recommend that you either get comfortable with that cycle of yo-yoing, or you stop trying to lose weight in the first place.

I am not talking about thin people. We all know that thin people are not having these problems. They can, as the author ends the article noting, lovingly lick the icing off a cupcake with impunity. They already are managing without having to think about it. I am talking about people who are fat and don’t want to be. Eat whole foods, in moderation, and abstain from foods that make you want more of them.

Perhaps you are thinking, “But cupcakes are so good!” Or “I could never give up barbecue ribs!” Cool. Then get your fat acceptance on! Work that! Eat your cupcake and love your beautiful, fat self! But if you want to lose weight and keep it off, chances are you are going to have to give up certain foods forever.

That is an unpopular opinion. Feel free to call the feelings police. I may get sent to political correctness jail, but I’ll be there in a comfortable body with my dignity intact.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
29 Jul 2017

Food is not my enemy (anymore)

I am not “on” a diet. I have a diet. I find that this is a distinction that a lot of people don’t have. Most of the people I interact with see no reason to maintain food boundaries when I am in a “normal” sized body. One should only “take such drastic measures” if you are fat. Other than that, it seems crazy to them to not eat a cookie. It’s just one cookie. Because to the average person, food revolves around weight.

I don’t keep my food boundaries to manage my weight, though, to a certain extent it does manage my weight. That is just a side effect of keeping my eating under control, just like being fat was a side effect of eating compulsively. My point is that fat is not the disease. Eating is the disease. And while I have never been fat since I gave up sugar, grains, and starch, I have also had times when I was not thin. I made food changes in those times, and sometimes they helped me lose weight and sometimes they didn’t. For example, when I quit smoking over 5 years ago, I gained weight. I tried to eat lighter at that time –less bacon, smaller fruits, more salad, not cooking my vegetables in fat – though still within my boundaries, and it did not help. I did not lose weight, and sometimes gained. Even cutting my food didn’t help me lose then. The only thing that helped was time. I put my body through a lot with all of those chemicals and all that tar for so many years. I suppose it needed time to heal. But in that time, though I was desperately miserable about my body, I did not seek out some other thing to help me lose weight faster – pills, exercise, fasting, extreme calorie cuts – because I had already learned that being thin wasn’t the answer to my problems.

In my mid twenties, I had lost a lot of weight by counting calories and working out. From the outside, I looked normal. In fact, I had never looked so “normal” in my life before. But I would say that I have never been crazier than in that time. I felt insane. I made plenty of poor life decisions. And I was really miserable, partly because I felt so crazy. Look, I am not talking about feeling out of sorts. I mean I thought that I must really belong in a mental institution, and I spent a lot of time trying to hide my crazy so that I wouldn’t be found out and institutionalized. I was living in fear of somebody realizing I was so unstable. And I was so thin. At the time, the thinnest I had ever been, and certainly thinner than I have sometimes been in the past 11+ years with my eating under control.

Being thin didn’t make me happy. Food was my enemy. We were at war, and food was winning. Everything I ate was either “good” and tasted disgusting to me, or “bad” and was delicious, but made me ashamed for having eaten it. I could not win, and I still hated my body, even though it was thin.

Nothing has ever made me as happy as having a handle on my food. And I do it gently. I eat foods I love, because I am not being punished. I don’t feel the need to “detox” or fast. Food is not my enemy anymore. Food is a delight, my 3 moments of respite in the day. Food is my “me time,” where I stop worrying about the things I have to do, and get to drift away into bliss. I don’t count calories. I don’t work out for more than 45 minutes a day. I don’t treat my delicious, nutritious, abundant food like a poison I need to get out of my body before it ends up on my thighs. My thighs are going to be my thighs.

I eat my meals and only my meals. My food is my food. My body is my body. And neither one is my enemy. So I am not on a diet. And I don’t plan to ever be on one again. And that makes me happy as well.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
23 Jul 2017

Not sorry, even though it sucked.

