Small Victories

Victories, such a positive word, but such a hard thing to obtain in the journey. So I will take the small victories; they are just as hard won and milestones none the less. Tonight on the way home from church I wanted to stop and get a blizzard, but all the way home I talked myself out of it, knowing that I will be going to the movies with my two nieces tomorrow and will have popcorn. I kept telling myself that I could wait until tomorrow, I didn't need the ice cream tonight. Mabye this self talk works after all. I didn't stop and I really didn't crave or think about it again for the rest of the evening. I also has decided to stop for ribs since church went later than usual and it was after 8pm before I got home and didn't really feel like cooking and didn't want to eat as late as it would have been if I did cook. Well that is the rationale that I used and told myself. I was saved by the fact that I had forgotten to put my checkbook in my purse and the rib joint doesn't do credit cards. But that jolted me enough that I decided that I could say no to the ribs (I could have gone next door to the gas station's ATM machine and got some cash). But just that amount of distraction and disrubtion of the crave/justification process was enough for me to regain sanity and strenght and say now.

In all actuality it only took as long at it takes to cook pasta to make a tasty, healthy mixed veg and pasta dish seasoned with a bit of gorgonzola cheese and broth to make a great sauce. Cooking with fresh foods and whole grains - healthy actually takes less time than preparing meats and traditional meals. I keep forgeting that.

Another thing that I am realizing that I am forgetting is that I get fuller on less. My mind and emotions have not caught up with my body yet. I have to consciously remind myself that I can't eat as much now as I used to. Tonight, for instance; I usually cook a 3oz serving of pasta when it is a main part of the meal. But tonight I cooked only 2 oz and it was enough. And yesterday when mom and I went to Beef-a-roo, out of habit, without even thinking about it I "supersized" our order when they asked. I was only able to eat half of the onion rings and the soda, throwing the rest away. Which in itself is a victory, throwing away food, especially Beef-a-roo onion rings is not something I have ever done or been able to do. It is nice that I am moving away from the physical need to eat so much, or at least the ability to eat so much. Now my reality and automatic choices have to catch up. I guess that is why it is so good to concentrate on being in the moment while I am eating.

But I will take these small victories along the way. Small victories add up to big changes and eventually the final victory of a changed life. What is the saying? Take care of the little things and the big thing will take care of itself. Well right now that is all I have the strenght to do is to take care of the little things. The over all picture is too great to feel that it can ever be achieved. So I do what I can do, make the small changes and celebrate the small victories and wait until I can see that they have added up to larger victories, larger, permenant changes.

Getting Ready for Exercise

Today I went to look at recumbant bikes to buy. Boy, they are pricey. But compared to a hospital stay or even ongoing dues at the Y, not so much. And mom says she will use it too, and that will be worth it alone. I found one that he will give me a discount on that will be 499...the next step up in this store is then 1200. Sunday we are going to go to Sears and another place that has home equiptment to see what they have and to price it. I need mom to try out the bike before I actually buy it to make sure she can get onto it.

I know that I have to face getting back into the schedule of exercise again. I hate the way I feel since I quit. I don't know if I will ever get to the point that I love it, but I do like how I feel when I get a good workout in on a daily basis. Tomorrow after I get back from the farmer's market Mom and I am going to finish emptying out my old studio room and get it ready to convert back into a bedroom again. That is where the bike will go. I know if I put it downstairs in the studio, she won't use it as much...she doesn't do the stairs so well anymore. Actually I thihk I would do it more in the mornings if it was in what will eventually be my bedroom rather than downstairs.

Exercise is just a part of what I know I have to incorporate into my new lifestyle. Lately I have been concentrating on the emotional part of eating and food, but in all reality I know that my body will not loose as well without physical exercise. I have to face that apart and aside from the eating disorder, exercise will have to become a part of my daily routine if I am to become healthy and get off my medication. I can do it, I just have to make the committment and find a way to fit it into my life in a way that works for me. Ok...I know that you will make the time for the things that are important to you, but sometimes something can be important, but if you don't like doing it, then it becomes a challenge to make it a priority. So I guess Death would be a good enough reason for me to make exercising a priority wouldn't it?

