Weekend Successes

Affirmation: I love my body and trust its wisdom

The weekend went pretty good for a change. Weekends can be my downfall. This is when I find myself eating out of boredom or stress, depending on mom's needs and moods. I know that I shouldn't allow someone else's moods and needs dictate my stress level, but I am still learning how to cope with the reversing of roles as my mother becomes progressively inactive and frustrated with her health.

This weekend I was gentle with myself and took many naps...I was tired. I love naps on cold wintery days. I also spent time in the studio. Creating helps to forget about food. I came up for air when I was aware that I was so hungry that I was shaking! I rarely forget about food and eating to get to that point. It was such a relief to come upstairs and choose quick/easy fix foods and not have to spend time cooking. It allowed me to just feed my true body hunger and get back to the studio and go on with my day. For the inquiring minds this is what I ate on Saturday:

Breakfast

LF cheese omelet

hash browns

2 slices whole grain toast

Lunch

Frozen Chinese stir fry

rice

Dinner

pizza

(it was mom's birthday, she wanted pizza)

Sunday

Breakfast

Slice of toast w/peanut butter

Lunch

Ummm I forgot, TV dinner I think

Dinner

cheese

pear

crusty sourdough bagette (indiv. serv. size)

dilly beans

ff veg. cream cheese

Snack

popcorn

This is so much different than how I usually snack my way through the weekend...even though the snacking is mostly healthy choices, I still eat out of boredom. It took less than 5 minutes to prepare the meals this weekend and it was such a joy to not have to have time eaten up (no pun intended) around the food prep/eat/thinking/etc. Somehow I feel such a liberation in this. Easy eating, calm eating, eating out of hunger and need for nourishment rather than an emotional response. For the most part the past 2 weeks have been like this. Last weekend I was so busy running around and not at home I didn't think it would be a good test of whether my paradigm shift would survive weekends. This weekend was a quiet weekend at home, and it did. Now, I did find myself thinking and wanting to munch in the evenings, but it was much easier to choose not to. Could it be that this truly is the breakthrough I have been struggling for, praying for, working for, almost have given up on? It is quite early to really say so, but in small and big ways I am finding that change in thought and actions are taking place.

I am finding it much easier to say no to the beginnings of hunger and wait until it gets to a true hunger, not just those little nudges from the hunger monster, you know the kind, hey...you haven't eaten for oh say 5 minutes!! whaddya trying to do...starve!!! To wait until I am well and truly hungry. I am getting more consistent in asking myself the questions too...am I really hungry or has something just triggered my old desire to use food for what ever reason. What is really going on here? And to talk myself through to a conscious answer - even if it is to eat, at least I am doing it consciously and with full knowledge of why.

I am also full of plans for the immediate future, my training and certification as a life purpose coach, creating art, looking for opportunities to sell it and designing and making jewelry...and thinking about selling it too.

Now...time to tackle the exercise demon!

Ready to Move On?

Affirmation: There is more to life than food; choose life.

Last night in group I commented that I just want food to not be the focus of my life. I was challenged that I sounded angry at food and perhaps I was not really wanting change because recovery takes a lot of thinking and focus on food. I understand what was being said, but it doesn't change the fact that I am ready for food to not be the center focus of my life anymore. I still feel that somehow all the focus I have put on food and eating issues that past year is no different, really than the previous years of over-eating. The focus of my life was still on food and eating. I don't think that I was able to explain my point so that anyone could understand what I was - am feeling...maybe because it is not completely clear to me either. But I keep thinking about this quote that was on Kerstin's blogg

"Naturally slim people have lots of goals and things going on in their lives that they focus on, e.g. their careers, family life, hobbies, faith etc. They eat because their bodies need the fuel, and because they enjoy eating. Overweight people on the other hand know only one goal: to lose weight. They think that their 'real' life only begins once they have dealt with that weight issue.." --Doris Wolf "Abnehmen und dabei geniessen"

This really explains what I am struggling with right now. I am ready to live life, to go back to the time when I was concentrating on living a life not centered around food; making goals, going after them, running hard after God, having a circle (tribe) of friends and food was something to be enjoyed, not obsessed over.

This past year has been about confronting the issues, both emotional and physical, surrounding this eating disorder. To learn about hunger, to feel hunger, to eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. To learn other ways of coping with life than using food. To learn portion sizes and teach my eyes and body to believe that this amount of food will satisfy me. To reteach my tastebuds to desire whole and healthy food and not junk food, sugars, and soda. I haven't quite taught my body to love exercise yet! But hope springs eternal.

But I am ready to let go of that as a focus of my life. This is not to say that I am going to quit working on or monitoring my actions, choices, and thought life around food. But I do believe that recovery, for me, looks like being normal. Perhaps it is because of my in God and the scriptural promises he offers like "Those whom the Son has set free are free indeed" I believe that at some point, after doing the deep work, I can be free from this eating disorder.

