With having my eating under control for almost two decades, the food part – the not eating sugar and carbs, the weighing my food, the abstaining from eating between portion controlled meals – is usually on autopilot. And having all of that basically running in the background all the time, gives me time to actively work on other things. My relationship with myself. My own authenticity and the kind of life I want to live. My relationships between my authentic self and the people in my life. The ways I want to communicate. The ways I want to land. What I want to create in my community and the world.
And that is just relationships. That is not the learning I do. The making. The expanding.
It is exciting to talk about all of those things and the work I am putting in. All of the breakdowns and breakthroughs of my humanity.
But I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t note that all of this is based on me actively having my eating under control. Doing it all the time without exception.
My ability to grow all goes away if I start to eat compulsively again. Because having my eating under control is where my self esteem STARTS. Period. All of my self love and self respect come from my willingness to stop putting my drug foods in my body, and my ability to follow through.
If you have never been an addict, there is a thing in us that feels ultimately incomplete and wrong any time we are not high on our drug. And then broken for feeling that way any time we realize we can’t stop. That is a bunch of broken promises to ourselves that seem to reinforce that we are, in fact, broken.
And those feelings don’t go away the moment you put your addiction down. They slowly fade over years. SLOWLY!
There are a lot of things that I get from giving up my addiction, but, like I said, the first one is self esteem. And that makes knowing what I want so much easier. I am not wondering if I should want what I want. I am not wondering what other people think about what I value. I like me enough. I respect me. I know I’m worth having an opinion.
In fantasy books, one rule is alway clear: Magic always costs something. Keeping my eating under control is the price of this magic. Practicing it every day is the spell.
We had some people over last night. We over ordered Chinese food. We had the counter covered in cartons and containers and literally none of it was for me. And I felt great about that.
When I was eating compulsively, I absolutely would have been obsessed with the countertop. And the company would be secondary. If that. How good was the food?
Instead I ate my usual “junk food” dinner of homemade sugar free chocolate ice cream and salt n vinegar pork rinds (there is more to it, but those are the highlights.) And I didn’t think about the food out for grazing.
I don’t graze. I eat my meals. Nothing in between but zero calorie drinks.
My attention last night was for our company. Telling funny stories and laughing at theirs. I’m funny in real life. Charming. A good story teller. Quick with a one liner. I can be these things better when there is no part of my brain being used to keep track of the food.
That is what 19+ years free of drug foods can do. Make food invisible. At least if I t’s not mine. My food is still mouthwateringly visible.
In fact, one of my food addiction milestones was looking through a NYC shop window at a really attractive man, and not noticing it was a bakery until I had passed it. INVISIBLE!!!
So I got to have fun and laughs. A meal I loved. And a mind free of all of the things that don’t belong to me.
It’s sort of crazy to me to think that over the past two and a half years so many things in my life and my body are entirely different than they used to be.
About 3 and a half years ago I got sick and I didn’t get better. And I hated doctors. I spent my young life fat and was not treated very well by doctors. And as an adult I was poor and didn’t have insurance so I just sort of managed. Went to a clinic if I had to, but mostly just rode it out.
But I am married to a union construction worker. We have excellent insurance. Yet I still didn’t want to go. Doctors were a traumatic experience for me most of my life. And even unable to breathe I didn’t want to go. To the point that my husband was at his wits’ end.
I will say that even right from the start, I had a whole bunch of experiences that reminded me that there is a reason I don’t like doctors. I was treated with so much condescension by several. And I have to say that being an incredibly smart person, being treated like a child by a person whose mother I could be, really brings out the bitch in me. (I literally had to stop myself from explaining the logical fallacy used by the probably 20 something first year resident while she was condescending to me…I did hold my tongue. Keeping my eating under control keeps my tongue under control too. For the most part.)
But here is the deal. That one change, being willing to go to the doctor to deal with my breathing, made a huge shift in both my physical body and my experience of it.
When I stopped running because I could not breathe, I started walking stairs. Walking stairs gave me a butt that I never had. Having a butt moved my center of balance back from my toes to my middle foot. The shift in my balance made my short right leg tighter and more noticeable. That made me put a lift in one shoe to accommodate my short leg from being born with a club foot.
Today I walk different. I workout different. My right hip rarely hurts anymore. My clothes fit differently, so that my belly is smaller and less noticeable.
And I go to the doctor. Regularly. I have a doctor that I adore. And I have a particular phlebotomist that always gets me perfectly on the first stick. (Blood draws have always been another problem for me and I would often end up bruised all inside my elbow.)
But changing the way I ate at 28, giving up my drug food, weighing my food, eating only 3 times a day, created the opportunity to change. Anything. Anytime. If I could change my eating I could literally change any aspect of my life. Yes it takes work. But everything worth anything takes work.
