onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Life”

25 Jul 2015

Principles before Personalities 

“Principles before personalities” is a 12-step concept. The idea being that you don’t have to like everyone, but you have to support everyone on their journey to stay sober, even the people who have really irritating personalities.  I try to practice this in all areas of my life. For me, it’s not just about sobriety. It’s about humans getting through life surrounded by one another. We have to deal with each other every single day. My principles include being part of the solution, minding my own business, helping when I am asked and can provide help, and keeping my integrity in tact. I want to do this regardless of the person I am dealing with.

But now I am working in a grocery store, constantly surrounded by customers, and coworkers. And seriously, people make that shit hard! 

No, no. I am exaggerating. I find that most people rank on the scale somewhere between awesome and harmless. But then there are the ones who fall on the spectrum between manipulative (that pathetic manipulation in order to save their own asses) and down right malicious. And that is hard for me.

Perhaps the hardest part is that I was once that kind of person. When I was actively in my sugar/food addiction, I often tried to manipulate people and situations to save myself. And when I got angry, I became cruel. I didn’t have a means of expressing my feelings. I didn’t know I even had feelings. I was numbing them with cake. And being angry felt like enough justification to harm others. I was in pain, so you were going to be in pain too.

Now that I have my eating disorders under control, I can deal with people who are hurt or angry or feel treated unfairly. I can apologize for a bad experience, even if it’s not specifically my fault. And even when it is. I can empathize with people in pain, and I can make it better. 

But getting attacked is not easy for me. I am the same sensitive person I was at 5 years old, under the covers in the night, praying that life would get less painful, because I didn’t think I would be able to do it if it didn’t get easier. And people do attack. Sometimes with a smile, or a smirk, as if it were a joke. Sometimes with a snarl like a wild animal. 

I want to say, You’re at a high end grocery store in a first world country where you can afford to buy meat for $25/lb. Or, You have a union job in a nice suburb. Why do you need to be so malicious, obnoxious, or cruel? Why do you need to hurt someone else?

But, like I said. I was like that too. Until I learned another principle when I got sober from sugar. Gratitude. I didn’t know how lucky I was when I was eating compulsively. I only looked for the ways I was disappointed. I only saw what I thought was wrong.

So I have to go into work today. I’m grateful that it’s a good job. I’m grateful I’m good at it. I’m grateful I’m appreciated there by my coworkers and management. And I am especially grateful the most people fall somewhere between awesome and harmless. 

As for the rest, I am grateful that I practice the ideal of principles before personalities.

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18 Jul 2015

I prefer flow to puches, but I’ll go or roll, as the situation dictates.

There’s a saying among people who keep the same food boundaries I do. (If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of sayings among the people who keep the same food boundaries that I do.) A day when everything goes my way and I keep my food boundaries is a great day. A day when nothing goes my way and I keep my food boundaries is a miracle.

I have a lot of miracles. It’s a nice feeling. That is not to say that things aren’t going well for me. They are. But so few days are without some sort of hiccup.

One of the things I had to learn early when I stopped eating sugar and eating compulsively was to go with the flow. Or, on a particularly bad day, roll with the punches.

There were things that I didn’t understand before I got sober from sugar. I didn’t know that I was making life harder by fighting what was, instead of accepting it and adjusting myself. I refused to go with the flow, or roll with the punches. I spent almost all of my time either drowning, or getting the crap beaten out of me.

In self-help books and top-whatever-number-habits-of-whatever-kind-of-people essays, there is a lot of talk about planning. Have a goal. Have a plan. I wholeheartedly agree. Having a plan is great. But having a plan is the easy part. There is something else that is often talked about, but harder to do. Having the ability to be flexible when some part (or all) of your plan falls through.

When I was eating compulsively, I felt like “fairness” equaled Life going according to the plan I made. And when it didn’t go that way, I was angry at Life. Because I had zero skills for adapting and adjusting.

And I believed that people who were happy, well adjusted and peaceful were people whose plans always went smoothly. I was fighting the way things were because I thought the way things were “supposed to be” was the way I had planned them.

