onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Relationships”

02 Jun 2019
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My anniversary of the other side

My birthday is Thursday this coming week. I will be 42. It’s pretty nice. I feel great. I look great. I have no complaints. Not about my life, and not about my age. 
It was on my birthday 12 years ago that I came out of the fog of giving up sugar. 
For most of the first 28 years of my life, I lived in a sugar fog. I was addicted to sugar and carbs from a very young age. And I was high on sugar the majority of my waking life. 
And then at 28, I gave up sugar, and went from being high on sugar all the time to not being high on sugar at all, and that felt like a different kind of high. It meant cravings, and a general slowing down of my brain function,  the adjustment of my digestive system, and a kind of low-level exhaustion basically all the time. My body and brain needed some time to heal. And then one day, my 30th birthday, about a year and a half after I gave up sugar, I noticed that I had woken up. 
In that year and a half of foggy time, I was learning to keep the boundaries around my food. From friends who wanted a bite and I had to say no, to bringing my own food to a wedding and the mother of the bride being mildly offended, to people wanting to make things especially for me and having to politely refuse.
Someone once told me that when you make a commitment, you change the course of your life. 
After that I was learning about how to keep other boundaries. Saying no to people who knew me as eager-to-please. Standing by my “no” when people wanted to coerce or manipulate me into doing what they wanted. Making life choices that made me happy, rather than choices I thought would make others happy. Making choices that I had to then stand by, because they were mine, and right or wrong, I could not pawn them off on anyone else.
If there is a hard part to change, I believe it lies in our relationships with others. I have been a relatively bold nonconformist for most of my life. I don’t particularly care what others think of me. And if I do, it is often a streak of defiance. I dare you not to like me. I dare you to judge me. 
But good lord, even with my devil-may-care attitude about fitting in, when it came to setting new boundaries with people in my life, boundaries I *had to* set to keep my eating under control, it was hard. People want us to be who we have always been. And when we make life-altering changes, like entirely revamping our food life, we will, out of necessity become different people. 
I see it all the time when people decide to do what I do with food. If they want to lose weight but they don’t want to change, they will not last long. They may lose weight. They may even lose all of the weight they want to. But then they inevitably return to old ways and old patterns. 
I have heard when women let their mothers-in-law insist they eat the special dessert made just for them. Or let their husbands convince them that they should have a glass of wine because they used to be fun. Or let their sweet grandmothers feed them that special dish. 
Refusing the homemade lasagna made by my most beloved grandmother (she made it  for Christmas and Easter and it was by far my favorite food in the whole world – in my life, it was what love tasted like) may have been the hardest thing I ever had to do. It was terrible to have to do to both of us. It hurt her. It hurt me. But I had to say no. So I did. 
I do not regret a single moment on this journey. I am grateful for all 42 years of my amazing life. And especially grateful for the past 13 and a half, where I have been learning slowly and steadily how to be my truest self. And even more for that moment 12 years ago, when I looked up from that year and a half of introspection, and pain, and discombobulation and discomfort, and saw that there had been an “other side.” And that I was on it. 
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26 May 2019

Thankfully I want to, even when I don’t want to.

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about the great things about keeping strict boundaries around my food. I am very vocal about the benefits. But I gotta be honest. Sometimes it is a royal pain in the ass. And sometimes it’s stressful. 
My husband and I had agreed to go to the movies over the long weekend. And the most convenient time our movie is showing is decidedly inconvenient in terms of my lunch. It means eating my lunch 3 hours later than I normally do, in the car on the way home from the theater. And on top of that I thought he meant today. And then this morning he told me he meant tomorrow. So I woke up late to eat a late breakfast to make it easier to eat a late lunch. And now I have to do all of that again tomorrow. Which is annoying. And it means I have to do all of my cooking for the week today instead of tomorrow. In other words, now all of my planning is mixed up, and I have to regroup and adapt.
I can. I can totally regroup and adapt. And it’s not really that big of a deal. It’s an inconvenience, not a tragedy. And I have 3 full days off of work this weekend. Which is a gift and a blessing! I will do all of the stuff I normally do on the weekend, and still get an extra day to go see a movie in the theater with my husband! Which is amazing.
But it’s also stressful. It makes me worry about all of the things that can go wrong. And what happens if things go wrong when I am so hungry that I can’t think straight?
I don’t know if that is a particularly valid fear. But I do get hungry between meals sometimes. And it does make me a little irrational sometimes. So it’s not ridiculous. 
Look, what I do is *always* worth the inconvenience. I would not have the amazing relationship with my husband that I have if my food weren’t under control. And I would not have the peace of mind and clarity that I have. I still have all of the beautiful things that my food boundaries give me that I always wax poetic about. But it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. And it’s not always pretty. And it’s not always easy. And I do it even when it’s a pain in the ass. And I am awake enough to know that I always want to do the thing that keeps me free from the bonds of my addiction. Even when I don’t “want to.”
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24 Mar 2019

