onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Life”

02 Jun 2012

I have to grow up? Again?!?!

Basically, I have 3 vices left. Sunbathing (in the natural sun), artificial sweetener, and cigarettes. And for my birthday, I’m going to quit smoking. Because 35 seems like a good age to grow the eff up.

I started smoking pretty young. By 16 I was a full-on smoker. I quit once before, when I was in my late 20s. For a year and a half. But I quit while I was eating compulsively, and about a year later, got control of my eating. My first Halloween with my food under control was when I started again. That was six years ago. I don’t think I expected to go back to being a smoker. I think I thought I would stop smoking again the next day. Or I wasn’t thinking about the consequences at all. But everyone was drinking and eating, and I couldn’t do those things. And it was a party, and I wanted to feel like I wasn’t missing out. So I had that first cigarette that night, and it took the edge off. The food edge. The urge to eat edge. And I never stopped.

I did a lot of things to take the edge off the food cravings in the beginning. Diet soda, coffee, tea, sugarless gum. Cigarettes. Anything I could put in my mouth that wasn’t food. And it helped. It got me through. And I still do that. Besides smoking, I drink herbal drinks with artificial sweetener all day long.

But in my life, I have learned how to give things up. I gave up sugar, of course. Grains and starches and alcohol as well, because my body reacts to them like sugar, and once I start I can’t stop. Then I stopped eating foods that I loved (like tomatoes and peppers and certain soy products) because they make me break out or give me indigestion. I stopped doing drugs. I stopped drinking diet soda and chewing gum. I stopped drinking caffeine after noon. I stopped staying up all night. (I did that before I stopped drinking caffeine after noon, not because. I could (and did) drink coffee from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep and still get 8 hours a night.) I stopped biting my nails. I stopped watching TV.

And every time I gave something up, I fought it. I have fought growing up at every turn. I was always terrified of what I was going to miss out on. How I was going to suffer. How my life was going to suck because there was something I didn’t have anymore. Because something would be missing.

And every time, I got more life. More peace. More freedom. Every time I grew up, I was grateful that I did.

There is a bit of chatter in my head right now. And I need to name it. I need to tell on myself. It is about fear of losing control of my food. It is about how smoking takes the edge off. And what if I can’t handle the void and I pick up sugar. And I need to acknowledge this as bullshit. I need to say that I don’t need to smoke to keep my food under control. And also, that if I were to renege, and not quit smoking, or to pick up cigarettes again with the excuse of not wanting to eat compulsively, it would still just be an excuse. It would just be bullshit.

And I want to say I have another fear. A fear of gaining weight. Not because of over eating. But because I have heard that smoking speeds up your metabolism. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s true. But I’ve heard it. And the part of me that doesn’t want to quit smoking keeps bringing it up. What if I gain weight? What if I get fat? Better keep smoking and not risk it. But if I keep my food boundaries (which I am committed to doing no matter what, in spite of what I just said above, because that’s just BS anyway…), then rational Kate knows that any weight gain would be negligible. 2 lbs? 5? Not worth considering really. And not worth feeling like I need a crutch to get through my day.

So I need to declare to you that all of this “fear” fidgeting around in my head is actually just me being a whiner and a drama queen. But I don’t stand for whining and drama anymore. So my head makes it seem like a justified fear. Oh no! Oh no! It’s scary! You could lose everything! Cigarettes are holding your life together!

Right…Here’s what’s really underneath all that panic: But look at everything I’ve given up already! Why me? Why do I have to? You can’t make me! I won’t! Poor me…

And I don’t have to. It’s my choice, after all. I’m quitting because I want to. I’m quitting because I’m vain. Because being a smoker is starting to feel pathetic. Because instead of making me feel like a bad-ass, like a super-cool, caution-to-the-wind, it’s-my-life-and-I-do-what-I-want rebel, it’s making me feel like a grown woman who doesn’t have her shit together. (You can say what you like about the health consequences of smoking. But you should know that my health has never moved me to make a positive change in my life. So far, the only thing that has ever been an effective kick in the ass to me is vanity. And that is ok with me. As long as I get there in the end, I don’t worry so much about how I got there…)

So rather than bolster my righteousness, and dig my heels in, and weave a story around how it’s just the way I am, and you can’t stop me, I would rather be happy. And free. And peaceful. I would rather not be a slave.

I’m going to use the patch. I don’t need to be miserable just to prove that I’m strong enough to do it on my own. I don’t need to do it by willpower, which I don’t have much of anyway. I don’t want to be a martyr. I happen to know that only makes me resentful. And that resentment is a short road to me punishing myself. Possibly with more cigarettes. And I don’t deal well with discomfort. Which is ok with me. When confronted with the question “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”, now I always choose happy. Ok, almost always. (Still stuck with this humanity of mine…) So I’ve decided it’s better to be a non-smoker than worry about how I quit.

I’m big into baby steps. I like doing one thing at a time. Gently. Slowly. I find that that’s what works. So maybe someday I’ll start walking around with an oversized sun hat and using stevia, but for right now, quitting cigarettes seems like an appropriate means of continuing my journey into adulthood. And I’ll say, for a girl who didn’t start growing up until she was 28, I’m not doing so bad.
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26 May 2012

What I *don’t* want for my birthday is Botox

My birthday is coming up. I’ll turn 35 the first week in June. And…Yay! I’m really excited! I love my birthday. And I love getting older. No, seriously. My life (and my looks) get better and better the older I get.

For several years now, I have been noticing the people in my life start to freak out about getting older. More and more of them every year.  I can almost understand it. Almost. I mean most of my friends are in their 30s, like me. But it does not escape me that we live in a culture that glorifies youth and shames aging. As if we have any control over it. Like if we were good boys and girls time would stop at 23. (By the way, you could not pay me to be 23 again!)