And I am 48. I am old(ish). Which means you apparently can teach an old(ish) dog new tricks.
I decided recently to stop showing people my crochet projects before they are done. There is some science behind it. That the praise of others gives you the same reward chemicals as actually finishing the project.
There is a thing that people who do what I do with food say. “If you want what I have, do what I do.” Mostly we mean, “if I look happy and peaceful to you then maybe you should try giving up sugar and put boundaries around your eating.”
And sometimes we say it outside of the group. A little inside joke. When someone says they could never do what we do, one person I know always tells them “that’s fine. I don’t want what you have.”
But sometimes it means something *within* the group. There are people who are doing all of the same things with food that I am. But they have a life I don’t want. I am not saying it’s not a good life. Just one not good for me. So I don’t take life advice from them. Food help, absolutely. Life advice? Absolutely not.
Getting my eating under control let me see how specific I could start to be about what I wanted for myself. Every specificity was a little more authenticity. And authenticity, not praise or popularity, was the goal.
Because it’s the knowing what I want that is often the sticking point. In getting my eating under control, I started to realize that the way I had lived, what I *wanted* up until that point was just reward chemicals in my brain. Very much short term gratification.
Denying myself reward chemicals in the form of food was the first step to delayed gratification for me. Eventually I would start my slow hobbies. Set positively unrealistic expectations for myself that I would actually end up meeting in a very realistic time frames. (I wanted to be able to design crochet as a beginner 15+ years ago. Before I could read a pattern…But yes. I now design my own dolls and art pieces.) And fail and persevere repeatedly for over a decade.
There are many things I dislike about perimenopause, but one thing I love is how self aware and self involved I am becoming. Caring more for pleasing myself than others. And yet I am so much less selfish than I was when I was in the food.
What I want is a rich and satisfying life of contentment and creative expression. And the road to that is slow by nature.
I saw a video on social media this week that I have been thinking about. It was about how to spot and stop manipulators. But the point was that the hardest person to manipulate is the one who is in alignment with themselves.
The person who knows what they want, what they stand for, what they want to achieve and create, and who they want to be in the world, isn’t going to be swayed by anything other than something even more in alignment with their heart and head.
I spend a lot of time worrying I’m doing life wrong. And will probably never entirely grow out of it. But this was a nice little reminder for me.
Because getting my eating under control is how I learned to listen to myself. I had so much noise in my head when I was eating compulsively. Most of it was about food and eating and craving, but it was also about shame. What I did wrong. What I failed to do. How I was lacking. How I was broken. How I was ugly and wrong.
When I was in the food, I could not see what I wanted. And if I thought I could, but the world didn’t agree, I assumed I was wrong, not the world.
But here’s the thing. The world often doesn’t agree with me. I’m not particularly interested in its conventions. And once I made friends with that, it was easier to be authentic. After all, the world doesn’t really want me to quit sugar and grains. It upsets a whole group. People who have zero stake in my eating have had all sorts of opinions about it. Strangers! And there is a whole ultra specific group that thinks that what I do is not only useless but harmful. People on the internet insisting that sugar addiction isn’t a thing. That it is about food morality. That I am a fatphobe monster because I assert that I have a problem with sugar and that sugar can be addictive.
Look. Just to clarify, I don’t think every fat person is an addict. I don’t care if a person is fat. I don’t think fat people need to lose weight. I don’t think that anyone owes anyone else any explanations of their food or their body.
But I was getting drunk on sugar from childhood and it was ruining my life. And want to help a compulsive eater and sugar addict who still suffers. (P.S. Not all sugar addicts are fat. I want to help them too.)
But that is part of how getting my eating under control helped me align myself and my principles and my past. It was only in putting boundaries around my eating that I could separate my fatness from my addiction. Come to love my body in all its iterations. To feed it nourishing foods. And not worry about health or weight. Just worry about not doing my drug foods. Just worry about not using. Take the morality *out* of food.
And every time I make a choice that makes people who are not me look at me funny, I remember who I am, what I want, what I want to create and what legacy I am leaving. And I have enough clarity of mind and purpose to actually know the answer. And all of that is the culmination of 19 1/2 years of keeping boundaries around my eating.
I ate almost two pounds of fruit this morning – along with my bacon and cheese and coffee with whole milk – and I did not DO NOT have an ounce of regret. I didn’t even feel a little stuffed. (Which would be a perfectly acceptable outcome for me personally.) Just the pure joy of a huge sweet breakfast.
It’s such a good reminder that bodies change. And that some of those changes are from our own choices and are in our control, and some are not.
In the summer, any summer, I am going to eat half of a giant cantaloupe, or a quarter of a ginormous honeydew every day I can. And if I can’t, I am going to be disappointed. (I mean, I will still have a delicious breakfast because loving my food is a priority. But I’ll be a little sad too.)
