onceafatgirl

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Archive for the tag “keeping my food boundaries”

23 Jul 2023

The slow crawl to spectacular

I saw a pulmonologist this week and it could not have gone better.

A little over 2 months ago, I got sent for a lung function test. Afterwards, a doctor called me and told me that my lungs were fine and to stop taking the medication I had been taking. And I was upset. Because my lungs were very clearly not fine.

It was more of the same thing that I had always felt about doctors growing up. That nobody was listening to me. That the relationship was about power and submission. And that I was always the small one expected to submit. They were the doctors. They knew everything. I knew nothing.

But I was feeling panicked and crazy and scared. And I called a friend crying and she told me that she had to learn to advocate for herself with doctors. That it was a skill. And that I should figure out what I want for myself. Which is so not how I have ever thought about doctors.

So first, I took the doctor’s advice, knowing I already had a pulmonologist appointment, and I stopped taking the medication. And then I started taking notes on my lung function every day in my journal. And how often I had to take a different medication (fast acting instead of long lasting.) And then I psyched myself up to duke it out with this pulmonologist to get back on the medication that had been helping. Because no matter what that test said, there was something wrong!

But I walked in and he looked at my test results – the same ones from months ago when they told me my lungs were great – and he said I have a very specific kind of asthma. That the tests look great because I seem to be at the highest level of lung function, but that it’s misleading because actually, there is too much air in my lungs. I am getting air trapped in there and then breathing more air on top of it. And then he asked me how I felt being on the original medication and I told him “spectacular.” So he put me back on it. I didn’t even have to make the request. 

But wait. There’s more! He then told me that this particular kind of asthma often goes away on its own and that we will revisit it in 6 months, but there is a good chance that this too shall pass. 

Then he said I could take a blood test and they could see if I had certain markers for asthma. But I told him that I have a really hard time with blood tests and that if it was necessary I would but I would rather not. And he told me that it was not necessary at this point. So we wouldn’t do it.

Before I got my eating under control, life happened to me all the time. I was powerless. I was just dragged along. And I didn’t even realize that there was another way.

When I put boundaries around my eating, I got clarity. I got responsibility. I got the ability to ask for help. To learn a new way to do things. 

But also, I just want to note that it took 16 years of having my eating under control plus a health condition to actually go to the doctor. And the help and guidance of loved ones to begin to understand how to navigate that world. So I’m not saying it’s quick, I’m just saying it’s a slow crawl to “spectacular.”

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16 Jul 2023

Less bacon…but still a life beyond my wildest dreams

I was talking to a friend this morning who does what I do with food, and we were talking about how when we were eating compulsively we could never listen to our bodies because we were stuffing them too full with food for them to really tell us anything.

Over the past couple of months I have been losing weight quickly. And since I only eat 3 weighed and measured meals a day, I was eating a lot of high fat proteins like bacon and pork rinds to satisfy my hunger. It allowed me to feed myself enough calories to stave off the gnawing stomach pains. And that really helped. Until last week. When it became clear that my body didn’t need that much fat every day anymore. And it didn’t want it anymore either. 

Over the past few days I started eating more leaner proteins with my meals along with my fatty ones. I am still me and I will always eat bacon. But in smaller quantities for now. 

It’s a miracle that I can hear what my body has to say. That I knew to eat heavier, and now I know to dial it back. That my body is an ever changing vessel and it needs different things at different times and that if I pay attention, it will make it clear to me what it needs. And that I am not shoving it full of so much junk that I have numbed myself and smothered anything it had to tell me.

When I keep simple sugars and carbs out of my body, I keep a clear head, which lets me listen to my body and my life and make choices accordingly. And because of that I have a life that I could never have imagined before I got my eating under control. Truly a life beyond my wildest dreams.

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09 Jul 2023

Ready to be of service

I have been reminded this week that if nothing changes then nothing changes. It’s a saying I heard a lot when I first got my eating under control. If I don’t do anything different, I won’t get different results or a different life. 

I spent much of my young life wishing things were different than they were, especially my body. I wanted to be thin and I was not. But also, I wanted to be thin, while I simultaneously wanted to eat whatever I wanted. And I wanted both of those things to be true at the same time. And any time I did lose weight, I was eating smaller quantities of the same foods, until I was thin enough, or just not invested enough anymore, to go back to eating the way I wanted to. Which led to me being fat and hating my body again.

But this was true for lots of aspects of my life. I used to be late a lot. If it should take me 20 minutes to get to work, I would leave the house 20 minutes before work. And I would only make it on time about 2/3 of the time. And even if I said I would try to be better, I didn’t really *do* anything different. I just got angrier at traffic or the subway or my job. Like the “trying” was just wishing harder to be on time.

