I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Saturday night. I've finally updated My Progress page and I was pleased to see a little progress in my most important areas - waist and abdomen. I've lost 2-3/4 inches from my waist and 2 inches from my abdomen. I'd like to have seen more progress, but these are the very last places that I ever lose weight, so it's not totally unexpected.
Saturday afternoon. OK, Blogger won't let me log in right now so I'm composing in WordPad and will post once they decide to let me in. I'm not going to let a little technological hiccup throw off my sunny day!
The Geneen Roth seminar that I went to talked a lot about being more present in our bodies, of not allowing ourselves to exist outside ourselves so that we can stuff ourselves full of food without feeling the pain that abuse brings. Since then, I've really been trying to force myself to be aware of the sensations in my body, both pleasant and otherwise, and it really is pretty amazing what you can feel when you are paying attention.
When I push myself hard during my walks, as I did last night, my calves burn and stretch, the front of my (muscular) thighs burn slightly, and my lungs struggle to get oxygen in and out. This is not an entirely pleasant sensation, so I just tell myself that each time I feel the pain or have to wipe away some icky sweat from my face it's because my body is burning up and carrying away all of the nasty, bad for me sugar in my blood stream. Just this simple visualization can keep me pushing just that little bit harder, as I try so hard to put this thing into a kind of remission and move on with my life as a healthy, whole person. (I do know that diabetes cannot, strictly speaking, be cured, but I've been told many times that, because of the way my body responds to reduced calories and increased activity, I could put it into remission either permanently or for a very long time, which is the prime motivator for the Ten Percent Challenge.)
Speaking of the TPC, I weighed on Wednesday and completely forgot to post it here. In case you were thinking that the title of the post was a reference to how many different ways I've tried to convince myself to give up and go back to eating massive quantities of junk food while never getting off of the couch, you would be both right (it's probably pretty close to that number) and wrong. I stepped on the scale thinking it would be half a pound or so lighter than the last time I weighed (246.2 a couple of weeks ago), and you could, literally, have heard my jaw hit the floor when I saw "241.0" staring back at me. That's over five pounds in about two weeks and eight percent lost from my original high weight. Eight percent! This is really working, folks. Even with the pretzels, even with my whining and griping and complaining about having to walk when I want to run, it's working. My blood sugar is still slightly above where it should be, but not high enough that any doctor in their right mind would put me on meds. I'm in the "watch your diet and exercise more" category now and that feels just amazing. My beautiful size 24 petite clothes that I bought from Talbots fit now, although the adorable sarong is still bunching up in the back a little across my hips, but they will all be comfortably wearable in a week or so.
Happy is a golden yellow color, radiating warmth and energy from my heart throughout my body, shining light into the dark, scary places and showing me that there's nothing to be afraid of, that I am strong and capable and I can take care of myself.
Wednesday. Today is my Thursday (the company's closed on Friday) just before my 17 day weekend. Yes, you read that correctly, I have 17 glorious days off! (Insert happy dance.) The bummer of it is that, because the entire company has a 10 day weekend (we're closed all next week, too), everyone and their brother is trying to cram all of their meetings in before the end of the day tomorrow. For most people I've spoken to, they officially ran out of unbooked time on Monday of this week and God help you if you need a conference room tomorrow, because the helpful folks at the Help Desk won't be able to. In any case, I got a lot done at work today, which makes a nice change, and I've got a conference call with the East Coast at 7am tomorrow, so things are just humming right along at VLSCI*.
As far as the Ten Percent Challenge goes, things are humming right along. Food right on target, water a wee bit low but still adequate for hydration, and, although I was mentally kicking and screaming before, during, and after, I just got back from another lovely 26 minute, 37 second walk. Bleah. Really. Don't. Like. Walking. Walking makes me feel slow, plodding, and ponderous. Jogging feels like I'm light, graceful, and quick, although I'm not a particularly fast runner. I think it was Meta who said that I needed to find a way to enjoy walking, to which I retort that I will only have to do it for another 25 weeks - less than six months now! - and I'm just gritting my teeth until New Year's when, with any luck, I'll be jogging 60 minutes straight and feeling like a gazelle.