My husband and I are home for a visit this weekend. We opted for a 5:30 am flight out of San Antonio, two hours away from our apartment in Corpus Christi. So we drove the two hours the night before and got a hotel room for the night. Before we left, I made a bunch of compact, complete meals, because they are easy to pack for travel. I don’t usually expect to eat them. At least not all of them. I pack them in case of emergency.Well, our flight got cancelled, and we couldn’t get another flight out that day. So we kept our room in San Antonio for another night, flew out the next morning, and I ate the emergency meals.

And ugh! It was kind of awful. Those meals are each a third of my nutrients for the day, packed into a little cake. And by the end of dinner, I was feeling pretty sick.

But it never occurred to me not to eat them. It never occurred to me that it would be better not to finish dinner. I have never once in the past 11+ years been sorry to keep my food commitments. Not once. I have never “missed” a food I didn’t get to eat, or been disappointed that I kept my word to myself. Even when I was choking down a too-heavy brick of proteins, vegetables, vegetable substitutes, and fat. I love to eat, but at moments like that, eating becomes like working out. I don’t like doing it while I’m doing it, but I’m always grateful that I did it when I’m done. 

My food boundaries are usually awesome. I eat such delicious food, prepared in my favorite ways. But the boundaries are the important part, not the awesome. In a pinch, I will eat the plainest, grossest, least appetizing things on the planet if it means my eating boundaries are taken care of. And I will eat it when I am not hungry at all to keep those commitments to myself. 

When I was eating compulsively, I regularly woke up without a shred of dignity because of the things that I didn’t want to eat, and couldn’t stop myself from eating. 

Now I wake up with my dignity intact. Because I am willing to eat exactly what I am committed to eating, whether I want to or not.

Posted in Inspiration, Life and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
15 Jul 2017

Velvet doesn’t get to make the decisions.

I was thinking that I should start cooking with salt. Or at least figure out how to cook with salt. Because I have been making a lot of recipes lately, and I have noticed that putting the salt in the dry rub or marinade makes a difference. Salt cooked into food is tasty. But that is not how I generally cook, because I don’t taste while I cook. That’s a rule. I only put portion and ingredient controlled food in my mouth three times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Any time that is not those times, nothing goes in my mouth but zero calorie drinks. Any food that is outside of my 3 portion controlled meals does not go in my mouth ever. That includes food that will eventually be part of my 3 meals. So even if it’s just a bite, a lick, a drop, I cannot have it. Even just a speck is too much. And I thought with some embarrassment what some particular foodie friends would think of that.

Because I want to be cool. I have always wanted to be cool. In all areas of whatever. Let me put it to you this way. There are a lot of different things to be, and we can be many things simultaneously, and we all have our priorities. Some people have propriety as a priority. (This is not really one of my personal priorities…) Some people have being knowledgeable as a priority. Some people have loyalty as a priority. And some of us have being cool as a priority. I am vain. Very very vain. (I am, of course, also a non-conformist, so there is a limit to how much I care about what other people think, but if you think about who has always been considered “cool,” they are generally not a bunch of followers, so…)

So I want to be cool and I am afraid that the kind of strict regulation I follow might negate my hep, devil-may-care attitude. Because I don’t actually have a devil-may-care attitude. Not when it comes to food, my body, or my sugar addiction.

But also, it is a little ridiculous that I am worried about my cooking “chops,” so to speak. I am an amazing cook. I make delicious, interesting things all the time. I am creative AF, okay? I have always made satisfying, and often ingenious, alternatives to foods I had to stop eating for my vanity, sanity, and health. But there is a limit to how “fancy” I can get. Because I have these rules. And I need these rules. These rules ultimately make me happy. Getting my eating under control really is the greatest thing to ever happen to me. And these rules are that control. Anything less than this kind of extreme limitation has never been enough to keep me sane around food. No looser set of boundaries have ever made me happy.