When I was 30, I was a personal assistant. My boss and I were shopping at a fancy department store, when this woman walked up to me and spread something on the lines around my mouth. It started to burn. As I tried to wipe it off, I demanded, “What is that!?” She said it was a wrinkle reducer. Botox without the injection. Then she asked how old I was. When I said I was 30, she looked surprised. “You look good!” I was appalled! I wanted to yell at her You think I’m in my 20s and you want to give me skin irritant to reduce my wrinkles!?!? Are you out of your effing mind!?!? But I was at work. So I held my tongue.

Shortly after that I had a conversation that had me start to understand why this was a thing. Why so many people didn’t like getting older. And why I didn’t get it. I was dancing with a modern dance company. I was back stage with one of the other dancers. We were about the same age. She sighed and asked, “Remember when you were 16 and your body was perfect and the world was yours?” Of course I laughed. I said, “Um yeah, no. That’s not how my life went.”

That was the first time it had occurred to me that not everybody’s life gets better and better. Because, personally, entering my 30s was the second greatest thing that ever happened to me. (Getting control of my eating was by far the greatest.) I had finally come into my own. I was finally understanding who I was and what I wanted. And I was suddenly capable of getting what I wanted. Emotionally and physically capable. Plus I got hot! Who knew!?!? So this passing comment from a fellow dancer was a wake-up call as to how lucky I was. While I was better at 30 than at 16 (and better looking), most people were having the opposite experience. At least they felt like they were.

And I don’t know if it’s their perception or the reality. Or if their perception is creating the reality. Because I keep getting more beautiful. No, really. I wasn’t just better looking at 30 than 16 because I had been fat and got thin. I was better looking at 33 than 30. I’m better looking at (almost) 35 than 33. And I even asked a friend to make sure I wasn’t crazy. “Am I better looking now than I was when you met me 2 1/2 years ago?” Her reply was “Absolutely!” (And I trust her. She’s not the kind of friend who blows sunshine up your ass.)

So I started to think about why. What is it about my life that makes me get better with age? And I have decided that it’s several things. But, (in case you couldn’t guess) they all come down to getting control of my eating.

First, of course, my body works better. At 16, and probably about 270 lbs (the truth is, I don’t know what I weighed then. Not quite 300 by that point, but not too far off), living in my body was a chore. An exhausting chore. To be thin and beautiful now is an incredible gift. And to be more fit, more agile, and stronger at 35 than 16 makes me feel great about my body. I don’t see all of the things I can’t do (or can’t do as easily) anymore. Everything is easier. Everything feels better. Everything about my body is improved compared to 19 years ago.

Also, I eat really well. Real food. Lots of it. Protein, fruit and vegetables. And lots of fat. Real fat. Butter, olive oil, egg yolks, whole milk, bacon. My body is nourished. Regularly. Not over fed. I’m quite thin. But not under fed, either. I’m not “on a diet”, I have a diet. I eat. I just don’t eat compulsively. And I think that eating well keeps me looking young. Don’t get me wrong. I have laugh lines (that I love) and worry lines (those I could do without) and some gray hair (meh, it doesn’t bother me) but I am regularly told that I look younger than I am. And I’m very open about my age. I earned my age. I’m not about to cheat myself out of even one year!

But there’s something else that I think contributes to me looking young, and it, too, is a direct result of getting control of my eating. I have a sparkle. You can see it in my eyes. I glow. And I think it is a combination of being present, confident, and free. Carefree.

I am present because I don’t live in a sugar fog anymore. I don’t even visit the sugar fog. I’m confident because I love my body. I love my life! Because not eating compulsively allows me to maintain my personal integrity. Keeping control of the food gives me self-respect. And liking and respecting myself makes me feel beautiful.

And my heart is free. I am not a slave to food anymore. Or to self-loathing. Of course, I’m still neurotic. I am a New Yorker after all. I’ve got a lot of chatter in my head. About all of the things that could possibly go wrong in the next moment, or the forseeable future…or the unforeseeable future. But getting a handle on my eating changed the frequency of that chatter. Now it’s like a radio tuned between stations. Sometimes it comes in clearly, but sometimes it’s just scratchy noise in the background. I reclaimed my innocence when I stopped eating compulsively. Or rather, I acquired a whole new innocence. A kind of trust in the benevolence of life and the world. I got peace. So sometimes when people are surprised by my age, I think more than my face and body looking young, it’s that my heart looks young. That my aura looks young. I think they are seeing my freedom.

I was in a lot of pain growing up. I had a very unhappy life. But I think there is something of a gift in having your joy, happiness, confidence and peace work Benjamin Button style. (And beauty! Yes, I’m vain…) When I think about the fact that so many people in my life are sorry for their age, and pining for their youth, I can’t regret that my own youth made aging a blessing. I don’t expect to look young forever. I’m not a fool. But I do expect to grow old gracefully. And to be beautiful for the rest of my life. And I don’t think that’s expecting too much.

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19 May 2012

I need to take this…it’s my calling calling

My life eating compulsively was like an extended childhood. Not in a good way. I didn’t have a particularly enjoyable childhood. What I mean is that I didn’t really start growing up until I got my eating under control. Sugar made it possible for me to let my life slip through the cracks for the first 28 years. That was why I used it. Not because it tasted good. But because it made me not have to feel my overwhelming feelings. That was useful when I was small and too vulnerable to process them. But as I got older, it became a detriment. It inhibited me. It allowed me to be numb enough that I could refuse to look at issues and responsibilities that needed to be dealt with. That I needed to deal with. Until they became emergencies. And then I dealt with them by throwing them into someone else’s lap. Someone who loved me. Usually my mother. But anyone would do.

