onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Relationships”

The joy of not being a jerk

Yesterday was, as the 12-steppers say, life on life’s terms. I went to the grocery store, got about $100 worth of groceries, checked out, and tried to pay with my debit card. It didn’t go through. I tried it again. Nope. Then the checkout clerk said the bank was declining my purchase.So I asked the clerk to take care of the people behind me while I called the bank.

It turns out someone used my card information to make some purchases. The first went through. The second, for over $300 went through. And the bank shut the card down when they attempted to make purchases for $500 and $700.

The gentleman at the bank unfroze my card long enough for me to buy my groceries, and asked me to call back when I was done to have the card cancelled. 

So I did. I bought my groceries. I packed them into the trunk. I got back in the car and immediately called the bank and cancelled my card, and confirmed that the fraudulent charges were not mine. 

The lady I got that time cancelled my card, took my Kentucky address so the new one could be mailed to me here, as well as the paperwork to dispute the fraudulent charges.

Do you know what I kept thinking the whole time? I kept thinking how much I like myself, and it’s all because of having my eating under control.

What I am saying is I was gracious and grateful and kind to every person along the way. I was friendly with the clerk at the store when he told me the bank declined my card. I was friendly with the man from the bank who told me about the fraud and reactivated my card so I could pay for my food. I was friendly with the lady at the bank who helped me cancel the card and who issued me a new one. I was able to make jokes with them all. 

I was more than just nice. I was grateful. I was grateful that the bank was looking out for me and shut my card down when purchases looked suspicious. I was grateful they could unfreeze my card so I could buy my groceries. 

This is the stuff that happens to everyone. This is the stuff that is not personal. This is life. But when I was a compulsive eater, when life happened to me, I was a complete jerk. 

I was already angry at life all the time anyway. I had a lot of anger and rage. And I used any opportunity to unleash my rage. Even, or maybe especially, at people who had nothing to do with it, and were trying to help.

My first reaction to this kind of thing is fear. Fear of what did wrong. Fear of losing. Fear of having things taken away. Fear of scarcity. 

In order to keep my eating under control, I had to learn to do certain things differently. I had to learn to cultivate gratitude. I had to learn to behave in a way so that I would not be ashamed of myself. I had to do the next right thing, one step at a time. This all comes from having my eating under control. 

When people see or hear that I have lost 150ish lbs, they think that is the accomplishment. They assume that is the ultimate reward. And while I do enjoy this body, and how it looks and how it moves and how easy it is to get around in, the parts of my life that are the most profoundly impacted by having my food addictions and eating disorders taken care of are the parts of my personality that have improved over the last 10 years. 

For me, the real gifts are all of the ways I like and love myself. For me, the real gifts are being calm and peaceful in the face of fear. The real gift is that I can look back on yesterday and not have to justify why I was a jerk. Because I wasn’t a jerk. I was a nice lady, grateful for other nice gentlemen and ladies, who helped me get a lot of unpleasant stuff taken care of. 

Some next-level sh…

I happen to be living the sweet life at the moment. Just Married to the love of my life. I not only have a driver’s license, but I even have a cute little car for running errands in a cute Kentucky town. There just happens to be a 2 mile path around my house for me to jog in the morning. Robins and daffodils are everywhere. And I’m writing and learning to knit socks. People used to tell me, “put boundaries around your food and your life will get better.” But that first day that I put boundaries around my food, I could never have imagined that they meant *this*. 

It took years of not putting sugar, grains or starch into my body for me to untangle myself from my false notions, bad behaviors, and manipulative ways. It took years to get free from my self-loathing. To be willing to take an honest look at myself and my character flaws and change. There was no way I could have fathomed this kind of happiness. But that is because I could not have guessed the self-love and freedom that exist in integrity. I would have wanted all of the “prizes” but I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what it was going to take to get them. And if I had known, I would have been terrified of the work.

Work used to terrify me. Discomfort was the boogie man, it filled me with dread and panic. In the end, I had to make friends with discomfort. It was the only way to grow up. Only children expect to feel good all the time. 

