onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “quit smoking”

15 Dec 2012
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It’s always an eating disorder blog because I always have eating disorders

I wrote a post earlier today, but I don’t think I want to share it. Not today. Not yet. It’s about my anger. My hate. My distrust. I have a lot of it. I am overflowing with it. And it’s ugly.
I am not afraid to show you my ugly. But it would not do any good right now. It would not serve me. Or you. There would be nothing for either of us to learn from it. Except that I am human. And that I have ugly feelings. Which I already knew. And you probably did too.

I am doing my best not to be ashamed of my ugly feelings. I am doing my best to remember that denying them doesn’t stop them from existing. And that the closest thing there is to making them disappear is to eat them. which is not an option. And I would like to say that I know that there is nothing virtuous in turning my hate in on myself instead of hating the people who have hurt me. But I have always used self-abuse and martyrdom as a kind of substitute for virtue. And I can forget when my rage scares me enough.

So for today, I will spare you my ugly feelings.

A friend said recently that my blog is as much, and maybe more, about quitting smoking lately than it is about compulsive eating. I think that may be true. And I told him that I made a decision a while ago to let it be what it is. That both the experience of getting control of my eating and that of quitting smoking are similar for me. I’m actually pretty sure that in time, my eating disorders will return to the forefront. I just happen to be going through a particularly difficult time with regards to quitting smoking. I am having a hard time with the feelings and the weight gain. I am having a hard time finding my footing after making a significant choice about who I want to be in the world. And who I want to be in the world is even more awake and aware and alive. I want to be not numb.
But there is something that I know, that you might not. In my mind, every day, always, I think of myself as a woman with eating disorders. I am a compulsive eater and bulimic with body dismorphia. A woman with a sugar addiction. And more specifically, woman who painstakingly takes care of her life with food so that she can be sane and stable. That is my primary identity. (I know…sounds super sexy, right?)

I have given up many things as a compliment to that identity. Smoking is one of them. Along with alcohol, and smoking pot, sugarless gum, diet soda and excessive caffeine. And behaviors like making rash decisions, and acting out in anger. But first, last, and always comes the food. Food was my first drug. It was my first numb. And getting control of my eating and letting go of getting high on sugar led me to realize that I actually wanted to be alive. That I don’t actually like numb. And that one step at a time, I want to come back to life fully.

I am in excruciating pain at the moment. I am more angry and hurt and scared and tormented than you can possibly imagine. I am burning with rage. I am overwhelmed with grief. I wake up puffy and swollen and encrusted with dry tears. My throat is sore from how tight I clench it. I am more miserable than I can remember being in the past (almost) 7 years.

But I do not eat to numb it! I would rather be here in honest, living, livid pain than be numb. Than be dead. Because eating compulsively is death to me. Numbness and death.

Yes, I have been talking a lot about smoking. And I’m ok with that. But my life, all of my life and every fiber of my being, is about being free from the food. I was able to quit smoking because I have my food under control. Because I learned how to feel pain when I let go of sugar and put boundaries around my eating. And if I thought that my eating boundaries were in danger, I would certainly go back to smoking. Or caffeine. Or chewing gum. Or whatever. Because the food will kill me quickest and make me hate myself the most.

So I hope you’re ok with my smoking talk. That you can somehow see that quitting sugar and quitting cigarettes are connected. Or if you can’t, that you still think I’m brilliant whatever I write! Or that you’ll humor me…

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08 Dec 2012

Is it just as judgy to judge people for judging?

I’m a little less body-miserable these past few days. Maybe it’s because, with weigh day behind me for the rest of the month, I put my body hatred it in its compartment. Maybe it’s because I have hope that by next weigh day, my metabolism will have started regulating itself again, and I will start losing this weight I have gained. Or maybe it’s starting to seep in that I am not, in fact, grotesquely fat in this body, and that I can have some peace if I can surrender to it being what it is. (That last one’s a stretch, but I believe in miracles.)

My big issue this week is how aware I am of people giving me unsolicited opinions and advice. And how offensive I find it. And how aggressive it makes me feel. (Not act…Ok, maybe a little. But I have managed to keep my clever and cruel remarks to myself.)

There is a saying I love. “If you want what I have, do what I do.”

I keep hearing from people who do not have what I want.

For example, I do not want health and lifestyle advice from a morbidly obese girl more than 10 years my junior.

I do not want to be told that my quitting smoking is “really for the best” by a woman I never see smile. And who looks something between bored and disgusted. Always.

I am glad that I quit smoking. For all of the pain that has come with it, there has been a new clarity and a deeper level of self-love, self-awareness, and self-confidence. I love that, even though it has not been an easy six months. But I don’t want other people telling me what is best for me. I like to decide that for myself.

And today, I can. When I got control of my food, I stopped doubting myself. I could trust my eyes and ears. I could trust my thoughts. I could trust my assessment of situations. I stopped wondering if I had it all wrong and was doing it all wrong.

And another thing I lost when I got control of the food, was the need to get it all right. (Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There are still things that I get very angry at myself for getting wrong.) But every day that I don’t eat compulsively, I have a lot more room for my humanity. And for everybody else’s.