And the truth is that I would become so incapacitated by the time something positively had to be dealt with, that people would feel sorry for me.  They would feel compelled to help me. Not help. That’s not the word. Because I ask for help now. In a healthy, responsible way. I love help! I am grateful for help. I can accomplish so much with help. But when I was eating compulsively and burying my head in the sand (really more like burying my face in a chocolate cake) other people were assuming responsibility for my failures and ineptitudes. And letting me off the hook without my having to live with the consequences of my actions, or inactions. At the time, this was a relief. Or it seemed like a relief. It wasn’t, really. It fed the thoughts that told me I wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t capable. It reinforced my ideas about my worthlessness. But I didn’t have any other context. Neglecting my life until the looming consequences left me in a state of paralyzed terror, and then having my cookies hauled out of the fire by somebody else, was all I knew. It took the immediate pressure off, but it never made me wise. First, because I was selfish and couldn’t have cared less that someone else was being deprived of something (time, money, resources) for my benefit. And second because I was numb. Getting high on sugar made it possible for me to never feel the impact of my choices. Sugar made it so that I never had to feel anything.

There was a strange paradox to my life when I was eating compulsively. I was simultaneously disgustingly arrogant and pathetically low on self-esteem. I felt totally entitled without feeling like I should have to honor my word or my commitments. Because I “couldn’t”. Because that required being worthwhile and able. Which I “obviously” wasn’t.

When I got a handle on my food, it became a necessity to start dealing with my responsibilities. Not being numb from sugar meant actually feeling the pressure to maintain my integrity. It meant caring about my future. About my reputation. About my relationships. Having clarity made me feel bad about hurting and abusing the people in my life. It made me want to be someone I respected and liked, because feeling like the asshole I was being made me uncomfortable. And there was no more cake to numb the discomfort. And besides, being someone I liked was suddenly an option. And then I discovered that I loved it! It wasn’t just a relief. It was joy.

I am slow. Not intellectually. But personally. I change slowly. I need a lot of time to adapt to new things. I need to sit with things for a long time before I can integrate them into my thinking and actions. Before I can get acclimated to them. What to do in a situation is rarely obvious to me. Maybe this is the result of living in fear and stagnation for the vast majority of my life. But it doesn’t matter why, really. It’s what is so. And I have learned to accept this about myself. I am learning to be patient with myself. To be still and present and listen to my inner voice. With its long silences and pauses. With its string of I-don’t-know-yets. (How ’bout now? Nope, not yet.) I am learning not to rush, or to judge myself. Because when I look back at where I was, (not just at 19 when I weighed 300 lbs, or 7 years ago when I was bulimic and food obsessed, but even 3 years ago, or 1 year ago, or 6 months ago) I can see that I do change. That I am changing. And that it’s ok that it takes years. I have learned that there will never be a “done”. So what’s the rush?

When I started writing this blog, I did it for me. I wanted to let my crazy out. I wanted to get the poison out. I wanted to say, out loud, that there were things about my past and my thinking that kept me living in fear and shame. Even though there was nothing to be afraid or ashamed of anymore. But recently, I’ve found that my inner voice, the one that speaks to me when I’m still and quiet, is telling me it’s time to think bigger. After years of simply dealing with my responsibilities and my integrity, one situation at a time, one moment at a time, it’s telling me that just honoring my word is not enough. It’s important. It’s huge. But it’s not enough. That there’s work for me to do. That this is my work. My story. My learning to honor myself and my body. My life, honest and uncensored. The sad and the joyful and (hopefully) the inspiring, on the page for you. That it’s time to hustle a little. To take some initiative in sharing it with the world. And what’s more, just as my inner voice started telling me it was time to expand my horizons, as if right on cue, life sent opportunities. And help. Information. Advice. Encouragement. Support. Reinforcements. So much love! And right now, you are participating in my work. You are witnessing my calling. So thank you. I am honored. I feel so blessed. I’m so incredibly grateful. I’m scared shitless, by the way…But grateful…

I am not clear yet where this will lead or what it will end up looking like in the future. That’s still another I-don’t-know-yet. But I can be with the I-don’t-know-yet. I can trust it. And honor it. I can listen for the next thing I’m supposed to do. I can wait patiently to find out what that is. But if you’d like to help me share my work, feel free to share this blog. Or follow me on twitter @onceafatgirl5

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12 May 2012

Can I pick my pedestal?

There’s something that I have been thinking about regarding this blog. It has probably become clear to you if you’ve been reading a while, but it’s on my mind, none the less. My blog is called onceafatgirl, and I regularly talk about the fact that I’ve lost 165 or so lbs. And that’s important. But it’s not really the point. For me, it’s not about going from fat to thin, but more about having been fat. And why I was fat. And what being fat meant to me. And what it did to me. And what it was like. And what I had to go through to get my eating under control. And how growing up fat and with food addiction affected my head and my heart and my life. And still does.

Most people consider losing that much weight impressive. People are impressed. It’s not like I hold it against them. But from my point of view, it’s misguided. My weight loss does not particularly impress me.

I am addicted to sugar. The way crack addicts are addicted to crack. When I eat it, my body wants more. It thinks it needs more. It thinks it will die without more. And I also have eating disorders that are about my thinking. Before I got control of my eating, I was obsessed with food. And also my weight and my body. At first, my body obsession was about how horrible it was to be fat. But eventually, after I lost a lot of weight counting calories and working out (which was not control of my eating the way I refer to it now), it was about how to eat and not get fat again. How to eat so that nobody noticed. What to eat and when. And how to get the body and life I wanted without having to give up eating the way I wanted to eat. See, I have never really had a weight problem. Being morbidly obese was just a symptom. It wasn’t like I was lazy and just hadn’t gotten around to getting thin. I had a food problem. I still do. It’s just arrested.