I can imagine on an animal level why instant gratification is a necessity. Eat the food when it’s there. You never know where there will be more food. But when you have a car, gas, a local grocery store, and you do know there will be food, instant gratification means higher obesity rates and a rise in the number of obesity related illnesses. But I’m not just talking about food, either. I’m talking about discomfort in general. I’m talking about sacrificing a fulfilling future for a comfortable present.

I am not one of those people who looks forward to exercise. (Do those people really exist? Are they all underwear models or motivational YouTube celebrities?) What I look forward to is having done the exercise. I like being energized. I like feeling accomplished. I like the endorphins. I like feeling like I am doing some long-term planning, investing in the future. A future with less pain and better brain function. A future where I continue to love my body and care for it, and it loves me back.

And I still marvel that this body can jog for 2 miles. This body that I was sure was such a curse. This body that I was so ashamed of and disgusted by. 

But that just brings me back to my point. How could that me, the one who constantly diminished and criticized myself, ever have had a glimpse into this future? 

They told me if I put boundaries around my food, my life would get better. So I did the work. And my life got better. So I kept doing the work. Yep, I still do the work. But I have to admit, I’d do this much work for a lot less. I mean, it’s not always easy, but it’s really not that hard either. I’d do the work just to be free from my obsession with food. I’d do the work for the guilt-free eating alone. But this whole thing, the love and the peace and the joy, the “prizes”, the life beyond my wildest dreams, this is something else. This is some next-level sh*t.

How you know you’ve found a keeper

When you have boundaries around your food, things that other people take for granted are off the table. Like grabbing a quick bite, going out to dinner somewhere you have never been, or sharing an entrée with your date. It can be complicated, annoying, inconvenient, and difficult. It’s worth it, but it’s not always easy or simple.

That makes it a great way to figure out who is worth your time. See, if I tell you that my food boundaries are a life and death matter for me, and you think it’s embarrassing, or ridiculous, or you simply think I am being difficult, then you are toxic to me. We can’t be close, we can’t be great friends, and we certainly can’t be partners.

This week I got married to the love of my life. I knew he was the one pretty early. I mean within days of being reunited with him after over 20 years. One of my big clues was that he asked me for a shopping list when I was flying to Texas to visit him. And he sent me a picture of a grocery cart filled with pounds and pounds of vegetables. He even found bok choi, which he had never even heard of before. Over the past 3 years, he has let me choose the restaurants, taken my eating schedule into account, and he never minds if I don’t eat with him, if I ask the server a million questions, or if other people are staring at me. 

I’m not saying it’s always easy for him. It’s not always easy for me. But it’s important to me. So it’s important to him. 

The thing about putting my food boundaries first is that my priorities become obvious. And my husband is a priority in my life. 

So pardon me, but now I need to go for my run, before I go out to dinner, with my husband, on my honeymoon. At a restaurant I picked.

Commitment: the cure for circumstances

The past few weeks, I have been feeling sort of like life was on hold. I wasn’t really sure what I should be doing in terms of work and writing. I couldn’t practice driving because while our car was getting repaired, we had a rental, and I don’t have a driver’s license. Plus, my boyfriend wasn’t working as much so it was a really nice chance to just sit around and spend time together.And now life is back in motion. On fast forward. 

Today, my boyfriend goes ahead of me to an extended stay hotel in Indiana, where we will be living, back on the road for the next 9 months to a year. For the next week or two, I will practice driving and get my license. Then I will drive to meet him. (But you know, no pressure.)

For the past week, my time has been spent doing the things I am committed to doing for my life: meditation, jogging, driving, and of course, as always, 3 meals a day within my boundaries.

At times like this, when all of the things I have to do can get overwhelming, having commitments makes priorities a no-brainer.

When I got my eating under control I learned that taking care of myself makes it easier to take care of the people I want to care for. If I know that my health and sanity come first, who and what comes next and next and next seem to fall into place effortlessly.

So I am cutting this week’s blog short. Because writing a blog is a priority. But making it long and poignant is not. There are clothes to pack and time to spend with my boyfriend before we are separated for over a week. (The separation part is not my favorite, by the way.) 

