Operation Normal – and Some Farmers’ Market Shopping

Soooo . . . Remember last May when I decided to stop dieting?  And then the whole blog went radio-silent?  As I mentioned before, that was because I needed the mental space to let my brain sort of . . . settle, for lack of a better word.

So for the last 6 months or so, I’ve eaten what I wanted, when I wanted it.  Then those 6 months got kind of stressful, as I started a new job.  So my eating wasn’t always the best.  In fact, I probably did more than my share of stress-eating – and let’s be honest, stress-drinking, too.  But I made an effort to at least eat when I was hungry, and to pay attention to WHY I was eating during those times I knew damn well I wasn’t hungry, but was eating anyway.

I took to calling this “Operation Normal.”

Over the last 6 weeks or so, I’ve started noticing that both my eating and my drinking seem to have leveled out.  I’m not drinking as much, and I’m not eating as much crap food – and I it wasn’t a decision I made consciously, just one that seems to be evolving.  But because back in May I decided to re-assess where I was in a year, and because I knew that year was almost half over, I started reading various food books.  I finally got around to reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I read a BUNCH of Geneen Roth’s books, and one called Real Food by Nina Planck (that last one is AMAZING).  And the more I read, the more I started thinking that rather than focus on calories, fat, protein, etc., I really wanted to think about WHAT I was eating and WHY. 

So at the end of November I started transitioning to “real” food.  I’ve been eating what’s in my freezer, but am working toward only eating raw dairy, pastured meat and poultry (and eggs), and sustainably, humanely raised fish (whether wild or farmed, depending on the fish).  I decided that further, I was going to try an experiment: for 2011, I would eat from the farmers’ market.  I’m a good cook, so I decided I would go to the market, buy whatever looked good and then figure out what the hell to do with it when I got home.  Eating locally, seasonally and intuitively all in one go!

After noodling on that for a while, I decided that (given my history of thinking things must be PERFECT) I would shoot for accomplishing the above 80% of the time.  (Thus allowing myself the occasional heat-and-eat dinner, and things like frozen spinach, which I REFUSE to give up, even if it does get trucked in from across the country.)

So I’ve been working on cleaning out my existing stash of food, and in the meantime, I’ve got a bread machine (“inherited” from Mom) and A PRESSURE CANNER (for Christmas!).  I’m super-excited about that last one, because I really want to can my own tomatoes this summer!!!!  😀

And I started a companion blog to this one: Eating from the Farmers’ Market (More or Less).  The first post over there will go up Monday, the 10th of January (after I make a farmers’ market run over the weekend, because the markets around me were closed the last 2 weekends for Christmas and the Rose Parade).  I’ll split my posting between this one and that one – this one will still be my outlet for my freak-outs and internal dialogues, and that one will be more about what’s in season, what I’m cooking, how much it cost, that sort of thing.  (I’m kind of hoping that I might be able to cull the recipes eventually and get to writing that cookbook I keep blathering on about.)  There will be more personal stuff too, but the serious neuroses will be confined to this blog.  (Lucky, lucky you.  ;D)

So there you go.  That’s the new project.  I’m not deleting any of my old posts off of here, but I also won’t be talking about calories, fat, or any of that going forward.  “Operation Normal,” remember?  And I don’t mean STATISICALLY normal, but NOT-CRAZY normal (I think the latter is actually ABnormal statistically speaking, but let’s not go there).  So it won’t be about weight (although let’s be honest – that’s what the “neurotic” caveat is for), but about health.  Real health: physical, emotional and mental.  Because Lord knows I need me some of that.

Losing My Mind, Finding My Self

It’s been months since I wrote, I know.  At first it was just inconvenient.  I had other things to do.  And then I was just really busy, all the time, and I stopped really reading, too.  And then a month had gone by, then two.  I spent time going through the 1st phase of the Geneen Roth stuff, where eat what you want and work toward eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.  And I put the scale on the top shelf in the closet in the guest room.  And I gained weight.  And then some more (I’m guessing about 20 pounds over the last 4-5 months).  And I didn’t get on the scale, and I didn’t read any blogs or write or anything else.  And even though the weight gain bothered me, I felt better. 

But I would think about blogging, and I it just made me feel . . . ANXIOUS.  I was trying really hard not to focus on my weight, and I was finding that I couldn’t even read general-fitness blogs without feeling like I should get up, go to the gym, eat better, eat less, lose some weight, it’s so SIMPLE, what’s wrong with me, I should just suck it up, get on the treadmill, cut out the carbs, it’s fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, fine fine finefinefineFINEFINE.

