onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “Halloween”

06 Nov 2022

My Recurring Holiday Miracle

There is no Halloween candy in my house. But it doesn’t matter. Because I didn’t want it and I didn’t eat any of it. And that is my recurring holiday miracle. 

Yes yes. I think sugar is poison. To me at the very least. But I am not the food police, or anyone’s parent. And also, I remember Halloween as a kid. The dressing up. Walking around the neighborhood I lived in with friends and cousins, ringing doorbells, shrieking with excitement. All the other kids doing the same. And the candy was so exciting because it was the big prize on top of all of the fun! So yes, I give out candy at Halloween. And I always buy more than I need. 

But the morning after I packed up all those left over mini chocolate bars and sent them to work with my husband. Big men doing physical labor all day made quick work of it.

But I never thought about it. Never craved it. Never thought about a single morsel of it as mine. That is not mine. It’s poison to me.

When I put sugar in my body, it sets up a craving for more. But there is the other blissful side of that. When I don’t put sugar in my body, and by now it has been well over 16 years, I don’t crave it. I don’t even really see it, let alone have any kind of feelings about it. 

I did work to get to this point. I had to change the way I thought about food. I had to stop romanticizing thoughts about sugar. Stop thinking pastry sounded good and start thinking it sounded like a slow, painful death. I had to keep myself away from it entirely for a long time. Stay out of particular grocery store aisles. Cross the street to get away from certain street vendor smells. Avert my eyes from the dessert case when I went to get a cup of coffee. I had to do these things for years.

But the work is done. And now my job is maintenance. As in stay away from the first bite of sugar. But that part is so much easier when my body doesn’t remember it. And remembering every day that I am an addict, keeps me from reintroducing them.

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31 Oct 2021

Halloween connections >>>Halloween candy

It has been a while since I *really* did Halloween. I have cobbled together a handful of last minute costumes over the years, but nothing like I used to do when I was young and/or single.

But this year I decided I am going to do it up, as the kids used to say when I was a kid. (I don’t know what the kids say now because I am old and out of touch.) This year I am dressing up as a Fae Princess, which is very on brand for me since I am obsessed with YA Fantasy novels about Faerie courts. My costume this year is complete with wings and a flower crown and pointed ears, and lots of glitter. And doesn’t “trick or treat” sound like faerie bargain in the making? 

When I was eating compulsively I loved everything about Halloween. I loved the costumes and the atmosphere charged with endless possibilities, some fun and some dangerous (I grew up in the 80s and 90s. We were given way more opportunities to do stupid crap unsupervised.) And I loved candy and I loved that on that day, I could eat candy with abandon the way I wanted to. And the other kids could and were too. I didn’t have to feel so shameful about it on that day. I was just one of many on Halloween, unlike most other days for the rest of the year.

When I gave up sugar and my drug foods, Halloween didn’t lose any of its appeal for me. Even though I thought it might. I thought I would be hard to watch people eat candy and get drunk when I could not. (I got my eating under control at 28, years past legal drinking age.) Instead, it became more about the costumes, the dancing, the pretending. And I got to enjoy it without all of the self-consciousness, and the out of control feelings, and the obsession with food. I got to have more “moments” with friends and strangers. It became about my and other people’s creativity. It became about connections. 

One of the best things I’ve gotten from getting my eating under control is my ability to connect with people. When I was in the food, everything was about food. Everywhere I went and everything I did was colored by either the food there or the lack of food. Every celebration was a celebration of food and food alone. When I put boundaries around my eating, celebrations became about relationships, and experiences.

I love that I still love Halloween. I love that I don’t need candy to love it. I love that I don’t need alcohol to love it. I love that food is not why I love my life, and yet, in between the moments of experience and relationship, I still get to love my food.

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01 Nov 2020

How is an addict like the Post Office?

One amazing thing about giving up sugar and simple carbohydrates is I don’t want the stuff anymore. It’s one way I know it was a drug for me. Once it was completely out of my system, which took about a year and half, I stopped needing it, or wanting it. Or really even seeing it. It’s like I have permanent blinders on. My eyes just sort of glide over things I don’t eat, unless there is a specific reason I am looking for it. And even then, it has no power over me.

If I am buying sugar for someone else, as a gift or as a treat, I can buy it with complete neutrality. I can look at it, and not see something I desire.

Yesterday, we had bags and bags of candy in the house. Trick or Treaters made short work of it, which I have no feelings about either way. Because over the years we have had bags and bags of Halloween candy and no kids to come by to take it from us, and in those years I still did not eat the candy. I wasn’t tempted by the candy. 