So cheers to commitments and priorities! It’s nice to choose them for myself, instead of being thrown where the wind blows me. 

The “addiction model” versus eternal suffering…I know which I pick…Duh.

In my post last week, I wrote about Oprah and Weight Watchers. You can read it here. I was inspired to write about it because of an article I had read that morning that basically said that if Oprah, with all of her money and power, can’t lose weight, why would you think you can? (In his defense, his point was to love yourself the way you are right now, which I FULLY support!) In response, a friend of mine wrote to him and said that if you want the success stories, look in 12 step rooms. And another reader responded that the people who succeed are the people who are giving up addictive foods like sugar.

The backlash in the comments section was very interesting (and a little unsettling) to me. So I did a little internet snooping. People, for reasons I do not comprehend, are very angry about “the addiction model.” I do not know what it is about addiction and the idea of addiction that gets people furious. They are practically screaming through the computer, “NOT EVERYONE IS AN ADDICT!”

Okay. I got it. Not everyone is an addict. But why so much anger about it?

I understand that there is not a lot of scientific evidence that the “addiction model” works. I have read articles on it. One claims that the addiction model of treatment has “shockingly low success rates.” Another claims “compelling support for effectiveness.”But I don’t do what I do because science tells me it is effective or not. I do it because it is effective for me.

So, I am not claiming anything scientific at all. I am saying that by identifying as an addict and giving up my addictive substance, I have had my weight and eating under control for 10 years now. 10 years. And I personally know people who have maintained huge weight loss for 20+ and even 30+ years. Not a person. I can think of 10 people right now who have maintained a weight loss for over 20 years. Most studies about long-term weight loss use 2-5 years as the benchmark for “long-term.” I can literally (and I mean literally literally, not figuratively) think of 60 people off the top of my head who would be considered successful. (No, really. I took a moment to tick them off on my fingers.) From all racial, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. From all over the U.S. and the world. And that’s just the ones I can think of right now.

And yes, I can think of even more people who tried the “addiction model” and it didn’t work for them. I can think of people who tried and quit. I can think of people who struggle and have struggled for years. I can think of people who used the “addiction model” and lost huge amounts of weight and then put it right back on, like any other diet or weight loss program. And that is just the people I can remember. I have no scientific evidence that says what I do is effective in general. I don’t know what that success rate percentage is. It may well be “shockingly low.” Sometimes it feels like a revolving door. Perhaps for every person like me there are 100 who fail. Perhaps it’s closer to 1,000. But I am looking at 70+ people who have lost weight and maintained that weight loss. Each of those 70 people is a human being who feels like they have been set free.

Here’s the other thing that I find fascinating. Study findings (actual science) in 2011 said that maintaining weight loss was “nearly impossible.” The human body flooded with hormones that made people hungry and kept very low levels of hormones that suppressed hunger and increased metabolism. In other words, your body was going to make you suffer, and unless you were willing to suffer for the rest of your life to maintain what you had done, you were destined to gain back your weight.

Suffer? For the rest of my life? Seriously? If you think that I could do that, you don’t know me very well…I don’t know why my experience is different than this 2011 study. And I don’t care. All I am is grateful.

I got it. People don’t like the addiction model. Anecdotal evidence is not science. I hear ya. But why are these people so angry that the only treatment is “addiction treatment?” Maybe it’s because they are waiting for science to come up with an answer for them, and all it can offer is eternal suffering. (What? You guys aren’t going to jump on that?)

Let me be very clear here: I believe in science, technology, and medicine. I believe in facts. I do not believe in “praying” your cancer away. I believe in chemotherapy. I believe in vaccines and antibiotics. In fact, I think that people who don’t believe in science should have their technology taken away. (Do they really not see the irony of “liking” anti-science propaganda on Facebook with their smartphones? Ahem, I digress…) I absolutely believe in medical treatment. But I also believe that not every problem is a problem for science. Just like I don’t believe science has a cure for your crappy relationship with your brother, I don’t think it has a cure for your crappy relationship with food or your body.