I am very open about my eating disorders, and hence, my weight loss. Not just in this blog, but in my everyday life. I kind of have to be. It comes up a lot. And I am not ashamed of having eating disorders. It’s just the simple truth.

It may not occur to you if you don’t have food issues, but people talk about food constantly. They want to know if I’ve tried that new restaurant. They want to know why I don’t want a free sample of cake. Why I don’t want the piece of chocolate they are offering. They want to wax poetic about what they ate recently. With many adjectives and sound effects. They want to know what I’m eating. (They’re called vegetables. They are a kind of food. I’m eating food.)

Sarcasm aside, it’s really fine with me. I get it. I don’t mind people talking to me about food. I don’t worry about what anybody else is eating. I don’t get offended or upset if people eat in front of me. Or offer me foods I don’t eat. Even if they know about my food boundaries. People forget. It’s second nature for most people to be hospitable with food. I don’t need to make a big stink about saying no. “No thank you” usually suffices. (If it doesn’t, and I get harassed about it, well, yes. That annoys the hell out of me.) But I don’t crave the foods I have stopped eating. I don’t pine, or feel deprived. I have entirely altered the way I see food. It is now either mine, or not mine. If it’s not mine, it’s just not. I keep my eyes on my own plate.

But there is a thing that I’ve noticed because I am so open about my food issues. Most people don’t register that I have food issues. Even if I tell them I do. What they hear is that I overcame a weight problem. It doesn’t occur to them that I was fat because I was eating my own self-hatred. They don’t have any concept of the kind of punishment I was inflicting on myself with food. They cannot fathom that I lost weight because I made a decision to stop abusing myself. And they look at me and see a beautiful, happy woman, and they have no idea that there’s a fat girl who lives in my head who wants me to hate myself again so she can have her cake back. (I am not condemning them. How could they know?)

There is one thing in particular that I hear a lot that makes it clear to me that most people don’t understand. That they think it’s about weight. And in the past tense: “You should be really proud of yourself.”

I am not proud of myself for losing 165 lbs. I am not even proud of myself for getting control of my eating. Not that it was a breeze. Not that it didn’t suck to give up sugar. (No, seriously. It sucked. The withdrawal was excruciating. I sincerely pray that I will never have to do it again.) But being proud is the last thing I need. It implies that it’s done. Whew! Glad that’s over! (Yes. That’s more sarcasm.)

Being proud is a dangerous place for me to hang out. Pride goeth before a fall and all. I can’t afford to start believing I’m too good for my food boundaries. That I don’t need them because I’m special. That I accomplished something great, so I shouldn’t have to be so strict anymore. If I get proud, I might forget that I don’t have any willpower. (That’s not sarcasm, just so you know.) If I get too big for my britches figuratively, I will surely do so literally.

What I really do, every single solitary day, is protect my relationship with food. It is an ongoing, never-ending process. So I am not proud. I am humbled. I am grateful. I am so effing relieved that I don’t have to eat compulsively today, that I do whatever it takes. I do the work. And then I do it again. And again. It is not glamorous. But it is the most important thing I do in a day.

I didn’t get peace in my heart because I got thin. I got thin because I got peace. I didn’t start loving myself because I lost 165 lbs. I lost 165 lbs because I started loving myself. I guess my point in all of this is that if I got to choose what impressed you about me, I would not choose my weight loss. I would choose for you to be impressed by how I learned to honor myself. And how I continue to cultivate that honor every day. How I do the work even though it can be inconvenient. Even though it is not fancy or sexy. Because it gives me a joyful life. That I figured out that I deserve to have a joyful life. That I went from being a girl who was killing herself with food and self-loathing, to being a woman who celebrates herself with love and kindness. At least that is what impresses me about me.

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05 May 2012
1 Comment

My place or yours?

There is a joke that I have heard many times. It makes me cringe with shame every time I hear it. Yes, even now. How are fat girls like mopeds? They’re both fun to ride as long as nobody sees you.

As a fat girl, I always knew my place. There are rules that fat girls live by. We all seem to understand these rules, though they are rarely expressed openly. The general gist is “You are an embarrassment. Take what you are given, be thankful, and don’t expect anything more. You don’t deserve it.” This is a fat girl’s place. A friend of mine refers to it as “taking crumbs.”

The first lesson I remember about knowing my place came when I was 13. I was friends with this guy. He was 14, QB of his HS football team, popular, and really good-looking. I had a big crush on him. We used to hang out a lot that year. We’d sit around his house, or wander the suburban streets. His mom and little brother loved me. I remember going to his games and sitting with them. And then one day, alone in my house, he kissed me. Really kissed me. You know, we made out. I was so shocked and so pleased. I told 3 girls. But they didn’t believe me. Because he was hot and popular, and I was…well…fat. One of them asked him if it were true. He denied it. And there it was. Fun to ride (not quite…I was only 13), as long as nobody sees you. I, of course, still wanted to be his friend. (Apparently I was glutton for all sorts of things!) But he drifted away until his mom sent him out of state to go live with his dad. I thought he stopped talking to me because he was mad at me for telling people and humiliating him. Which, to a 13-year-old fat girl, seemed well within his rights. I was sorry for him. Sorry that I was so fat that he had to hide the fact that he kissed me. Sorry that I wasn’t the kind of girl he could brag about. Or even just tell the truth about.

But when it came down to me, I was not sorry that I had been abused or mistreated. I didn’t blame him for lying at the expense of my feelings and honor. I did not feel outraged that he had denied my humanity. I didn’t see my own humanity. I didn’t think it was worth honoring.