And in past years, that sometimes meant that I would be uncomfortable and overfull after breakfast. But again I don’t mind that. I would rather feel too full than hungry. And I don’t have to have a moral or emotional reaction to that anymore.
But lately my current workout is centered around building muscle, so even eating gargantuan fruits, I am very rarely really full anymore.
I had so much shame around how I felt about even my own experience and preferences of eating before getting my eating under control. Hunger was “greed” and wanting was “greed” and preferring to be stuffed rather than hungry (thin) was “greed” and I was never going to be a good girl if I wanted to be satisfied.
But getting my eating under control also taught me to sit in discomfort. Withdrawal is a bitch and sugar is no different. It taught me to live with feelings. Even hunger or the cravings that masquerade as hunger.
But also, my eating boundaries come with a community. So if I need more literal fuel, I have someone else to help guide me through what kind of food and how much and when.
Having boundaries around my eating let me choose my eating for myself, while also having a set of clear rules that keep me from my drug foods. And that took the morality out of food for me.
About a month ago I became enamored with a pretty little feral cat in my neighborhood. She was scared and jumpy and never let me touch her, but she was clearly hungry. And did I mention she was so pretty? I named her Suren, Wren for short, after a fantasy novel character who is a fairy queen who grows up feral on the streets in the mortal world.
So I put out a bowl of food, and she was grateful. And I kept putting out food and she became affectionate in her own way. Rubbing against things near me, and lots of slow blinks and head cocks. And when she was hungry every day, she sat like a lady in front of my window and waited to catch my eye. So I was feeding her expecting her to eventually touch me. Trust me. But after over a week she never did.
And then I figured out that she was pregnant. And had been the whole time she had been coming to me to eat. And my vet-tech-step-daughter said that moving a pregnant stray cat was often too stressful for them. And that it was *why* she was afraid to let me touch her. (And why she always had her tail down.)
So I just kept feeding her and let her do what she wanted. Because that is the lesson of honoring boundaries. She was asking for food and also to not be touched. Was I offering help? Was I being of service or was I expecting a return?
And then one day, she came earlier than usual. So I fed her. And I noticed that her tail was up! And I thought, “you had those kittens.” And then she came back again later that same day. And ate a whole other can of food. Plus a bunch of treats. And I thought, “oh you definitely had those kittens.”
That day she led me to a neighbor’s home and went into their yard where I could not follow. But I knew where she was. And that felt better. Plus my step daughter said that it was better because if she thought I knew where they were she might feel the need to move them. So I left her alone. And she came every day and I fed her.
But we went to our new work apartment this week and my husband found little pictures of her on our ring camera waiting like a little lady and I WAS NOT THERE. I got upset which got my husband upset. Ugh!
And then we came home this weekend, with a bunch of food and two bowls to hand out to two of my neighbors, to ask them to leave it out for Wren if they saw her.
But when I went to see if I could lure her from the neighbor’s yard, another friendly neighbor who was friends with the neighbor in question looked and said there were no more cats but there were empty food and water bowls out.
So maybe she moved her babies because they were found. Or maybe she and her babies *were* found by someone who took them to Animal Welfare. But for now, I don’t know. And maybe I never will.
One of the hardest things to give up is the idea that “I should have done a thing better.” If I had been better, known better, done better, an outcome would be different and I would not have failed or come out lacking.
But that is the first thing that everyone told me when I got my eating under control. That I am not in charge of anything but my own actions. And that “If all you did today was keep your eating boundaries, you won. You succeeded.” It didn’t matter how many other things I failed at. Because the world is not on my shoulders. And not every problem or situation is mine to solve. And if some of them are mine, the best thing I can do is not drug myself with sugar. The rest will follow.
Clearly I know intellectually that I did “enough” with Wren. I was willing, and did what I was able. But somehow it still feels bad.
And also, I liked her. We would sit together while she ate. She would occasionally come close enough to eat cat food off a plastic fork in my hand. She had a personality and I liked it. And now I miss her.
It feels hard to just accept certain boundaries. Especially from a feral cat. It feels like I want to help her, and do what is best for her in spite of herself.
But also, I have a lot of identification with a feral cat. I am also used to doing what I want. And don’t really care if you like or appreciate my decisions. And trying to put me in an environment that makes you comfortable is not a gift to me. It is a trap.
But hell. For all I know, she is living in the lap of luxury because someone snatched her and her babies up and took them home. What do I know. We all make our own choices. (Human and cat.)
There is a saying of people who do what I do with food. Having my eating boundaries lets me “wear my life like a loose garment.” When I am not eating my drug foods compulsively, I can (usually) gracefully navigate my life. Including my relationships, my hopes and disappointments, and just the changing of everything.