I believe in attraction, not promotion. If you look at me and see that I have maintained a 150 lb weight loss for over 10 years, and not only am I not suffering eternally, but am truly happy, joyous and free, then you should maybe try a totally unscientific “addiction model” for yourself. And if you can’t get over the word addiction, or the idea of giving up cake forever, or anything else about what I do, then you do you.

I’m not mad about it all…

Commitment and cleanliness

It is my experience that life will test you. Especially when you make a commitment. When you really want to recreate some aspect of your life. 
If you are committed to drinking 8 glasses of water a day, suddenly, all of the bathrooms in your office are out of order except one. On a different floor. For a week. And you have to decide if you want to keep that commitment.

Recently, I decided that I wanted to leave my current job like a grownup. I want to go on good terms. I put in my two weeks notice just yesterday morning, in fact. (Yay!)

But when I got my schedule for the week I don’t have a day off for six straight days. And I have two assignments for my new dream job as a writer due on Tuesday morning, 8 am. 

I knew immediately that it was a test from life, but it took me a minute to figure out what the test was. It was not, in fact, to test if I was committed to my new job. It was to test if I was committed to leaving my old job like a responsible adult. 

And I assure you, when I saw that I wasn’t going to get a day off, it crossed my mind to say screw this, I have a super sexy writing job now. I’m not going to my crappy food service job.

But there is another story I want to share with you. Many years ago, before I was reunited with my boyfriend, I was going on a lot of dates. And that often meant packing a dinner and eating it in the city at a Starbucks before I met the guy.

Now, I have a person who helps me when something happens with my food. One evening right before a date, I was eating my strictly portioned dinner and I dropped a speck. Seriously a speck. I called my friend and I told her. She said that I didn’t need to call for a speck, but I said I was about to go on a date, and I wanted to be as “clean” as I could be. I wanted my integrity to be solid. I was looking for love. I was looking for an awesome relationship. I did not want a speck of food to get in my way.

The truth is, the date was horrible. I ended up telling him that I was not having a good time because he was not being nice to me. Then he tried to make out with me. (Apparently that’s how he showed how nice he was? Ew. Whatever…)

I left that date. I didn’t stay longer out of politeness. I didn’t let him drive me home. I saw that I wasn’t getting treated the way I deserved, and I ended it right there.

I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t called in that I dropped a speck of my food. Maybe the same thing. But maybe, if I thought my integrity had a crack in it, I would have stayed and let myself be treated poorly.

So here I am, fulfilling my commitment to write my own blog. And I will fulfill my commitment to get my writing assignments for my new job in on time. And I will also fulfill my commitment to stick it out at my other job for the next two weeks. So I can leave knowing I did the right thing. Not for them, but for me. Because I want to start this new job as clean as I can be. I don’t want cracks in my integrity while I am fulfilling my dreams.

To hang out in the uncomfortable unknown and trust

First, for those of you who were wondering if that internal growth spurt I mentioned last week meant I was pregnant, I am not.

I was referring to a spiritual/emotional/personal kind of growth spurt. I am talking about getting better and better. I mean becoming more and more my authentic self.

Perhaps it does have some similarities to being pregnant, though. Like in how I forget the pain and I get excited to do it again.

For some reason, every time I make a move and take action to grow and change, I expect it to be easy. I expect the experience to be that of getting consistently happier, and more confident, with a steady acquisition of new skills.

Yeah…not so much. The truth is, while I am in the middle of it, it sucks. It’s painful and humiliating. And before I am graceful and happy and better than I have ever been before, I have to stumble and fall, fail and persevere. I forget that, like having a baby, it takes the blood, sweat, and tears of labor.

And there’s something else I have noticed. Life will always, always, ALWAYS give me a chance to backtrack. Usually more than once. Life makes me choose change over and over again, depending on how committed I am. It makes me say out loud, ‘I want something better.’

When I made the decision that I wanted to be in a serious, committed relationship, I took actions and made different choices. And out of the blue, multiple men from my past started calling and texting me. Seriously. Guys I had not heard from in months or years decided that they were curious about me.