What I would eventually come to understand was that happy people were people who understood that the way things were was really the way they were “supposed to be.” Happy people didn’t fight what was, in order to get reality to coincide with their plan, but adjusted (or scrapped) their plan to coincide with the reality.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was going to start eating more raw vegetables because it helps me keep a tighter hold on my body-dysmorphia. And I did just that. It was great. I felt great. And then I started working, and the days that I have to eat a meal at work, I only have 15 minutes. I can’t eat a one-pound salad in fifteen minutes. It’s just not physically possible for me. So I have to make smaller, denser meals when I have to eat during a shift.

Now I could fight the reality if I wanted to. I could become resentful of my job because I only get a 15-minute break. I could get resentful of my food boundaries because they are inconvenient, and wonder why I can’t just skip it on the days I work.

Or I could choose the softer option. I can adjust to the situation as it is. I can be grateful that I have boundaries around my food, and that I have a job, and that I can take care of my meals in 15 minutes on workdays by making them smaller and denser. I can go with the flow. And I am grateful to have the clarity to see that eating smaller meals is definitely an example of “going with the flow.” I reserve rolling with the punches for the big life-and-death stuff.

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12 Jul 2015

A parachute for the free fall

Life is always full of changes. But I now have a job where my schedule changes weekly. That is a strange thing. I haven’t had that kind of life since I was in my early twenties as a waitress. Thankfully, my food boundaries don’t change. Nor does my commitment to writing my blog. These things ground me. They make my life simpler. Of course, it can be stressful trying to make it all work. After a week of shifts at my new job, today I am going to my cousin’s wedding. I have to plan and pack my dinner for tonight. I am supposed to meet my mom to get our nails done, and I need to plan lunch around that. And I still needed to get this blog posted since it’s already Sunday. (Okay, obviously I can check the blog post off the list.) 

I’m still getting used to the life that comes with my new job. That newness still has me anxious. But knowing that I won’t change my commitment to my food boundaries, or my blog writing makes me feel safe. 

It’s funny because it all comes down to my own choices. I am not relying on anyone else to make me safe. It is about what actions empower me, and knowingly taking those actions. It is about creating a safe place for myself. 

When I was eating compulsively, I repeatedly took actions and made decisions that created disorder, sabotaged my peace and my integrity, and generally made my life scary and unsettling.

By doing what it takes to keep boundaries around my eating, and make time to write about my eating disorders, I have a permanent parachute, for when everything else in my life is in free fall.

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05 Jul 2015

One of those times history did not repeat itself. Maybe because I didn’t backtrack.

I had my first day at my new job yesterday. It went really well. I think I will be just fine at it.
I only get a 15 minute break per shift, so that means packing the smallest possible meal when I have to work through a meal time. But it’s manageable. 

I had a handful of rough days worrying. First about meals. Now that I have the experience of having eaten one meal in my 15 minute break, it seems like a non-issue. But mostly I had been worried about scheduling. Or more specifically, asking for what I need in terms of my schedule, from someone I don’t know.

I have a history of working for power-crazy bosses. Not all of them. I have had plenty of kind, considerate, honorable employers. But I have also had a lot of bosses who liked to demonstrate their position as the person in charge of my money.

And I historically, I have let them.

I am the person in charge of my money. I always have been. But I lived for many years as if it were not the case. And I was easy to manipulate, because I was a people-pleaser who thought her job was to make the boss happy. I thought that I didn’t deserve money for less than that.

It turns out that all that time, my job was my job. And the boss being happy was not in my control. 

I do my best. I am committed to integrity. But my best isn’t going to make everyone happy. And I need to live with that.

So right, scheduling. I was hired with the understanding that I could not work after 4 pm on Thursdays. But I got my schedule and I was immediately scheduled for Thursday night. And I was so upset.

So the “Good Girl” in me wanted to just accept it and work Thursday night, so that she didn’t have to be humiliated by making requests on her first day. And that fear of humiliation made me angry. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was even more anxious than usual.