I learned my lesson well. I didn’t kiss anyone else until I was in college. And even then I knew my place. I knew not to tell anyone. I knew not to embarrass any man who was gracious enough to throw me crumbs. I shut my heart down. I was prepared to keep it idle forever. After all, I didn’t like me. I certainly didn’t expect any man to like me either.

When I look back on that experience over 20 years later, I can see that boy differently. I can imagine that his embarrassment about kissing me stemmed from his own insecurity. And I can imagine that he stopped being my friend because he didn’t want to face me after throwing me to the wolves. But his lie seemed so legitimate at the time. I was fat and he was cool.

At 34, I can finally look back at 13-year-old Kate and see that she didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve that. That it was cruel for him to lie at my expense. To make me seem like a liar so that he didn’t have to admit that he had kissed a fat girl. That he was attracted to a fat girl. (Of course I was a liar. Just not about that.)

But when it comes to liking someone, even as a beautiful, sane woman, I still occur to myself as an embarrassment. And while I managed to change the size and shape of my body, my brain still remembers that I have a place, and it reminds me that when I forget my place, I am punished with shame. And there are feelings that accompany those thoughts. Despair and fear and a kind of pathetic resignation toward the futility of loving.

I don’t know how to unthink those thoughts and stop feeling those feelings yet. With regard to love, I don’t know how to see myself as a human being worthy of being honored. I have stopped taking crumbs. Which rational Kate knows is an important first step to being loved. But the fat girl in my head doesn’t know how to accept actual love. She doesn’t see how actual love could be a possibility for her, and subsequently, me. She keeps telling me that I have two options. Crumbs, or eternal loneliness. Which is redundant, really. Because taking crumbs is its own kind of eternal loneliness. Worse than a life alone, it even keeps me separated from myself.

I do not want to be alone forever. I have a ridiculous amount of love to give away. But neglecting my own heart and humanity for a little affection is not a channel for love. Charity begins at home.

I wish that I had loved myself growing up, even though I was fat. I wish I had not spent my life continually putting myself back in the place I was told I belonged at 13. But if I had loved myself then, I wouldn’t have been fat, and I wouldn’t have been put in a fat girl’s place. I ate to numb the self-loathing and disgrace. Self-hatred and food have always been tied together in my life. Or at least as far back as I can remember. I don’t know which came first, the hatred or the eating. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. I cannot change the past with wishes. And today my food is under control, and my body is beautiful. Because I did the work. Because I continue to do it every day.

In order to change what I did with my food, I had to change what I did with my food. It stands to reason that in order to change what I do with my love, I will have to change what I do with my love. I don’t really know how to do that yet. There are things about my life that exist in my blind spot, and I don’t know how to see them. But I guess the first step is knowing that I have a blind spot. And that I want to look at those things I can’t see so I can create something better for myself. So I can change how I see myself, my humanity, and my love. So I can stop living like my place is small, dark, and hidden. I want to start walking in the sunshine. It’s my sun too.

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28 Apr 2012

Looking God in the eye and rememberin​g what’s none of my business, which is almost everything

So a friend read my blog for the first time the other day. He read “How the Kate got her stripes”. The one about my stretch marks. He texted me shortly afterwards and said that reading it made him feel like an intruder in my life. And that made me feel bad. It embarrassed me. I had to ask myself if I have been saying too much. Or too graphically. It made me wonder if I have crossed the line from intimacy to exhibitionism. TMI, if you will. Because making someone feel like an intruder is hardly warm and fuzzy. And it is definitely not the purpose of this blog.

It felt empowering for me to write openly and honestly about my body. It felt good to say that my body is not perfect, and that I love it anyway. It felt like a gift to write that, as beautiful and sexy as I am, I do not look like an underwear model. Because you probably don’t look like an underwear model either. Because as you probably know, if you don’t live under a rock, even underwear models don’t look like underwear models. (Even I know that and I practically do live under a rock. I am pathetically under-informed about most things cultural.)

But hearing from a friend, and maybe more significantly, a man, that this blog gave him an unpleasant feeling, jarred me. I write a blog about living with eating disorders because I want to feel like I’m giving honor to the truth. It is powerful for me because I hope it empowers others. I want to believe that sharing my experiences has some meaning for you, as well as for me.

And maybe it upset me because admitting that my body is flawed, flawed because I abused it, was hard for me. I was already worried that you would judge me. That you would think, “Ew. Gross.” And that “Ew. Gross.” would not be about a body. But about my body. That yucky feeling, that judgment, would be about me.

What I try to remember every day is that what other people think is none of my business. Not even what they think about me. The only thing that is my business is my relationship with God. And my relationship with God is solely based on my personal integrity. I have a phrase for it. Looking God in the eye.

When someone doesn’t like me, or is angry at me, or feels yucky because of me, I try to make a point of knowing why. Being the human that I am, I can, on occasion, be an asshole. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes unwittingly. If someone doesn’t like me because I behaved badly, crossed a boundary, made a mess of things, well then that’s a personal integrity issue. That’s between me and God. And I do my best to clean it up with that person. Because making my wrongs right with someone is actually between me and God as much as it is between me and them.

But plenty of times a person doesn’t like me (or something I did, or my blog) for reasons that have nothing to do with my integrity. And that’s between them and God. (Or them and life, or them and themselves, or however they choose to see it.) Some people don’t like me because I honor my own life first. Some people don’t like me because I’m happy. Some people don’t like my personality or my sense of humor. Some people don’t like me because I have boundaries around my food that I don’t cross for any person, place or thing. (That last one makes me laugh, because if you think you don’t like me with my food under control, you obviously don’t realize what an asshole I would be if I were eating compulsively again.) But I can’t be worried about those people. If I can look God in the eye, I’m golden.

