onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “food boundaries”

07 Jan 2017

I’ve got time, because it wasn’t really a New Year’s Resolution anyway

For me, getting my food under control was ultimately about growing up. Before that, I was irresponsible, and food let me be that way. It made me not have to feel the consequences of my actions and inactions. Under the right circumstances, vanity and fear of humiliation can be exceptional motivators. As long as I can really feel them. And as long as I am not overwhelmed with shame.

But for me, another part of growing up is recognizing the complexity of life and the world. Only children, and people who refuse to grow up, have the luxury of living in a simple, black and white world.

I have not figured out the details of my not-really-a-resolution yet. I don’t mind. I’m not ashamed. I can change any time, not just at the beginning of the year. I would rather do it right than do it “on time.” Because I want to be more peaceful, but there are other things I want too, and they make peace more complicated.

I want to be a channel for justice. I want to be a witness to the people who seem to be invisible. I want, in my own, small way to make a difference. And that means that I cannot cut ties from what is going on in the world, and in my country. Especially in my country. I believe in being a citizen of the world, but I also firmly believe that charity begins at home. First with me, and then my husband. Then our families and friends. And out in ripples. Virtual concentric circles.

January 2nd marked 11 years of food boundaries for me. (And 5 years of this blog! Whoa! That kinda took me by surprise!) That means every day without exception. And in so many ways, that one commitment 11 years ago changed the way I see the whole world.

Before I learned to put boundaries around my food, I had no boundaries at all. Not with my food, and not with my relationships. I would use and manipulate people, and I would let myself be used and manipulated. It wasn’t conscious. I just didn’t have a frame of reference for how to say no. I didn’t like or respect myself, and I was so preoccupied with trying to control every outcome that how I was affecting people in my life was not even on my radar.

At 28 years old, putting boundaries around my food was just about my food. No sugar or carbs, 3 meals a day, with strict portion control. But that quickly meant that I had to put boundaries around my time. I had to wake up at a certain time to eat breakfast before I left for work. I had to take a break to eat lunch. No, I couldn’t grab a slice to eat while I walked. I had to eat dinner, so I could meet you for coffee, but I had to leave by 8. Even if you needed me. Even if it was important. Dinner was more important. So I ended up having to put boundaries around close relationships. And eventually I had to put boundaries around all relationships, right down to the teller at the bank and the Starbucks barista. (The truth is that on a daily basis, putting boundaries around momentary relationships with strangers like that doesn’t look that different than before, though I would probably say that I am much nicer and feel less entitled, while at the same time being much more likely to ask for exactly what I want. With a smile.) What started as a simple (okay, not so simple) act of taking care of what I was eating, radiated out from me, into all of my interactions in the world.

The truth is, if I want peace alone, I can put myself in a news and politics blackout. I already have a cutoff. I will not watch physical violence. Sometimes, when my husband is watching a video I find disturbing, I leave the room, or ask him to. I do not watch videos of people being killed, tortured, or maimed.

But there is a lot of violence in politics right now. And just because it is not blunt objects, or bullets and blood, I have let my guard down. And it is painful for me. I am sensitive to violence. But I am ultimately in favor of being sensitive to it, because the alternative seems to be desensitization.

There is the complexity. How do I protect myself, while still being available? How do I do with my heart what I do with my food? How do I make sure I am true to myself and who I want to be in the world, without creating a toxic environment in my own head?

I know that I need to up my meditation. Once a day is not enough. But what do I do to limit my intake of those things that fill me with rage? The violence, the hatred, the lies, the corruption, the pettiness, and sometimes just the sheer stupidity?

It’s not like the food. With the food, I can stop seeing it. I can put myself in a blackout, because food that is not mine does not affect me; it’s none of my business. But politics does affect me, and is my business.

To not be political is its own kind of politics, and I cannot, in good conscience be a member of that “party.” It’s not that I don’t know where I stand. It’s that I need to figure out how to stand here with peace and love in my heart.

So for now, I will up my meditation. And while I am meditating, I will ask for the answer to this dilemma. And that answer will come in its own time. But I’m in no hurry. Because it wasn’t really a New Year’s Resolution anyway.