And even one more thing is that I stopped feeling the need to give other people advice. I stopped needing to show that I had all the answers. That I was so smart. I started to understand the value of minding my own business! Who knew!?!? (By the way, I had zero answers when I was eating all the time. I sure hope nobody was actually taking the advice I kept forcing on people…Oh well. Too late now…)

So why am I so upset with people giving me their unsolicited opinions and advice? Why can’t I have room for their judgment? Why can’t I let it roll off my back?

I think because cigarettes were how I numbed the feeling that other people didn’t like me. Didn’t approve of me. Didn’t think I was doing it right or well. Didn’t think I was good enough. Being judged hurt. And cigarettes made that pain go away. It was a kind of manufactured indifference.

But now I have to acquire a new coping mechanism. And I don’t think I want it to include indifference. But I don’t want to own someone else’s judgment of me either. I need to figure out what that’s going to look like. Because I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t want to judge those who judge me for judging. I want to acknowledge their right to have thoughts and opinions about me and my actions. And know that those thoughts and opinions are none of my business. Even if they insist on telling me. I want to have room for their humanity, whether their words come from love or spite. I want to be protected by my confidence and personal sense of security. I want to learn to love my fellow human beings. Not because they deserve it. Because I do.

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01 Dec 2012

I may *be* insane, but I’ll manage to not *act* insane. Good enough?

I have been an unholy wreck this week. Crying and anxiety. I’m restless. I want to claw my skin off. And the bulimic girl who lives in my head is disturbingly loud lately.

I weighed myself this morning. I always weigh myself on the first of the month. And only the first. The kinds of eating and body image disorders I have can make me obsess about the number on the scale. So in order to keep it in perspective, there is only one day that I step on the scale. And since my quit-smoking-weight-gain started, the week before weigh day has been overwhelming.

I gained another pound and a half this month. I weigh 157 lbs. That is 24 lbs heavier than I was on June 1st. I have been eating less and less and have still gained weight every month. (A friend said that sounded like its own special circle of hell. I’m pretty sure it is.) And I am so angry. And I feel so punished. And I am absolutely positive that I am going to be alone my whole life.

I don’t know how clearly I understood it myself, but looking back I can see that I quit smoking because I wanted to have a shot at love. I wanted to be able to be intimate with a man, which is hard when you have a fiery torch in your mouth and are exhaling a toxic smoke screen. But I wasn’t prepared to gain this much weight. And I am a former fat girl. The size of my body matters to me. I have spent years rigorously maintaining strict boundaries around my eating. Every day. No matter what. And that was supposed to keep me thin. It did keep me thin until six months ago. And I do not know how to love my body this size. And I don’t know what man would be interested in me this big. Because I think I am so ugly right now.

I’m telling you I hate my body. (I am writing this thinking You can’t post this, Kate! You’re supposed to be uplifting. Don’t tell them you hate your body! Don’t tell them anything is wrong. Just write something charming and spiritual. But obviously I am telling you. Because it’s honest and it’s my story.) And it occurred to me the other day that this emotional rough patch I have been going through is all about hating my body. And that the week before weigh day, how much I hate my body is all I can think about. And the other three weeks of the month I put it in a compartment and wonder why I am so sad and when I am going to feel better.

I have been making a lot of empty threats to God this week. And then sometimes just begging. Please make this stop. I am doing everything right. I’m doing everything I am supposed to do. I can’t take it any more. If it doesn’t stop I’m gonna…I’m gonna… something.

And boy does my bulimic girl want me to something. Laxatives, castor oil, throw up, starve. SOMETHING!

But the truth is I’m not gonna something. For some reason I realized when I put down sugar and stopped eating compulsively, that I had to stop hurting myself to spite difficult circumstances and situations. That circumstances and situations don’t care. That God isn’t an indulgent or exhausted parent who will give in if I throw a scary enough tantrum. And thankfully my boundaries aren’t just about not over eating. I may not under eat either. I may not purge or abuse laxatives. I may not honor my bulimic girl at all. I have boundaries around acting sane, even if I feel crazy. And God, I sure do feel crazy.

So maybe there’s an uplifting message after all. I have a commitment not to hurt my body, even if I hate it right now. I have a promise to keep my food boundaries, even if they are not keeping me as thin as I would like. (I mean, I hate having gained 24 lbs in six months, but I’m a 300 lb girl in a rented body. I pay rent on this body by keeping my food boundaries. If I were eating compulsively, I could have easily gained 24 lbs in two weeks. )

This is my prayer: Dear God. Please let me love myself and my body exactly as I am. Please let me know that I am beautiful as long as I am taking care of myself.

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20 Oct 2012

Resistance is futile. And drama is a lame a** drug.

