Going the Distance

I never liked running. I didn't "get it" when I was younger. Unless you were chasing after a ball of some sort, what was the point? But, as I wasn't in the position to be part of a group of people who ran while chasing things and wanted to get in shape, I attempted to take up running.

I did this for the first time several years ago, while still in the midst of college. It didn't stick. I did it again a year or two later, after graduating and getting friendly with the running fiend that was my school's psychologist. I had a lot more success this time around, but then I got pregnant and couldn't maintain a regular running schedule. (And let's clarify, running for me, at that point, was going for maybe five minutes and then walking for two or three.) I didn't run again until this past spring when I decided that, despite my initial and sincere dislike for running as a youth, that this was going to become my thing.

So, while loosely following the Couch to 5k model (running for a few minutes, walking a few more), I built up my endurance and distance. During the last few weeks when I've run, I've started to drop the walking part. My running time has been getting longer and longer and tonight I did not walk at all.

This is HUGE for me. I didn't feel winded, my legs didn't hurt, and I could have kept going, even after TWO MILES. I don't remember the last time I ran a whole mile, never mind two. What's more, I really, really enjoyed it.

I am so incredibly proud of myself.

And while I know this isn't food related (as this blog has been and will likely remain), as I'm trying to make healthier choices in my life, being able to run and like it is a huge check in the win column. Here's to hoping I only go farther!

Body Love

In the midst of this whole "figuring out my food thing and weight-loss goals" there's me. In this body. Right now.

Oh, but goodness, what to do with it. I go through bouts, all in one hour, of loving to loathing. That curve looks so sweet there, but oh, if this spot just beyond it were a little...tighter. Ugh. It's exhausting.

I wish I could just be happy with it all, all the time, no matter what. Is that even possible anymore? Am I allowed to be happy with my body?

That's just it - I don't know if it's okay to love myself the way I am right now, when I'm working to change how I am.
I read a lot about embracing the body you're in, loving yourself unconditionally. And that's swell, but. BUT.

....butt... (it's too big)
But you know someone who likes that an awful lot.

There's just too much. 
But for some, it's never enough. Or never too little. There will always be an unattainable amount. Stop chasing it.

It's okay to feel good about your body. Really. (I tell myself.)
But they said.
Tell them to SHUT. UP.

But - How do you love something you're planning to lose?

Small Victories

We went out to dinner Friday night to celebrate an award our daughter received at school (I'm raising a beautiful and brilliant little girl, by the way).

E., my daughter, has a favorite restaurant and that restaurant, is Applebees. I was kind of pleased to go, because, you know, they have all those lower calorie and Weight Watchers choices. So I perused the selection and was mildly enticed. But damn, I really wanted some freaking french fries.

So, I got a sandwich, with fries. But I also, for the first time ever, despite having read/heard this suggestion a billion, trillion times, got a take out box and put half my sandwich (and eventually have my fries) inside before I had even finished dinner. I also paused mid-meal to see if I was still hungry (I was).

This may not seem like a huge deal, but the fact that I was able to leave a restaurant without feeling like I was going to explode or be sick is pretty amazing. Small victories, right?

What Grandma Ate For Dinner

There's a lot of talk these days, and rightly so, about food deserts, food insecurity, and the obesity epidemic among the poorest Americans. All three are intrinsically connected and it makes me think a lot about generational connections to food. After all, for many, our relationships regarding food stem from our families and communities. One has to wonder - what happens to future generations when their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents grow up with food insecurity? I don't have an answer to that question, but I do have an idea.

Both of my parents are children of people who grew up in immigrant communities during the Great Depression, a time and place where food wasn't exactly plentiful. My dad, whom I am like in many ways, and how we eat is no different, was a part of the very first generation in his family where starvation was not a very possible threat. Food insecurity was a huge issue for many generations in my family and, in the grand scheme of time, only stopped very recently. When I consider this, a few odd behaviors I have started to make sense.

• Starvation mentality - If there is food in the house or in front of me that I want, I have a very difficult time telling myself that the same food will be there the next day. I'm inclined to eat it all out of a completely irrational fear that it might be gone the next day. 
• Not wasting food - I despise the waste or loss of food. If something is accidentally left out over night or the dog gets into it, or my daughter, E., simply doesn't finish half of her dinner and then throws away the rest without me noticing, my skin crawls and I feel sick to my stomach. A little over the top? Why, yes, I totally agree. 
• Clean Plate Club - This is something I think a lot of baby boomers and their kids (i.e. my parents and I) are familiar with. It's that whole idea that you eat whatever is on your plate until it is all gone, hungry for it or not. While my parents didn't enforce this rule with me, I ate enough meals with my grandparents to get the message and frequently follow it. 