And there is another part of it. I spent most of my life alone. And that meant that my choices had limited reach. But now I’m in a relationship. So money is not mine anymore. It’s ours. In the past, if I felt uncomfortable with the way I was being treated in a job, it was my right to walk away. But now walking away from a job would at least require a conversation with my boyfriend. 

But Thankfully, I was at least present enough to know that I didn’t know what was going to happen. (Being sober helps in that way.) I knew enough to know that I needed to take care of this one step at a time and not get ahead of myself. 

So I walked in on my first day and I did my best. I also made my requests. And my boss was great. He told me he never got my availability schedule, so he didn’t know about my Thursday nights. He rescheduled me that day. He even accommodated another request, that I specifically told him was not a necessity, but would be nice since I had planned something before I got the job. In other words, he’s a good boss and also a nice guy.

I was worried and upset because of history. Because I didn’t know what to expect, and I was afraid of getting the worst of what I have gotten before. But it’s also about confronting the worst of myself. The doormat. The Good Girl. The martyr. It’s scary to go head to head with those aspects of my personality. I was that way because I got something out of it. And even though I get more out of being honest and straightforward and taking care of myself, the fear of losing something by not being obliging can still be intense.

But now I have another reference point for self-care, where it worked out perfectly in the end. So it turns out that history does not always repeat itself.

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28 Jun 2015

I don’t want Kevin Bacon making choices for me.

Slow week for eating disorders in my house. How nice is that?

What has been on my mind is letting people make their own decisions. How other people’s decisions might affect me, and yet I still have to let them make them.

For me, autonomy is a gift of having my eating disorders under control. I have mentioned before that I remember when I first intellectually understood that I was responsible for my own life, no matter what happened to me or who did it. It wouldn’t be until after many years of being sober from sugar that I would understand how to implement that knowledge. But I still recall grasping the idea that even if someone were to “blame” for something, they could not be responsible for how it affected my life. Even if they wanted to take responsibility. Even if I wanted to give them the responsibility. 

It’s a free way to live. Scary, but also much more peaceful. Life is scary. Less so when you stare it down, rather than blinking. Or, eating a chocolate cake and passing out in a food coma.

When I got my eating disorders under control, so many people wanted me to do it differently, or not at all. They thought it was extreme to do what I do. Or unhealthy. Or that I was going to miss out on things. Some of them were subtle. Some of them were blatant. But it made a lot of people uncomfortable. And they wanted to make sure I knew it.

When I do something for myself, it makes it easy to do it for others. I don’t know how it works. But because I was willing to ignore other people’s opinions and make my own choices, I am able to let go of making judgments about other people’s choices. Even if they affect me. 

We all affect one another. We are all connected. Life is just a big game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And I don’t want Kevin Bacon, or anyone else for that matter, trying to make my choices for me. 

And I don’t want to make choices for him. Or you. Or the people I love. Or even the people I thoroughly dislike.

The addict in me always wanted to make all the decisions, and pass off the consequences. The addict in me never stopped to wonder if that were even possible. The sober woman I get to be a day at a time, knows that it’s not. Life happens, you accept it, readjust, and move on. Sometimes (usually) the life that happens is rubbing up against another life. Doesn’t matter. Same rules apply.

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21 Jun 2015
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I’m just going to sit here and be anxious 

Living with anxiety is an interesting thing. Sometimes I get anxious because of specific events. But sometimes I just get anxious. Now I just live with it. But I used to eat it. Numb it with sugar.

That made it worse. I didn’t know that at the time. Sugar sure did feel like it was helping. But it really only made every feeling bigger, closer to the surface. Coming down made me edgy and cranky. More raw.
Living with anxiety, as opposed to numbing it, is not so bad. It’s not great. But when I’m sober, it doesn’t matter that I’m anxious. It doesn’t mean anything. Being sober makes it just an experience. Not an omen. Not a sign. Not a truth. It’s just a feeling. Feelings pass.
Even when it’s triggered by something real, it doesn’t have to mean anything.
I will be starting a new job soon. And that’s great. But it makes me anxious. It’s not surprising. Any kind of Change does it. Especially one where I have to prove my merit.
But I like myself. I know that I am an asset. And when it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what happens. Whatever it is will be the right thing. So maybe I’m a little tense, having uncomfortable feelings. I’m just grateful that I can be still and let it be. 