 

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12 Nov 2016

(Ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba) I wanna be sedated.

I keep boundaries around my eating, but I am not on a diet. And sometimes, I eat for comfort, but always within those boundaries.

I ate heavy on Wednesday. Lots of high-fat, high-calorie foods. Since then, I have reined it in. Because having boundaries around one’s food doesn’t necessarily mean being thin. I could be fat and still be eating within my food boundaries. I make different choices because I don’t want to be fat. I don’t like it. I have my priorities.

The big difference between me now, and me when I was active in my sugar/food addiction was that back then, even if I wanted to rein it in, I couldn’t. I was a slave.

Look, I don’t “like” to eat lighter (i.e. less fat on my vegetables, less fatty meat, smaller fruit portions, fewer high calorie foods in general.) Ever. I want to eat all big and juicy, fatty, greasy, ooey gooey all the time. I want to roll away from the table because I’m too stuffed to walk properly. Much like the late, great Joey Ramone, (Ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba) I wanna be sedated.

But, of course, I don’t want what comes with that. I don’t want the extra weight. I don’t want the lethargy. I don’t want the obsession with food, even foods that are “by the rules.”

Food got me through difficult times when I didn’t have tools. But it’s important to note that I still gave up sugar and put boundaries around my eating before I had life-coping tools. Because I was never going to learn to cope without food until I gave up food. I was never going to figure out what my options were while sugar was still an option. Because as long as my substance was a possibility, I was always going to choose it. So I made a commitment. And something happens to you when you make a commitment. It looks and feels a little like magic, but I’ve come to realize that it’s pretty standard. I closed the door on numbing out with sugar. I chose that I was going to maintain my food boundaries no matter what happened in my life. Yes, I still use food as a comfort sometimes. But I do so with integrity. More than just eating within my boundaries, I bear in mind what I want for myself, and my body, and make food choices that coincide with those desires.

Since I stopped eating sugar, food no longer runs my life. I have the clarity and wherewithal to take a step back and look at the long-term consequences of what I eat. I don’t have to make decisions based on temporary discomfort. I have tools to deal with unhappiness and upset that are not edible. I get anxious, nervous, upset, unhappy ALL THE TIME. Food, even within my boundaries, had to stop being my go-to answer. I was forced to come up with some alternatives.

But what happened was that for a while there in the beginning, I was bad at life. I didn’t have sugar, and I didn’t have tools. But the commitment I made was clear. The sugar was not coming back. And it turned out that the old saying was right: necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention. I invented new ways of dealing with my problems. And I did it pretty damn quick. I found coping strategies. I got honest. I got grateful. I got responsible. I stopped blaming circumstances and started making choices and taking actions. Sometimes I effed up. Sometimes I effed up royally. But I learned. And I grew. And I got better at life. Hell, I got good at life.

When I was eating compulsively, and lying about food, I was always going to come clean about my transgressions after I got myself back under control. You know, (or maybe you don’t) I was going to admit that I ate a chocolate cake once I went a week without eating chocolate cake. I was going to admit that I gained 10 pounds cheating on my diet once I got back on that diet and lost the 10 pounds. I was going to be honest once I took care of the consequences.

Spoiler Alert! It doesn’t work that way. Instead of getting my shit together so I could come clean, I needed to come clean so I could get my shit together. I have never ever once gotten my integrity back before I got honest. And let me tell you, I sure did try a whole bunch of times, over and over, for most of my life.

So I let myself take comfort in comfort food. And that was nice. I am not ashamed. I love food. I will never be neutral about it. But food is not my coping mechanism. I have actual life skills for that now.

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23 Oct 2016

Crazy for sugar

When I was growing up and I was active in my food/sugar addiction, everything was about food. Now that the sugar is down and I keep strict boundaries around my eating, everything is about feelings. In retrospect, it was always about feelings, but the food masked that.The craziest I have ever felt in my life, the sickest around food I have ever been, was when I was 27-28 years old. I was in a socially acceptable body, maybe even thinner than I am now. (I am a healthy weight now, but I am not skinny.) But my feelings were out of control, my eating was out of control, and the things I was doing to keep the weight off were absolutely out of control. I was constantly tormented. 
Around this time of year is when I have the most memories, or more like flashbacks, to that time, now 11-12 years ago. At that time, I was essentially starving myself. But I wasn’t losing weight. And then, my period stopped. 