I went back and read “How the Kate got her stripes”. It was honest. It came from a place of love and honor. It was not written to shock. I was not trying to shake you up, or make you uncomfortable. There was no agenda other than healing. If it did shake you up, or make you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. Because I do my best every day to bring love and happiness and peace into the world. But also, if it did, I can’t be responsible for that. That’s not between me and God. And frankly, like almost everything else in the entire world, it’s none of my business. When I ask myself if I can look God in the eye after posting it, I know I can.

So let’s get back to my friend. Because this works both ways, right? All he did was tell me the truth about how my post made him feel. And I didn’t like it. I got scared. I started to worry about the fact that I’m doing something that leaves me open to being judged. (Um…duh, Kate. You’re writing an intimate yet public blog about a divisive issue.) And those worries and fears are not between my friend and God. They are not his responsibility. That stuff is all mine.

Do I want you to like me? Of course I do. Do I want you to like this blog? I can’t even tell you how much. But I have to remember that I don’t write this blog to be liked. I write it because I feel called to tell the truth about my experiences as a woman with eating and body image disorders. And I can’t start catering to individual readers because their reaction made me feel ashamed or embarrassed. I have to keep telling my truth to the best of my ability. Because that’s between me and God too.

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21 Apr 2012

How the Kate got her stripes

Since I told you all about my irrational body image issues in my last post, I decided it’s time to write about my rational ones. I decided to talk about “what is so” about my body, so it seemed like a good idea to mention the things I am embarrassed about. Still. At least sometimes. Even after going from 300 lbs to 133ish.

Let’s start with my knock-knees. This is not a genetic trait. It is something I did to myself. First, and nobody’s “fault”, I was born with a club foot. To remedy this, doctors put me in various hip-to-toe casts as a baby. They were changed regularly, of course. But this still stunted the growth of my right leg, which is now an inch shorter than my left. Then, growing up fat, my thighs were so big that they kept my feet and knees from ever meeting. Walking and standing while carrying so much excess weight as I was growing made my longer, left leg grow crooked. The femur has a slight bend to the right, the tibia and fibula an exaggerated bend to the left. When I lost my weight, and my thighs got thin, it turned out that when my knees touch, my feet are still six inches apart. When I bring my feet together, my left knee overlaps my right. This embarrasses me. I don’t know why. Maybe because I did it to myself. I wear heels to make it less obvious. And I have a modified “supermodel” walk so that my knees don’t bang together.

But even more embarrassing to me is my skin. I have a lot of it. A crap-load more than I need. It hangs. And it is covered with stretch marks. And there is nothing natural to do about it. The most noticeable places are my arms, breasts, belly, and upper thighs.

I was in a tank top at the playground the other day, and the 3-year-old I take care of said, “Kate, look!” And she pointed to my under-arm. “You have stripes!”

I said, “It’s true. I do.”

“Why?”

I said, “That’s a long story.”

She asked, “Do you have it at home?”

“Do I have what at home?”

She said, “The book. With the story of why you have stripes.”

I read a great analogy once about skin after a huge weight loss. It said that if you take a garbage bag, and stuff it too full of cans, when you take the cans out, the bag is still stretched out of shape. Even if you do it slowly, one can at a time. It is not that I lost my weight too fast. It is that I got so fat at all. I realize that skin is a living organ. That it’s different from a plastic bag. And, indeed, my skin is not still the skin of a 300 lb woman on a thin woman’s body. It has bounced back quite a bit, to be sure. But I still have plenty of extra. And after years of being thin, it is clear to me that it’s never going to go away entirely and leave me with a lean, smooth, tight body.

And I worry about what other people think of that. I would be lying if I said I didn’t. I am afraid of having my body judged. Partly because I’m very protective of it. It’s mine. It has been very good to me. And partly because I am ashamed of having done to it what I did. I scarred it. And I am afraid of owning that. And being reminded of that. Especially if it’s because someone else brought it up because they saw something they found unattractive. (No, I don’t mean the 3-year-old. She loves me just the way I am.)

I have worn a bathing suit in public maybe 4 times in the past 20 years. Always with my family at a hotel pool. Never comfortably. Not even since I got thin.

Being with a man, actually just the thought of being with a man, can bring up a lot of insecurity about my body. I have learned that if a man wants to see you naked, he’s never disappointed if he gets to. But knowing this has never made it easier to take off my clothes in front of one. And I have always wanted to apologize for my body. As if skin and stretch marks make me the booby prize. As if any man wouldn’t be damn lucky to be with a beautiful, intelligent, fascinating, and incredibly sexy woman. All of which I am. If I do say so myself…

But here’s the interesting part of it for me. The truth is that when I am alone with my naked body, I think it is positively beautiful. Saggy boobs, belly flap and all. It is certainly not “conventionally” pretty, but conventional has never occurred to me as all that pretty in the first place. My body is interesting. And womanly. It has a history. And I love it.

As I said, there is nothing natural to do about “fixing” my skin. But there is, of course, something to do about it. Plastic surgery. And I don’t want to. It’s not that I’ve never considered it. It’s not that I’ve never thought it would be nice to wear a bikini to the beach without worrying about the shape of my stomach. Or a backless dress, which can only be worn bra-less. (Which is just not a possibility when you’ve gone from a 44DDD to a 34D…and straight down…) And my step-mother even offered to help me pay for the plastic surgery if it was something I decided to do. But when it comes down to me and me, my relationship with my own body, I like it just the way it is. Flawed, weird, interesting, and beautiful as hell. It’s me. It is exactly who I am. And I don’t need to forget that, or deny it, or pretend that it’s not.