I don’t have particularly high hopes of being coherent in this post. I am having a hard time unraveling my thoughts and feelings. A lot has been going on this week. In my life and in my head. But I’ll do my best for you.
Last week I distinguished that even eating within my boundaries, I had some foods that I was using to “make it ok” that I am lonely. And realized this because I limited the amount I eat of those foods, as per the recommendation of a friend who helps me set my food boundaries. But I was fighting it. Resisting. Being a brat. I don’t mean that I hadn’t been staying within my new boundaries once they were set. I am talking about my attitude.
This week I decided to stop resisting. I decided to stop fighting this change of my food boundaries.  I decided to surrender to less food. And specifically less of my comfort foods.
Resisting, and the drama that comes with resisting, is another way I “make things ok”. I get to be a victim so it’s not my fault. And I get to be angry at life and the world. And I get to forget that my life is my responsibility. Or at least pretend that it’s not. But more importantly, I get to wrap myself up in a big spectacle so I don’t have to feel my actual feelings. Or investigate the truth of them.
So when I gave up my comfort food and the drama of resisting, when I surrendered, I was left with some enormous, scary feelings. Overwhelming feelings about my worth. And my wholeness. Feelings from before I had words for them.
These feelings are the reason I want to make it ok that I am lonely.  After all, who would want to be ok with that kind of pain? Unless the alternative were worse.
Here’s where it starts to get mishmashed and confusing in my head and heart. I am positive that no one will ever love me. Nor will anyone ever want my love. This is the context of my life. My primary conviction. (That is not me being dramatic. It really is how I see myself.) But I am terrified to actually test this out. Try to prove it wrong. Because I am afraid that it is true. And that I will just end up proving it right. I am afraid of finding out beyond a doubt that my love is worthless and that I lack the capacity to inspire love. And somehow it’s like if I never push too hard or too far, if I never seek or ask or request, if I can just live with being lonely, then I will never have to know if I am unlovable. I am 35 years old and I have never had a boyfriend. I’m beautiful. And smart. And funny. And I am not shy. At all. So why? Why have I been alone my whole life? Is it because I believe that I am unlovable? Or is it because I actually am unlovable?  And if I do decide to risk my heart, how do I learn to accept rejection without believing that it ultimately reiterates the point that I cannot be loved. That I’m broken.
Yes. I can understand why the girl I was ate herself to 300 lbs. It was easier to eat those feelings than to feel them. It was easier to smoke them. It was easier to eat a vat of deep-fried onions once a week than to have to ask myself if I’m willing to put my sensitive heart on the line. And maybe find out that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. Yes, I can see why I have been willing to do anything and everything to make it ok that I am lonely.
But there have been other things in my life that I thought were undeniable truths too. And I was wrong about them. I thought my body was broken. I thought I was fat and could never be thin. I thought I could never stop eating compulsively. And I was afraid to give up sugar. I was afraid to put boundaries around my eating. But I did it. And it didn’t matter that I had held those beliefs about my body and my self-control for twenty-something years. The fact hat I was willing to do something different, even though it was terrifying, and excruciating and left me feeling vulnerable, changed the way those beliefs manifested in my life. Yes, I had to work through those issues. And I had to feel a lot of pain, instead of numbing it. And no, that thinking will never fully go away. After all, it’s why I write this blog. But they are not truths anymore. Now they are irksome thought processes. I can distinguish them. And they don’t get a vote when it comes to my eating and my body. I never, in a million years, thought I would be able to control my eating. But today I don’t have to eat compulsively. So I guess anything is possible.
I took some actions this week. In spite of my fear. I just thought you should know.
You can always share my blog. I’m on twitter @onceafatgirl5
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06 Oct 2012