Maybe that doesn’t seem like such a hard test, but familiar relationships are comfortable. Even if they are bad, or mediocre, or unfulfilling, there is such a temptation to go backwards into a set of circumstances you already know. Especially if what you want hasn’t shown up yet.

I didn’t know that my current boyfriend would turn out to be the love of my life. It was an act of faith in the benevolence of Life to turn away from men from my past. But I did it. I told Life that I wanted something more. And that I was willing to hang out in the uncomfortable unknown and trust.

And here I am right now, once again in the middle of a huge transition. Learning how to drive. Writing samples and interviewing for a dream job. Staying at a job that I absolutely abhor while working my way into a bigger, richer, gooier life. And sometimes it hurts so bad that I cry. And sometimes I hate it so much that I behave badly, like a little brat. And sometimes I am terrified that I will get stuck in the middle of the transition and never reach the other side. But somehow, I always manage to make it. And I live to forget how terrible the pain was. And again, like childbirth, I have this person that I love more than I thought I could. Only, in my case, that person is me.

Having boundaries around my eating is not the reason I can change. But it puts the whole thing on a fast track. Not being able to numb my disappointments and dissatisfactions means that I either have to live with them or change them. So I usually choose change, because I am very bad at sitting in discomfort. And that is a very special gift, because it has given that incredibly unhappy little fat girl a life beyond her wildest dreams.

If you need the wood, I’ll be off the cross in a minute.

One of the ways I keep my eating under control is by focusing on my part of a situation. With food it’s about keeping my eyes on my own plate. I don’t worry about what anyone else is eating. With life, it’s about minding my own business. And keeping peace in my own heart and mind. Other people’s behavior and relationships are also none of my concern. I keep my eyes on my own life.
But another way I help myself keep my eating under control is by being authentic, and speaking up for myself. I do not let myself be abused. I do not please others at my own expense.

There are some people at work, both customers and fellow employees, who are really not nice people. (No seriously. Not like normal people having a bad day. Like people who actively try to make others unhappy. Like total jerks.) And it’s hard for me to find a balance between taking care of myself, and being peaceful, regardless of the situation.

The other part of this is finding the best way to keep the Good Girl in me on a short leash. She let people abuse her for a long time. Her worth was in how far she could diminish herself for the happiness and use of others. 

Look, the Good Girl, when she is right-sized, and in her proper place, is part of the reason I am so good at my customer service job. When I am not being a martyr, I genuinely like giving people a great experience. I aim to leave people at least satisfied, and hopefully even happier, as a result of their time spent with me.

But just like I wrote in last week’s installment, the Good Girl can have me agree to do things that end up leaving me feeling resentful and frustrated. I can wind up feeling taken advantage of, often forgetting that I allowed myself to be put in the situation in the first place.

I am not going to eat compulsively over these feelings of resentment. But that is a luxury that I cultivate. Resentment is exactly the danger to an addict like me. It is just the thing to convince me that I totally deserve that chocolate cake, damn it!

Last week, I was doing what needed to be done for the store/my department, and neglecting to care for my own self. I forgot that integrity means keeping my word, but it doesn’t have to mean volunteering at the expense of my own peace. I was doing what was requested of me, simply because I was asked. I agreed knowing I didn’t want to. And that was dangerous. I was putting myself and my eating disorders in a dangerous situation.

I know that I need to keep my food boundaries at the center of my life. Keeping my sugar addiction and my eating disorders at bay is the most important thing I do in my life. Part of that is never letting any resentment, judgment, or torment grab a hold of me. It means I have to shake them off quickly. I have to be grateful for what I have. I have to remember that all things pass eventually. And if I am unhappy, I am the one who must change.

In parting, I will leave you with the Serenity Prayer. (If you don’t already know it, I promise it’s a good one. By the way, it’s not just a prayer. It’s a way of life.)
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

AMEN!

In Defense of Giving A S*** (Please note, I use the “s” word freely in this post)

A friend of mine recently posted pictures from her trip to Burning Man this year. In one, she has a button that says “Give A Shit.”