I had the whole thing twisted around. I wanted my body to work like normal while I did abnormal things to it. I didn’t want to fix my eating because I couldn’t imagine a fix for it. The idea of giving up sugar never ever crossed my mind. That would have been crazy to me. It was what I lived for. It was my joy. So I wanted to eat what I wanted to eat, not have it affect my weight, and have my body be healthy. And I was getting none of those things. I was eating mediocre “diet” substitutes (lower calorie, but still full of sugar) for the things I really wanted, I was exercising to the point of hurting my body, my period had stopped, and I was still in a body that I hated.

I went to the doctor, and she asked me about what I was eating, and I lied through my teeth, and she put me on birth control. Basically, we were going to force my hormones to start working again. But what happened was I started to have these emotional outbursts that I could not stop, even though there was a little, rational voice in my head telling me that I was acting crazy. It would say things like “Don’t yell at this cab driver, it’s not his fault.” “Don’t throw a fit in the grocery store. They are just out of something, it happens.” I could see very clearly that I was being crazy, but I could not stop being crazy. This was, without a doubt, the worst time of my life. I could not imagine a way out. I truly feared that I would end up institutionalized.

The way out would turn out to be giving up sugar. Exactly the thing I was trying to keep by doing all of these crazy things. The starving, and the exercise bulimia, and the regular old stick-a-toothbrush-down-your-throat bulimia, and birth control pills that made me scream and cry like a mad woman.

The other day, I had a rough day emotionally. I was filled with a lot of anger. I was frustrated, and riled up. I did a lot of praying, and a lot of calming exercises, and a little talking to sane people, and even a little crying to get it out. But I didn’t eat over it. And the next day I was all better. 

Those feelings could have been anything. They could have been hormones, or SAD, or just a bad mood. But they did not get fed sugar, or mean-spirited acting out, or emotional outbursts, and they passed.

That is the gift of having my eating under control. My feelings are in their proper place. I get to look at them sincerely, and see if there are things in my life that I want to examine and change. But they don’t get a say in what I do, what I eat, if I keep my commitments, or if I behave kindly. They get to read the map, but they don’t get to steer the vehicle. 

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01 Oct 2016

Living in fog (and I don’t mean San Francisco)

I am coming to the end of a big knitting project, my first adult sweater. I have made baby sweaters before using the same techniques, but a baby sweater doesn’t take that long. An adult sweater is a task that requires time. Weeks or possibly months.

Now that the end of this one is in sight, I have decided on my next project, and it is also an adult sweater. But this one is an ambitious undertaking. It uses techniques I’m less familiar with, and is constructed differently than any of the other sweaters I have made. But most significantly, it has a complicated cable pattern that is shown in a chart. And on certain rows, you have to read the chart both backwards and opposite (knit stitches are purl stitches, and purls are knits.) I wanted to make sure that I could actually make the sweater before I bought a bunch of fancy yarn, so I took yarn I had laying around and worked the cable pattern. And while it is hard, and gave me a few hand cramps, I can absolutely do it, and do it well.

But while I was doing it, I realized that I wouldn’t have been able to if I were still eating sugar. I would not have been able to wrap my mind around it. I wouldn’t have been clear headed enough to make sense of it. Or if I could have made sense of it, the food would have made me indifferent enough to fail to take the time or spend the energy. Why bother knitting when I could just eat? Besides you can’t knit and eat at the same time.

I am really smart. And it’s a good thing. Because as a sugar addict, I was never firing on all cylinders. I got by in life by being so smart that I didn’t have to be all there. 

I stopped eating sugar on January 2, 2006. But it wasn’t until June of 2007 that My head cleared. It took a year and a half for me to come out of the fog. A fog that I had been living in since I was a child. It was such a constant presence in my life from such a young age that I didn’t even know it was there until it was gone.