I won’t stop being a brat and you can’t make me

So my weight gain has continued. And this time I gained a whopping 10 lbs in one month. I have now gained 22 lbs since I quit smoking. And I can’t stop crying. I really can’t stop. I’m crying right now. I cry during my morning meditation. I cry on the subway. I cry at work when nobody is looking. I cry sitting home reading. I cried while I was out having coffee with a friend. I have been puffy and red and totally dehydrated for days.
First, I hate my body. Hate it. The sight of it in the mirror makes me break down immediately. And I am deeply resentful that I have gained all of this weight without eating compulsively. I have not eaten sugar. I have not broken my food boundaries. I have not done anything “wrong.” And here I am 22 lbs heavier.
And then something even more devastating happened to me. My food quantities changed. Got smaller. Because I have gained so much weight. And I feel punished. And deprived. I feel unloved. Unacknowledged. Unappreciated. And totally powerless.
Let me note that I don’t “have to” accept these changes in my food. I buy my own food. I cook my own food. It is my responsibility to deal with my food. But there is a woman in my life that helps me make decisions about my food. I requested this help. And I have agreed to take her suggestions. I took her suggestion when she told me to eat more food because I was dropping weight quickly. And her suggestion now that I am continuing to gain weight, is for me to eat less of certain vegetables. And to eat less food in general.
This is rational. It makes sense. Obviously, if I have gained 22 lbs since I quit smoking, my metabolism has slowed way down. And since this is the case, my body doesn’t need as much food anymore.
But, of course, the vegetables I get less of are my favorites. Winter squash. Carrots. And onions! Losing my giant plates of deep fried onions is a huge blow. The idea of a portion a fraction of the size I have been eating for years makes me nauseous. (Literally. That is not an exaggeration.) It makes the thought of them repugnant to me. It ruins all of my joy in anticipating them. As of right now, I am sure I will never eat them again.
And this attitude is embarrassing to admit. Because what an obnoxious brat I’m being! If I can’t have it the way I want, I won’t have it at all! As if anyone cares if I don’t eat my favorite food anymore. As if it’s a punishment to anyone else. But I’m so hurt that I really don’t want my favorite foods. I am actually not enjoying my meals. Which is saying something, since I’m a compulsive eater and food addict.
I have never had this happen to me before. Hating my food. Being resentful of my food. Since I stopped eating compulsively, I have always been grateful. I have been mostly grateful that my eating has been under control and not running or ruining my life. But also, my food has always been delicious. And felt abundant. But then, it has always been abundant. In fact, in 6+ years, the only way my food boundaries ever changed was that I was given more. I have been used to eating huge quantities of food just to maintain a small body. I was unprepared for my food to be reduced. I haven’t been this emotional about food since I first gave up sugar and put boundaries around my eating years ago.
Maybe my food is still abundant and I’m just blinded by the fact that it is now less. I can’t tell.
And I am sorry I never realized I was skinny until I stopped being skinny. It is apparently true that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone. I wish I had noticed that at 131- 133 lbs. I was a little thing. But once a fat girl, always a fat girl. At least in my own mind.
Now I weigh 154.4. I’m writing it for you because I don’t want to. I’m admitting it because it’s humiliating to admit it. And I don’t want to run from the truth.
And also, this crying and overwhelming sadness was triggered by having my food reduced, but it’s not about food. This sadness, whatever it is, is old. It’s big and deep. The tears are fat and hot. The crying makes me convulse. It hurts to breathe. The pain in me is bigger than me. Like an undetectable extension charm in Harry Potter or a bag of holding in Dungeons & Dragons. (Oh yeah. I’m a total nerd.) This pain is the same pain I had when I was 4 years old and I lay crying in my bed, and I said to God, “If this doesn’t get any easier, I’m not going to be able to do it.”
And that’s how I feel. I can’t do this, God. If you don’t make it stop I’m going to…
What, Kate? What are you going to do?
I’m like a defiant 8-year-old. I’m full of empty threats. I’ll run away. I’ll stop loving you! Or worse yet, real threats. I’ll hurt myself!
But there is a message I keep getting. Over and over. That this is my transition. Into womanhood. This might seem silly to you since I am 35. But I have been fighting growing up at every turn for my whole life. And since I got my food under control, I have been living the life of the girl I never got to be when I was actually a girl.
But I quit smoking because I wanted to grow up. And it has not escaped my notice that the weight that I have gained from this particular act of growing up has gone to my breasts, hips, thighs and belly. That it has made me curvy more than anything. Womanly. That’s the word people keep using. Womanly.
Maybe these are my last moments as a child. This bratty refusal to accept changes in my life, my body and my food with grace. And trust that God, Life and the Universe are preparing something beautiful for me. Or maybe this is limbo where that desperately terrified 4-year-old girl is in the process of passing that overwhelming pain to that grown woman who is brave and strong. The grown woman who can feel the pain without being destroyed by it. Because she has peace and love. Because she is a woman.
Because when I realize that I have no ultimatum, no leverage against God and Life, I know that I can, indeed, handle the pain. And the uncertainty. And it’s even ok if I am not willing to be graceful yet. If I insist on being a brat. I know me. I’ll give it up eventually. I’ll chose peace in the end. It’s just the kind of girl I am. And maybe it’s the kind of woman I am. And I just haven’t realized it yet…
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22 Sep 2012

When you say womanly, you mean hot not fat, right?

Yesterday I spent much of the day in bed. Crying. Because I hated my body.
Today, I put on a sexy dress and some knee-high boots and went into the city to meet some people. I didn’t hate my body so much today. I wasn’t in love with it, like I have been before. But I could see that to an outside observer, I am really lovely.
My dismorphia has been coming in waves. And I have just been trying to keep my head above water and not get swept away in the current.
I have been comparing myself to me a year ago. I keep thinking that being 12 lbs heavier than I was before I quit smoking means that I’m 12 points (units? notches?) uglier than I was then. But friends and strangers keep complimenting me. One of my neighbors actually asked if I had started working out because I look so good. So healthy. A friend of mine said that she could see that I had gained a bit of weight. But that she thought it made me look more beautiful. Less drawn. More womanly.
That’s the consensus. Healthy. Womanly. I am a sensuous woman. I like the idea of being round, soft and warm. It fits nicely with the kind of wife and partner I would like to be someday. Nurturing, loving, empowering. And I know that I am beautiful, and sexy. These are traits I learned to own when I got my food under control. Well nourished, well rested, with strong integrity and a good amount of genetic luck.
So why am I having such a hard time with my dismorphia lately? I think a lot of it is that I am not in control right now. And that scares me. I have no idea when the weight gain will stop. I have no idea how much more weight I could gain. I don’t know how long it could be before I feel happy and comfortable in my body again. 3 months? 6 months? A year? (Oh dear God, please don’t let it take a year!) I don’t get a say about my body right now. I am in free fall. And I am having a hard time trusting that this will end well.
Maybe it’s just because I spent my first 28 years in a body that I hated. I have a lot more experience thinking I am ugly than I do knowing that I am beautiful. I have been experiencing a lot of those same old feelings of body shame lately. I noticed today that when I am out in public, I have not been breathing. That I have been keeping my neck and shoulders rigid. I am waiting for someone to make a comment about my body. I’m waiting for someone to tell me I’m fat.
I, of course, am not at all fat. There is nothing unhealthy about my weight. At 145, I fall well within the normal range for a woman my height. (5′ 6.5″) My 12 lb weight gain comes from doing something very healthy. Quitting smoking. Plus all signs point to much of the weight being temporary. I have gone up one pants size. Now an 8 fits me comfortably. A 9 in juniors sizes. This is a normal size.
I wish I felt like a normal woman in a normal body. I wish I knew for certain that I would stay a normal size. I wish I had some idea of when the weight gain would stop and I would get some measure of control back. I wish I knew how long before I stopped being uncomfortable in my own skin.
I’ll be honest, if I had known that this was going to happen, I would not have quit smoking. But what’s done is done. I’m no fool. I can see that there is no turning back now. I’m already in it. At this point, the only way to the other side is through.
Here’s another thing. I have a reputation among certain people I know for being non-judgmental. The one who accepts herself, and therefore them. The person people can come to and tell their secrets and failures, without fear of being shamed. I am the woman who teaches people to love themselves by example. Because I learned to love myself. And here I am hating myself. Being ashamed of my body. And I feel like I am letting everyone down. Like I’m letting you down. And I am embarrassed to admit that. I want to be better than that. I want to be stronger than that. I thought I was made of better stuff…
And maybe the most difficult part of this whole experience is not knowing what the lesson is. Or if there is a lesson. Maybe I’m supposed to have some room for the self-hatred. To let it in so it can flow back out again. Maybe I need to stop resisting hating my body. Maybe I just need to hate it until I love it again. Not hurt it or abuse it. But hate it. Think it’s ugly and let that be ok.
Or maybe I should ignore it. Perhaps I need to stop caring about what I look like for a while. Stop looking in the mirror. Stop dressing to be cute. Stop worrying about whether or not men find me attractive. Because I do worry about it. Which is kind of ridiculous, since I have not been dating for a very long time now.
Or maybe the lesson here is that I just have to keep doing what I am doing. Longer. Just keep managing my self-hatred. Keep putting it down. Keep finding some way to love myself one day at a time.
And there is one more possibility that has occurred to me. And it’s that I have had this self-hatred for my whole life. And that I ate it. And when I stopped eating it, I smoked it. And now that I am not smoking it, all there is to do is feel it. And maybe if I feel it for as long as it takes, I will move through it. And I will be able to love my body because it is mine. Not because it used to be fat and unhealthy and now it is thin and healthy. And not because I managed to make it a shape that I think the world will find appealing. But simply because it is the only vehicle for the life that belongs to me. Because it is me. And I am worth loving.
As always, you can share my blog any time you want. I’m on twitter too @onceafatgirl5
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15 Sep 2012