I’m FINE.

So I didn’t come back.  Not even to say, “Hey, I love you, I might come back or I might not, but I’m ok.”  I just couldn’t do it.  Everywhere I looked it seemed so simple to just lose! some! weight!  Not easy, necessarily, but SIMPLE.  And if I didn’t write, if I didn’t read, if I didn’t think about anything other than whether or not I was hungry or full or lonely or anxious, if I ate more mindfully . . . I felt BETTER.  Calmer. 

Anda few weeks ago I got on the scale at the doctor’s office (there was a possibility I’d broken my foot, although it turned out to be all soft tissue damage – all better now!), and even though I tried not to see the weight, I did (on a piece of paper I didn’t think would contain it).  And it bothered me.  A lot.  I haven’t been this weight since I was in my early 20s, and bingeing every night.  So I came home and cried.  I kept thinking, “I’m becoming what I’m most afraid of becoming.”  I kept thinking about how I should just go on a diet, and deal with it, and THEN I kept thinking about how doing that has NOT worked, so maybe I should give this Roth thing a shot for more than a couple of months. And then something else occurred to me: when you run from something, it controls your life.  Fear rules your thoughts and behaviors.  So maybe I need to be what scares me most so I can get through it.  Ok, then.

And so a few weeks ago, (when the new pants I’d bought that were a little too big in August became almost too small) I decided that maybe it was time to stop wondering if I was hungry, deciding that I wasn’t, and then making a conscious decision to eat anyway.  (Yeah.  I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work, but I was willing to do it if it was something I needed to get through, first.  And it was.) I finally got to the point where I decided to start thinking about nourishing myself, not just feeding myself.  So I’m trying to meditate every day and drink more water.  That was what came to mind, rising up out of my unconscious when I asked myself, “What do I need next?”

I’ve been reading various blogs here and there again.  Just lurking.  And most of the time, it’s ok.  Some days I don’t read, and I don’t know how often I’ll write.  I’ve taken to calling this project, “Operation Normal.”  😉  And I don’t go the gym, but I do go to my dance classes, and I even bought some new ballet shoes, although I haven’t sewn the elastics on yet, so I haven’t been to class.  But even buying the shoes was a victory: ballet was what made me the craziest, way back when.  And now I stand in a studio, where I’m the biggest girl (even in jazz class), and most of the time, it’s ok.  I feel a little bit like I’m not so much reinventing myself as re-finding myself, or reclaiming myself.  I’m not actually sure who it is that I’m reclaiming – I haven’t seen that person in years.  But I’m kind of curious to find out.

Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me . . . Nah, I draw the line at eating worms.

Soooooo, last night I realized something.  (Cue the drumroll!)  I think I spend my life as a 7-year-old.  Ish.  7-ISH, really.  But in that general vicinity. 

I’ve written ad nauseam about childhood bullshit, so I’m going to keep this as short as possible:
Smart kid.  Really smart.  REALLY smart.
Knowing, even as a kid, that I was different.  I did not fit in with my peers at ALL.  (And not even the best parenting can stop all awareness of one’s own circus-freak-ness.)
Starting school – private school, zero tolerance for bullying and shitty behavior.
Transferred to a public school – not so much with the zero tolerance rule = lots of bullying and shitty behavior.
No learned skills for dealing with the bullying and shitty behavior (due in large part to aforementioned “differentness”) = spending a lot of time wishing to be left alone, but getting bullied mercilessly instead.
Wishing desperately to fit in – to be thinner, blonder, more affluent, more self-confident, more popular.  To be anything but different.
Knowing that the only people in my corner were the adults, which in turn, made things worse.  It made me MORE different and led to all kinds of “teacher’s pet” crap. 
Knowing that if I pissed off the adults, I was REALLY up a creek.
Bullying got so bad that Mom pulled me out and homeschooled me.
Started college at 14.
Spent a year on the sidelines, still insecure, watching the groups around me.
Deciding to become someone else – I spent a year watching the “popular” girls in the dance dept (my major at the time), analyzing power dynamics, clothing choices, conversation topics, attitudes, etc.  (Me and Jane Goodall, man.  We are SOUL SISTERS, ok?  LOL)
Showing up the year I turned 16 as a WHOLE DIFFERENT PERSON:  I became my own avatar.
WDPerson is wildly succesful: liked, pretty, popular . . . also kind of mean, but I DID NOT CARE, because you know, LIKED, PRETTY, POPULAR.
WDP sticks around, gets nicer, but otherwise stays pretty much the same.