The part that’s all blessing

Even after all of the prep I did last week for this week, there is still so much to do. Plus the drive to the home office from my house in the Chicago suburbs is more than twice as long a commute as the last job I was on. So unless I am going to run at 4:30 in the morning (spoiler alert! I’m not!) I am going to have to jog after work. Which, if you have not already heard me complain about, I hate. I am tired after work. Waaaaah! And then while we are home, my husband has been asked to do a 1 day job in Milwaukee, and I may have to go get our taxes done by myself! Did I mention Waaaaaah! yet?
Having my food taken care of is the blessing and the curse of all of this. Just a little curse. The curse part is that I have to do all of the stuff myself. Perhaps someday I will be rich enough to pay someone to do all of this stuff for me. The shopping. The cooking. Washing the Tupperware to pack up my food. Though I weigh almost all of my food (with a very few exceptions, and all sorts of rules around when I don’t have to) and I do have a commitment to weigh all of my food for myself. No matter how rich I get, it will still be my own responsibility to know my portions exactly. Also, my husband and I are doing pretty well financially, but not get-Kate-a-personal-chef-well. Though Powerball is up to $750 Million….
But the blessing is that when I do this stuff, I don’t have to eat compulsively. I talk a lot about all of the great stuff I get from having my eating under control that is only peripherally related to eating. Like being a good worker, or having self-respect. Or having great relationships. But one thing that I get every day, whether I screwed up at work, or I have a good bout of “imposter syndrome,” or I have had a fight with my husband, is that I am not eating compulsively. I am not a slave to food. I love my meals and they end, and I move on with my life.
The truth is, I owe at least 4 people calls and emails. (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! I have not forgotten you!) And I had to write this blog. And I had to cook and prep for the rest of the day, and tie up some loose ends for work tomorrow. But one thing I didn’t have to do was eat something I didn’t want to eat, but couldn’t stop myself from eating. And that part is all blessing. 
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17 Mar 2019

Logistical Tetris, and then the fun part

As a person who travels for work, I get to see all sorts of places and be part of all sorts of communities. And I enjoy that very much. There are things I like and things I dislike everywhere. For example, I won’t miss the way people drive here in Tennessee, but being so close to Nashville was fun. 
But it’s just about time to move along, and that means my least favorite part of this way of life. Apartment hunting. Setting up utilities. Packing, hauling, and unpacking. Tying up loose ends. Ending and beginning again. 
It’s stressful. It’s a lot of moving parts. It’s kind of like logistical Tetris. All of the pieces are coming at you in quick succession and you have to get all of them to fit together in a certain time period. 
It’s times like these that having food boundaries is helpful, especially in terms of self-care. Because I already have an attitude that prizes planning, preparing, and protection of my food. For example, I am looking ahead to the future and realizing that I will have to prep more food than usual in advance. Both today for next week at our permanent residence. And then again in two weeks when it’s time to officially pull up stakes here and head to a new home in a new town.
I know a lot of people who forget to take care of themselves in difficult or unusual situations, times of change and upheaval. They forget to eat until they are starving and/or hangry. They forget to sleep enough because they need to get “one more thing” done. They don’t make time to take care of their bodies or their minds. 
And what’s more, they think they are doing the right thing, being honorable, sacrificing.
I am not saying that there is not a time to sacrifice. There is. There is beauty and honor and love in it. But I am going to suggest that moving apartments is not that time. If I had to sleep in a hotel for a night, I could do that. Having the internet turned on immediately is not life or death. (I even have a hotspot on my phone!) And since we change residences about every year or so, that would make for a lot of sacrifice, of my my health, my happiness, and my relationship (I don’t want to be cranky, angry, and taking things out on my husband) to basically be able to like stuff on Facebook. 
Getting my eating under control taught me about my own priorities. It taught me *how* to prioritize. And my well-being is my number one priority, followed closely by my husband’s well-being. Everything else is a situation that will pass. 
So I will have to do a bit more work today. But it will give me peace of mind and keep my head clear. I won’t be nervous about when or where my next meal will be. I will be able to think about all of the many things I have to get done, without worrying about how I am going to take care of my needs. I will be free to go with the flow of life.
But one of the best things about logistical Tetris is that all of the pieces come in rapid succession, but then they are in place, and it’s done. And then I can look forward to getting to know a new place and a new community. And that’s definitely the fun part of a life of traveling.
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10 Feb 2019

Keep your friends close and make your enemies friends

I was talking to a friend the other day about making friends with certain difficult or frustrating aspects of ourselves. I feel like making friends is not what we are taught. We are taught to eradicate and transform. We are taught that we should change the way we are. It is all about principle and not about practical. All about what we should be, instead of what we are.