(Self created) rumors of my imminent collapse have been greatly exaggerated
Tuesday afternoon. I've got seven minutes before my next meeting - it's process intensive and I'm the driver - and I just wanted to stop in and say that, although yesterday's post sounded pretty bleak, I'm not falling apart, I'm not giving up, and I'm still cruising right along with my good eating habits. I just needed to dump all of the "junk" that had been floating around in my head since the seminar over the weekend and even prior to that. Sometimes, all it takes is just getting it out of your system to remind yourself that, as Shannin said, "a bag of pretzels is merely a snack".
When is a bag of pretzels not just a bag of pretzels?
Monday afternoon. I did it. It had to happen sometime and now it has and I'm feeling really devastated, shaken, and adrift. I ate off of my program today and it doesn't matter that it was only a 220 calorie bag of pretzels, which easily fits into my caloric intake for the day - I didn't follow my plan, the plan which has been so good to me and for me for just over three weeks. I know, I have three weeks of exceptionally positive, strong, and healthy eating to my credit, my blood sugar readings are very nearly where they're meant to be (125 fasting instead of 100), my weight continues to drop, and (physically) I feel really good. None of those things matter, though, when I start to think about all of the bad omens of late and today's Pretzel Incident.
I'm so afraid. The fear is not really about bingeing or falling completely off of the Ten Percent Challenge, it's about this nagging feeling I've had, all along, that the idea of keeping my motivation positive and pure was too much for me to sustain after a lifetime of hating myself and my body. Some part of me knew that it all seemed too easy, too effortless. Making a healthy life for yourself is hard, it's work, and it shouldn't feel easy and happy - these are the beliefs that have formed the structure of my life since my first diet at 13. Hate your body, hate yourself and then use that hatred to fan the flames of a fanatical, desperate program of deprivation. Feeling good about myself and wanting to care for and nurture my body is foreign, it's like a pretty, new pair of shoes which look lovely on the rack and on the 6'3" fashion model but pinch terribly the first few times you wear them.
Let me be clear, I've not eaten over my caloric limit since Friday, June 4th and I've not done less than five days of on program cardio since that day, either. I've been drinking plenty of water and taking my vitamins, too. Outwardly, logically, scientifically speaking, I'm still "on program" and nothing untoward has happened. Inwardly, I'm quaking in my Brooks running shoes and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I feel all of the old habits coming to the fore - eat less to make up for it, double your exercise today (maybe tomorrow, too?) - and always there, in the background, is the steady drumbeat of the familiar songs: "you're not good enough to be loved (even by yourself)", "you're going to fail eventually so why do you keep trying?", "hurry up, hurry up...you need to lose weight faster so that you can be thin and happy", and the most insistent and insidious of all, "it doesn't matter what you do, how little you weigh, or how hard you work to make your entire life absolutely perfect, you're a failure, you always will be, and there's nothing you can do about it, so why not just get it over with and do it (binge)? You know you want to, you know it's the only thing that will make this pain go away, and it's been the only consistent source of happiness in your life, so why are you fighting it?"
The pain right now is tremendous - it feels as though my heart is going to be rent in two by the opposing forces inside me. I still feel confident that I'll be able to keep to the eating and activity portions of the Ten Percent Challenge, and that's somewhat comforting, but then I think about why I feel so confident, and I know that the source of my strength is not where it should be - self love - but, rather, my old enemies, self loathing and fear. This cannot continue because this isn't about - CANNOT be about - my weight or the size of my stomach, it's about taking care of myself and loving myself more than the food or more than sitting on the couch watching Life pass me by. I'm tired of sitting on that couch! I'm tired of killing myself slowly by ignoring my blood sugar and letting my adoration of binge eating create diabetic complications that will shorten my life. No, damnit, no. NO! Not this time.
Information overload and the urge to binge returns
Sunday morning. The Geneen Roth seminar was, as expected, amazing. I'm not going to go into everything we learned because, in addition to being an incredibly long entry, you sort of have to experience it yourself to really appreciate much of it. The basic premise, however, is pretty revolutionary and might be too much for some (like me) to allow in.