I used to think that everybody else got an easier life than I did. Now, of course, that is certainly not true. (That’s just the whiny addict talking.) But I had no idea how much harder I was making it on myself by essentially being drunk on sugar all the time. I never realized how I was limiting myself, or just how muddy and muddled my thinking was. 

I know that this new project is not going to be easy. I am a great knitter, but I am stretching myself here. I am sure I will come up against things that I don’t understand, or things that are harder to do than I expect. I can anticipate that at some point, I will get confused. I am positive I will get frustrated. But I will not be incapable. I will not be incapacitated. I may be taking on a demanding task, but I will be my super smart self on top of my game. And I will enjoy every moment. Okay, maybe not the hand cramps.

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11 Sep 2016

Even Eskimos eat dessert

Yesterday, my husband decided at the last minute to go to home for a celebration that we were originally not going to attend. It was 8 in the morning and he asked how long it would take for me to get ready if I wanted to make the almost 6 hour drive. I didn’t have any meals prepared, and I was not interested in spending the next 2 hours cooking and packing, to spend 6 hours in the car, just to go home for a day and turn right back around. So he went and I stayed at our apartment. Yes, I miss him when he’s gone. Yes, even for just a day. This is just one example of how my eating boundaries can be inconvenient.

Earlier in the week, we were talking about how hard it must be on a relationship to have someone put boundaries around their food in the middle. He said he wondered how many marriages had ended because of it. He said that for him, he knew what he was getting into from the start. I had boundaries around my eating for seven years when we started dating. But even knowing that ahead of time, it is still inconvenient for him that I am sober from sugar. It is inconvenient for me to put boundaries around my food every day without exception, and I’m the one whose life is getting saved. We don’t eat out a lot, because it can be difficult for me to get what I need. We can never just order a pizza, or drive through a fast food joint. He can, but we can’t. (By the way though, I cannot imagine that being affected by my food boundaries is more inconvenient than being married to an active addict…just sayin’.)

And then he said something that I think is really important. He said that he (as I know, because I do all the grocery shopping) has a cabinet full of bread, snack cakes, starchy sides, sugar cereal and candy that I never touch, but what happens when people are already married, and one of them suddenly gives up sugar and can’t have it in the house anymore?

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it talks about avoiding alcohol as a means of staying sober. “[Some people say]…we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink…we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all.”

But the Big Book’s reply to this is that it can’t work that way. “[The addict’s] only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin every­ thing!” 

The truth about sugar, like alcohol, is that it is everywhere. I was never going to outrun it. I was never going to escape it. So I had to change my mind about it. That started with my thoughts and my words. I stopped talking about “loving” sugar. I stopped thinking about eating it. If I do think about eating it, I stop having that thought. I remember that it is poison to me. 

I don’t romanticize drinking bleach. I don’t think about how nice it would be to slit my own throat. So I also don’t think about how great it would be to harm myself with sugar now, because eating sugar would always be self-harm.

Yes, in the beginning, it is easier to keep oneself away from tempting situations. While one is still detoxing, it is a great idea to keep sugar out of your home. It is probably not the best idea to walk into a bakery in the beginning. But ultimately, one has to muster some immunity, because there is nowhere to hide. Grocery stores, coffee shops, movie theaters all have sugar foods. Even just walking down the street in some places we are bombarded with smells. Where could we go? Even Eskimos eat dessert.

So my husband gets a cabinet of sugar and carbohydrates. He gets a freezer of ice cream and pizza rolls. I pack his lunch every morning with pizza, doughnuts and Mountain Dew. It’s not mine. And the way I eat may be inconvenient, but it’s the way I eat, not the way he eats. I don’t have to be afraid of sugar. It turns out it is not going to jump into my mouth.

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28 Aug 2016

This post does not contain attachment. Post anyway?