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14 Jun 2015
1 Comment

Egos or I go. (Yes, I am aware of how bad that pun is.)

I had another week of intense feelings. They are still not my favorite. I didn’t want to eat this week.

I ate my meals. Because it’s part of my boundaries. It’s how I roll, if you will. But it was not easy. It was not fun. I did not enjoy it.

As a compulsive eater, it is rare to not want to eat. I usually love every bite of my meals. Sometimes I’m even a little sad when they end. But just like how I feel doesn’t change whether or not I eat more, it doesn’t change whether or not I eat less either.

My boyfriend had some things to point out about me and my behavior this week. He wasn’t wrong. And it was hard to hear.

Look, I know that I write a lot about making changes to myself and being a part of the solution. Yadda yadda yadda. Of course, what I write is true. But for the most part I am writing about it after the fact. After I have already done the hard part. That might make you think that kind of thing is easy for me. Perhaps you are under the impression that I am naturally humble.

I’m not. At all.

I do the things I do because I want things. I want peace. I want to be in a great relationship. I want to be a person I like and respect. I want to sleep easily at night.

But I have an ego. And it really wants to argue. It wants to make excuses. It wants to manipulate and put others on the defensive when it feels threatened.

It is work not follow my ego. It is painful. It is uncomfortable and humiliating. I do it, even though it is not easy, because I want to be happy more than I want to be right. Or seen as right. Admitting I am being a jerk sucks. And I will have to do it again. And again. Until I’m dead. Because I don’t imagine I will ever entirely rid myself of jerkiness.

I only know what I want because I have my eating disorders under control. Because I am sober from sugar. Because I eat my committed meals, whether I want to or not. I only have the ability to keep my ego in check because of this. I can only look at myself honestly, as painful as it may be, because of this. And I can only change myself because of this.

Putting boundaries around my food took a specific kind of honesty. And keeping my integrity around my food requires me to bring that honesty to all areas of my life.

For a long time, I ate compulsively, and it fed my ego. Here is the irony. It is my vanity that has me check my ego. It is my desire to be, and be seen as, my authentic self, that allowed me to put my ego in its place.

There is a saying (you know how I love my sayings): You can’t save your face and your ass at the same time. My face is always just fine. It’s my ass that sometimes needs saving.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , ,
07 Jun 2015
3 Comments

It turns out you won’t bleed to death from wounded pride.

For most of my life I ate my feelings. I do not recommend this. It didn’t work particularly well. I could only stuff them down so long before they burst out in unhealthy, unseemly, and uncontrollable ways. But more importantly, eating, instead of feeling my feelings, kept me stuck. In ways I didn’t really understand until I stopped eating and started feeling.

Now, I don’t really have any alternative to felling my feelings. The escape mechanisms I have, and use, are tame. Healthy. I read books. I watch movies. I crochet. In moderation (sort of.) I still manage to get stuff done. I am not paralyzed. Nor am I too high to care about my commitments or my integrity.

I am having a lot of feelings lately. Difficult feelings. The worst kind. I have a lot of shame and humiliation popping up.

I still don’t have a job. And it is hard for me to find peace around it. I have applied to a bunch of places, and I have had almost no response. That is beginning to affect my self-esteem. I know that I am not only a capable employee, but a desirable one. I have a fantastic work ethic, and the highest level of trustworthiness. Not to mention the fact that I am highly intelligent, a quick learner, and experienced in a wide variety of fields. When I think of myself as a worker, I can see that I am a catch.

I had this experience as a woman before I ended up with my boyfriend. I knew that I was the kind of person I wanted to be. And that I was the kind of person I wanted to be with. I had done a lot of work on myself to get to that point. And I knew that I wanted to be the kind of person who would continue to grow and get better. So why was I still single? I started to wonder if I was wrong about myself. If there was actually something wrong with me.