Geneen's idea (also espoused by groups like Conscious Eating) is that dieting and deprivation don't work because they don't deal with the reasons that we overeat in the first place. [Wonder how many people just got their hackles up and are ready to defend their own ideas? I know that part of me felt that way through much of the seminar.] At the root of the plan of eating that Geneen espouses are seven principles that basically boil down to paying attention to what your body wants (not your mind, your body) instead of eating for reasons other than physical need.
Here is my interpretation of those principles:
1. Eat only when your body is hungry. Note that this is very different from a mental hunger. Your body is hungry when there are physical signs such as your tummy rumbling, irritability, or an inability to maintain focus.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions can include TV, books, and intense conversations.
Principles 2 and 3 basically mean that when you're eating, that's what you should be doing, not allowing yourself to eat mindlessly.
4. Eat only what your body wants. Geneen talks a lot about really listening to your body, becoming in tune with its needs, and this step is part of that process. It's really tough (I can't do it) to distinguish between what your mind wants (Twinkies, HoHos, McDonald's) and what your body wants (protein, fruit, salad, etc), and it will take a lot of practice (or so Geneen said).
5. Stop eating when your body has had enough. OK, so here's a major roadblock for me. Stop before you're uncomfortably full? How the heck am I supposed to do that? If I do that, how am I supposed to enjoy eating? (The real truth, of course, is that I go numb when I start to eat anyway, so there's no true enjoyment of anything I eat.)
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others. This principle is for those of us who have made an eating career out of sneaking food knowing that calories consumed when no one is watching just don't count. No eating in the car on the way home from the drive-through. No waking up in the middle of the night and eating from the fridge. No cramming your mouth full of food so that you can eat an entire meal before your husband comes home and then eat again when he does, so that you'll "get enough food". (Yes, I really did that, more than once, when I was married.)
7. Eat with gusto and enjoyment. This final principle would seem to be the easiest, seeing that most overeaters have a love affair with food. The problem is that most of us salivate and quiver with anticipation of the wonderful food we're going to eat, rush with eager hands to take the object(s) of our desire from whatever source we're receiving it from, and then immediately go numb after about the first bite or two, appreciating none of the tastes, smells, or sensations produced in our bodies. All that we want is more and more and more and the blessed numbness. Sad, but true - the thing we think we love more than ourselves, more than our health, more than our lives, we never actually enjoy fully, either.
I highly recommend reading Geneen's latest book, by the way. It's not strictly about eating but she read extensively from it during the seminar and it's a great exploration of what you do after you've conquered your food addiction, your fear of real emotional intimacy, and you still don't find the bright, shiny, perfect life you're sure will magically materialize once you've "fixed" everything else. It's called The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It and the prose is so beautiful that you don't even have to pay attention to the underlying message of healing and redemption to be able to appreciate this book. I also bought When Food Is Love, which draws a parallel between the difficult relationship with food and the difficulty of forming a satisfying love relationship when you've got unresolved feelings from your past coloring your perceptions.
In any case, I was quite horrified to find myself thinking about bingeing in the aftermath of the seminar. I'm not sure if it was the chocolate kiss that she had us savor in our mouths as part of learning to appreciate the sensory pleasures of the food we normally shovel into our mouths or all of the unpleasant feelings from the past that I was forced to confront, but there were definite binge impulses going on last night. They weren't terribly strong and I didn't act on them, but I did nearly slip into the "it wouldn't hurt if I just got a nonfat chocolate frozen yogurt" trap - came much closer this time than the last time. I had to, literally, shake myself to snap out of it and realize that I'd done too much and come too far to let some fear of feeling push me back into the Hell that is bingeing and self loathing. Not. Going. Back. There. NOT!
And, with that, I'm going for a walk. Increased my daily time to 26 minutes, 37 seconds yesterday in the gym at the hotel. Man, it's starting to get to that "this is a long time to be doing something I really hate" place, which scares me. So far, so good, and we'll just have to wait and see what my inner child cooks up for tantrums this week.