I was taking to a friend the other day about compromise. She was confused about why someone was acting a certain way when a compromise would be easy. I told her that this person most likely didn’t want to compromise. My friend asked, “then what do they want?” It was funny to me because the answer was obvious to me, but because of the nature of my loving and generous friend, she could not imagine it. She could not fathom that people want what they want. They want to win. They want complete and total victory.It’s perhaps obvious to me because I lived like that for so long, wanting what I wanted, feeling defeated or put upon if I had to let go of my (often grand and exorbitant) expectations. Feeling cheated and wronged by anyone who got even a fraction of what they wanted at the expense of the total of what I wanted.

Addiction makes most of us self-centered in the most unhealthy ways. We believe we should have all the good, and yet we expect everyone else to deal with the bad. We decide that we deserve our good fortune, but in the face of bad fortune, or even just the consequences of our bad decisions, we condemn life as completely unfair, and others as wicked, cruel, and out to get us.

This ultimately comes down to our attachment. Attachment to the way we want things to be. Attachment to our expectations.

In recovery, I had to learn non-attachment. Non-attachment is a spiritual idea that I have known about for some time, but was unable to practice until I got my eating under control. When I was younger and searching for a spiritual practice to make me feel whole, I read a slew of self-help, spiritual, and religious books. Zen Buddhism books talk a lot about non-attachment. But I was never able to fully grasp it until I put boundaries around my eating. I am sure that had something to do with the fact that addiction is attachment. It is attachment to one’s substance, the belief that you simply cannot live without it.

In recovery, I had to learn that I could only control my own thoughts, words, and actions. Of course this started with the food. I was no longer going to eat cake. Ever. And I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that other people were. And that I could not be resentful of that, or I would be in danger of ending up back in food hell. Even if They weighed 300 pounds and were diabetic. Even if I thought they were sugar addicts like me. I made a choice for myself and the only person I could expect to live the way I wanted to live was me. And soon, it became clear that this needed to be true in all areas of my life.

I do not get a say in what others think, say, or do, and (here’s the kicker) that is exactly as it should be. It was confronting to realize that I was not the center of all of my dealings in the world. It was painful to accept that I, not only would not, but should not always get everything I desired. But there is also something very freeing about recognizing someone’s autonomy as sacred, rather than inconvenient. 

I do not claim to be a guru. But I am good at non-attachment. Not because I think it is holy, but ultimately because it is convenient. I live a happier life knowing that other people’s choices and behaviors have nothing to do with me. Of course I still want things. And yes, there are things that are important to me that I do not get. But that’s life. And that’s another thing I have found since I put boundaries around my eating. When I don’t fight against other people’s choices, trying to force the outcome I think I want, in the long run, life always gives me better than I thought I wanted in the first place.

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02 Jul 2016
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This just in: Control Freaks Suck!

So, remember how in last week’s post I wrote about how sometimes people who love me offer me food I don’t eat because they feel bad for me? And remember how I don’t mind because I say no, and I know that they love me and I love them? Yeah, well sometimes people don’t want you to say no, and they push and push, and it’s abusive and inappropriate. And that is what this week’s post is about.
Last weekend, my husband and I had people over. I knew some of them, but some were new to me. This is a story about one who was new to me.

Everything was all fine for hours, and then it happened. This visitor had brought Italian beef from Chicago. She really wanted me to eat some. And I briefly told her thank you but no.

That is usually all it takes. I smile with genuine gratitude and say “no, thank you,” and people graciously honor that. 

But that is not what happened this time. This woman did not honor my no. She pushed. She pushed for about 5 full minutes. 

So you can understand a bit about some of my food boundaries, you should know that I need to know the exact ingredients. I need them in the ingredient list. Ingredient lists are written in a specific way, descending order of quantity. Sometimes there are parentheses in the list when one ingredient, for example salsa, can be broken down into more ingredients, like tomatoes, peppers, and potentially things like corn syrup. These parentheses mean something to me. They matter. 

Now, this woman didn’t have an ingredient list. For me, that made it an automatic no-go. 