WDP has been around for more than half my life now.  I’m 33.  I’ve been WDP Marste for longer than I’ve been Marste.  Man, THAT’S weird to think about.  I don’t know how NOT to be that person anymore.  And honestly, I don’t even know how or if Marste is any different from WDP.

But inside, I am still 7 years old.  I still spend my life in abject terror (and that is NOT drama – there are not words strong enough to describe the level of that fear) that people only like WDP, that if they really knew me, they would laugh and point and confirm all over again how different and unloveable I really am.  I eat and drink to squash that terror.  I eat and I drink because that 7-year-old is anxious ALL THE TIME, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I eat and drink because that 7-year-old is struggling against being wrapped up tight and stashed in the closet, even though she scared to DEATH of what would happen if she came out.

It seems funny, because everybody likes me.  I mean, I’m sure there are individuals who don’t like me after getting to know me (not in an insecure way, just that not everyone likes everyone), but on a purely superficial, see-you-at-work, hang-out-in-groups level, everybody likes me.  I have worked damn hard in my life to make that happen.  But on the flip side, no one likes me – they like the persona I’ve constructed.  No one actually knows me. 

And that in turn, informes my WHOLE FREAKING LIFE. 

If I eat compulsively, I don’t have to feel the 7-year-old: not her anxiety or her constant whispering (man, THAT sounds horror-movie psycho, doesn’t it?).  If I stay fat, I can say that it’s the reason I don’t date (not much, and almost never seriously).  If I stay busy, I don’t have to have close friends who might catch me in an unguarded moment and glimpse the 7-year-old circus freak.  If I excel at my job, then those in authority will never be unhappy with me (hello, teachers!).  When those in authority ARE unhappy with me (or even just offering genuinely constructive feedback), I panic, I get flustered, I get angry: I AM DOING MY BEST, CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?  YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN MY CORNER, GODDAMMIT!!  WHY ARE YOU TAKING AWAY THE ONE THING I AM GOOD AT?!

That persona informs EVERYTHING.  People are shocked when I tell them that I am an introvert.  They’re incredulous when I admit that I’m almost cripplingly shy.  Because see, those are things about ME.  But WDP can walk into a room and work it like a public relations professional.  (I figured I’d better clarify what KIND of professional there, LOL.)  Most of the time, anyway.  Sometimes the anxious 7-year-old wins, and I spend half an hour at the party, cowering in the corner, trying to bully myself (yes, I see the irony) into socializing before making an almost panicked break for the door. 

No fucking wonder I’m always so tired.  It’s not a sleep issue.  I’m maintaining a fucking PERSONA 24/7.  It’s exhausting.  No wonder I go home from work and don’t want to see anyone after: when I’m home by myself I don’t have to maintain that performance.  But then, that’s when I have to deal with the anxious 7-year-old, which is also exhausting. 

So.  Right now I don’t have any non-depressing way to end this post.  So I’m just going to call it a day and go do some of those damn Geneen Roth exercises.  (Which, supposedly, will eventually help.)

*gulp*

I have about 10 different posts in my drafts section.  All from this week.  And the thought of posting any of them fills me with anxiety.  I mean, really.  I thought about writing some of them in a notebook, but that was equally anxiety-inducing.

I think a little part of me is afraid that if I open the box, all the snakes will come out and eat me alive.  Right now I’m sitting on the box, holding them in.  Clearly, THAT’S worked out well for me so far in life.  😛  In those Roth books she writes about feeling smaller than problems, like if you really sat with them they’d just engulf you.  So some of her exercises involve just sitting and FEELING.  Realizing that the world won’t end, you won’t get sucked under, it will be ok.  I’ve been working on that, but honestly, it’s not that I feel like my problems are too BIG – it’s rather that I feel like there are a thousand little ones.  That snake metaphor is really true: I don’t feel like I’ll be swamped under by a tidal wave of rage/grief/despair/whatever – I’ve been there, done that, bought the proverbial t-shirt.  But I feel like there are a thousand of them, and they all have teeth, and as soon as I deal with one, there are 999 more biting different places.  I don’t have 999 hands to catch them all, and I don’t want them loose, slithering around in my head.

(Actually, you know what’s weird about that metaphor?  I actually LIKE snakes.  Like, a LOT.  I’m sure there’s something deep and psychological at work there, that I chose that metaphor.)