So a new layer to add over the next few weeks is exercise. Lord help me! Help me to see that this is important enough to make it a priority in my life, to commmit to it, to actually do it for more than a few weeks or months. Help me to make it as much a part of my daily routine as showering or brushing my teeth, or even talking to you!

So off to bed, early morning tomorrow...gonna go to the Farmers market for some REAL 'maters!

'night
jackie

Cravings

Tonight has been about cravings. So...this is cravings. I wanted to EAT. First chocolate, then chips, then anything. I didn't, I waited until I could feel hunger, and know that it was hunger, then I chose to have a bagel. I was out of fruit; that would have been the logical choice to satisfy the sweet tooth, but a bagel did the trick...of course I sprinkled a little cinnamon on it, and it helped satisfy both the hunger and the craving. Maybe I am beginning to get the hang of knowing the difference between hunger, cravings and just plain wanting to eat because I am bored.

This week is almost at an end, I have learned something about hunger/fullness....and that much of the time I eat not out of hunger. I think that next week may be more of a challenge, the novelty of fighting to be aware of this hunger/fullness, living in the moment of eating and being present in it will have worn off, I am sure. Next week I think that I want to be more dilligent of only eating when I am eating. Not double tasking, reading, surfing, whatever...but to just sit with the food, taste it, enjoy it acknowledge it.

Thursday Morning Check In

Ok, so it is not morning, it is almost, but not quite noon. But I am writing on my lunch hour, morning was rushed and I didn't get a chance to post before I left for work. Today I am still focusing on hunger - recognizing true hunger vs craving or just wanting to eat, waiting utnil I am at a 3 on the hunger meter, and stopping at a 5 or 6. What I am fighting with today is just plain wanting to eat. I know that the food is there in my lunch sack - I am not really hungry, but I want to eat. Some of it is boredom. I am pretty bored with this job right now...can't wait untill they start giving me more projects to keep me busier. But some of it is --- I don't know what. Is my world so completely engulfed by thoughts of food? I don't remember thinking this much about food when I wasn't trying to loose weight, get healthy and eat healthy. And I don't think that I ate all that frequently, I ate ALL the wrong things, mostly living on fast food and convience food and resturant food as well as eating late at night and never exercizing. I am hoping that as I sit with this exercise of being aware of hunger that this wanting to eat all the time will end; that it is just a result of focusing on the hunger levels. A.M. says that eventually you will learn to respond to hunger naturally with out thinking about it...but to do so you must first spent the time learning what it is, how it feels like and what it takes to make you satisfied. It is a really uncomfortable feeling for me right, which tells me that it is what I should be doing right now.

I am convinced that one of the things I am learning through this is how bored I am with my life right now and that I am/have used food to entertain myself, to fight boredom...in other words I eat when I don't know what else to do with myself.

So...solutions:

1. Keep at getting my studio set up so that I can be creating.
2. Finish washing walls and ceilings upstairs
3. Clear out old studio and set up as bedroom
4. Continue to cultivate new friendships and get out of the house
5. In otherwords get a life!!

I have gotten into the habit of coming home after work and vegging out. It is not even that I am tired it is just an easy choice to make at night. Since moving home I feel like I have lost some of my focus and energy in life. I know I have, I am at loose ends living in my mother's house. I miss having my things around me, my home, I miss living alone. For now, though, this is where I know I am to be, and I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else in spite of the little difficulties. Who knew how much having "things" around me would be so important!?

