Processing the Problem

Thanks to all who commented in response to my post yesterday. I appreciate all the advice and tough love that came my way. I really needed a kick in the pants and some tips and I knew I could count on my blog buddies.

I wish that keeping junk food out of the house was an option for me. I live with my sister who is most definitely not on the same page as I am. She's shorter and is carrying a little more weight than I am. She also faces a lot of the same potential health problems as I do since we both come from a long line of tpe II diabetics and have a very strong family history of heart disease. However, while I bite my nails considering what could happen if I don't change my ways, she maintains a belief in her own invincibility that is as zealous as it is foolhardy. She loves fried food and chocolate and dammit, that's what she's going to eat.

I've said before that it wouldn't be so hard to change if I was living with someone who's not on the same page as I am, but the trouble is that she's reading a whole other book. She resists the changes I'm trying to make in my own life. She scrunches her nose about my attempts to eat healthier and she pressures me to eat things I shouldn't eat. I mean really pressures me. Last night, for example, she got out the Pazcki. She held the box under my nose and I said no thank you.

"Why?"

"Because I don't want one."

"Sure you do, they're good. I'll get you a plate. Here eat it."

I resisted and resisted and got angry and gave in. I wasn't hungry. I didn't want it. But I ate it. I was so disgusted with myself that I cried. I don't know why I couldn't find the strength to walk away. Afterwards, I confronted my sister about being a food pusher and she defended herself by saying that she didn't make me eat it. This was very true and I know that the responsibility for my decisions rests with me alone. Why shouldn't it? It's my knees that have to carry around the extra weight. But I haven't been feeling strong lately and living with someone who is threatened by the changes I'm trying to make makes life really difficult.

So keeping foods I have difficulty resisting out of the house isn't really an option and I obviously can't count on my sister to be supportive enough to keep her assorted goodies out of my sight, so I need to find a way around this barrier.

Ria's suggestion about journaling everything I ate struck a chord with me, mostly because I felt so repelled by the idea. My reaction seemed odd to me. I know it's good advice. In the times in my life when I've dropped weight, before my recent slow down, I always tracked what I ate. So why was I so resistant to it now? I think part of me is in denial. I recently read a post by Chubby Chick in which she talked about the fact that she was angry that she can't eat like a "normal person" and that her desire to be "normal" has quite ironically contributed to a 100 pound gain in the last 2 years. Her anger really resonated with me. I wish that eating properly could just be second nature for me. I wish that I didn't have to think about it. If I write everything I eat, I'm acknowledging that I must be constantly mindful. But not writing down points or calories, not acknowledging what I eat and how much of it I eat won't negate the consequences of all my munching. It will just enable me to avoid responsibility and awareness and will lead to unpleasant surprises and ultimately a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. I'm tired of that feeling. There may be a time in my life when I can "eat like a normal person" without measuring and counting, but as Yoda said, "you must unlearn what you have learned" before you can adopt a new way of being. ("Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." Might also be an appropriate Yodaism at this point.)

So thanks, Ria. It should have been so second nature for me to decide to return to recording what I eat, but it wasn't; I really needed someone to say it!

In addition, I think I can work to combat the temptation of living with a food pusher by being better prepared. I'm going to try to be proactive and have healthier options that we both like. The theory here is that she will buy less garbage and if she does try to push something that will break my day, I can have something else to turn to to stave off temptation. I've been kicking around some options. Sugar free Jell-O is like a Godsend. With only 10 calories a serving, I can turn to it when I'm having a sweet craving without feeling guilty. I also find the sugar free pudding helpful for the same reason. Fresh berries feel like a splurge since I'm on a budget, but they also make a delicious dessert when I mix them with fat free vanilla yogurt. Finally, I'm really digging on sorbet and No Pudge brownies. I just need to stock my shelves with these items as defense against all the other crap I might consider putting into my body.

Any way, that's where my head's at today. I'm journaling every bite and have been strong enough to resist the brownies in the office. I'm planning a walk on lunch though I'd much rather curl up and read.

Thank you all for being my Yodas!

Remembering My First Time

Recently, I stopped by PQ’s blog and responded to her challenge to summarize the last ten years of my life in 100 characters. Without thinking too much, I fired off:

Gained 110 pounds, graduated high school, got job, college, grad school, job, back to grad school, lost 50 pounds (so far).