You know what else, though?  I’m afraid of giving up the drama.  There.  I said it.  Right now my life is an Epic Struggle, a Battle Against Evil.  I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  (“The only one in all the world with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil blah, blah, blah.”  Right now I’m SUPER embarrassed that I did NOT HAVE TO LOOK THAT DIRECT QUOTE UP.  NERD. ALERT, ok?)  The highs are really high and the lows are really low, and I am SUPER IMPORTANT, you know?  Every decision is EPIC and LIFE-ALTERING.  (Man, I’m really enjoying abusing those capital letters right now, I gotta tell ya.)  Life as a trashy soap opera.  But . . . honestly, I’m not 100% sure who I would be without the drama – er, “Drama.”  And also, I’m not sure HOW to be without the Drama.  How do people get through life without everything being a production?  I mean, it’s a ridiculous question, and I’m simultaneously aware of its ridiculousness and totally serious in that I don’t know the answer.  Which, actually?  Is kind of sad. 

Argh.  That is all the space I have in my head for seriousness right now.  I have an appt with the T tomorrow so there will be MUCH seriousness then.  Especially because I told her that if I could use the blog as a journal, I’d bring her the stuff to read.  I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but then again, if it’s ON THE FREAKING INTERNET, it’s not all that private anymore, is it?

In other news,  I got rid of my scale.  Sort of.  Kind of.  I put it on the top shelf in the closet, mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to give it away just yet.  But it’s not staring at me every morning, although I do find myself repeatedly checking to make sure the tape measure is still in the bathroom drawer.  I’m kind of disturbed by how calming it is to know that it’s there.  Like I still have a way to punish myself in the absence of a scale, so the WORLD AS WE KNOW IT will continue.  WHEW.  WE CAN ALL RELAX, NOW.  (There’s that Drama again!)  Fortunately, I’m generally too lazy to actually get the tape measure out and USE it, so my self-flagellation is dramatically reduced by the absence of the scale.  Which is good.  Even if it’s making me a whole new kind of crazy.

*sigh*

Procrastination . . .

I don’t want to keep a journal.  Really.  A lot.  I mean it.  The DON’T MAKE ME PULL THIS CAR OVER kind of meaning it.  I have successfully avoided it for a week now, but since I have to see the therapist next week, I should probably get on the stick, no?

I’ve been reading some of the Geneen Roth books, and although I’m “supposed” to be thinking about relationship patterns and closing myself off, I find myself thinking more about wanting.  Over in the sidebar is a link to Kate Harding’s post “The Fantasy of Being Thin,” which basically amounts to, “don’t live your life waiting for tomorrow.”  Geneen Roth takes it one step further and talks about what happens when you start wanting to WANT more than you really want to HAVE.  Because as long as you want to want, the outcome is controllable.  As long as I want to be thin, I can keep believing that it will make me a different person.  As long as I wait to be thin, I can believe that I’ll meet the perfect person, and real life will never intrude on my fantasy.  As long as I wait/want to be different, I can imagine that I don’t freeze up at the thought of confrontation, that I don’t vacillate wildly between panic and rage.  I can imagine that I’m cool, calm and collected all the time.  I can imagine that everything really IS fine – that I’m never sad, never vulnerable, never angry, never wrong.  I can live there, in that place without having to deal with the messiness and pain of real life. 

Is it weird to write that I’m more comfortable posting this on the internet for the world to see than I am taking it into the therapist’s office next week?  (Actually, probably not.  The internet is still abstract, whereas a therapist is a face-to-face thing.)

I mentioned to the T that I live above my neck.  I live in my thoughts, my opinions, in the high-powered, always-running, turbo-charged space that is my brain.  I’ve been trying to eat when I get hungry.  But you know – I don’t KNOW when I’m hungry.  I can’t feel it until I’m starving, when I suddenly look up from whatever I’m doing and realize that I need food NOW.  But starving is different from hungry (and momentary starvation is different from long-term starvation). 

The T asked me at the first session, “Do you think that you eat/drink in order to slow your thoughts down?” and I answered that no, I didn’t really think so.  And I still don’t – I eat/drink to SHUT THEM UP altogether.  I eat/drink to put myself back in my body, even when the results are unpleasant (coughhangovercough).  I spend days running from one thing to the next: gotta get this done, don’t forget about that, did I remember this, add that to the list, after this is done I have to do that, but first I should accomplish this thing over here . . . I run and I run and I run, but I never really STOP.  I realized, as I started paying conscious attention to that part of me, that the VERY FIRST thing in my head when I wake up is a variation on, “today I have to . . . ”  And sometimes, I’ve realized that even as I wake up, before I’m fully awake, that refrain is already running – IN MY SLEEP. 