Even the angry, destructive side of me likes sexy pants

I have multiple eating disorders, hence I have a whole cast of messed up characters that live in my head when it comes to food, eating, my body, and my emotional life.

I talk a lot about my fat girl. She’s relatively easy for me to talk about. She’s lived in my head for almost the longest. (The girl who is a burden has lived in my head the absolute longest. We’re not going there today…) And in many ways, I think my fat girl is the easiest for you to process and handle (unless you have an eating disorder of your own). She’s sad and a coward. She couldn’t stop eating. She hopes I’ll go back to being a coward so she can have her cake back. That’s about the extent of her. Don’t get me wrong. She’d kill me if she got the chance. But it would be a slow death. Diabetes and heart disease. Death by chocolate, if you will. Which I bet sounds great to you if it’s not actually a possibility for you like it is for me.

But there is also a bulimic girl who lives in my head. And she’s the scary one. The one that is the most dangerous. And damaging. The kinds of things I was doing to myself because of my bulimic girl scared me into quitting sugar entirely. She is the reason I keep such strict boundaries around my food. She would rather see me dead than fat. She is angry and obsessive and cruel. And she’s excessively vain. Not a healthy, see-how-I-take-care-of-myself kind of vanity. A seven deadly sins kind of vanity. She has no peace and no love. Nothing is ever ever good enough for her. Especially not me.

My bulimic girl has a tag line. A particular thought. Get it out. Actually it’s more like Get it out. Getitoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitout Get. It. OUT! NOW! (And this is said through clenched teeth.)

It was this thinking that had me abuse laxatives, drink castor oil, run 14 miles a day and eventually make myself throw up my food. My bulimic girl was full of hair-brained schemes to deal with the aftermath of my fat girl and her binge eating. If it were humorous, it might be a version of The Odd Couple. A grotesque murderous version…

Since I quit smoking 3 months ago, I keep gaining weight. I have gained 12 lbs since June 1st. It has been hard for me to deal with. (This may be my understatement of the year.) I put on a pair of jeans the other day, and they were tight. This was especially embarrassing and sad for me. In February, they were comically big. They had to be held up by a belt and sagged around my butt. I wore them to babysit when I expected to get dirty. Feeling these jeans pressed up against me was incredibly uncomfortable. Emotionally. Because it was a reminder that I feel incredibly fat. And I know there is nothing for me to do about it. It is not about calories. When I first quit smoking, I didn’t change my eating at all and I gained 3 lbs. The next month, I ate lighter than usual, (more salad, less cooking in butter) and I gained 4 more lbs. So it is not that I have been doing it wrong. It is not something I can control. My body is changing. I don’t get a say.
Guess who hates this? Any thoughts? My bulimic girl. This is killing her. She insists that there must be something I can do. At least don’t get fried onions this week. At least chill out on the full fat yogurt. At least walk a couple more miles a day. Do SOMETHING! Do you WANT to be this fat? GET IT OUT!
So my fat girl wants to give up and eat cake (not like she’s popped up this week – she just always wants to give up and eat cake), and my bulimic girl wants to resist and starve me. I decided not to give up or resist. I decided to accept. My body is what it is. Right now. And I don’t know for how long. And I don’t get a say. There is nothing for me to do.
But that is not true. There was one thing for me to do. And I did it. I went out and bought bigger pants. I bought pants I feel sexy in. Because maybe the hardest part of this weight gain is that I have been feeling incredibly unsexy. And sexy has been a very important part of my life for years now. It is a part of my personality. It is one of the things that I love about myself and my life.
And buying sexy pants that fit my body the way it is right now has shut my bulimic girl up. For now. I’m sure she’ll be back. Just like my fat girl, and my burden, and my good girl. But today, because I have my eating under control, none of them get to run my life.
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28 Jul 2012
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Have you seen a year and a half? I lost one.