Of course, now when I look back on it, I can see that I could never have imagined how happy I would be with my boyfriend. I hated waiting when I didn’t understand that what was coming was worth the wait. I want to trust that the same applies to me and getting a job.

And there is something else that I really don’t want to talk about. But I am going to. Because this blog has taught me that keeping secrets only makes me more ashamed. Telling the truth, ugly or embarrassing as it may be, is the best way to get those painful feelings out. It is the opposite of eating them. It is the step after feeling my feelings. It gets me unstuck.

I have been applying for jobs on the internet as well as in person. And I was offered a job the other day. But it was not a real job. It was a scam.

First, let me assure you that I realized what was happening before I did anything that put myself at risk. And I turned over all of the information that I had, and all of my correspondence, to people who have launched an investigation with the FBI. The only harm was to my pride.

But that is a pretty big wound. I have a lot of pride, not only in my intelligence, but also in my savvy. I lived in New York City for almost fifteen years. I like to think that I can smell a rat a mile off. And I was tricked. And I am deeply ashamed of that.

I will tell you that I cried quite a bit over this, and then talked about it with friends and people I trust. I have come to the conclusion that my pride is not doing me any good in this situation. This experience doesn’t mean anything about me, what I deserve, or who I am.

I had to feel my shame because I refused to eat it. And it didn’t kill me. More importantly, it wasn’t that bad. I used to eat my feelings because I was afraid of them. But the fear of them is so much worse than the reality of them. And stuffing them down only allowed me to stay afraid. Telling the truth, shame and all, gives me freedom. I get to move forward without being shackled by my embarrassment.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , ,
30 May 2015

It’s not the salad, so much as the principle…

I have been eating a lot more raw vegetables for several weeks. I have been having big salads at least once, and often twice a day. Colorful, delicious arugula salads with radishes, onion, mushrooms, bean sprouts, cucumber, and a handful of steamed broccoli and canned artichoke hearts.

I haven’t generally thought much about raw versus cooked vegetables, but I have noticed that my body dysmorphia is in what seems to be a dormant phase. And it makes me wonder if the two are connected.

I eat my vegetables every day. I have done so for over 9 years. I have been regularly consuming fresh produce like Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, carrots, onions, bok choi, Swiss chard, cabbage and green beans. Mostly roasted or sautéed. But since I have started eating so much salad, I have been feeling significantly calmer about what I look like.

And I have not lost weight. That’s what makes it interesting.

I have questions about why. Is it chemical, and physiological? Is it all psychological? Is it a combination? Or is the whole thing just coincidence? Am I just in a good phase regarding my body image issues?

There is a part of me that wants to say that it doesn’t matter if the two are connected. What matters is that I am mostly well now. But ultimately, it does matter. It is the difference between peace and torment. And I need to admit that I do not believe it is a coincidence. But I don’t want to, because I love eating lots of cooked vegetables. And if I admit that is having an effect on my mood or my happiness, it means I will have to moderate how much of my food is cooked.

I am a compulsive eater. I might have my eating under control, but I will never be neutral around food. If I ever had the ability to be indifferent, that ship has sailed. And then it sank. I like my food, and I like it decadent.

It’s not that my big salads are not delicious. They are wonderful. I love every bite. But I can often forget how much I will enjoy them when I am not in the actual process of eating one. There is a kind of mental block I have around salad. And I know that I am not the only one. I have talked about this with lots of other people.

And there is that part of me that doesn’t want any more limits. Whenever I think it might be time to make a change, my first reaction is always to be a crybaby-whiner. But I already gave up sugar and grains, and I quit smoking, and I limit my coffee, and severely limit my diet soda. Don’t take anything else away from me! I mean, they are just sautéed Brussels sprouts? Can you really find fault with Brussels sprouts? Seriously?! (Can you hear the whining?)