What I’d like more than surgery, is to wear my bikini in public. In my gorgeous, sexy, flawed body. Without shame or embarrassment. Baby steps, Kate…

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15 Apr 2012

Does this blog make me look fat?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my body image disorders lately. Body image has been coming up in the media quite a bit, of course. But for me it has a weird extra layer, because I was so fat for so many years. Not just fat by Hollywood standards (which I still am, by the way…at a size 6. To which I say eeewwww.) But fat by any standards.

I very often don’t know what I look like when I am not standing in front of a mirror. I mean that in all seriousness. (It might be why I like looking in the mirror so much. I am incredibly vain!) Sometimes I will catch a glimpse of myself in a store window as I am walking down the street, and it will take me by surprise. Wait! That’s me!?!? It happens less as the years go by with me living in a little body. But it still happens pretty regularly.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I still think I look like I weigh 300 lbs. But that’s part of why it’s so sick. It’s subtle. It’s sneaky. It’s an interesting look at the ways I’m still messed up in the head. And heart.

“That man thinks your ass looks huge in those pants.” “That woman thinks you shouldn’t be wearing that dress.” “Everyone is looking at your stomach.” “That cute guy would never talk to you. You’re too fat for him.”

These are the kinds of thoughts I think all the time. I’m 5′ 6 1/2″. I weigh between 131 and 135 lbs on any given day. And I have plenty of muscle. These thoughts are ridiculous and irrational. But they are a part of my daily life. And they are between me and me.

I’m not a model, a dancer, or an actress. I don’t work in any industry where people are telling me I need to lose 5 pounds. Yes, I think that’s gross. Yes, it upsets all of my sensibilities. But it’s not the world I live in. In fact, I don’t even think about it terms of losing weight to “get thin”. In my mind, I both understand that I am thin, and conversely, that I will never get thin. There is a corner of my mind that holds the belief that I am fat. As a way of being. Not that Kate’s body is fat, but that Kate is fat. Like there’s nothing to do about it. It’s just the way it is.

It’s funny because I do know that I’m attractive. Ok, hot. (I should call it like I see it. False humility is ridiculous.) But, like many other aspects of my eating disorder brain, much of my thinking about my body and my self is warped. Knowing I’m thin and hot, and knowing I’m fat and unattractive live side by side. It doesn’t make rational sense. But it makes perfect sense to me.

I wore a path in my mind with thoughts about the inevitability of my fatness. The undeniable “truth” of it. And wearing a new path of thinking of myself as thin, even having a beautiful body, often means wandering untrodden territory in my head. But I do it. Even though it can be scary and uncomfortable. Because I believe in the power of thoughts. Because I don’t want to think myself back into compulsive eating.

I want to note that I do not live in fear of being fat again. I know it’s possible, because my eating disorders and my sugar sensitivity are irreversible. (You may disagree about the nature of such things, but please, keep it to yourself. I have no shame in my weakness/sickness. I have no need to become “normal”. It gives me peace to surrender to the “forever” of my disorders.) But I don’t clutch at keeping my food under control with white knuckles. I have every intention and expectation of keeping a handle on my eating. I have peace around food. I do the work I need to do daily. The practical part, the emotional part, and the spiritual part. And one aspect of that work is to start thinking new thoughts about what it means to be Kate.

I’m telling you this because since I’ve been writing this blog, a lot of emotional and spiritual wounds that I have written about have healed inside me. Or have at least begun to heal. And I would like to heal this too. I would like to honor my body exactly the way it is. So it is best to acknowledge what is so. What is so is that I am thin. And there is no honor in clinging to obsolete thoughts of self-deprecation.

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08 Apr 2012

Happy Easter! Now leave me alone.

I don’t do holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are no longer a part of my life. I haven’t celebrated them since I got control of my eating.

Let’s be honest. Holidays, especially the family centered ones, are about food. You get together with as many of your relatives as you can pack into a home, people cook their most decadent dishes, and then you eat yourselves into oblivion.

First, I don’t eat like that anymore. Ever. I can’t afford to start if I won’t be able to stop. And second, I don’t like my family.

They are good people as individuals (with a few notable exceptions), but as a group, my family’s dynamic is one of passive-aggressiveness, and cruel humor. Yes, they are incredibly funny. But nearly always at someone else’s expense. And as the most sensitive member of the family, I was by far the easiest target.  And there are a lot of them. My mother is the second oldest of 11 kids. I have 23 cousins and a brother on that side. To be the girl with a bull’s-eye on her forehead in a room full of 30+ people was a horrible experience. I can remember being reprimanded regularly by my mother for being “too sensitive” when they made me cry. I never learned that lesson though. I’m sensitive. I don’t deal well with people being mean to me. Now I just surround myself with people who are nice to me. People who treat me like they like me. And that’s not my family.

The other thing is that I ate over feelings. Especially the kind of shame and humiliation that my family specializes in. And I come from a family of eaters. So any holiday will always have a ready supply of exactly the foods that can make me numb. And Aunt So-and-so saying something nasty about the way I look, or Uncle Whoever making an obnoxious remark about something stupid I did 15 years ago, is the kind of thing that makes me want to be numb. I can already hear the fat girl inside me: Oh, don’t mind them, Kate. Look! There are chocolate bunnies!

I’m strong. I’m committed to having my food under control. I’ve done it every day for over six years. But I have absolutely no desire to test that commitment by being surrounded by both sugar, and people who make me want to eat it. And for Easter? Well, that doesn’t seem like a particularly good reason to me. I don’t practice any religion anymore anyway.

And I don’t want to go to anybody else’s family either. Not to avoid being alone. Just because it’s a holiday. I don’t want to have to explain what I do with food. I don’t want to have to tell your grandmother why I can’t have any of her special cookies. No, not even just one. Not just a taste. I don’t want to be the ill-mannered guest, whom your family was kind enough to invite because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. I do have someplace to go. I just don’t want to go there. I don’t do holidays. And I don’t mind at all.