The candy is not mine. It’s not for me. It’s poison to me. I ate my fair share of candy for the first 28 years of my life. More than my fair share. Certainly more than enough.

When a person is fat, their doctors inevitably send them to nutritionists. And generally, those nutritionists tell their patients about moderation. They tell them to eat *one* cookie. They tell them to eat *one* piece of chocolate. They tell them to eat *one* *small* handful of chips. 

I cannot eat one. I am incapable of stopping once I have started. When sugar and simple carbohydrates are in my body, my body craves more. My brain tells me I will positively drop dead if I don’t have more. And that first year and half after I quit that it took to get the stuff out of me was filled with brain fog, and itchy skin, and emotional outbursts, and crying, and depression, and physical and emotional exhaustion. In other words, withdrawal. Like any drug.

For me it is literally all or nothing. I can either eat none of the stuff, or I will be haunted until I have eaten it all. All of what is in the house, and once that is gone, I will take a trip back out for more. When it comes to sugar, I am like the post office. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep me from getting my fix.

If moderation works for you, I am very happy for you. If I could eat cake with impunity, I surely would. But I can’t. And if you find that when you eat a piece of candy or a cookie, you can’t stop thinking about it until you eat more, you may want to consider cutting it out entirely. Because if you do that, there will come a time when you won’t need it, or want it. It will stop having power over you. Just like it stopped having power over me.

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04 Nov 2018

Not my candy, not my problem, not my business

I made it through my 12th Halloween without sugar and carbohydrates. And it was painless. 

We had plenty of candy on hand for trick or treaters, and we only got 4. But it didn’t tempt me. And not because it wasn’t “the good stuff.” It was exactly the stuff I wanted as a compulsive eater. (And even the stuff that wasn’t my favorite, I would have eaten anyway.)
I wanted all of the candy. Any candy. I have heard people in food recovery day that they ate their favorite things first, and then when they were gone, “ended up” eating things they didn’t particularly like. Not me. If I thought it was just OK, I ate it first, and saved my favorites for last. Because I always already knew I was going to eat it all.
I’ll say this for my food addict self. There wasn’t a lot of lying to myself about not eating it all. There was, however, a lot of lying to myself about how long it would last. And a lot of lying to other people about how much I could, would, and did eat.
But the big bowl of candy was a non issue for me at home. And now it’s at work where I hope a crew of construction workers will eat it. But whether it gets eaten or just thrown away, it is not me who will eat it, and it’s none of my business what happens to it.
There are 2 aspects to my immunity to the very candy I once lived for. First, the drug is not in my system, and has not been for over 12 and a half years. And second, I changed the way I think about candy, and about sugar and carbohydrates in general. It’s not mine. None of it is mine. It can be anyone else’s. I don’t have an opinion about that. I don’t need to know who it belongs to. Just who it doesn’t belong to. That’s me.
It’s simple, but not easy. At least not at first. It takes retraining your thoughts. And that takes practice. It doesn’t come naturally. I had to work at it daily before it became my default setting. Now it offers me the gift of giving out candy with a smile, and without a hint of either longing or self-loathing.
I think that aspect of it, the mental aspect, is a thing that is lacking when we talk about “fighting obesity.” Doctors and nutritionists tell us what to eat, and expect that whatever it is they are warning us against will make us obey. Diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s. It’s like the dietary version of “scared straight.” I have even heard medical professionals speaking to one another say, “If you were told you needed to change your diet or you were going to have a heart attack, don’t you think you would?” The implication being that people who don’t are lazy or stupid.
But a change like that takes resetting a lifetime of impulses and beliefs, truths buried so deep we sometimes don’t have language for them. It takes struggling through a million instincts to eat the candy.
Changing takes a certain amount of mental flexibility. And that is not easy, or obvious. Absolutely possible! But not a no-brainer. It takes lots of brain. And lots of action. And lots of sitting through pain. But there are peace and freedom on the other side. And I like peace and freedom better than chocolate.
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01 Nov 2015
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A Really Scary Halloween Story

Goodbye Halloween. I love Halloween. But it has been a while since I did much to celebrate. This year I didn’t even dress up, since I had to work.

No matter how I look at it, it’s such a beautiful miracle that I don’t care about candy. Halloween exactly 10 years ago was filled with humiliated binging, and a general sense of shame, but in a normal sized body.