I am bringing this up because I heard the other day that being authentic is about being able to hear that voice in your head that talks so much shit, and shine a light on it; it’s being able to make friends with your more unsavory aspects. It’s to say out loud the things you most don’t want people to know.

My personal experience is that nothing slays the dragon like pointing out that there is a dragon, that it’s scary, and that you are afraid of being cooked like a sausage and eaten.

My other personal experience is that whatever it is that I am terrified to tell the world, seems pretty tame, even lame, once I do manage to say it out loud.

So I have these restrictive rules about food and there is not really anything to do about it. Those rules are not a problem. They are the solution to my problem, food. Food has always been my problem for as long as I can remember. So the truth is, if it’s not cool to be so restrictive, then I am not cool.

Then I have a few options: 1) Be not cool and be a bitch about it. I don’t recommend this one. It just leads to misplaced anger and resentment. 2) Be not cool and be cool about it. Or 3) Be not cool and be so freaking cool about it that it changes the perception of cool. What is not an option is to break my rules, or cross my own boundaries.

I am going to try cooking with salt, but I am still not going to taste while I am cooking. Will I screw it up? Possibly. Will I end up figuring it out in the end? I have no doubt. The deal is that cooking with salt is ultimately not a big deal, but I still had shameful, humiliating, unsavory thoughts because of it. And I do myself, and everyone who likes the authentic Kate, a disservice when I pretend that I don’t have a shady inner life.

I want to let everybody know that for all of my positive attitude, and fearless championing of the sugar-free life, even after over 11 years, I still have my embarrassments and my doubts. I want you to know because you may be having doubts too. Maybe about food, but maybe about something else, starting your own business, training for a marathon, changing careers. I don’t want you to look at me, or read my blog, and think that I am so bleeping cheerful because the only voice in my head is a cheerleader named Bambi who has the spirit and wants you to have it too! There’s also a gloomy Goth girl named Velvet who would like me, all of us really, to remember that life is pain, humiliation is hiding around every corner, resistance is futile, and in the end we’re all going to die. And she’s way sneakier than Bambi. Bambi shouts into her megaphone at high noon in a neon yellow bikini. Velvet whispers subliminal messages of impending doom in my ear while my attention is diverted.

I’m saying that I have the same dark side you do. I just make a point to keep an eye on my little Goth, and make sure she doesn’t get to make the decisions.

 

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
08 Jul 2017
2 Comments

It just may be a luuuuuunatic you’re looking for.

After 3 or so weeks of frustration and difficulty, I am back to my usual self. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I still have to write a post for my eating disorder blog, and I don’t have anything in particular to say.

I don’t eat sugar, and it’s great? Yay?

Look, I don’t eat sugar. And it is great. If you do eat sugar, not eating sugar is better than you know, and way way way better than you think.

I say all the time that I am not the food police, and I do not care if you eat sugar. And I really don’t. Even if you’re fat. Even if it is killing you and making you miserable. What I really believe in is personal freedom. I happen to be an American, (though I know many of you are not, hi international friends!) and I strongly believe in those American ideals that center around the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I mean the liberty to do things that are killing you and making you miserable, as long as they do not encroach on the rights of your fellows. But I have a feeling that even if sugar is killing you and making you miserable, you don’t know it. I would even venture to guess that you don’t have any idea how much sugar you are eating and how it is affecting you.

If you tell people you don’t eat sugar, many of them freak out. I am considered a crazy person. And I own that when I talk to people about it. But I am going to be blunt. I may say “yes, yes, it’s crazy, I know…” with a simper, but that is to make you feel better. Because really, I think people who eat sugar are the crazy ones. I am simply deviating from the norm. But what about the norm is sane in this situation? I especially think people who don’t have any idea what they are eating are the crazy ones. If you are eating, and feeding your family, prepackaged, highly processed foods daily, which are generally packed with added sugars, or things that immediately turn into sugar in your body, I think that’s pretty insane.