Throughout my life, I have had to make friends with many aspects of myself. Especially aspects that made other people uncomfortable. For one example, I am very sensitive. When I was a kid, it didn’t take much to hurt me and make me cry. People in my life wanted me to stop being so sensitive. 
First of all, how do you expect a child (or a grown up, for that matter) to *stop* their feelings? Especially without any instruction for how to cope. They just wanted me to stop crying. 
Of course, there are lots of ways to stop feelings, to shut off one’s emotions, but none of them occur to me as particularly helpful, or healthy. And even if we sensitive souls could, for whose benefit would that be? It was certainly not to my benefit. It was generally to the benefit of people who enjoyed being mean or “funny” at other people’s expense. 
Look, I do understand why people who loved me wanted that for me. The world can be a cruel place. They wanted me to be happy. They did not want me to be hurt so often and so easily. But it didn’t work. It just made me feel like I was the one with the problem.
I am very comfortable with my sensitivity now. Because once I made friends with it, I could manage it. I could figure out my coping strategies. 
I don’t know if I *could* have made friends with that part of myself while I was still eating compulsively, but I certainly never did. Eating was how I tried to manage unmanageable feelings. Eating didn’t help me get through them. In fact, it was the opposite. Eating let me ignore them. But they were still there. And in ignoring them, I made them seem so concrete and indisputable. 
Once my eating was under control though, I was able to feel those unmanageable feelings, and deal with them. I was able to recognize what feelings were signals that I was unhappy with a situation or relationship, and that I wanted to change something about my life. And I was able to recognize that not every feeling was a signpost to some great truth. Sometimes I was just uncomfortable, and I could feel uncomfortable and just sit in it. 
But I could not eradicate my sensitivity. Just like I cannot eradicate my addiction to sugar and simple carbohydrates. Obviously, that is another aspect of my life that I had to make friends with. I am a sugar addict, and there is no going back. There is no cake in moderation for me. There is no “just one bite.” But in making friends with that aspect of myself, I have learned to make and eat food that is delicious, and satisfying, both physically and emotionally. I have learned how to use my love of eating as a blessing. I eat 3 times a day with so much enjoyment, sometimes other people get jealous. And that’s me eating protein, fruits and vegetables.
My sensitivity is a blessing. For all of the pain and discomfort it gives me, it gives me more joy, happiness, contentment, peace, and awe. It is the source of my favorite aspects of my life. And for so many years, people wanted to squash it out of me. I am glad they didn’t get to.
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20 Jan 2019

Yucky feelings and all

I have a love/hate relationship with feelings. I live for feelings. I spend all of the free time I can listening to books and reading comics and watching soap-opera-y TV shows. I am in all of those things for the feelings. If they make me so uncomfortable that I have to pause and calm down, I love that! If they make me cry, even better! (Sometimes my poor husband comes home and I am huddled under a blanket with tear streaks on my face and I have to explain that I was just reading a comic, and everything is fine…)

But when it comes to my own feelings, well, let’s just say I am not nearly as comfortable with those. Having my own feelings makes me panic. Even after 13 years of feeling my feelings, my first reaction is to freak out and shut down.

This week, I had a problem come up with my food. Part of what I do is tell someone who does what I do what I am going to eat the next day. It’s essentially making a promise. I consider it sacred. And I found out this week that I had to find someone else to make that promise to. And that was terrifying.

I understand that to you, it may not make sense why this was so scary. But it was. You will just have to trust me on that. And my first thought was to panic.

But of the many things I have learned in keeping my food under control, one important step is to take care of the most pressing problem. And another is to stop, calm down, and think over my options for the long-term problems. And to definitely not make any rash decisions.

So I called someone and made my promise for the next day. And then I went to bed and I dealt with the problem of finding a new promise-taker in the morning. By morning, the problem was not nearly so scary.