As it turns out, that’s actually 102 characters if you don’t count spaces, but that’s not important. What does matter is the somewhat unwelcome line of thought those 102 characters initiated. Gained 110 pounds. Wow. How does that happen? For me, it came on in less than two years, a mere blink of an eye and all the while I was oblivious to the changes. I didn’t own a scale, and while people called me fat, they’d always done that; it’s not like they were saying “You’re fatter.” Did my clothes get too small? They must have, but I don’t remember ever really noting it. Maybe I was determined not to realize. Sometimes I think that I was born weighing over 200 pounds, because while I’d be thrilled to weigh 150 or 160 now, I thought I was enormous then and it seems unthinkable that I was ever that small. I need to look at the pictures to even believe that I once wore the size 12 jeans that I didn’t bother to pack when I moved.

How does that happen? You can only gain that much weight if you get up in the morning and decide, consciously or unconsciously, to eat more calories than you burn most days of your life. At one point in my life, I didn’t do that, and then as if a switch was thrown, I got to it in earnest.

I can pinpoint it. I remember the precise moment, the first time I ate food seeking something other than nourishment, the first time I abused food in the way other addicts abuse alcohol or cocaine or sex. I can see it so clearly with one exception. I know that in reality, it was the summer before my junior year in high school, but in my mind I always imagine that I was very young and very small. I see myself looking the way I look in old pictures where I have straight bangs and corduroy pants, where I’m playing with my Barbie on the old brown linoleum with my sister or where I’m standing looking shy in my purple velvet dress.

But aside from the way I picture us, I know that I remember everything with perfect clarity. The front door’s open, inviting the muggy night air in. The firelight outside is casting fiendish shapes on the walls and floors. I can hear the rumble of rock music, turned up too loud on a second rate boom box to even be intelligible. I know my parents are out there, but their not rowdy as usual, they’re actually hushed, but they are drunk, which has become a matter of course for summer weekend nights. They’re more somber and I know that it’s because, frustrated by our poverty and an engine that wouldn’t start, my father has thrown a tomahawk through the windshield of his car. A tomahawk. A mistake that, stupid to be sure, will cost them money they don’t have. I know they think it’s my fault, because I made him mad. When the car wouldn’t start, I had touched his arm and said, “maybe it’s best, Dad. Maybe you’re too drunk.”

Later, my mother hissed, “You should have left him alone. You have no right to judge him.” I wasn’t judging; I was relieved.

In the kitchen, two girls, who can hardly stand a moment together under normal circumstances, huddle giggling together in the pale light coming from the bulb over the sink. They’re inventing a recipe for childhood escape: toast raisin bread, spread generously with butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and one tablespoon each sugar and Nestle’s Quick. Consume while warm and repeat if necessary.

It was necessary on hundreds of nights I can’t remember and a few I’d like to forget. It wasn’t always the same food, but it was always uncommon and excessive. It didn’t fix the windshield, it didn’t help me understand my parents or make them resent me less, but somehow, binge eating felt like my anchor. It’s a pattern that I’m struggling to break every day.

I’m not writing this because I feel sorry for myself or because I’m hoping for some sympathy. I’m writing it because I subscribe to the school that says that in order to fix the problem, you have to understand it completely. You have to turn it over in your hands, take it apart, analyze it, even if doing that is incredibly painful. That’s what I have to do if instead of recounting my first time, I’m going to some day write about my last.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Some day, I will be able to live my life without looking at everything through the lens of weight, but today is not the day. Halloween has always meant two things to me: 1. The chance to pretend to be someone else for a day and 2. the chance to eat ludicrous amounts of candy.

Dressing up is probably the best part of Halloween. I love the idea of putting on a whole new, completely unique self. My co-workers are really creative. They build their own costumes from stuff they have at home and they usually come up with some pretty clever stuff. I on the other hand , tend to be fairly unimaginative in my costume choice. If I can't purchase it as a package deal, I probably won't bother. What I've noticed is that my options for costumes are much wider than they were 50 pounds ago. It's nice that I can choose something other than nun or ghost now. Hooray for non scale victories!

As far as consuming massive quantities of of candy is concerned, that should not really be an option for me now. (Especially since I broke up with Jack!) I have tried not to eat candy with the reckless abandon I used to. That said, by the time we shut out the porch light, I may have eaten almost as much chocolate as I handed out. Uggg! I could have taken steps to avoid such massive transgressions. I especially like MizFit's suggestion to indulge planfully. I could have tried to find candy that I actually wouldn't eat. But I didn't do any of that; I pigged out.

Thankfully, tomorrow's a new day and the start of a new month. It's a chance for a fresh start and the formation of new goals.

I hope you had a happy Halloween and took advantage of the chance to be someone else and make other people smile today!