It is vital to do the work, the emotional, the spiritual work, the deep work. To resolve the issues behind the reasons for an eating disorder, but does it really have to be the focal point of my life forever? I am convinced not. That speaks too much to the victim mentality to me, of being tied to this disorder for life; it controlling me rather than me being free of it. Perhaps I will always have to be on guard that it will not return to consume me again, I can live with that, even scripture speaks to this with the description of putting on the whole armor as means of resisting temptation and sin.

Perhaps I am asking too much too soon. But I also think that this anger, this readiness to move beyond all the focusing my life on this issue speaks to me of being ready to move on. And oh baby am I ready to move on. I am tired of food being the sole focus of my life.

I am particularly talking about all that surrounds the physical act of eating; planning, shopping, cooking, eating, thinking about what exactly to eat next. It is exhausting and taking time away from all the things I really want to do. (Of course this begs the question of whether I am using this as an excuse for not doing what I really want to do is a valid question and my whine-fest on my morning pages will attest to that.) What I am talking about is all the time and effort surrounding planning menus, looking through cook books, going shopping, making sure you have all the right things on hand, cooking and cooking and more cooking, thinking almost incessantly about food, when you will eat next, what you will be eating, if you will be able to choose the healthy choices and not eat too much, will I have enough food with me during a long day so that I will not get hungry - all of it. It is like only half my brain is focused on anything else at any given time during the day. I do not think that this the way recovery will look. I am ready to move into a different place...a more normal place.

For instance. I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman who only had 1 loaf of bread in her cart, exactly 7 TV dinners, 3 baked potatoes, some fresh fruit, some cheese, a bottle of wine, some chicken breasts and a box of crackers and a few other fresh veggies. We were talking and she said something like "I hate doing my big weekly shopping". I looked at my cart (for two weeks for two people) that was almost filled with healthy choices of food that would take hours of thought and preparation. It was a light bulb moment for me. Eating healthy was not synonymous with eating simply or normaly for me. But it could be. I started to watch what people were eating at work - normal people - and saw that even the men were eating simple things; sandwiches and a piece of fruit, a frozen dinner, a can of soup. They were eating to provide fuel for their body, not making it a major production. So I have been trying to incorporate this into my life. Eating foods that are easy and don't take a lot of prep time. Foods that taste good. Foods that are uncomplicated. It has liberated me and my life. Now this is only about 2 weeks old, but it has been a major paradigm shift for me. And I think it is going to revolutionize my life. It makes me nervous to not have a lot of food in the kitchen (just in case), but it is wonderful to not have to touch food, cook food, think about food so much. The frozen dinners are working for me. Perhaps I will one day become tired of them and be ready to go back to more conventional ways of cooking, but for now it is freeing me up from being chained to all that surrounds food for me.

Next frontier: exercise!

I'm Hungry - Really? Or am I Feeling?

Affirmation: I'm stressed: don't eat don't eat don't eat

Ok..I am at work, I am hating - no that is not even a strong enough word - what I am doing. I am hating it because I am terrible at it, I don't know what I am doing, and it is way outside of my comfort zone, not to mention that I plain don't really care about this particular bit of busy-ness. Help, I can only do left brain for so long. So...Now I am hungry, all I can think about is food. Well I am not that hungry, I can wait for 25 more minutes until lunch, but all I want to do is eat. So...I am bored, that triggers the eating monster (nods to Kerstin), but just this once I am determined to not give in to this beast! But the more I try to figure out this little assignment the more frustrated and bored I become and the more I want to eat. So I have gotten up and walked down the hall...I still want to eat; I have closed my eyes and breathed; that hasn't helped; I have drank almost a glass of water; no help; so now I am writing here.

Forgive my rant and rage. I know that this is just me throwing a temper tantrum. I don't want to be here at this job (any office job for that matter) doing this kind of thing. I want to be in my studio creating, and soon I want to be talking with clients helping them discover their purpose for their lives. But for now I have to wait, wait for god's timing in all of this, for the groundwork to be done. for the financial aspects to be finished with...Namely paying off my debts. It is not so much that I feel stuck and can't go forward. I feel mired in the day to day responsibilities and minutiae of my life and it detracts from what I really want to do and accomplish. and that makes me want to eat; to take away the stress, sadness, frustration, and all those other emotions that go along with this being stuck. But I also know that this is just for a season. Soon, probably sooner than I can imagine, I know this will change. There have been too many indicators of it, too many people praying, too many serendipity happening. So patience and not food is what I need right now.

don't sacrifice the long term for a short term moment of misguided stress relief

So why is it so important to not give into this? It is not about food. Why does not eating now, not using food to soothe myself become important to the rest of my life and obtaining my dreams. Because making the hard decisions impacts the rest of my life. Seeing that it is not food that will change my circumstances will help me to more clearly see what will. Removing the intoxicating and numbing effects that eating has will leave me with no option but to face what it is that is bringing up these emotions. Facing them, identifying them will help me to cope with them in healthy ways. Facing them and identifying them will help me to choose other options with my life that will be more beneficial and productive to doing what God has called me to do; life coaching and art.

wow this little brain dump and tirade has helped. And look at what I discovered, eating doesn't really help change things. I can decide to not eat, I can decide to change the way I feel by choosing to act not eat.

breathe! yes now breathing helps.