Panic and paralysis were the standard of my life before I got my eating under control. I would panic, and then I would shut down, and then I would eat myself into not caring about my problem. Which never took care of the problem causing the uncomfortable feelings, just the uncomfortable feelings themselves.

The other part of getting my feelings back is that I didn’t just get the yucky ones back. I got the panic and the hurt and the terror, sure. But I also got the joy and the love and the swooning, and the pride.

I don’t have to like my feelings. But I am now able to honor them. And that means I can be effective in my life. And that ability to live life as it is makes me like myself and love my life. Yucky feelings and all.

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06 Jan 2019

Clunky and graceless is OK for now

This week I celebrated my 13th anniversary of keeping boundaries around my eating. One thing I was taught early on was to set boundaries with people. Even if they were “clunky.” Even if they were graceless. Even if I sounded like a jerk. Even if I *was* a jerk.

It has occurred to me in the past few months that I avoid difficult conversations. In some ways, this came as a surprise to me. I like to think of myself as a model of self-expression. And I thought I had already overcome this. Which I had. But I should not be surprised. My experience is that we all have our lessons. And we have to learn those lessons over and over, deeper and deeper.

Once I realized this, I knew that I wanted to do something about it. And I have. A little snappy. And a little pushy. But moving ahead.

Right now, I don’t know what to do about it in terms of concrete actions. There are ways to make commitments to things like this, but they are not as obvious to me as food boundaries or water drinking promises. Those are no brainers. 4 oz of meat, weighed on a scale. Three 20 oz bottles of water a day from my reusable water bottle. That’s easy. Or at least, easy to wrap my mind around. But having uncomfortable conversations occurs to me as less clear-cut.

Still, I will work at it. I want it. I want to say the things I need to say so that I don’t feel resentful, or self-pitying, or stifled. I don’t want to be “nice.” I want to be kind. I don’t want to be “likable.” I want to be authentic. I don’t want to be “good.” I want to be powerful.

When I don’t muddle my thinking with food and sugar and carbs and things that make me fuzzy, I can feel my uncomfortable feelings, and consider what I want to do about them. I am in no hurry. I can be happy for now with the baby steps I have begun to take, even if they are clunky and graceless. I can think about it a little bit longer. I am in no rush. I have all the time in the world to grow. And there will always be more growing to do.

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30 Dec 2018

I am not an only-once-a-year-resolver.

It’s that time of year. New Year’s Resolution time. I am not a Resolver. I love the New Year. I too feel the warm glow of possibility in ending the old and welcoming the new. I like the chance to look back, and forward. But I don’t like to pin all of my hopes on a feeling. 

That is what a New Year’s Resolution is, I think, for most people. They feel excited about what may come in this next 365 days. It’s a blank slate filled with potentialities. And knowing that all of that potential is out there fills us with feelings. Feelings of hope, and desire, and courage, and drive. We feel motivated! 
I don’t know if you know this, but feelings like that don’t last. For anyone, really. At least nobody I know. Even the most powerful, potent, accomplished people I know do not *feel* motivated all of the time. Or even most of the time. 
Most people, even the ones who have what you want, find getting the good stuff to be filled with something akin to drudgery. The ones who get themselves extraordinary lives are the ones who brave discomfort regularly. 
The secret to me having what I want, as I have noted before, is to have commitments, and to keep them no matter how I feel. 
I would rather sleep in than jog. I would rather drink coffee than water. I would rather knit and read and watch Netflix than prep meals. I would rather stay home than go out with friends. I would rather pretend everything is fine than have difficult conversations. But all of things that I would rather, all the things that make me *feel* comfortable, leave me with a life that doesn’t  *feel* valuable. I want relationships with myself and others that are worthwhile, and whole, and intimate. I want love, and friendship. I want to like and trust myself. I like and trust myself when I keep my commitments. 
I am not done growing and changing. I am all for wanting more, and being willing to do more for it. But it doesn’t have to be for the new year. I can change any time. 
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09 Dec 2018

The ability to be uncomfortable long enough to make a change.

I am having some problems at work. Personality problems. And they difficult to navigate. It takes a lot of restraint on my part. 