A friend asked me the other day which was worse, quitting cigarettes or quitting sugar. I must have looked flabbergasted. I felt flabbergasted. In my mind it’s so obvious. I forget that to most people, food is innocuous. That when you say you’re addicted to sugar, they think it’s a cute euphemism for liking dessert. Like “I have a sweet tooth” or “I’m a chocoholic”. Yet there are signs and public service announcements everywhere exclaiming the risks and hazards of smoking. If you are wondering which I think is worse, sugar. Sugar withdrawal stole a year and a half of my life.

My life got incredibly small from January of 2006 to June of 2007. It had to. I couldn’t do anything but protect myself from food. And feel feelings I had been eating my whole life. I couldn’t handle much of anything. I felt like I was walking around without skin. I felt dazed and stupid. And erratic and unhinged. The best way to describe it is “emotional free-fall”. Nothing about my life was familiar. Nothing felt comfortable or normal or safe. I had just made a commitment to give up the very thing that I had always used for comfort and a sense of safety and normalcy. Life had suddenly become terrifying. Filled with uncertainty. I felt unfit to be in the world. I needed to avoid food. I needed to avoid being upset. I needed to avoid most interactions. I spent a lot of time alone. Doing weird, obsessive things that were not eating.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time cooking. Preparing food for the future. I would cook for weeks and weeks ahead of time. I made fancy, time-consuming things. I got recipes for how to make all sorts of mock desserts and dishes. Things that were like the foods I was used to eating, but without sugar, flour or starch. And I made up my own recipes. I experimented and I labored. I obsessed over cooking and preparing the way I had over eating.

I watched the same anime series on 3 DVDs on a loop. As soon as the series ended I put the first episode back on. By the end of that time, the shows didn’t mean anything anymore. The funny parts weren’t funny. The sad parts weren’t sad. The romantic parts weren’t romantic. But it was familiar. And comforting. And it kept me oddly centered. It was another something to be obsessed with besides eating.

The only time I would want, really need, to be out in the world was at night. I would get restless and want to eat, so I would run out of my house, sometimes in pajama pants and a T-shirt, to the book store that was open until midnight. I would sit there reading manga and drinking coffee until they closed. And then I would take my time getting home. I did not want to be home alone at night.

Nights were so hard because nighttime and binge eating were specifically tied together in my mind. I ate all the time when I was eating compulsively, but the ritual of bingeing myself to sleep was particularly ingrained in me. Sometimes getting out of my apartment was both absolutely necessary and incredibly difficult. All I wanted to do was get enough sugar to make me totally numb, climb into bed, and eat myself into a food coma. If you are not a binge eater, you may not understand what “enough to make me numb” means. But it’s a lot. It means eating several of “the whole thing”. The whole box/bag/container.

When I was eating compulsively, I am not sure I ever fell asleep. I basically just ate until I passed out. Every night. Like an alcoholic. That is not an exaggeration. Frankly, it’s why I was such a bad bulimic (thank God!). I would start a binge with the intention of eventually going to purge, but so often the binge would get so out of hand that I would pass out before I could get to the bathroom. I don’t know that I would have looked for a solution to my food issues if bulimia had kept me thin. I may have thought that making myself throw up was the solution.

It’s kind of interesting to me that my friend asked me which was worse. Asked me to compare sugar withdrawal to cigarette withdrawal. Because they are comparable. Quite similar, in many respects. Since I quit smoking, I have had a few emotional flashbacks to that year and a half that I first gave up sugar. A lot of the same feelings have come up and have brought me back to that time. Whereas before I quit cigarettes, I had probably not thought about that time of my life in years. In fact, when I try to recall it, it’s kind of hard to remember. It’s a blur and the days seem to blend together. All 520-something of them. 2 Winters, 2 Springs, a Summer and a Fall. That’s a lot of time to lose.

It was my 30th birthday that I looked up and realized I had room in my head and in my life. That I didn’t have to be obsessed with not being obsessed with food. That the cravings and the craziness were gone. That maintaining my boundaries around food was a muscle I had successfully built up. Of course, I knew I still had to take it seriously (just like I do to this day, six and a half years later), but it was not so precarious. I could actually live my life. A life so much bigger and better than the one I had had when I was a slave to food.

I have been walking around all pretty and happy for a while now. But I generally remember where I come from. I haven’t forgotten that I was fat. And crazy. And that food and sugar ruled my life. And I know that I don’t ever want to be fat or crazy or enslaved again. But I don’t always think about what I went through in the beginning to come out on the other side and get this happy, pretty life. I feel like I should acknowledge who I was then. What a hero I was for myself. I walked through the fires of hell, and I made it out whole. Cleansed. I am careful about pride and hubris. But I also want to remember that I am capable of honor and commitment.