But I eventually got my eating under control because I changed the way I ate. I stopped eating simple sugars and carbohydrates. I started weighing my food. I only ate 3 meals a day with nothing in between. And I only changed because other people had gone before me and told me that if I did what they did, I could have what they had. A body and a life that were different in their joy and freedom than I had ever experienced before. And they were right. I ate differently, I thought differently, I lived differently and I got a different life.

And lately I’ve been changing again because, again, I have been making changes. I have been going to the doctor after 20 years of avoiding it, and I am taking care of my health. I have changed my workout, so my body is changing. And I signed up for The Craft Yarn Council’s Certified Instructors Program to get certified to teach crochet. So I’m acquiring new skills and techniques and learning how to make my passion for making into a shareable product. 

And all of these changes, that already feel pretty big on their own, are combining to make me feel like maybe I am on the precipice of something even bigger. Perhaps something new and exciting that I haven’t even considered before. 

I don’t know what happens next. But I am kind of thrilled. I am ready to be surprised! I am ready to be tickled! But maybe most importantly I am ready to be of service.

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02 Jul 2023

I’ll cry instead

I am a crier. I have always been a crier. And for most of my life it was a source of shame. It was not ok o cry. I was supposed to be strong. I was too sensitive. I was wrong, and I needed to stop crying. But I could not. I have never been able to just stop crying. It has never been a thing that I could just have a handle on. Never.

But in the past 17 years I have had to cry less and less. The longer I have my eating under control, I less I need to cry. I am generally much less unhappy. And generally have much less stress. For myriad reasons. Plenty of them things like meditation and exercise. But also getting myself into fewer bad situations because I’m not lying and cheating. I don’t act like an addict anymore.

But I actually love to cry in safe situations. More than love it. It’s probably one of my favorite things in the world. I am obsessed with novels. And I realized years ago that I am much more likely to give a book 5 stars if it makes me cry. Especially a particularly emotional and cathartic sobbing. (My poor sensitive husband. I always make sure he knows that it’s the book, just the book! But he still doesn’t actually like to see the crying.)

And then I read an article this week that said that crying is the nervous system’s way of regulating after “fight or flight.” And that it sends out all of these really good feeling brain chemicals to calm you down. And that all made a *lot* of sense to me. And shifted the way I think about certain things.

It gave me an inkling as to why I have never been able to get control of it. It made me recognize that I was sent into that fight or flight response a lot for most of my early life. Easily and regularly. And that probably for exactly that reason, I was kind of addicted to the chemicals of crying. Also, that I generally do it less now that my eating is under control because it’s much rarer for me to be in a position to go into fight or flight mode. And it makes a lot of sense to me that I still want to be getting all the brain chemical rewards without the actual danger.

I made friends with my crying a long time ago. People hate it. I know that. But I had two choices. Hate myself for not being able to control it, or get a sense of humor about it. I choose the humor. And the safety of novels.

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25 Jun 2023

The perfect body

This week I had to do a mid-week grocery run. And there is a discount department store right next to that grocery store. So I went in to get myself some workout pants that fit. And I figured while I was there, I should try on some real actual pants with things like buttons and zippers and figure out what size I actually am at the moment. 

I bought size medium workout clothes and figured out that I am currently a U.S. size 10 in pants, down from a U.S. size 14.

I have so many very complicated feelings about this.

This weight loss is, at least in part, the result of the workout I am doing. And one of the reasons I am doing it is because I love the effect it is having on my butt. I have never before had a butt, and now I do. And I really really love it. I can see the difference in the mirror and feel it when I sit down. And now that I am enjoying having a butt, I have a different feeling about pants in general as a clothing option. 

But I have spent the last 11 or 12 years trying to dismantle the ingrained idea that thinner is better. And yet, when I see the “M” or the “10,” I have a huge reaction. My brain sends out all sorts of happy messages! Skinny! Pretty! Good Girl! And then it gets excited about how much thinner I could get. Could I be an 8? A 6??? Could I be a SMALL?!?!?  And then it follows up with a burst of fear! How will we keep it going? How can we speed it up? What if it stops?

And in a blink, staying a size 10 is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. 

So what I have decided to remember is that as long as I am keeping my eating boundaries, I am in exactly the right body I am supposed to be in. That whether I am a 6 or a 16, as long as I am weighing my food and abstaining from sugars and simple carbohydrates, I am in the perfect body for me and my life.