There is another important part of this story in my mind. And it’s counter intuitive, but hugely important. This person has her own food boundaries. I know because we talked about them. And I thought that would make her an ally. She also avoids sugar, though she does have it on special occasions. We laughed about it because I bought sugar for coffee because I didn’t think a guest would want artificial sweetener, especially the one I use. And I found out that she actually uses the same one I do. And we even talked about what it’s like when people try to get you to eat something you don’t eat. So, you can imagine that her pressuring me seemed to come out of left field. 

This woman who had her own experience of being pressured and abused over her own food choices was being relentless with me! She told me that I was being silly not to try the beef. That if it had flour, it was just a little. (It doesn’t matter, I can’t eat it.) Well, of course it matters. The percentage would be practically nothing. It’s just a thickening agent. It’s just…It’s only…It’s nothing to worry about. 

For about 5 full minutes she pushed me. She did it in front of other guests. She was pissing me off. And I could tell that every time I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to calm myself, she thought she had won, and was even more forceful. 

I want to be clear about something. What this woman did to me was controlling and abusive. Because she is the wife of my husband’s coworker, I had to be friendly. So I did not say “Back the f*ck off, b*tch!” But I had every right to. Nobody, and I mean absolutely NOBODY gets a say in what goes in my body but me. Not my mother, not my husband, not my doctor. If I didn’t eat the lasagna of the greatest love of my life besides my husband, my sweet grandma, there is no way in hell I’m going to appease some control freak I’ve never met before, whom I have graciously welcomed into my home.

When people refuse to honor your no, they are trying to control you, and that is a form of abuse. I want to say that, because so many of us are people-pleasers. We want to appease our spouses, our parents, our mothers-in-law, our bosses. And some of us even want to please strangers, to be considered nice. 

Like I said last week, I love it when my father-in-law offers me food. He offers out of love, and he honors me when I say no. It is a beautiful thing to be offered food as a sign of love. 

But when we are pressured repeatedly to the point of frustration, it can be easier in the moment to give in. But at what cost? That is a serious question. There is a cost, and you are the one paying it.

I once met a woman who was a recovering bulimic. She ate a food she was addicted to in order to please her mother-in-law. She was sent back into bulimia because of it, and it took her months to stop again. She said one of the most profound things I have ever heard. She said “My mother-in-law wanted to be there when I ate the pastry she made, but I’m alone when I’m in the bathroom afterward. She’s not there holding my hair back while I stick the toothbrush down my throat.”

The control freaks don’t have to live your life after they have convinced you to hurt yourself. They don’t have to deal with your consequences.

I’m hoping that this story gives you strength. I hope that if something like this ever happens to you, you can remember that you don’t have to harm yourself to please someone else. I hope you remember that it is a form of abuse. I hope you remember that you are in control of your body and your life, even if someone is trying to control you. But mostly, I just hope it doesn’t happen to you. Because it sucks, and it’s not OK.

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26 Jun 2016
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What I’m missing 

Last weekend, my husband and I were home for a few days. On Father’s Day we went to my husband’s parents house. I ate lunch long before the party, and I wouldn’t eat dinner until the evening. I drank water and black coffee with artificial sweetener. I went there knowing I was not going to eat. I had a really nice time.

But of course, there was a lot of food. And of course, people use food to show love. So my father-in-law, who really doesn’t understand my food boundaries, assured me that there was vegetarian pizza if I wanted it. Now, I think this is hilarious. Partly because meat is a thing people regularly assume I don’t eat, when in fact, meat is a huge staple of my diet. And partly because pizza of all things is almost entirely bread, which is definitely something I can’t eat. I’m not poking fun at my father-in-law. I already knew that he doesn’t understand, and that he probably never will. I never mind. I love him, and I love his hospitality. And I have known for a long time that for so many people, the extreme nature of what I do is difficult to wrap their minds around. 

But that is not really the point of me telling you this story. The point is that whenever my father-in-law offers me food, which he does all the time because we genuinely like and love each other, I can tell that he feels so incredibly sorry for me. I can tell that he really wants me to accept, not because it’s a gift, but because he really believes I must be suffering. It has occurred to me that this may actually be the reason he doesn’t understand my food boundaries. Because he thinks it must be painful for me.