And you know what the irony is?  Physically, I’ve never been able to run.  Even doing the Couch to 5K or before that, trying to teach myself to run using a similar format, I’ve never been able to run for more than 6 or 7 minutes straight.  I did it exactly once, for 15 minutes or so, but never before or since, and that once just about killed me: I was wiped out the entire rest of the day.  It’s like my body compensates for the speed of my head by digging in its heels (literally and figuratively) and weighing me down, forcing me to hold still, demanding that I stop.  Which only makes my head run faster.

In the meantime, I’ve been meditating.  Not a lot: once a day (maybe twice), for about 10 minutes at a stretch.  Just trying to be present IN my body, instead of living in my head. 

It feels weird.

Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends . . .

Somewhere, Shakespeare is SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE right now.  Can’t blame him.  😛

There’s a lot going on.  A lot coming up, going down, blah, blah, blah.  To be as brief as possible:
– I dig the new job!  I’m working on global concessions, which basically means that when you see Jack Sparrow’s face on a popcorn tub/drink cup, I was involved in getting it there.  I like it!  🙂
– I went back to therapy.  It was time.  I have a bunch of stuff I’m working on, including food (duh), conflict patterns from childhood, relationship patterns, all that kind of good stuff.  More on that later.
– I read “Women, Food and God,” by Geneen Roth.  I was both glad and sorry that I did – it sucks to have someone you’ve never met basically lay out all your issues on paper.  Dammit.  So I bought 2 more of her books, and have been reading them, which is digging up all my crap.  Thank god for the new therapist.
– I’m in the middle of Crystal Renn’s book, “Hungry,” which is fantastic.  Highly recommended.
– Related to the above (Roth), I stopped dieting.  Like, just recently.  Like, a week ago.  (But OFFICIALLY today.)
– And since I started really dealing with therapy and all my crap, I’ve spent the last week living on vodka and grilled cheese sandwiches in a frantic attempt to STUFF IT ALL BACK DOWN.  Good thing I’m not dieting.  (Yes, that laughter you hear is indeed tinged with a little bitterness and frustration.  But I decided I’d rather have more pain now and less pain later, than this amount of pain forever.  So.  Time to lay off the vodka and grilled cheese sandwiches and you know, DEAL WITH MY CRAP.)

Aaaaaaand the therapist (henceforth known as T) said I should keep a journal.  And it just so happens that I have this handy-dandy blog!  Which I kind of started as a journal way back in the day!  So there you go.  I don’t know how often I’ll post, though it’ll be semi-regular, and I make no promises as to interesting content.  Also, some of the posts, depending on content, may be password protected.  If you want the password (it will always be the same), you can email me at mjlmcd(at)hotmail(dot)com.

I’m back, babies!  Let the naked table-dancing begin! 

Or, you know.  Not.  😉

Jury duty!

Yes, that’s right: I’m on jury duty at the moment.  Fortunately I got an interesting case (THAT I CAN’T TALK ABOUT, WHICH IS KILLING ME), so it’s not completely mind-numbing.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to write about here.  It’s funny: since I haven’t been writing, my food neuroses are much quieter.  When I don’t spend time every day thinking about them, my eating and exercise get easier, both mentally and scheduling-wise.  I dropped a few pounds just before ShoWest by adhering to the “Sort-of-Like-When-I-Was-In-College-But-Without-the-Crazy-Part” diet, and a central component of that was to stop thinking about it so much. 

Does that make sense?  It’s like I spend so much time THINKING about it that when it comes time to DO something, I’m already tired.  I feel like I’ve already spent so much time on it that I can’t bear to spend any more.  And when I don’t think about it so much, I have energy to do something about it. 

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this.  It’s a puzzlement, as they say (sing?).

Too Much Stuff, Squashed Into a Little Ball

Things are crazy around here.  (Then again, when are they NOT?)  So I’m going to space some of this stuff out over the next few days, and you’ll just have to come back if you want to read the whole post!  Muahahahahaha!!  In the meantime, I’m trying to stop by and read at least a couple of blogs a day, but when push comes to shove and I have to choose between reading and exercising, I have to choose exercise.  So, apologies in advance if I’m not commenting so much.  (I might have to go back to working out in the morning, although that comes with its own set of hassles.  Meh.  I’ll figure it out.)

ANYWAY. 