The first thing I have to remember is that moderation does not have to mean The End. I do not have to give up my Brussels sprouts forever and always. I can limit them to, say, three or four times a week. But the more important thing I have to remember is that I don’t have to do anything. It’s one of my Jedi Mind Tricks. It takes away a lot of my initial instinct to rebel when I remind myself that I’m a big girl who lives her own life and makes her own decisions. If I want to fight and make a fuss, I can eat cooked vegetables every day on principle. Who is going to stop me? But just like every other action I take, I will reap what I sow. There is no escaping that.

In the end, I always want the gifts. If limiting my cooked vegetables means more days of peace and sanity, I will choose that. It’s how I roll. But I don’t always choose that first. Sometimes I take longer to get out of my own way than others. But ultimately, I want what I want. And I have learned over the years that I want sustainable happiness more than I want instant gratification.

I am still interested in the ways you take care of yourself and the gifts you get from not harming yourself with food. Use the hashtag #betterthanchocolate and share your experiences. I want to hear from you!

Also, follow me on twitter @onceafatgirl5.

And please feel free to follow, share and repost my blog!

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24 May 2015
2 Comments

Hashtag! You’re it. #Betterthanchocolate

This week, I took my Twitter app out of a folder of apps I never use. I decided it was time to use it. I always post Onceafatgirl there. But honestly, I have it set up so that WordPress does that for me. All I have to do is hit “publish,” and each post goes out to my social networking sites. Easy-peasy, as the kids say.

But now I have decided I wanted to use Twitter to hone my comedy writing skills. And I don’t know what has shifted, but I am suddenly not afraid of it anymore.

When I started writing Onceafatgirl, a friend told me to get on Twitter, and start using hashtags to grow my audience. It was good advice. I did it, but I didn’t do a very good job. And then I gave up. I wasn’t ready. Partly because I didn’t have an audience in the beginning and I didn’t know who they would eventually be. I didn’t know what this blog would end up being. I didn’t know that I actually wanted to hit the blogosphere big time. Really, I just wanted to share my story. But also, and importantly, I didn’t understand Twitter. And that made me fear it.

I didn’t want to feel foolish. Or worse. People on the interwebs can be vicious. Especially when they don’t have to look you in the eye while they tear you down, beat you up, and bully you. And this is a brutally honest blog. Brutal for me. It can be intense to admit some of the things I think and say and do to a group of friends and strangers. It is a deeply personal look at myself. Stretch marks and all.

But I am feeling better about Twitter. I have been tweeting this week, and it has been a confidence-boosting experience.

One of the things I really came to appreciate when I got my eating under control, is that boundaries are a fantastic catalyst for creativity. I put some serious rules around my food choices and portions, and ended up with more enjoyable meals than when I could eat whatever, whenever, wherever. 140 characters is an exciting limitation in the same way. I have loved being forced into brevity. It is a delicious exercise in how to put the entire context of a joke into the joke itself. It is an invaluable lesson in editing for a particularly wordy person, like me.

But I want to try something else too. Because this is a very personal blog, I have been protective of myself. I love the feedback I receive, but I am not sure how much I should do about it. I have noticed that I haven’t responded to any comments on any posts for a long time. I have felt uncomfortable with the idea of constantly saying, “Thank you. That means a lot to me.” It’s not a lie. It does mean a lot to me, but it is starting to feel hollow after 3 years.

So I have registered a hashtag. #Betterthanchocolate

Peace is #Betterthanchocolate is the tagline of this blog. For me, it’s about the gifts that I got when I started taking care of myself and stopped hurting myself with food.

Now I want to know what you think. And not just me hearing from you. I want to create this conversation.

If you are a sugar addict like me who has given up sugar, let me know the gifts you get every day that are #Betterthanchocolate. Here are some of mine:

Not being afraid of a flight (or 6) of stairs is #Betterthanchocolate

Dancing the night away without wanting to die is #Betterthanchocolate

Having shoelaces not be an issue is #Betterthanchocolate

But even if you are not a recovering sugar addict, let me know the gifts you get from taking care of yourself that are more important to you than eating. Or the things you love to do that are #Betterthanchocolate.

You get the idea. Let me hear from you! Let you hear from you! You can post them on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or wherever you are using hashtags.

And if you want, follow me on Twitter @onceafatgirl5

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