That weekend we also took my dad out for lunch for Father’s Day, and when I called the restaurant to make the reservation, I flagged myself as an allergy. (I do this regularly when I eat out.) The woman taking the reservation asked what specifically I was allergic to, and when I told her it was sugars, grains, and starch, the phone went quiet for a second and then she said, “Wait, wow, really?” I laughed and I said “I know. It’s intense.”

People think I must be miserable. People think it must be horrible. So many people feel sorry for me. Even people who know me and know how happy I am. 

I will tell you something. If I didn’t get something out of it, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t be able to. 

I don’t believe in willpower. I don’t have any. And I think that expecting anyone else to have it is silly. I believe that we as humans do things that offer us something more. I have said it before. I have never given up something to lose something. I have only ever given things up to gain. I have gained freedom, self-respect and trust in myself, every time I have let anything go from my life.

So today, we are having company again. Some are people I have never met. I have bought them a kitchen full of food that I won’t eat myself. There will probably be questions and incredulous looks. But all is well. I already know what it is I’m missing, which is to say, I’m not missing anything at all.

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15 May 2016

When enough becomes too much. (I’m talking about giant fruit.)

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that, for me, it is not about my weight. Don’t get me wrong, I am living in a lovely body that I am (usually – damn body dysmorphia) comfortable in. But my weight is not, ultimately, the point for me. This is hard for people to grasp. Some of the ways I eat can be confusing to people. I can think of a few examples, mostly over apples believe it or not, where random people told me point blank to my face that what I was doing was “cheating” or “didn’t make any sense.”

When I eat an apple, it can be any size. I can only eat one, but it can weigh over a pound. No, that does not mean that I can eat two eight ounce apples. One is one. One eight ounce apple, or one one pound apple are each considered one fruit.

This confuses people. And the reason is because they think I am trying to deal with my weight. (For the most part, people can’t fathom why anyone would manage their food, if it didn’t have to do with weight.) They are thinking in terms of calories. They are thinking I am “on a diet” and that choosing an apple that weighs over a pound must be cheating. 

But what I am really dealing with, of course, are my eating disorders. And sometimes a giant fruit makes me feel safe. Because when I was eating compulsively, along with a general craving for sugar and carbohydrates, there was a constant sense of missing out. I didn’t just want a cookie. I wanted all the cookies. Not just in that moment because I was hungry, or craving. There was an obsession to “own” food. There was a kind of aching fear that I would not be the one to eat something. (That’s not a joke. And it sounds funny when I write it, but I promise it’s not.) As if there were not an unlimited supply of cookies. It was as if I were afraid there would not be enough for me.

Eating a giant apple makes me feel like I’m getting enough. It makes me feel nourished and taken care of. Without having to eat all of the apples in the world.

Now something has started to happen in the past few years. I have started thinking that giant fruits are too much. Too much food! (Huh?!?!?! I know!!! I looked for pods in the basement too. No, it’s really just me.) I never thought I could think there would ever be enough food, let alone too much.

I’m not saying I will never eat another apple that weighs more than a pound. I almost certainly will. If I need some comfort. Or if I am feeling particularly hungry, as happens from time to time. But there is some peace in knowing that I can be satisfied with an average apple, or 8 ounces of berries. There is a little extra cushion of comfort knowing that less is still more than enough. 

Historically, I have always wanted more. A large drink is better than a small. Two tea bags are better than one. You name it, bigger was better. Getting my eating under control and coming to a place where my food was enough was a miracle. So It’s funny to come to a point in my life where I can see “enough” cross into “too much.”

I like it, but it’s a little scary. I’m boldly going where no man, (alright, fine, plenty of normal people have gone there…) where I have never gone before. 

Look, the reality of writing this may scare me into looking for a cantaloupe bigger than my head so I can have half for breakfast. And that’s ok too. Two steps forward, one step back is the dance of life. (Cha cha cha.) But knowing that I have reached this new place around food, even after 10 years of food boundaries, is a little more peace. And peace is one area of my life where I will always think more is better. 

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
19 Mar 2016
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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.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , ,

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