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18 Jun 2023

Another bacon shake up

I had to start buying a new brand of bacon from a different grocery store recently. Because the brand I had been buying changed their recipe. And can you guess what they added? 

You got it! Sugar! (DING DING DING)

Which is why I still occasionally read the labels on foods I have been buying for years. Because sugar is a cheap. And it keeps people coming back for more. And it finds it’s way into so many things you wouldn’t expect. (I wonder how it could have gotten there?!?!)

It didn’t help me that this particular bacon recipe changed over while I have been on the biggest bacon binge of my life. (My mini stepper workout has me positively ravenous almost all of the time. And since I only ever eat at meal times, lots of bacon -yes, and pork rinds- at those meal times really keeps that gnawing hunger feeling at bay until the next meal.)

There is so much talk about “obesity related illnesses” and “an obesity epidemic” but what almost nobody is talking about is the food we consume and what is in it. And how it has changed. Nobody seemingly wants to put those puzzle pieces together. 

Society thinks we should all collectively just “push away from the table.” They don’t seem to have any questions about why so many of us can’t. Or why so many *more* of us can’t than ever before.

We talk about eating as if it were easy, natural and cost effective to eat whole unprocessed foods. That anyone who doesn’t lacks common sense and willpower. That the fact that more people are fat is some sort of onset of cultural laziness.

It takes a great effort to eat real food. It costs a lot of money. It requires that you or someone in your household prep and cook it. And while it does satisfy true hunger, it doesn’t light up a brain the way sugar does.

When I was fat and eating compulsively, I purposely kept what I was eating and how it was affecting my body separate in my head. But that wasn’t doing me any favors. And I only stopped doing that because I found a way to put boundaries around my eating and that required that I take an unflinching look at the reality of what I was putting in my body. And why. But it took my own individual total desperation to get me to that point.

What would it take to get the world to that point? And why would people profiting off of our inability to push away from the table let that happen?

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11 Jun 2023
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When Rational Kate isn’t invited to the party

I have a lot of messed up body image issues. But they are usually dormant because I have my eating under control.

If we consider 26 the age at which our brains are done developing, then I was either fat or bulimic for my formative years. And that had an effect on the way I think about my body.

My eyes are broken. I can’t “eyeball” my food. If I’m hungry, 4 ounces of meat looks tiny. If I’m not hungry it looks like a mountain. 

The same is true for my body. When I first got my eating under control and started getting physically smaller, I would startle when I walked past a window and saw my own reflection. I once saw a picture of myself where my face was obscured and I literally asked someone who it was. Because I could not imagine that the thighs on the woman in the picture could be my thighs.

And right now I am having a sort of body-dysmorphic episode. (It’s fine. I’m fine.)

For about two months I have been doing a more intense exercise routine where I do 30 minutes of cardio on my mini stepper 5 days a week, instead of a 2 mile jog. I have been losing weight. My butt is noticeably perkier, and my clothes are noticeably looser. But for the past week or two, I have been flitting in and out of these weird little thought pockets where I “can’t see the results.” Times when I think the changes in my butt are all in my head. Times when I think all the bacon I am eating is making me fat.

Rational Kate knows that all of this is ridiculous. I can literally feel the difference in my butt when I sit down. I can feel my workout pants getting bigger every time I pull them on. But if having my eating under control has taught me anything (and it has taught me so many things) it’s that rational Kate doesn’t always get invited to the party. 

The answer of course is that there is no answer. The answer is to not make any rash decisions about my food or my body for the moment. It’s to keep doing what I am doing and the crazy will eventually go dormant again. And eventually it will come back again. The answer is to make friends with the dysmorphia, without letting it make any plans.

I don’t have to listen to the crazy because I have my food taken care of. All of my calm(ish) indifference to a very emotional part of my life experience (being fat in our culture sucks if you did not know) is possible because I have boundaries around my eating and a supportive community who wants me to be my most authentic self.

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04 Jun 2023

Ups and downs and how little control I have over them

I don’t weigh myself. I haven’t for about 10 years. I used to. Once a month. Most people who do what I do with food weigh themselves on the first. 

But when I quit smoking over 10 years ago, I gained a bunch of weight. I was keeping my eating boundaries and gaining weight anyway. It was really difficult. I was having nightmares about my weight and getting on the scale. And I would weigh myself on the first and be relieved that I didn’t have to do it again for another month. But the relief only lasted a week, tops. And then I was obsessed with what I could do to not gain more weight by the next time.

But I was not overeating. I was not doing any of the things that conventional wisdom tells us make us gain weight. I was eating less and less calorie dense foods and weighing more.