Here’s a question: What exactly do you think you are getting from sugar?

Joy? Fun? The ability to blend in with society and not make waves? That warm, fuzzy feeling? (P.S. That fuzzy feeling is called being high…) Nourishment? I am pretty sure you know that you are not getting nourishment. Even people who believe a calorie is a calorie think that sugar is, at the very least, devoid of nourishment.

I am not in a position to have a piece of cake occasionally because I am an addict. I have an unnatural reaction to sugar, grains, and starch. When I put the stuff in my body, I set up a craving for more. But if you, and I know there are a lot of you out there, mostly eat real, whole foods, especially fruits and vegetables, and occasionally have a piece of cake, or a candy bar, or a can of soda, I get it. I am not talking about you. I am sure it’s fun, like someone who is not an alcoholic having a drink occasionally. But it’s not generally those people who act like I’m some weirdo, or some martyr. Those people totally get it. They think that I am a champion. It’s the junkies who think I’m a lunatic.

I promise that I have more peace, joy, fun, and general contentment because I don’t eat sugar, not in spite of it. And I don’t even mean more of those things than I had before, though that too. I mean more of those things than sugar eaters. So don’t feel sorry for me. And if you do, you can feel free to keep it to yourself. And if you can’t manage that, then when I simper at you and tell you how I know that what I do is so extreme, you can feel free to realize that in my head, I’m pitying you more than you are pitying me.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , ,
01 Jul 2017

F*ck Karl Lagerfeld

This week I kind of freaked myself out. I was looking in the mirror, which I do all the time because I am particularly vain, and I was thinking that I look really beautiful. Again, this is not that far fetched for me. Body dysmorphia aside, I think I’m pretty hot much of the time. And then the next day, a friend whom I had seen on a video conference told me that I was looking really beautiful. But then I realized why I, and perhaps others, may have been thinking I was so beautiful. It’s because I am particularly thin right now. And that made me uncomfortable.

So I did something I almost never do. I asked my husband. You should have seen the look on his face. You’d think that Admiral Ackbar just snuck up behind him and yelled, “It’s a trap!”

Of course, it wasn’t a trap. But he was wise to tread cautiously. Obviously weight and size are loaded in this society in general, especially for women, and super extra especially for me. And my husband had to live through my most debilitating body dysmorphic episode ever after I quit smoking and gained 30 pounds, even with my food boundaries firmly intact. He knows first hand that nothing can reduce me to tears (and insanity) as quickly as some unwelcome belief about my weight, real or imagined.

He told me very clearly that he actively avoids looking at my size. That he knows no good can come of it. And that ultimately, it really doesn’t matter to him.

And if my obsession with my weight and body were, as I truly believed for basically all 35 of my single years, about being attractive to men, especially the one I am in love with, then this post would be done. But it’s not, and it’s not.

The truth is that I have mixed feelings. I do like what I see in the mirror, whether I have been conditioned to think so or not. And obviously, I am not the only one, if a friend was seeing and saying the same thing that I was. And I truly hated being fat, whether that was also conditioning or not.

Wallis Simpson is credited with saying that a woman “can never be too rich or too thin.” But she said this before the 1970s and 80s, which is when cases of eating disorders began to escalate. (It is worth noting I think, that this is also when cases of obesity began to escalate.)

Now we know that a woman can, indeed, be too thin. A person can starve themself to death. Vital organs can shut down. Perhaps Wallis Simpson couldn’t imagine a world where a girl would have a heart attack in her teens because her desire to be ever thinner led to the weakening of all of her muscles, including the ones to keep her alive. Perhaps she had too much faith in a human’s survival instinct. (I have opinions about whether it is possible to be too rich as well, but as this is an eating disorder blog, I will keep those to myself.)

But on the other side, I think that there are reasons that being thin, or at least not being fat, is considered attractive. I mean that I don’t think it’s entirely about societal conditioning; I think there are also evolutionary reasons.