I used to have a skill that I cultivated. It was the ability to not flinch. It was part of my “cool” persona. I was very good at it. When people did things to try to get a start out of me, I would barely react.

Not just friends playing pranks. Even when I was mugged and punched in the face when I was about 24 years old, I can still remember the look in the eyes of the guy who punched me. It clearly freaked him out that I didn’t scream or cry, or even cower. In fact, I remember looking at him with a disgusted look. I made him flinch. (Of course, I would later realize that I was a bloody mess because he punched my teeth right through my lip. I suppose that would be scary if you punched a seemingly weak girl in the face and all she did was look angry at you…)

From the time I was a very small child, I was very good at building fortresses. My fat body was a kind of fortress against intimacy. So was smoking. So was that unflinching bitch attitude. And being high on sugar.

Sugar may, in fact, have been the most useful tool I had against giving a shit. Because it made everything foggy. And surreal. And it made life-moments incidental. My real life lay in food and eating and getting high. Everything else was simply something to be endured until I could get my next fix.

But then I got my eating under control and I quit sugar all together. And then slowly, (very, very slowly…one at a time, after years of being sober from food) I dismantled my fortresses.

Because you can’t have love without pain. Because you don’t get to pick and choose what you let in. A fortress doesn’t keep the bad things out. It keeps EVERYTHING out. All of it. Not just the sadness of rejection and the pain of being wounded, but also the love and the joy and the trust and the intimacy.

I made a choice when I decided that I wanted to let myself fall in love and be loved. I made the choice to give a shit. I knew that it meant getting hurt. I was a grown woman in my 30’s. I didn’t have fairytale delusions about how love made everything easy. I was quite clear that the life I had chosen until then, behind my very secure, safe walls, was the easy way. Not giving a shit is, by far, the easier way. Love is not safe. Intimacy is not easy. It is complicated and messy.

Admitting you are wrong is scary. Making amends is scary. Restoring a broken relationship is scary. Being vulnerable is just plain terrifying.

I could make all of it go away by just not giving a shit. Still can.

But that would make the love go away too. And the joy that comes from loving. And the warmth that comes from being loved. Because ultimately, love is giving a shit.

I choose love, so I choose to give a shit. And I wish the same for you.

Vulnerable, unpredictable, and intense – just as it should be

When I was in New York last weekend, I was with a group of people who make it their lives’ work to be present and honest. And it’s intense.

Now, it is also my life’s work to be present and honest, so quite frankly, I loved being there. But it was still really intense.

When I strip away the pretense of day-to-day living – like wanting to be liked, wanting to look cool, wanting to be acknowledged for being “good” or “right,” or any of the things that I do out of fear so that I don’t have to acknowledge my truth or be present for my life – what I am left with is unguarded love. To love and to be loved in return.

Here’s a secret. Love is scary. It’s vulnerable and unpredictable. It’s intense. Sometimes it can feel like it’s too intense.

I wouldn’t understand until years after I got my eating under control and got sober from sugar, but food was my main defense against being present and honest. And it was my first fortress against love. It did not matter how much love was sent my way. I had a wall up, and that wall allowed me to filter how much of it got in. I could take my love in easy-to-swallow, palatable doses. A lot of the love meant for me went to waste.

Being with this group of people was also interesting because I met them before I got sober from food. One of them was the one who sent me to get sober. Because of having known them for so long, I have memories, in my body, of how uncomfortable I was when I was eating compulsively. I could feel very clearly how free and peaceful I have become in the last 9+ years. I remembered how much I thought I had to hide then. I could feel so clearly, in contrast, how open I am now.

Another dear friend of mine talks about how getting sober from sugar and compulsive eating lets her discover who she really is, as opposed to who she was trying to be. And how she really likes the person she is discovering. That is my experience too. That in being who I am, I really like and love me. That I am happier being my flawed self than I was trying to be a perfect someone else.

So I am posing a question to you. (Yes, you. Who else?) Who would you be if you were totally yourself? What would it look like if you could let that true self be loved without filtering how much of the love you let in?

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