I started losing weight about 6 months ago. And since we have moved back home and I got a mini stepper two months ago, the weight loss is quicker. The other day I put on a dress that I bought 5 or 6 years ago and that used to be just the right amount of snug on me. Now it hangs off of me. Pants that used to be tight are now way too big and I have to roll the waistband down twice to get them in a comfortable position.

A lot of people who do what I do talk about how they still wear the same clothes from years ago. But that is not my story.

My story is that my weight has changed many times in the past 17 years. Not just when I quit smoking. And that I personally don’t have any answers as to why. I have gained weight eating all salads. And I am currently losing weight eating ridiculous amounts of bacon and pork rinds. Weighed and measured yes. So there is a limit. But bacon and pork rinds don’t weigh all that much.

I decided years ago that I would concentrate on keeping my food addiction under control and not worry about my weight. That whatever weight I am when I am weighing and measuring my food is exactly the right weight for me to be. 

But I still live in our society. And I am most definitely conditioned to think that getting smaller is always automatically good. So I keep an eye on those thoughts. I don’t entertain them. And I won’t make any major lifestyle changes, like longer or more intense workouts, without talking to a trusted person about them first.

I want to be strong and healthy. I want to love my body. But I don’t want that love to be contingent to my weight or size. I don’t want that love to be contingent on anything.

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28 May 2023

Less stuff. More love.

On Monday my husband and I had a dumpster dropped off in our driveway, and since then we have been deep cleaning our home. We pulled everything out of our attic spaces to clean them, and go through all of the stuff we had in there and decide what was worth keeping. And what was not.

It feels amazing.

I have never been great at letting go. It wasn’t until I got my eating under control that I learned how to let go of things that didn’t serve me anymore. Then I lived in small New York City apartments that had limited storage space. So twice a year, when it was time to switch out my seasonal wardrobe, I would do a big cleaning purge. What I didn’t learn right away was how to stop acquiring new stuff.

Baby steps.

First, I had to see the clutter I had everywhere, then get clear about how stressed out it made me. And then get to the point where the pain of letting it go was less than the pain of keeping so many things.

Part of learning how to stop eating compulsively was to learn how to sit in discomfort. “How to not numb a feeling with cake” eventually turned into “how to not numb a feeing with an impulse buy.” (But let’s be clear. In the beginning, those impulse buys made it possible to not eat the cake. I always quit the thing that’s killing me quickest. It’s just that when the food got easier, I could let go of those little “treats” too.)

Getting addiction under control is almost always about connection. I regularly feel like there is a giant hole inside me. And I tried to fill it with food. And stuff. But the only thing that really fills it is being in relationship with other people. It gets filled with love and laughter and tears and compassion. It gets filled with quality time and acts of service. 

It feels amazing to have taken a real, exhaustive inventory of what I have, and like a huge relief to have a dumpster full of the stuff gone. It leaves so much more room in my head and my heart for the people in my life.

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21 May 2023

Enjoying my butt and my bacon

I have been losing weight over the past few months. And quickly. And I don’t know exactly why. But I suppose I have an idea. I have started a more vigorous step workout. And I can breathe easily. But the truth is my weight has fluctuated significantly since I got my eating under control. And I don’t always know why.

Recently I had to get rid of my size XL yoga pants. They were too big to stay up. And I am starting to shrink out of my size L yoga pants. And I am super hungry so I am eating really greasy, fatty proteins. Lots of bacon. Lots of pork rinds. Lots of full fat Greek yogurt. Even that has not slowed down the weight loss.

Plus, I have been starving after my workout, so I have pushed it back to right before lunch, so I can eat immediately afterwards.

I am really loving the changes in my body. I am watching my shape transform in ways that make me happy. And it’s not about thinness, or getting smaller. In fact the point is to get a bigger butt. (I have never had a butt. Just hips.)

But I have a complicated relationship with my body. I need to keep an eye on my thinking. I don’t want to end up in “diet head.” I don’t want to get obsessed with working out. I don’t want to love losing weight so much that I lose my mind. I have lost my mind over weight loss before. Yes, I was thin. But also crazy. 

I spoke about this with a trusted friend who does what I do with food. She hates that I am hungry. So do I. One of the best things about my food boundaries is that I don’t have to be hungry. But this is a choice. I could go back to jogging instead of my step machine. I could take a break from working out all together. (I don’t have any plans to do that right now.) I could do a million different things to get different results. But for now I am just going to keep on the same path. Enjoy my butt and my bacon and maybe buy myself some new pants.

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