My dad sent me an interesting podcast a few weeks ago. In it, Gary Taubes, who wrote a book called “The Case Against Sugar,” talks about how he believes that there is a fundamental flaw in the way the health and medical community views weight. (I feel the need to note that Taubes clearly states that he is making a case, but that there have not been clinical trials and scientific studies that have proven this idea. He is simply making an argument, and he would like to see this idea studied. I will also say that in my very much not scientific, but particularly personal experience, I think he is on the right track.) He says that we talk about obesity and weight in terms of a balance of energy – calories in must be equal to calories out – but that what the calorie comes from doesn’t matter. He argues that, in fact, what we eat matters because foods have chemical and hormonal impacts. In this podcast he said something that really struck me: “People don’t …accumulate 100 pounds of excess fat because they eat too much, they do it because their body is telling them to accumulate fat. And that’s going to be a hormonal, enzymatic problem.”

I happen to think that over millions of years of evolution, we humans “understand” various things subconsciously. Not in thoughts and words, but in basic “gut” reactions. And I think it is possible that humans find fat less attractive because it indicates some form of ill health, some problem with the functioning of our hormones/chemicals/biology.

I know (rationally) that I was not fat because I was lazy, stupid, greedy, or shameful. I did not want to be fat. I wanted to be able to stop eating. I went to nutritionists and did workout tapes. (Yes, I said “tapes.” That’s how old I am.) I joined programs with weekly motivation classes and pre-packaged food plans so you didn’t have to think for yourself about what to eat. I worked my ass off to work my ass off and it never did go anywhere. I could not manage to not be fat.

And while I limit the amount of food I eat now, I still eat a lot. Pounds and pounds every day. Including full-fat greek yogurt, whole milk, pork rinds, bacon, and sausage. But I am not eating most sugars (except for some natural sugars in the form of some whole fruits and vegetables) or things that turn into sugar, like grains, starch, and other carbohydrates. And the elimination of those foods has meant that for the past 11+ years, I have never been fat again. And I think that chances are good that eating sugar was always the culprit; sugar was signaling to my body to store fat.

But if it were only a matter of a healthy, properly functioning body, versus an improperly functioning body, then I wouldn’t be so freaked out about the fact that I like being thin. I’m freaked out because we have taken “thin” too far. And I am afraid that I will mix up what I am constantly told I “should” look like, with what I look like when I am in a healthy, properly functioning body.

From the 50s through the 80s, famous beauties generally had a BMI of somewhere between 17-20.5, while the average American woman had a BMI between 23-25. As a young adult, I had a BMI of about 45. (Yes, I know that BMI is a flawed system, but it is a “standardized” system, so it is helpful in illustrating my point.) So when I was growing up, the real knockouts were somewhere between a modern size 2 and 6. Today, a model who is a size 6 is considered “plus size.” So a woman with a BMI of 20.5 is considered fat by today’s (fashion industry) standards, while the average American woman currently has a BMI of 27.6 and is a size 14.

My point is that I don’t want to get caught up in liking or not liking my body based on a fundamentally flawed definition of acceptable weight made up by an industry that makes it’s money by telling women that they are lacking. I don’t need Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, or Mark Jacobs to tell me that my healthy, strong, fully functional body is not pretty enough, because clothes “look better” on a girl who is about to experience renal failure. (Seriously, f**k them.)

But mostly I am afraid that I will get brainwashed by them. You see, I don’t want to listen to them; I don’t want to come to believe them; I don’t want to let them in my head. And I am afraid that if, when I look in the mirror, I like my thin self better than my less thin self, I will make myself sick physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s not that I don’t want to like what I look like, I just want liking what I look like to not be so tied up in weight. I want to be able to be happy that I am thin. I have changed my entire life so that I could be happy in my body. But I also don’t want to have to take it that seriously. Perhaps ultimately I should think about my weight the way my husband thinks about my weight, which is to say, not at all. But for a girl with a lifetime of food and body issues, perhaps that’s asking too much…

 

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
24 Jun 2017
1 Comment

Life is experiences, and some of them are crappy.