Answering the Hard Questions

Affirmation: YES! I CAN!!

Ok...so December was an utter failure. But don't ya just love the new year? It is so full of promise and hope. This year looks to promise a lot of change in my life; good changes in my life if not in my weight. I have to admit that I am a little discouraged in the lack of physical results in the last year. I have honestly put a lot of effort and done a lot of internal work on this. Yet at the same time I know that ultimately there is the physical equation of:

"calories in must be less than energy expended"

I eventually must begin to decrease the amount of calories I eat and increase the exercise I do. But that isn't happening right now. And the question is why? Why do I resist exercise? I don't have the answer for that yet, but I am continuing to ask and listen.

Last time in group I was complaining about not loosing any weight this last year. A asked the question of what would happen if you never lost the weight you wanted to? I have not liked to think about this question, even though it has been in the back of my mind for a while before she asked it and almost constantly the past two weeks. My first reaction was "then what is the use?" I mean, why work so hard to deal with the underlying issues, become aware of need vs. want, hunger levels, other calming/coping methods besides food, all the stuff that has occupied my mind this past year. Why deprive myself if I will never loose weight?

Then I became angry; at myself, at God, at food, at life, at anyone who happened to say hi to me....well almost! But as I continued to think about this, I realized that it still has to be about more than loosing weight. And that is the hard part. Because deep down it is still about how I look and the insecurity of being unacceptable at almost 300 lbs. Of still struggling to look at myself in the mirror with gentleness, love and kind thoughts. Of still struggling to find beauty in the person, yes even the physicality of that person standing there looking back at me. Of assuming (many times rightly so) that people don't take the time to see beyond the mass of body into who I am. And, really, am I doing any more? If I can't do it for myself, can I even expect anyone else to do it for me? Which shows me that this isn't about food.

It shows me that it is still about learning to loving myself enough to accept myself. Will I love myself any more if I am thin? I mean really? Will I really be any different, at the core of who I am, when I am thin? Of course not, I am who I am. Being fat has nothing to really do with who I am at my core, only the way that I feel about myself. And food is only a tool I use to numb the pain, distract me, entertain me, calm the nerves, celebrate, commiserate and compensate with. It is a reason to have a party in my mouth because I am not allowing myself to have a party in life! So back to the question about what I would do if I didn't loose any weight. Well I guess this little tirade has helped me see that I need to come to a place that I will continue this process irregardless of loosing weight, because it is more about how I choose to live my life than what I do or don't choose to eat. It is about how I continue to choose to believe a lie and how I choose to think and feel about myself rather than believing the truth about who God says I am. (A treasured child of the most high God! Psalms 139:1-18) That is a tough one, but I do want to get there.

I also have been thinking a lot about the quote Kerstin left in my comments (see sidebar at bottom for quote). I think that this capsulates where I want to go this year with this journey. I have done a lot of the soul and internal work this past year. This past year was all about focusing on the issues behind the food. I am ready to move on to other things in my life. I am ready to let go of food. Now I know that there will still be a lot of ups and downs, but I am ready to concentrate on the other areas of my life, the areas that will fill me up, rather than using food. This year looks to be a year of new opportunities and new beginnings. Tomorrow I will start training to be a PWTP life coach. I have been asked to become a group leader in women's ministry at our church. And can I tell you that our women's ministry leader rocks! This is not "church ladies" women's ministry! These woman rock! I also sense that my role as caretaker for mom may increase this year. As I watch her do less and less, she is able to do less and less. I don't know how much longer she can stay relatively immobile and retain her health. (But that is for a future blog I think). And there is my art. I want this year to be about making art, about making time to make art, and finally taking the risk to exhibit and sell my art...even if it is on eBay! And finally this year is going to be about de-cluttering, thinning out, lightening the load, simplifying - no celebrating simplicity, letting go if all my stuff both emotional and the physical - especially the physical! Not just the fat, but all the stuff I have collected and sits in boxes because I don't have anyplace to put it. When I finally am able to have my own home, will I even like any of that "stuff" anymore? hmmm I wonder if "lightening the load" of my stuff will have an effect on my emotional/bodily physical/emotional lightening the load journey? heheh