I can't say that these behaviors stem even a bit from a long history of food insecurity, but one does wonder: How much of our individual attitudes about anything, not just food, stem from generations of similar attitudes, even if it was not directly taught, but instead some how registers in our sub-conscious mind? I have never faced food insecurity, neither has my father or mother, but so many of those who came before us did. So many that I find it so hard to believe that just because there suddenly was food that old behaviors were simply left behind and died out with the first generation that had all the nourishment they needed. What's more, I am not the only member of my family who has these issues, or similar, with food.

And so this brings me back to where I began. I look at my food issues, I look at the hurdles my family members and ancestors had to endure and then I wonder about the generations before us. Even if a person is able to escape the cycle of poverty (something that is becoming ever increasingly difficult), will their sudden easy access to plentiful and nutritious food be all that it takes to break generations' worth of poor food choices? What of their children and grandchildren? 

My own issues make me wonder if by preventing families from having access to proper food sources and allowing Americans to continue to worry about where they will find their next meal, that we will doom future generations, who will come to live beyond the borders of food deserts and will never have to worry about getting three meals on the table, to the same complicated and irrational fears and issues I struggle with now. 

Dinner Time

I was really pretty comfortable, hunger-wise just before dinner the other night. I had been starving, of course, as I finished up my grocery shopping just a half hour before, but just as I was plating my food and getting ready to sit down, I thought to myself, "Geez, I'm really not that hungry right now." Now, granted, they weren't the full portions I would normally have. I cut my burger in half and only took maybe a third of what I would usually have in sides (in this case, baked fries and and cherry tomatoes).

But, I still ate my dinner. I couldn't help it. I really couldn't. For one, the burger was delicious. My husband doesn't cook a ton, but, oh boy, when he does, it's really good. Secondly, as I kept telling myself, I had been hungry, or so I thought, not so long ago, and if I didn't eat now I would likely be hungry later and would eat closer to bed time, which I didn't want to do.

But more than any of that, I couldn't stop myself from eating that delicious dinner, even though I wasn't hungry, because it was dinner time. How on earth could I be expected to sit at the table with my husband and kids while they enjoyed dinner and I just sat there and watched? And it wasn't as if I felt like I'd be missing out. I felt like it would be weird and uncomfortable because it's dinner time and I'm supposed to eat then.

I realize this is completely irrational. Why eat when you're not hungry? It's almost philosophical - it's only dinner time because I say it's dinner time. If I said it wasn't? Would it still be time to eat?

Making the Right Choice

In less than two weeks I've lost nearly twelve pounds. Intense, right? I won't deny being pleased, but I have myself freaked out at the same time.

The reason? I did it while following the Whole30 program. If you're not familiar with the Whole30, it's a thirty day elimination diet where you eat protein (usually meat), vegetables, healthy fats (coconut and olive oils, avocado, nut butters, but not peanut, ghee, etc.), and some fruits and nuts. The idea is that during those thirty days you cleanse your body, start to identify food issues, both emotional and physical, and, hopefully, lose weight.

Within a day or two of starting, the weight simply fell away. This isn't actually unusual, because I don't have an issue with losing weight as long as I'm really careful about how much I eat and am at least a little bit active. But this was crazy - I was losing a pound or more every day or two. I knew this kind of weight-loss couldn't be sustainable, but even after a week and a half, I was still dropping weight like it was hot.

What's more, I felt pretty great, too. I was staying full between meals, so no snacking, I had lots of energy, and couldn't say enough positive things about my experience. Even when I started feeling a little crummy and definitely grumpy, I wasn't too fazed, because it was to be expected, according to the Whole30 timeline. It was simply my body adjusting to all the new changes I was making in my diet. But then everything took a turn for the worse. Five days of heartburn, three of them absolutely excruciating, to the point where all I could do was lay in bed or sleep until it passed. I literally couldn't eat and dropped almost three pounds in two days.

I started to get scared, not because I thought my health was at risk from the heartburn or that this was even an unusual symptom (I googled it, and it's very common to have terrible heartburn during the Whole30 as things "cleanse" or whatever). I was scared because I was afraid to stop the program. I wanted to, desperately, but I was so, so afraid that if I stopped I would regain the weight I had started to lose. I didn't want to fail at this, especially since I had been so gung-ho about it.

In the midst of this, I went to see Dona, my nutritionist, and we started talking about binge-eating disorder and how well I seemed to fit into that particular category. She was fine with my continuing with the Whole30 if that's what I wanted, but her leeriness was obvious, as it had been every since I introduced the idea. After researching binge-eating disorder and how diets (even though I tried really, really hard to not categorize the Whole30 as such, so I could pretend it wouldn't be a problem for me) are a huge component of my (or anyone who binges) eat, repent, repeat cycle. I had initially thought of the Whole30 as "safe" because it wasn't a permanent change, but because I was depriving myself of so much I started to sense this could only end badly.

So, with the two week mark looming ahead, I stopped. I couldn't handle the stress of figuring out what to eat or how to avoid situations where I couldn't enjoy myself because of the food there. I couldn't handle the physical pain I was experiencing (side note: if you have some heartburn troubles, ginger kombucha helps tons!). And I could see something developing within me that could be very bad. The fear to stop doing something, even though I was thoroughly miserable, simply because it might mean I wouldn't lose as much weight or even gain some weight back, was a dangerous place to be, and I really, really didn't want to play that one out to see where it went.