This week I got, not one, but two (two!!!) cold sores. I think that if, by chance, there is an afterlife, and if, by chance, I end up in hell, my punishment must be eternal cold sores. I cannot think of another thing that torments me as much or makes me act as crazy. (Except perhaps my body dysmorphia…) From the compulsive hand washing, to my fear of going out in the sun and heat in case that exacerbates it, to my total lack of desire to eat my delicious food because my face and mouth hurt, to the general obsessive focusing on it, I really feel like I am going a little insane.

I bring this up for two reasons. 1) Because it is all I have been able to think about this week. They have totally hijacked my brain. And 2) because I think it’s important to talk about the bad stuff when there’s bad stuff. I know I have mentioned it before, but there is something particularly troubling for me about the way we portray ourselves on the internet, especially in regards to social media.

Most of us want to appear to have it all together, whether or not we’re floundering. Social media is a great way to “show” that, because we are in control of the information that gets out. And we’ve become masters of “framing.” I don’t have to talk about my cold sores. But if I did, how I tell you could make all the difference in how you see me. If I whine about them, I look like I don’t have my shit together. But instead, I could say that I have two cold sores and am keeping out of the sun, but I am grateful for the extra time I have gotten to spend writing.

But that’s a lie. I won’t say that I am sorry to have spent extra time writing every day, but I am still miserable. I miss the sun. I miss kissing my husband. I miss not thinking constantly about if my hand has been anywhere near my mouth and what I need to disinfect.

The truth is that I live a very happy life. I am generally peaceful, content, joyful, grateful, and gratified. Giving up sugar and learning how to make and keep commitments to myself has given me the kind of satisfying existence that I did not think was possible 12 years ago. And I like writing this blog in a way that expresses my joy and gratitude. I want to show my positive attitude. Because I usually have a positive attitude. I want to inspire positivity in those who are struggling. I want the person who is still suffering from food addiction to know that there is hope.

But it would be misleading to make it seem like my good attitude is infinite and unending. It’s not. And right now I am kind of miserable. And a little cranky. And feeling sorry for myself.

Being miserable is not the end of the world. This too shall pass, like everything else, good and bad. But having my food under control does not save me from all pain, or from the parts of life that just plain suck. And what’s more, these cold sores are a circumstance, not even a personal failure or a mistake. Having my eating under control doesn’t save me from those either.

If there is a bright side to this whiny post, it’s that getting my eating under control taught me not to take my life so seriously, not to take my pain so personally, or my joy and success either. Perhaps my favorite teaching about how to deal with life is this: It’s all just experiences.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , ,
17 Jun 2017
2 Comments

The bare minimum, but like you mean it…

I was talking to some people the other day about making changes. I am talking about the kind of changes that alter the course of your life. In my experience, there is a human tendency to get inspired, and decide to jump head first into change. And then, when change gets difficult, which it inevitably does, to give up.

Sometimes, when I am helping someone give up sugar and put boundaries around their food, they will tell me that they have a laundry list of things they want to quit. They want to quit sugar, and smoking, and caffeine, and chewing gum, and diet soda, and artificial sweetener, and watching more than an hour of TV, and playing video games, and Facebook, and…

I always tell these people that they can do that if they really want to, but that I don’t recommend it. I think you should take on one thing. Especially if it’s one thing that takes a lot of time and energy, like quitting sugar. I believe that first you take care of the thing that is killing you quickest.