It is also bringing up some awarness of irrational fear of not having enough food. Now I know that I won't starve to death, but I worry that if I allow myself to get hungry I won't be somewhere where I can easily get food to eat. I find myself checking before I leave to go somewhere..."am I hungry, should I eat, will I get hungry before I get back home, will there be somewhere I can get food if I do get hungry???" Now I know that this is not normal for most people, it reminds me of when older people go out somewhere and they have to check that they go to the bathroom before they leave, wheather they need to pee or not! But I am trusting that this is a process that I will need to go through to re-train and re-teach my body to trust that there will be enough food to live on and for me to learn to trust my body for correct signals about hunger and food. Baby steps, baby steps.

Gotta go

Jackie

Hunger

I have been hungry all day. I waited for lunch until I knew I was really hungry, I probably waited too long, but it was good to actually see and feel the difference between honest hunger and what I think is hunger - cravings, just the desire to eat something; have a party in my mouth, or just eating because I saw it or was bored. I have been thinking about hunger and how I feed my hunger. I eat at the first sign of hunger, I get worried if I don't feed myself. What am I worried about, surely I am not going to die of starvation! I have enough fat on my body for it to feed on itself for years to come!! So what is it my hunger is telling me or showing me. That I am bored with life right now is becoming apparent to me. But this is a new thing, boredom so it doesn't explain the long term of my weight battles. I am not sure what it is my hunger is trying to tell me, all I know is that it is like a newborn baby's cry, annoying and insistent that I do something about it. But that is the problem isn't it. Food isn't really going to solve the problem. So what is it I am suppose to do with this hunger? If I can't feed it, what? Somedays I feel that if I feed the hunger till it is gone I will eat until I pop! Like the blueberry girl in Willie Wonka (the old one). Unfortunately I know that I will not just float away...It will keep me firmly planted, stuck, solidly, on the ground...To heavy to float away.

I have been staying in the moment with the hunger. When I have eaten, I have made excellent choices, listened to my body and stopped eating the minute I am satisfied. I am eating slowly - to give my body time to know it is satisfied.

Now there is another word that goes with hunger...Satisfied....Full. I don't want to necessarily eat until full...That is that uncomfortable feeling that goes beyond meeting your nutritional needs. Satisfied, I am learning how that feels, for the first time in a long time. Satisfied feels like I am no longer hungry, but I don't have that uncomfortable, pushing, stretching feeling in my stomach. It is hard to describe it as no longer wanting anymore to eat, I always want more to eat. Someday that will change. But satisfied means that there is really no feeling in my stomach, not hunger, not full. Hmmm that is a revelation for me. (stream of conscious writing sometimes really works at showing you what you need to know).

Another thing I have noticed since I have tried to be present in the moment while I am eating is the taste of food, and how good it really tastes. Who knew - I always have thought part of why I ate is because I liked the taste of food. But I am wondering if it is more the texture, the crunch, the smmmooth? But I am realizing that a lot of it was unconscious.

gotta run
jackie

Wednesday Morning Check In

Yesterday ended up being a so so day. I did pretty well with food, except for the bag of Mrs. Fishers chips that jumped from the vending machine into my hands...funny I went down for coffee, I was sleepy and freezing and ended up with salt and crunch. I haven't wanted Mrs. Fisher's chips for years!

Today I am sleepy. I didn't wake up starving like I have for the past several weeks so I didn't eat breakky yet. Brought some homemade gronola to eat later. I didn't make luch last night either, I was just a slug and didn't feel like doing much. Read a bit and watched tv with mom, paid bills and went to bed early...maybe I got too much sleep.

I am still trying to get into the book I am reading "It is not about food", but having a hard time doing so. I think that what she is saying is right spot on, but maybe a lot of what I have read so far I came to the same conclusions years ago so am having a hard time concentrating on it. I will continue to read it as Annette highly recommended it for group. It just goes to show you that knowing, even believing things about how you relate to food is not enough to get you to make the hard decisions it takes to be healthy. I keep waiting for some magic revelation to sweep me away and change everything about how I think, feel, relate to, and use food. But, like Dorothy, I am beginning to realize that everything I think I need to know is inside me already.