Halloween 10 years ago was one of those days when I knew I was hitting bottom, but before I knew what I could do about it. It was the time in my life that I was most terrified about what would become of me. It was the time of my life when I felt the most out of control. I was barely managing to keep myself sane. I was in a regular sized body, but I could not stop eating. And all of my energy went into eating, and then trying to not gain weight from eating. 

Halloween 10 years ago was my first successful bulimic episode, where I stuck a toothbrush down my throat and actually managed to throw up. I had tried before that, but bulimia is not easy. (It turns out it’s not all that effective either.) I remember looking in the mirror and seeing how bloodshot my eyes looked from it. I remember being bloated and taking some gas medicine because of it. Gas medicine because I could not get the water pill some old woman recommend. I remember asking a pharmacist where I could get a water pill, and the pharmacist looking at me funny and asking if I had a prescription. And when I said I did not, telling me that they were dangerous and were not sold over the counter.

I remember being embarrassed and ashamed. I remember wondering if she could tell that I wanted it because I was bulimic. Wondering if it was written across my forehead. This girl is doing shameful things with food. I remember feeling crazy.

I remember that I was terrified that I was going to look fat and ugly for the Halloween birthday party I was going to. And I arrived later than I wanted because I was doing whatever I could think of to look normal. To not look bloodshot and bloated. 

The truth is, maybe I didn’t look as ugly as I thought I looked. But I was so unhappy. And I thought it must be obvious by just looking at me that I was so out of control that I had resorted to making myself throw up.

I thank God for many things about that day. I am grateful that I hit that point of desperation. I don’t think I could have found my solution for my eating disorders if I hadn’t tried something so extreme.

And ultimately, it would make for a very happy ending. Just two months later, I would find the solution to my eating problem. I would never have to worry about how to get rid of the food I wished I hadn’t eaten. 

I would get a life that was more peaceful than I could ever have imagined in my wildest dreams. A life where I can walk by a bowl full of candy, and rest easy knowing it’s not mine.

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02 Nov 2014

In case you missed it, it has already begun…

Another Halloween over. Of course, Halloween kicks off our collective debauched food binge that lasts through the extreme hangover that is New Years Day. The day we firmly resolve that this year we will be better. We will lose weight and drink more water and less alcohol and stop yelling at our kids and be better listeners.

I am so grateful that I don’t have to play that game anymore. Of course, at this particular moment I am most grateful that I did not have to eat compulsively just because it was Halloween. Trick or treat would have been, without a doubt, all trick and no treat.

I handed out the candy this year. Which wasn’t hard, because I don’t crave it since I haven’t had it in my body for over 8 years. And there weren’t many kids since it was so cold, so there is still a whole bunch of candy in the house. But thank God I don’t have to eat it. Thank God it’s not mine. Thank God I don’t have to start, and then be expected to stop. Because I don’t know if I have another stop in me. And I don’t want to find out.

I also love that I still love Halloween. I love dressing up. I love my own creativity. I love the chance to show off how clever I am. I love getting to wear a costume I can feel beautiful in. (I was Miss America this year. Complete with evening gown, tiara, sash and running mascara.) In a body I can feel beautiful in. I love that I don’t have to feel deprived. Of fun. Or chocolate. Because the truth is that I would not have just eaten some chocolate. And I wouldn’t have just eaten all of the chocolate. I would have eaten the things I didn’t want or like. I would have eaten everything that was there. And then I would have gotten more. I would have needed to go get more. I would not have been able to not get more. But instead, I get to still love Halloween because I don’t have to eat myself to shame and self-loathing. I love that I get to wake up with some dignity. Even after the binge-fest that is National Candy Day.

So now it is time to beware the Holiday Season. I may not be in danger, but food is still dangerous to me. Even after all this time. I don’t take it lightly. I protect myself from my eating disorders. By remembering that I am eternally a compulsive eater. Hopeless and without a cure. By making sure that the meals I make myself are delicious and decadent while keeping them within my eating boundaries. By remembering that I am addicted to sugars, grains and starches. By remembering how eating compulsively manifests in my life. On my body in the form of 150 more pounds. And in my personality in the form of lying, cheating and stealing. And in my heart as depression and self-hatred. I remember these things because I want to continue to wake up with dignity.

I may have made it through Halloween, but there is more to come. Pumpkin Pie and Christmas cookies. Mashed potatoes and stuffing. Wine and eggnog. There is little time to take a breath between bites and gulps for the rest of the year. For other people. For me, there is plenty of time. Hours and hours between my three meals a day. To do and be. As long as I keep my head on straight and keep the boundaries around my eating.

So I hope you had a Happy Halloween. And I wish you a peaceful Holiday Season. Because it has already begun.

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