So yes. Quitting smoking has me in a bit of an emotional free-fall right now. And I have let my life contract a little. I’ve slowed down and taken on less. Avoided things I know will upset me. Because I know that if I let my life be smaller right now, and if I’m gentle with myself, on the other side life will be better and more beautiful than it was when I was smoking. And that less will upset me in the first place. But the truth is, I still have a pretty full life right now. I don’t need to lock myself in my house and obsess about not being obsessed with cigarettes. My years of keeping my food under control have taught me a lot about trusting life. And living with uncertainty. And being uncomfortable. And letting that be ok. I’ve gotten pretty good at the free-fall. I trust that my chute will open. Or maybe I’ll just learn to fly. Whatever.

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01 Jul 2012

Well, that was unexpected

The post I want to write today is about quitting smoking. And I’m having issues with that.  I keep thinking, “I don’t want this to turn into a quitting smoking blog.” But the truth is that smoking and eating have a lot to do with each other for me. I did them for basically the same reason. Because I don’t like to feel my feelings. So I am going to write this anyway.
There was a good reason why smoking took the edge off of the food cravings when I stopped eating sugar. It numbed the same feelings that sugar did. Actually it numbed some of the same feelings that sugar did. Over the past 3 weeks, which feelings those are has become apparent to me.
Before I get into cigarette feelings, there is something I want to explain.  When I stopped eating sugar/eating compulsively, I got this profound level of self-assurance. It did not happen overnight. It was a long and subtle process. But getting control of my food eliminated nearly all of my self-doubt. I have come to understand from looking back on the past 6 1/2 years, that it is the result of a combination of things. The rigorous honesty that I began to practice, first with my food, then with everything else. My commitment to keeping my promises. (Again it started with food and extended into all other areas of my life.) My willingness to be responsible for all of my actions, good, bad or indifferent, which I had to do because not doing so gave me feelings I couldn’t handle without eating cake. And finally the mental clarity that came from not being high anymore. All of these things came together and gave me a new relationship to the truth. Not just my honesty and my own truth, but to the truth in general.
When I was eating compulsively, I was a liar. And I was easy to lie to.  You know that saying “You can’t kid a kidder”? I think it’s wrong wrong wrong…It was like my own lies muddled up my brain and muddied my thinking.  They kept me from seeing reality. You could tell me something that obviously didn’t make sense, and I would notice, but I would always have to question myself. I always had to question my own thinking. But when I stopped lying, that stopped.  Also, I wasn’t high anymore. On either sugar, or the obsession with food. (Yes, for me the obsession was its own kind of high, related to, but not the same as, the sugar high.) I had a clear head, and I was telling the truth. It slowly but surely became clear to me that the truth was obvious. That it was silly to question myself.
The same thing happened with my own bad behavior. When I was being an a**hole, I had a hard time distinguishing bad behavior in others. The kind of actions that now occur to me as red flags, would totally escape my notice. But when I started treating myself and others with respect and honor, disrespect and dishonor became glaringly obvious. Sirens and flashing lights.
Getting control of my eating also had me become a person I liked and respected. So there was no question in my mind anymore that I didn’t deserve to be treated badly. That I deserved honesty, honor, and respect. It wasn’t that I never did anything wrong. It was that I knew when I did something wrong and when I didn’t.  And that when I had done something wrong, I was willing to own it and do the right thing. I stopped questioning myself. I stopped thinking myself in circles. I got an incredible confidence in my own judgment.
So back to cigarettes. And what kinds of feelings I used them to numb. They were “Good Girl” feelings. They were feelings about not being good enough. About wanting to be liked. About not wanting to do anything wrong. And not wanting to upset anyone.
Here is the pattern from when I was smoking. I would do something that seemed to me to be totally normal and not particularly worthy of notice. Someone would offer some subtle hint of disapproval. Subtle. Easy to pretend that I was not affected by it. I would tense up. I would not look to see if it had any merit. I would hold it in until I had a chance to smoke it. I would pretend it did not happen and I was not hurt.
The first time I went to the grocery store after I quit smoking, I left the store and immediately wanted to light a cigarette. I realized that I always lit a cigarette as soon as I left the store. I realized that I have been denying the fact that the checkout women at my grocery store are mean to me. The ways they show it are easy enough to ignore. If I can go smoke those feelings as soon as I’m out the door.
So that first time I had to face that those women are sneering and unpleasant with me, I cried. And then it hit me that I have been going to that store for years. And that I get a little panic and a little dread every time I go to check out. And that I have been doing all sorts of things to make myself more accommodating to them. And less annoying to them. Doing things to get through the checkout line faster. And that I have been stressed out about it. For years.
And when I couldn’t smoke it, and I had to face it, I finally thought, Why do I give a sh*t what these women think of me? I am giving their store my money. I’m not there to be liked. I’m there to do business. And I did, indeed, stop giving a sh*t. I stopped dreading. I stopped taking actions to make my shopping easier on them. I stopped stressing about checking out. I got peaceful.
I live in New York City where the streets are filled with people whose job it is to solicit donations for not-for-profits. I used to get really uptight when I would have to pass these people on the street. I would get edgy and stressed out wondering how to get past them without them talking to me. How to not make eye contact. How to look busy. How to look rushed or focused. How to get by unnoticed. And all of a sudden I am so calm when I walk by. I smile. I tell them I am not going to talk to them. I just say no and keep walking. No big deal. Just no.
These are seemingly small or trivial examples of the kind of shift that has gone on for me this past 3 weeks. But the peace and confidence that I’m describing does not occur in my life or my head or my heart as small.  Some parts of it make sense. Not smoking has meant I have had to look at things I was able to avoid by smoking them. But other parts of it don’t make rational sense to me right now. The generally being more calm and worrying less. I mean, isn’t that why I smoked? To calm down?
Maybe it’s being more present than I have ever been in my life that has me so self-assured. Maybe it’s that following through on my commitment has given me more self-esteem. Maybe, like when I stopped eating, as time goes by, the how and the why will become clear. But I like this whole happier, saner, more serene life. I am grateful I decided to quit smoking. I wish I could say I would have done it sooner if I had known it would be this emotionally freeing. But I know that’s not how it works. I know it’s everything in its own time.
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16 Jun 2012