I was at the bookstore the other day about 2 weeks ago (what can I say, I’ve been thinking about this for a while), loitering in the cookbook section (which I do way, WAY too often).  Having browsed the Food Network section and the vegetarian section and the cook-it-fast section and the slow-cooker section, I made my way over to the “healthy” section.  I found a lot of good stuff there: a Best of Cooking Light book that had some yummy-looking stuff, a “Comfort Food Made Healthy” book by Eating Well that was definitely a jackpot find, a Williams-Sonoma “Essentials of Healthful Cooking” that was ALSO a jackpot find. 

And then I glanced down toward the bottom shelves, where I found books with titles like, “Eat Everything You Want Without Gaining a Pound!” and “Gain Taste, Lose Weight!” and “Eat Like a Devil, Look Like an Angel!”  and “The Skinny Girl’s Guide to Gluttony!” and so on.  And on.  And on.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  The books that manage to make you feel bad about yourself before you’ve even THOUGHT about food.  The books that basically boil down to one title: “How to Pretend to Stuff Your Face (Using Lettuce) So You Don’t End Up Looking Like the Fat, Disgusting Cow You Are.”  Books about food that simultaneously scream “Embrace it!” and “Run away, run away!” 

No fucking WONDER our culture is so neurotic about food.  On the one hand we have the eliminate-a-food-group dieters and the Calorie Restriction dieters (though some are doing it for health, not weight, which is a whole ‘nother discussion for a different day), and on the other hand we have Nigella Lawson, described by the Los Angeles Times as “the queen of come-on cooking.”  Food is both fetishized and forbidden (triple points for alliteration!), something we dream about and something we “pay for” at the gym.

Really?  I mean, come on: REALLY?

I wrote a couple of posts back about going back to pre-crazy dieting: about eating off the cuff, on the fly, not worrying SO MUCH, not planning out all my meals and snacks a week in advance, not counting calories, not devoting all my waking hours (or at least a sizable number of them) to pursuit of the RIGHT numbers, the RIGHT exercise, the RIGHT Way To Live (TM).  And what that basically boils down to, for me, is to acknowledge that every meal matters, but that no single meal matters.  That I should get some exercise every day, but the kind doesn’t really matter too much.  It’s just not that big a deal.  It can’t be.  It’s when I let it BECOME a big deal that I slip down into craziness.

And hand in hand with that comes the knowledge that I need to start cooking again.  It’s weird to pore over cookbooks while eating a diet frozen dinner.  It’s WEIRD, ok?  I need to remember that food really IS more than just fuel, at least for me, and to acknowledge that THAT’S OK.  I think food is more than fuel for most people, and honestly I’m not sure I’d want to be any different about it.  Frozen dinners don’t carry that sense of nourishment that real food does.  (I hadn’t realized until recently just how much I’d been relying on pre-packaged food again.)

So Sunday night I ate an enormous dinner: I roasted a chicken and mashed some red potatoes with olive oil, garlic and Parmesan cheese.  I roasted some asparagus with prosciutto.  And sat down at the table and ate.  Now, don’t misunderstand: for some reason, I was ravenous last night – I wasn’t eating just to eat.  But pulling chicken off the bone, sitting in a house full of the smell of (literally) Sunday dinner, it wasn’t just food.  It was a symbol of self-care. 

And in our culture, if you are fat or plump or chunky or even just carrying a LITTLE extra weight, you are not supposed to care for yourself.  Oh, you’ll be told, “take CARE of yourself – lose some weight!” but the very process proscribed for weight-loss is so often to DENY ourselves that most basic symbol of care: eat less, eat diet food, eat non-fat, low-carb and whatever you do, restrict.  Slash your calories, cut your food intake.

The irony there is that for ME, when I eat food that nourishes me – not just my body, but my emotions too – I eat less.  I don’t need food to fill that hole inside because there is no hole.  And so my calorie intake drops, and my portions get smaller (last Sunday notwithstanding!) – all without feeling that I’m missing out on something.  But it’s astonishing (and appalling) to me how HARD it is to do that – how hard it is to take care of myself when I’m surrounded by conflicting messages like “Food is decadent!” and “Food is fuel!”  How hard it is to tune out the chatter and the hyperbole used to sell books and magazines and movies and the Latest! Greatest! Celebrity Diet! EVARRR!!!  This is a seriously schismed culture when it comes to food.

Argh.  I don’t have a good way to wrap this up, either.  I’m all over the place tonight.  This is why I haven’t posted in the last few days.  It doesn’t seem to be sorting it out in my head any better with time though, so for now you get my disjointed ramblings. 