I stopped and I felt immediately better emotionally. Fears went to sleep, though I still (then and now, because it's only been a very short time since I stopped) worry about regaining weight. As I move through this journey, I fully realize now, even if I might still be tempted, that any diet that significantly restricts what I can have is not a good idea for me, at least for now. Those who already have a healthy relationship with food may very well benefit significantly from the Whole30 or something similar. I won't deny the results I saw (weight-loss, improvement in my complexion and seasonal allergies), but the negatives, for me, were too great.

I'm not sure what's going to happen now. My new, short-term goals are to relax about my eating, but watch portions and to continue to go running. I'll be seeing Dona in a couple of weeks and then we can discuss what's next.

A Little Backstory

Let's jump in with something big, shall we?

I have been going to see a nutritionist, Dona, since 2012. I was at my heaviest then, a weight too embarrassing to share publicly. Between January 2012 and May 2012, I lost roughly forty pounds. It wasn't everything I felt I needed to lose, by a long shot, but it was a great start. That May, I got pregnant with my second child and trying to lose weight went out the window. I did try to continue to eat well, but pregnancy sure was a good excuse to overindulge (I thought).

After my son, M., was born, I obviously wanted to lose the baby weight and get back on track with healthier eating. Off and on I would go, through spurts of really trying to watch what I ate, going to see Dona regularly, and just generally being "good" about what I ate. And then I would go through bouts of total food annihilation. No foods (except for maybe veggies) were safe. I would eat and eat and eat. Maybe there would be a "good" day in between, but generally my eating habits sucked. Finally, enough days would go by where I felt like total crap when I went to bed, stomach too full to get comfortable, and the scale tipping just way too far in the wrong direction. Then I would feel very guilty - not too guilty, mind you, because I am excellent at rationalizing the things I do to avoid that very feeling - but still, that nasty turn of the stomach feeling would sneak in. 

Once that unsettling feeling of guilt finally got to me, I would lay awake at night and promise myself and the ethos that the next day would be better. I would call Dona and make an appointment (because, you see, I had already missed two). I would go for that run that I said I would do for the last two weeks. I would make sure I ate better. I. Would. Be. Good.

And then I would be "good". And then I would be "bad" again. And my weight? Well, luckily for me, it stayed roughly the same, until very recently, where in the last two months I gained about five pounds, then lost it and another ten with it (more on that later).

I ask you to notice two things about what I just wrote. First, note my focus on why I wanted to do better with my eating. Weight-loss. Now, I could write a whole post (and maybe I will) on the media and pop culture and women who are bigger than allowed by their standards, but for now I will say that I am like almost any other warm blooded American women in that I see these "standards" in which I am expected to live up and they scare me into thinking I better start laying off the cupcakes and doing that thirty-day ab challenge a bunch of my Facebook friends are doing. And, that's not to say that eating fewer cupcakes or doing crunches is a bad thing, because it's certainly not, but when it's not coming from an emotionally healthy place the results that come will likely soon be erased.

That brings me to the second thing I want you to see - my cycle. My cycle of "binge, repent, repeat" (Dr. Michelle May) is something I've done for as long as I can remember, though I never realized what a problem it was until I was older, just as I was starting to see Dona. I looked at it very distinctly as being "good" versus being "bad". The quotes around these words, by the way, aren't there for some weird, pretentious reason. They're there to highlight that the terms good and bad are very subjective here. I'm not out to actively harm myself when I eat poorly, though I surely am. And, to be honest, when I eat well, the reasons aren't always good ones (like improved health, better performance when I run, or longevity so I can enjoy my family for as long as possible). 

These two things are just parts of the multifaceted puzzle that makes up binge-eating disorder, a disorder with which I've been tentatively identified.

A definition from the Binge Eating Disorder Association: 
Binge eating disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of binge eating, feeling out of control while binging, and feeling guilt and shame afterward.

I can imagine some reading this and thinking, "Geez, why can't the fatty just stop eating? It's her own fault." And there isn't a whole lot I can say to counter that, because, on some level, I agree. But, the truth is, I can't "just stop" binging. It's my source of comfort when everything else around me feels out of control or fills me with anxiety. It's my cigarette, my beer, my opiate. Food is my drug*. There are chemical and emotional strings attached to every bite I take, and while I do not withdraw ownership over many of the food choices I make, both good and bad, each choice is tinged with this unhealthy relationship, which I have not chosen to have.

I'll end this by saying I'm not under any allusions that this is the same as a heroin addiction or will devastate my body and family in the same fashion as something like bulimia or anorexia, but it is a battle, my battle, and one that is long overdue.   



*And in fact, one of the risk factors of having binge-eating disorder is previous addictions.