Glenda: “You've always had the power to go back to Kansas.”

Dorothy: “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard because, if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

And like Dorothy, I just need to learn for myself to trust myself. I know that others can help in this process.Group,The Journey Girls, Annette, but ultimately it is me who has to be willing to face the hard truths about how and whyI use food. To face the deamons inside. To ulitmately trust God and his power for healing. And to trust his Love, to believe His love for me. To hear a verse like "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" I automatically thinkg, ok, this isn't about me. But of course I know it is about me, I AM fearfully and wonderfully made. So why isn't that a reality in my though process and manifested in my life? Why is it so hard for me to believe this about myself? So the answer for the meantime is to believe God's opinion about myself, not mine. Truth is that God says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, so I am, period, end of discussion. This is not a truth for me to try to reason out. It just IS. Hey!! I AM fearfully and wonderfully made! That means that God knew that I would have these struggles, and while he didn't create them, I did, by my choices, He is here to help me with them, and it doesn't change the fact that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. This fearfully and wonderfully made thing goes way beyond and much deeper than physical appearance, it has to; it applies to all humanity.

Well gotta get to work

jackie

Tuesday Morning Check In

I am feeling better this morning. Not hungry so I am not eating breakfast until I get hungry. This eating only when I am hungry is a scary thing. It is weird to go against years of eating at certain times of the day just because it is breakfast-time or lunchtime. It brings up feelings of "not enough". If I don't eat now, will I have enough later, will I even be able to eat later? Honestly, how can someone who had lived all her life in the midst of such plenty worry about food like someone who has starved all her life? Perhaps I have been starving...but not for food.

Last night I was reading in the book "It's not about Food" and the author suggested that an eating disorder should be honored because it was our body's way of surviving. That, honoring my eating disorder, is something I will have a bit of trouble wrapping my brain around. I have been at war with both my eating and my body for I don't know how many years; I am having a hard time thinking of honoring it. Maybe it is like any other fight, if one stops and disengages, then there can be no more fight. I know that I am more than ready to have my life be about more than food, weight, fat, people's well intentioned but hurtful comments, feeling so shitty physically all the time.... I am ready to live my life again. I know that this is a process, and I intend to try to not to get ahead of or discouraged with the process.

Lately I have been looking for and reading other's blogs on their weight loss journeys, mostly hoping for insight and encouragement. It is sad how many of them started out full of enthusiasm and hope and yet, so many have not been written in for months, years in some cases. Most had experienced some success in the beginnings only to have hit a bump and gained and tried to get back on track and ultimately quit writing in the blog. I know the feeling, I have, am still sometimes, there - fighting those bumps in the road that call out to me saying it is easier to quit, to stay defeated, fat, that it is just too hard to change my life. How many times have I tried, do I have to try before change happens? But I am convinced that it is not how many times you stumble, fall, fail that counts, it is how many times you get up. I am coming up on almost a year of concentrated effort in changing my life style. For almost 20 years I had given up on diets and loosing weight, I had lost hope. But since going through CHIP, and more importantly since becoming part of group - there has been in some ways, tremendous progress, some ways you can't tell any difference - especially if you only count outward appearances. But inside, in my heart, mind and emotions I am changing. And I have always believed that if I could find the courage and the help to face the WHY of eating and food, then the how would take care of itself. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are days that I can see a mind shift in how I am thinking about food and how I am choosing to handle stress. There are moments when it is not about food. There are even moments when I can visualize a life where it is not consumed by this disorder, and all that means...there are even minutes, sometimes hours where I am actually living it out. And there have been times when I have actually been able to not use food to comfort or handle stress. I am finding my voice and speaking out. I am beginning to put myself first and choosing not to be so influenced by worrying about what others are thinking. Moments. And if moments can happen so can hours, days, months, years and finally a lifetime of living free.Well off to work and a victorious day.jackie

Monday Morning Check In

I have a headache this morning that is driving me crazy. I am also vaguely hungry and craving food, any food. I had a LARGE Georgia mud fudge blizzard last night and am wondering if this is all due to the excessive amount of sugar that put into my body. I am going to tough it out and eat healthy today and drink plenty of water. I am finding that my physical craving for things like blizzards are lagging behind the mental and emotional cravings. I spent yesterday being a vegetable and incrediably boared. It was great, but as the day wore on I found my thoughts going to food, mostly because I was bored and needed to entertain myslelf. Not that I didn't have any thing at all in the world I could have been doing! Just didn't want to!