As an illustration, I was a smoker for over six years after I quit sugar. I am going to be blunt. It helped. I needed it. I could even say it saved me. Coffee and cigarettes were like a kind of religion for me at that time. Of course, I was already a smoker and coffee drinker. I didn’t start smoking to stop eating, though I went from a cup or two of coffee a day to drinking it from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed, often drinking 15 cups a day. But again, I needed it. Coffee wasn’t going to kill me before the food was. Cigarettes weren’t going to kill me before the food was either. I am suggesting that “killing you quickest” doesn’t necessarily have to mean physically. Smoking may be more likely to kill you younger statistically, but not being able to stop eating was killing me physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. It was killing my self-love, my self-respect, and my feelings of self-worth. Eating was more than just slow-motion suicide. It was fuel for the fire of my self-loathing.

I am glad I didn’t try give up coffee and cigarettes at the same time that I put boundaries around my eating. It would only have been in the name of chasing after perfection. And I can tell you pretty assuredly, that I wouldn’t have succeeded. And then where would I be? Still eating, still smoking, and felling like a failure, who was cursed to be fat and food obsessed forever.

The excitement of change doesn’t last long. Ask any gym patron who goes year-round. On January 15th, everyone is at the gym, excited to make a change. On February 15th, they are excited that Valentine’s Day chocolate is half off.

Perfection, or at least the quest for it, has always been my enemy. I never pull it off, and whatever I do achieve is not good enough, because the goal was perfection. But when I do one thing, and I do it with purpose, commitment, integrity, and love, even when it’s hard, even when it sucks, even when I don’t want to, I see results. I make a change that sticks. And once I have made that change, and it has stuck, it is no longer the thing that is killing me quickest. Now there is something else to deal with, slowly, honestly, purposefully.

For me, that is how things get done. And this is from a low-functioning addict, someone who didn’t get a lot done for most of her life. So screw perfection. I recommend the bare minimum, but every day, like you mean it.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , ,
10 Jun 2017
2 Comments

More reasons to kiss the cook

My husband told me in no uncertain terms this week that he wants his props. And, in truth, he deserves them.

The most important thing in my life is keeping my food boundaries. This might sound strange, I know. The idea that my food boundaries would be more important than the people I love or my life’s ambitions sounds rather pathetic from the outside. I am aware. But let me offer a translation. The most important thing in my life is taking care of myself in a loving and responsible manner so that I can be present and available for my relationships and life goals. There’s that age-old idea that you cannot really love someone else until you love yourself. That, exactly, is why I keep my eating boundaries as my first priority.

When my husband and I first started dating, he wanted to cook for me. But all of the things that he was good at making were based on carbohydrates: homemade sauce for pasta or lasagna, rice-stuffed peppers, tacos. And to make it extra especially difficult, about 7 years ago, years before we were together, I realized that high-alkali foods, like tomatoes and peppers, were the reason for my cystic acne. So, I gave them up. I had basically eliminated any option for him to cook for me.

For a couple of years now, I have been fooling around with the idea of introducing a little bit of tomato product back into my diet, just for a change of pace. It seems that people who have a reaction to high-alkali foods mostly have a problem with raw foods, rather than cooked. And a friend of ours recently recommended a recipe for barbecue ribs that included a dry rub, steaming them in the oven over a pan of root beer, and then slathering them with barbecue sauce.

I figured it would be worth a shot, because that sounded freaking amazing! If I broke out, I would know that I really can’t have any tomatoes or peppers, and just wouldn’t eat them anymore.

Now, even if I wanted to try adding a little tomato-something to my usual fare, I still have to have one that fits my sugar requirements. Same for any seasoning. So instead of searching and searching for a ready-made dry rub and bottled barbecue sauce that met my needs, he made them himself. Not only that, but he let me look through the ingredients and make sure they, were acceptable, and substituted things that were not. For example, we steamed the ribs over diet root beer, replaced the Worcestershire sauce with my soy sauce alternative, and used artificial sweetener instead of brown sugar.

And Oh. My. God! They were so good! And, even better, they were so good and I didn’t break out!

The thing about keeping my boundaries is that, when I take it seriously, and when I am responsible for keeping them on the highest level, my husband takes it seriously too. He honors it, because I honor it. I lead the way, and he follows. But he could only follow because I lead the way. What he did for me was an act of love. And because it was especially for me, it made me feel particularly loved.