And now it’s a little after 8:00, and I’m going to bed.  I have to get up at 4:00 to go to the gym, and me on fewer than 7 hours of sleep is NOT a happy thing.  😉

*I have to interject here that there are many “diet” books I don’t have a problem with, even if I don’t always like the way they cook.  I’m objecting specifically to the types mentioned at the start of the post.

So . . .

Hey!  Do remember back in the day?  When I had a blog?  That I updated regularly?  Yeah, me too.  Man, those were the days, right?  Good times, I tell ya.  I can FEEL the nostalgia.

. . .

Huh?  Sorry, I was marinating in the nostalgia.  Where was I?

OH, RIGHT.  That BLOG I USED TO UPDATE.  Back before Florida New Year’s Christmas.  Yeeeeeeah.

I think that I think too much.  (Yes, I’m aware of the irony.  Be quiet.)  I came to this conclusion (again – I’ve come to this conclusion before) while standing in the bookstore, leafing through some of Jillian Michaels’ books.  (With a copy of a Williams-Sonoma cookbook tucked under my arm.  Three guesses what book I left the store with, and the first 2 don’t count.)  I was sort of bizarrely fascinated by the fact that she has 3 books out – AND THEY’RE ALL THE SAME DAMN BOOK.  I kept flipping back and forth between them.  Seriously – they’re ALL THE SAME. 

After I got done marveling at the fact that anyone could write 3 books that all contained the EXACT SAME INFORMATION (don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just The Jillian who had multiple copies of a book with different titles – she just was displayed the most prominently), something else occurred to me.  Do you know why it’s possible to write multiple books like that?  Because people don’t listen the first time.  Honestly, all the books pretty much say the same things and after you’ve read a few, you start to know the words by heart.  Stop eating so much crap (although “crap” is defined differently in different books), and get some exercise.  The best books don’t even promise weight-loss, just that you’ll be healthier.  Eat less crap, exercise more.  Bottom line.

And I started thinking about that: about how they all say the same things, with MINOR variations and about how there’s this huge market for all these books that say the same thing.  Now make no mistake: I’m no different than the other bazillion people who buy the same book over and over.  I flip through them, sort of hoping that I’ll stumble on the Magic Secret That Will Allow Me to Lose Weight Without! Even! Trying!  Yeah, I’ll own it.  I know better, but I kind of hope I’m wrong about the knowing better.

And THAT got me thinking.  (Always dangerous, you know.)  Honestly, if I spent half the time eating well and exercising that I spend rationalizing why it’s ok “just this once” or rationalizing why “that” plan won’t work, I swear to God I’d have lost all my weight 10 years ago.  If I spent as much time working out as I spend tracking calories, fat, Points, carbs, protein, whatever, I’d be in the gym a LOT, ok?

And I have a million reasons (or “reasons”) why I haven’t lost weight: I’m afraid of failure, I’m afraid I won’t have anything to blame my unhappiness on, I’m afraid that there ISN’T a thin person inside me, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid.  But I think I’m most afraid of losing my hiding place.  I overeat and I drink because I’m hiding. 

And (I have GOT to stop starting every paragraph with that word.  Eventually.) I was thinking back to college, before I lived on Tootsie Pops (over 100 licks, by the way, is the answer) and Diet Coke.  You know what?  Even accounting for the Crazy, even BEFORE the Tootsie Pop and Diet Coke Diet started to seem like a good idea, I was losing weight.  I was losing it consistently, and pretty quickly, too (just not quickly ENOUGH, hence the advent of the Crazy Diet).  It was actually the only time in my life that I lost a fair amount of weight in a healthy manner. 

Nowadays I count calories, track my intake, measure my heart rate to account for calories burned, fret about not lifting enough weights, wonder if I’m eating too much fat/protein/carbs.  But in college, pre-crazy, I didn’t do any of those things.  I got some cardio and did some light weights every day, but I didn’t stress about it (in retrospect I could have stood to lift heavier weights, but at the time the conventional wisdom was “light weights, 5,000 reps”).  I didn’t count calories; instead I left mayo off of everything, skipped cheese, didn’t eat a lot of pasta.  Instead I ate whole grains, smoothies for lunch (even those sherbet monstrosities from Jamba Juice), single portions at dinner of whatever was being served (and it was NOT low-cal).  I wasn’t a big snacker, although I had a steady stream of coffee and/or water in my system.  I never got on a scale, instead relying on a tape measure and the fit of some jeans I wanted to fit back into.  I didn’t journal my food, I didn’t track my exercise, I didn’t do any of that.  And I lost weight.  And I haven’t lost more than about 10 pounds successfully since then, with all the counting and calculating and obssessing.