Friday night I went to the theater to see Man of LaMancha. It was so uncomfortable sitting in those chairs, tiny to begin with, miserable for me. It is dreadful not fitting, being uncomfortable. So much lately I have decided not to do because of my size, my physical state, or lack of it. This is a new state for me. I have never been self-conscious about my size or uncomfortable physically about it. But now I am. I don't like how I am feeling these days. Why now after 5 years of being this heavy am I feeling so bad? I guess that time has just been taking its toll. But I am also grateful for these feelings, they help me stay motivated. It is so not about how I want to look as much as how much I want to feel healthy, energetic and able to do the things I have always done.

I am finding that I am going to food out of habit now more than need...although there are days that belie that! Today seems like it will be one of them. But I feel pretty strong and the Journey Girls are there to help me through it too. Each day that I make sound healthy choices makes making those choices easier and more unconscious...like breathing. Soon that day will come where food will not be the centerpiece of my life. I can see that day, somethign that a year ago I was resigned would never happen. It is soooo not about food! But as I deal with the issues, right now it feels like it is all about food.

Today I decide to chose health

jackie

Monday! Urghhh August 8, 2005

Since this is my first blog I should tell you something about myself and my journey to health. I began this journey almost a year ago when I went through a program called CHIP (Cardio Health improvement Project). Since I have come off of one of my high blood pressure medications and lost a bit of weight. I am now involved in a support group for eating disorder and am fighting to become healthy. My main motivation is health, not necessarily weight loss, or at least not for the sake of looking like one of the emaciated fashion models one sees in the mags.
I want to feel better, to be able to be as active as I can be, to not have my feet and knees be cranky if I am standing or walking on them for too long a period of time, not to say anything about my aching back. Ok...all this whining I sound ancient, I am not; soon to be turning 50. But that is not old, it is only middle age as I fully intend to live to at least 100 and be active to boot.
I want to have a life that is not obsessed by food, eating or not eating. I want to find a way of living with food that is not a diet, one that is a way of life that I can live with for the rest of my life. Diets don't work. Normalicy does. I just need to learn what that is. And, slowly I am.
About me: I have spent most of my life as a professional costume designer, leaving the career in 2001 to move home to care for my elderly mom. Now I am finding how hard it is to find a job when your job skills consist of being able to make clothes for imaginary people. All I need is a job for someone who has a highly active imagination, likes to play with fabric and anything that glitters, and can deal with actors, directors, and stitchers all at the same time...and sometimes even make them happy.
I am now persuing other areas of creativity, something that working full time in theatre never allowed me time to do. Oh and I work at a 9-5 job, that I don't take home every night, has no deadlines and I have weekends and holidays off. Who knew that there was a thing called life!
I am happily single (and no, I am absolutely NOT looking), with no kids, human or four footed. But am a proud auntie who spoiles 2 neices and 2 nephews...or tries at least. They all have now entered the teen years and auntie jackie is getting to be too old for them! Who knew!
So enough about me, my least fav subject. This blog is to allow me to journal online, anywhere i am. To talk about what I am experiencing, thinking, feeling in a way that gets it outside my head. Doing it online opens up the possibity for risk, something I think will be helpful for me. Feel free to comment on entries.
So this is part of me, what I am about in this particular blog, and what I hope to use it for.
jackie

Monday, Aug 8, 2005 - 07:33am