Commitment, surrender, and God’s totally effed up sense of humor

There were two things that I had to figure out before I could make a lasting change for my life around food: commitment and surrender.

Commitment was where I had to agree, between me and God, that  circumstances and situations had no bearing on whether or not I would stay within my food boundaries. I had to recognize that there would always always be some reason to cross them. That even the most paltry excuse could be rationalized. That even the most valid reason would still lead me straight back to bulimia, 300 lbs, misery, and insanity.

And I have kept my food boundaries through some crazy things. 2 years ago my grandmother, who was the love of my life, got sick. She passed away about 4 months later. About a week after that, my favorite aunt, who was also my godmother, and way too young to die, was diagnosed with cancer, and again, was gone within about 4 months. That was a hard year for me. From April to November I did a lot of crying. But I stayed within my food boundaries. While they were in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice care. During regular updates from my parents about their rapid deteriorations. At their funerals. Throughout the traveling back and forth to my hometown. It didn’t matter that I was sad. It didn’t matter that life sucked. The only thing that mattered when it came to my food was that I had boundaries and a commitment to stay within them.

Would you have blamed me if I had eaten a chocolate cake? Probably not, right? But I had made an agreement with God. That circumstances and situations have nothing to do with my food. That my feelings have nothing to do with my food. That my life has nothing to do with my food.

The other part was surrender. Surrender was when I stopped asking why. Why me? Why do I have to give up sugar to be happy? Why do I have to have boundaries? Why can’t I just eat like a normal person? I stopped complaining. It’s not fair. It’s hard. It’s too much. It’s too rigid. Nobody else has to do this. People are going to think I’m weird. I stopped looking for it to be easy. I stopped wishing for it to be convenient. I accepted that I had been given a solution, and stopped trying to renegotiate the terms. I surrendered to it exactly the way it was. And surrender brought me peace. Is there something better or easier or more convenient out there? The truth is I don’t know. And I don’t care. I have no desire to give up my solution for even a moment in order to find out. That’s what I mean by surrender.

So let’s get to God, and His totally effed up sense of humor.

If you don’t know, I quit smoking 11 days ago. I made a commitment to myself and God. And I surrendered to the fact that smoking is just not something I do anymore. I think having a point of reference with food probably made it easier to do it with cigarettes. But commitments get tested. That’s actually the definition of a commitment if you think about it. If it didn’t take something, some strength or honor, to make and keep it, it would be called something else.

Ok, backtrack two weeks. I was still smoking at the time. One night, I was physically threatened, by a man I was becoming friends with. He told me he had no reservations about punching me in the face. (Over this blog, actually. Which I still don’t understand…) Needless to say, I walked away. It was obvious that we weren’t going to be friends, and I didn’t think too much about it after that.

A few days later, on my 35th birthday, I quit smoking, as was the plan. The smoking itself wasn’t so hard to give up. I didn’t miss it. I had already changed my thinking about it. I had committed and surrendered. But the feelings were pretty awful. Just regular life feelings. But they were hard to deal with. It became clear to me that I had been smoking those feelings. And now I didn’t have cigarettes to numb them anymore.

And then a week after I quit, I got a text message from the guy who threatened me. He wanted to know if we could reconcile. I was gracious. But I told him no. And I went to bed.

I woke up to a series of progressively more upsetting texts from him. Amorous texts. Too forward. Too intimate to come from someone I had never touched or kissed or even been on a date with. Or whose last words to me had been violent. The texts scared me. So much that I went to the police station after work. (After dinner actually. Because food first. Always.) I filed a harassment report.

But I could practically hear God. “It’s only been a week. So I’m wondering. How committed are you, Kate? How about if I make you scared for your safety? Those are some pretty intense feelings, huh? You still not gonna smoke?”

Yes, God. I’m still not gonna smoke. But you do realize that you are totally twisted, right?

“Oh, yeah. I know. But I’m proud of you, Kate. I honor your commitment and surrender. You’re doing good work.”

Part of me wants to tell God to go to hell, of course. But there is another part of me that is grateful. Because this experience has actually been an opportunity. Because by honoring my commitment not to smoke in the face of real fear, I get a look at how powerful I am. I get a boost to my self-esteem. And I get to recognize that I can make the choice that no circumstance, situation, and maybe more importantly, no person, gets a say in how I live my life.

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