Interesting, no?

So I stopped counting calories the other day.  I’m still keeping a journal of WHAT I ate because *part* of the reason I didn’t overeat during that pre-crazy time was because I lived with other people and I was embarrassed to keep eating just for the taste.  Now I live alone, so I don’t have that impediment anymore.  So I keep a journal so that I know how many servings I’ve had. 

I’m going to make a return to pre-crazy eating and see what happens.  I’m going to keep reading the Beck book and working on that, and I’ll keep a “what I ate” sort of food journal (instead of a “tracking” journal), but other than that, I’m going to try and eat more like I did in the early days of my college weight-loss.  If I find myself going off the deep end, I’ll dial it back, but you know . . . I don’t think I will go off the deep end.  I can’t help feeling pre-emptively RELIEVED, actually.  It would be nice not to have to spend an hour or two every night figuring out how many calories I’ve burned/eaten, and how many I’ll burn/eat tomorrow.  It would be nice to not think about what I can and can’t eat.  It would be nice not to freak out about fat or carbs or protein.  It would be nice not to think about ANY of it SO FREAKIN’ MUCH. 

You know.  Like it used to be.  Back before it wasn’t like that anymore.

Thinky Thoughts: Battle to the Death Edition!

Ok, before I jump in, I added Belle pictures to the other day’s post.  Yeah.  You’re welcome.  😉

So I think my neuroses and my “normal” self (selves?) are battling to the death in my head.  (Well, I HOPE it’s to the death, anyway.  ‘Cause what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and the LAST THING I NEED are stronger neuroses, ok?)

A couple of weeks ago I had a bad week.  Epically bad.  The kind of bad that made me stay home from work and cry.  And then I dragged myself kicking and screaming back on the proverbial wagon, and had a really GOOD week.

Three guesses how this week went, and the first two don’t count.

I set a goal to exerise every day in December.  Even 5 minutes counted: the point was EVERY DAY.  And I was doing pretty well.  For the first week.  And then last week, I had a migraine every day.  Let me repeat: I HAD A MIGRAINE.  EVERY.  SINGLE.  DAMN.  DAY.  There was no exercise.  There was a lot of scotch and a lot of dark rooms and a lot of weeping into pillows, wishing that the pain would STOP, GODDAMMIT, just freakin’ STOP ALREADY. 

I also didn’t make a meal plan this week.  And normally that’s not a disaster, but when I have a migraine and I think that my eyeball might fall out any minute, I don’t make the best choices.  So I ate a lot of crap that I wouldn’t normally eat.  Whoops.

And the thing is, I know the headaches are psychosomatic.  I KNOW they are.  Why do I know this?  Because every time I start to make positive changes, something happens.  I get injured, I have a mental breakdown, I feel so tired that I can’t keep “real” food down – SOMETHING. 

I’m a seriously emotional eater, and I know that some part of me is terrified of letting that go – how will I deal with stress if I don’t eat (or drink)?  I mean, I know the answer INTELLECTUALLY, but on a gut level, I really can’t conceive of dealing with stress any other way.  Food and stress have always been wrapped together for me: whether starving or bingeing or drinking, it’s how I have always dealt with life.  And I’m not sure how I’ll deal with life if I change.  I mean, I know I WILL deal with it, and at some point the way that I deal with it will seem as easy as eating does now, but from this vantage point I can’t see it.  Does that make sense?

So this weekend I had to take a really good look at what I CAN control.  When I can’t exercise, I can control my food intake.  When my stomach is upset, I can eat Chinese soup (with garlic and ginger and bok choy) instead of noodles and butter.  When I’m exhausted and only feel like eating sugar because my body needs something to run on (and it hasn’t gotten any sleep), I can drink a glass of chocolate soy milk instead of that enormous Starbucks mocha. 

There are always small things I can do better, and I think at this point, that might BE the point.  Even if the small things seem TOO small, I think the point might be to send my psyche the message that I’m not stopping.  This is for real.  This is permanent.  I am changing and I will not be dissuaded, migraines be damned. 

But *cue the whining* I just wish it didn’t have to be so haaaaaard.  And I really wish it didn’t entail this Battle to the Death that seems to be going on.  (And I really, REALLY wish that said Battle didn’t feel the need to sacrifice my left eyeball for the cause.  I think I wish that most of all.)