So here’s to Wren. I hope she’s living her best life, whatever that looks like.
Another move. Today! (So another quickie.) I am pretty excited for this move. It’s close to home so I can get my salt n vinegar pork rinds whenever I want, but I also found my favorite yogurt again in the new place! So the best of both worlds.
I am excited to move on. I am ready to be back on a daily routine. I am ready to be back in a rhythm.
My eating boundaries are portable. I have been able to keep them for over 19 years. And also, it means that even when my life is in upheaval and I’m neck deep in change, some things are the same. My eating never changes.
When I ate compulsively, my eating didn’t change much either. It’s just that I was eating drug foods basically constantly and I hated myself for not being able to stop. Now, I eat guilt free three times a day and a satisfied physically and emotionally.
This past week has been enlightening for me as a person looking to continue to grow. I always forget that most real spiritual breakthroughs in my life happen through breakdowns. I always think about the joys of the other side without remembering the absolute physical, mental, and emotional misery of the catalyst for it.
The 2 month period that led up to me quitting sugar and putting boundaries around my eating was emotional torture. But people who saw me then said I seemed fine. Perfectly normal.
The months that led up to me no longer weighing my body and no longer judging my life based on the size of my body were riddled with uncontrollable weight gain, nightmares and stress hormones, and crying jags I couldn’t control.
This week it took some time to get me out of my woe-is-me-feelings. But they say to do service to feel better. So I did some stuff for other people. Which got me out of my head. And I decided on my amends. (I ended up donating to the GFM for Burn the Cape by Dr. Raquel Martin.) So that I could move on. Because I hurt someone by accident and then I got terrified that I would do it again. And I made myself as small as I could be. Made as little movement as I could. Froze right in place and stayed as still as possible.
Because that is how it goes for me. I be whatever I am. And I get bigger. Weirder. Sillier. And then make a mistake and hurt someone. Again. And I freeze. Then I flee. And I go and hide.
Getting fatter was absolutely a way for me to get smaller when I was still eating compulsively. More invisible. A way to have less impact. To be less seen. To hide in plain sight. I definitely did not know that intellectually at the time. And the being high on sugar helped me not know.
This is a difficult thing to explain. If you know me you may already think I’m “big and weird and silly.” You may think I have a gigantic personality. Which I do. But even that is still a stifled little girl doing a cha cha dance of trying to never ever make a mistake and then making one anyway and then quitting the dance and then 5-6-7-8…
And that is the lesson here for me. That the shutting down and the woe is me and the hiding away is not authentic. It’s a way for me to stop and regroup and figure out what is palatable. What’s a tolerable dose of Kate? Let’s get it in that range.
That is a problem. For me, anyway. Because what got me here to my sugar addiction and compulsive eating being arrested, and loving my life, and being in a loving and happy marriage, has been an uncovering of who I am. Very much *not* the making myself easier to digest. My life is better because I care about my authentic self.
I understand a few things.
My ego is not particularly big but it is fragile AF!
My impact in the world, and not my intention, is what I am responsible for. So that ALSO MEANS I don’t have to have a whole emotional breakdown about being a scourge on humanity because I made a joke that landed a way I didn’t mean for a person I really like. I can make it about my integrity (a thing I can do something about) and not my ego (an amorphous blob of ever changing and impossible standards.)
I just want to say that over these past 2+ years I have seen an incredible transformation in so many aspects of my life. My breathing health. My mental health. My physical strength and wellbeing. My balance. My willingness to see the doctor regularly and to get blood work done.
I am clearly changing for something. Into something. And I expect it won’t be the last time either.
A few months ago I stopped eating eggs. They were expensive and I was lowkey worried about bird flu. Yes I know if you cook them through they should be fine. It’s not that I didn’t understand. I was just still bothered. Enough that the relief of quitting them outweighed missing them. I don’t miss them. Other people in my house still eat them. I have the option. I just don’t.
But now I have to consider if I want to continue to drink milk and eat yogurt since the FDA is suspending milk quality tests.
Milk and yogurt are a huge part of my diet. Butter too. Plus meat. Another food that is important to have standards for. And let’s not forget how many foods that get contaminated and recalled are vegetables. Lettuce pretty regularly. Cucumbers pretty recently.
I eat real fresh food. Most of it was recently alive. And that is dangerous if it is not handled properly in a mass production environment.
I am worried about my food. I am worried about your food too. I am worried about food safety. I am worried about food transparency.
Am I just going to have to be sick occasionally? Do I just have to accept that?
Or am I supposed to trust that Kroger and Albertsons would never do anything sneaky or inappropriate to sell me their product? Am I supposed to trust in the free market?
onceafatgirl 