People expect that I’m lonely. They tell me I’m lonely. Because they would apparently be lonely without somewhere to go for a holiday. But the fact of the matter is that I like to be alone. Any time. And on holidays especially. Post childhood, the only thing I ever really liked about them was food. Not just food, but eating ridiculous amounts of food. And in the open. Because everyone was over-eating. In the open.  So much of my eating was done in hiding when I was eating compulsively. I was ashamed of it, so I did as little of it in front of people as I could. But holidays were when I could look around at everybody and see them being as gluttonous as I was. It was a relief. But not eating compulsively any time, for any reason, is a much bigger relief. I do not feel deprived. I promise, I had more than my share of chocolate bunnies for the first 28 years of my life. In fact, I had my share, your share, and the shares of 2 or 3 other people.

Maybe if I have a family of my own someday, I will want to celebrate holidays again. Not with the gluttonous eating, of course. But with traditions and gatherings. I can imagine that Christmas or Easter might look different to me if I were looking at it through the lens of a family I made myself, rather than the one I was born into. But in the meantime, I will happily celebrate the holidays by spending time with the person whose company I enjoy the most. Me.

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27 Mar 2012
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Why the f*** do you care so much about how I eat?

I just got back from a weekend with my great-aunt. She’s my late grandmother’s sister. My dad’s mom and I were incredibly close. Losing her was losing one of the great loves of my life. And having her sister is definitely comforting. Plus, this aunt is so much fun to hang out with, not to mention side-splittingly funny. But going to visit her this weekend turned out to be stressful for me. Because she doesn’t understand about my food issues. And worse, she cares about what I do with my food. And not in a supportive way. I spent my weekend defending myself, justifying the way I eat, and protecting my control over the food.

In case you don’t know, how I keep a handle on my food looks extreme to the outside observer. To me, it is not so extreme. It is not nearly as extreme as the obsession that it alleviates. My eating and body image disorders are grotesque. The things they compelled me to do created misery and insanity. So sure, I no longer get to participate in society’s food rituals. But participating in the society’s rituals in public had me creating my own sick, crazy rituals behind closed doors. When I was fat, I would eat an entire box of cookies and a pint of ice cream in one sitting. Not a day. A sitting. And then go out for more food when that was done. (Yes! More food. No! I was not full. No! I was not sick. Except in the head and heart.) And then I had more scary and destructive rituals when I was a normal weight but still eating compulsively. Drinking castor oil. Abusing laxatives. Making myself throw up. Running 7 miles in the morning and 7 at night, and binge eating in between. So much that I was still gaining weight. Running to the point that I was injuring myself. And then refusing to rest because I had to run off the food that I ate. Or was going to eat. And that’s not the whole list. That’s just a sample of how I harmed and tormented myself, just so you know. I could not stop eating. But I had lost so much weight and I never wanted to be fat again. I cared more about food than I did about my body or my life. Food was my life.

What I have noticed is that the people who have the strongest negative opinions about what I do with my food are the people who have food issues themselves. This aunt had been big when she was younger, and then lost 90 lbs on a well known commercial diet program. She never got “thin” on this program. Or not what I would consider thin. (She got down to a size 12.) But she was able to keep that 90 lbs off through her life. And, as she explained to me, she could still eat anything and do the things that everybody else does.

But here’s the other part. My aunt just got through cancer. Thank God! And after the chemo and radiation, she is now a size 8. And to hear her tell it, being an 8 is the greatest thing that ever happened to her. So why she can’t understand why I do what I do, if only for the sake of having a body I love, is frustrating for me. Of course, I don’t do what I do for the body alone. I do it for my sanity more than anything. But I would be lying if I said the body didn’t have anything to do with it. Having a body that I love, that I’m proud of, rather than ashamed of, is part of staying sane for me.

I kept control of my food while I was with my aunt. I maintained my rigid boundaries no matter what she said or how much of a “pain in the ass” she told me I was. That control is more important than anything else in my life. Literally anything. Since I found my solution, it has always been more important than any person, place or thing. So it is even more important than a 78-year-old, cancer-surviving, generous and hospitable family member’s feelings. Yes! That important! But having to protect myself against someone I love…well, it fucking sucks.

Since I started doing what I do with food, there is a litany of things I commonly hear. Why don’t you just have one? (Because I can’t stop after one.) That’s so inconvenient! I could never do what you do. (That’s ok. You don’t have to.) Don’t you ever wish you could eat like a regular/normal person? (Wishing won’t make it a reality.) Don’t you ever cheat a little? (No.) Don’t you ever take a day off? (No.) Not even for Christmas? (No.) Not even for your birthday? (No.) You’re going to eat all that?!?! (Yes. I eat between a pound and a pound and a half of vegetables at both lunch and dinner.) And my personal favorite…Don’t you have any willpower? The answer to that last one is a resounding NO! No, I have zero power over food.

Writing this right now is making me cry. Because most people don’t understand. They can’t. I’m sick in the extreme. I have no right to expect anyone else to comprehend it. But there is something I have come to expect. And I don’t always get it. Respect. Respect for the deeply personal choices I make about what I put into my body. And when. And how. And how much. And what I can handle. And what I need. For myself!

As I’ve said before, if I lose control of the food to accommodate someone else, they are not going to come into the bathroom with me and hold my hair back while I stick the toothbrush down my throat. They are not going to gain 165 lbs from my inability to stop eating. So I have to admit that, while I love my aunt so much, I dread the thought of going back to visit her. Because I will never bow to her ideas of what I “should” do. And standing my ground to take care of myself is exhausting. And painful. But it’s my own responsibility. And thank God. Because if I left it up to the rest of the world, I would weigh over 300 lbs. And be shamed regularly for not being able to eat just one.

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