The other day the personality I have the most trouble with made trouble between me and another worker. Thankfully, I calmed down (way way down) before I talked to this other worker. And because I went in calm, and did not act out like the crazed person I felt like, all turned out just fine. It turned out to be a miscommunication. It was presented to me differently by that first personality.
That first personality likes to create panic. I don’t have time for panic. I don’t have room to be guided by my feelings. (Not my intuition, from which I do have room for guidance. Feelings. Yucky, human, unpredictable, physical reactions to situations.)
Feelings are useful, certainly. They let us know when we are on the right track. They also let us know when we need change.
I masked my feelings with food for the first 28 years of my life. It was easy to live in the discomfort of something being wrong when I never had to experience the discomfort.
When I first got control of my eating, I was so bad at living with discomfort that I would rush headlong into “fixing” my problems so I could get past the uncomfortable part. I didn’t have much grace, but I did start to get myself some boundaries. Not just around my food, but around all aspects of my life. And while I had a lot of apologies and amends to make for my rashness, I was actually getting things done for myself and making changes in my life.
But now, I try to be softer on myself. I have frustrations, and things make me angry, but I can take my time to consider how I am going to deal with them. Not everything has to be now. Because I can be uncomfortable. (That’s a blessing!)
If you don’t know, I am blunt. I don’t like to talk around things. I don’t like to give wishy-washy answers to things for the sake of politeness. I think direct honesty is infinitely more polite. And I don’t think “no” is rude or wrong. I think it’s quality information. I like quality information. It saves me time and trouble.
For example, if I go to a restaurant and ask if the asparagus can be made without the parmesan cheese, and my server tells me “Probably not,” they have not helped me. They have not done me any favors. They have now forced me to ask more questions about the asparagus. And they have not been any more polite than if they had said, “No. it’s already pre prepped with the cheese.” At least then, I could move on.
But being blunt at work is harder. It’s harder to set boundaries with people who, technically, could get you fired, even if they can’t fire you themselves. It’s also harder to be straightforward with people who are passive-aggressive. They have already set up the context for a given communication, and trying to navigate that with both honesty and grace is not simple.
There are two major life lessons that I got from getting my eating under control that apply to this work conflict. The first is “When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.” I get to take my time and trust that the right answer will come along at the right time. I don’t need to leap into action. I need to be committed to change, and keep my eyes and ears open for the best time to take the right action.
The second is that we do the best we can and let the chips fall where they may. I can certainly allow myself to bullied and cowed on a regular basis in order to avoid having a difficult conversation with someone higher up in the company than myself. I can let that difficult personality get me riled up and panic-stricken. And I can be constantly worried about the quality of my work, because that personality is looking to find fault (or maybe just looking to push someone around). But I am bad at that. And that is not the best I can do. The best I can do is set boundaries around how I will be treated.
I know that I am good at my job. Really really good at it. I know that I am friendly, efficient, organized, consistent, and that I have a great work ethic. I do not have any qualms about whether or not I am doing a good enough job. But that has nothing to do with office politics. And if I am going to be reprimanded for not accepting unacceptable treatment, then this is certainly not the job for me.
But the truth is, I don’t think this personality would ever really try to get me fired. I think they like the threat, and the power of the threat. I think everyone knows that I do quality work.
I forget that as an addict, I am not the only one who is sick. I forget that other people are sick and cruel and behave badly all the time and they’re not necessarily addicts. Or they are and it’s not obvious to me.
I will not make any rash decisions around this. But I will also not be treated poorly. I owe that to myself. Because I don’t have cake to numb the pain of abuse. And I do have the ability to be uncomfortable long enough to take a stand and make a change.
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18 Nov 2018

Will I still respect me in the morning?

Halloween has passed and Thanksgiving is this week. As many of you know, I don’t participate in Thanksgiving. It is essentially a food holiday. The whole thing revolves around one big meal. You can say it’s about family, or gratitude, but tradition says it’s about turkey and potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Every family has their own traditions, and they are all about the meal. 

I don’t miss those foods. I don’t even like turkey. It’s not that I can’t be around foods I don’t eat. I do it all the time in my daily life. And I am willing to do it for Christmas, and the occasional birthday party if I happen to be home. But Christmas and birthdays are about something else.
I love to give gifts. I love the idea of peace on Earth and good will towards human kind. I love celebrating the life of a human I am tied to in this life. That there is food is fine. Humans all over the world and for all of time have eaten special foods at festival times. That is as it should be.
But there was a time when festive food only happened at festivals. For much of my life, in the modern, wealthy, food-rich world, I ate like it was a festival every day. And I was not the only one. Especially from Halloween to the New Year.
I am grateful to not eat myself drunk on sugar every day anymore. And if I have to skip eating myself drunk on sugar on holidays, well I have had more than my fair share.
And if I skip one holiday out of the many we Americans celebrate, so be it. I will wake up with dignity on Friday morning. Like every morning. And I didn’t wake up with dignity almost ever for more years than I would like to think about.
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