When I gave up sugar, one of the things I had to do was get over the fact that some people whom I loved and who loved me, were used to showing me love through foods I didn’t eat anymore, and now they couldn’t. And I had to learn how to show love to those people, and to show them that I got their love, without eating those things. I had to be grateful, without harming myself to show it. So there is something particularly heart-warming for me about my husband going out of his way to make me food I can eat on my own terms. So I am grateful. And excited! And positively quivering in anticipation of the possibility of pulled pork! Woot!

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , ,
03 Jun 2017
1 Comment

It could be worse. I could *look* 40.

This coming Tuesday will be my 40th birthday. And I am pretty excited about it, quite frankly.

I am not afraid of aging. I have written about this before, I know. I think that part of the reason I am not afraid of aging is that with my food under control, I am aging particularly well. I may be in the best shape of my life right now. And I don’t show a lot of the visible signs of getting older, though I do have a lot of gray hair. No seriously, a lot for 40. But it’s more white and silver than gray gray, so even that isn’t too bad.

And I don’t want to imply that I’m not experiencing the normal wear and tear that a 40-year-old experiences. My knees crack, and sometimes one or the other of my ankles is sore or wobbly for the first few minutes of my morning jog, and that’s with knee and ankle braces. And when I sit up after doing my crunches, I can hear and feel my back crack.

But at 16 I was morbidly obese. I had difficulty walking, let alone running. I was easily exhausted. I feared stairs the way people fear public speaking, though I had to face stairs daily, while, unless it’s your job, most people don’t have to speak in front of crowds very often.

But it’s not all about being thin either. It’s not just physical ease vs. discomfort. I look great, I feel great, I am generally happy, and content, and I believe that has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t poison myself with sugar.

The average American eats about 94 grams, or 350 calories, of added sugar in a day. That’s over 75 pounds of sugar in a year. And that is the average, not the extreme. For reference, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends about 25 grams a day for an average adult. So average Americans are eating almost four times the recommended amount of sugar. Every single day.

Now, I am not the food police. I don’t care if you choose to eat sugar. But as time goes by, science and medicine show more and more evidence that sugar is a drug, and that it affects us, not just physically (as in our weight), but also hormonally, and neurologically. I know it’s poison to me because I am addicted to it. But even if you are not addicted to sugar, it is becoming clear that it is still dangerous. And like all drugs, it has side effects.

I think a lot of my general beauty and good health has to do with the fact that I am not putting that particular poison into my body. The result is that I have glowing skin, bright eyes, healthy hair, and a strong body. I also exercise, am well rested, and I drink lots of water every day, and that’s all possible for me because I don’t eat sugar, grains, or starches.

I don’t use sugar as fuel. I don’t crash mid-morning because my breakfast was carbs with a side of sugar, so I need another fix. I sleep 8 hours a night because I am not hopped up on sugar late into the evening. I am hydrated because I don’t need to drink sugar to get me through the day, one little fix at a time, and instead I can manage get my water in. (Don’t get me wrong, I still drink coffee and zero calorie diet drinks. I just drink my water too.) I am not anxious, irritable, or moody because I need a hit.

Yes, not being high on sugar helps me make better choices when it comes to taking care of myself. It always made me lethargic and lazy. It made me comfortable enough in the moment to not think far enough ahead to take care of my health and my life.

But seriously, I strongly believe that look as good as I do (and seriously, I look pretty damn good), not just because I exercise and drink water, but because I am not constantly pumping poison into my body. In general, drugs age a person. You can find a million before and after shots on the internet showing their effects. If you hear the word junkie, there is an image that pops into your mind, and it’s probably not one of shiny hair and a big smile with a full mouth of teeth.

So I am grateful to feel so beautiful on the eve of a big birthday. And I believe that, more than any other reason, I owe that feeling to keeping sugar out of my body.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , ,

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →