Getting Real

I hugely disappointed myself last night. First of all, I weighed myself. My scale had been hidden away (not on purpose) for ages now, and I finally got around to cleaning under our tub yesterday and it was pulled out. Like a body possessed I found myself standing on it and looking aghast at the number that appeared. I knew I had gained a lot of weight, but I was really surprised. I was at least ten pounds more than I thought I was. It made me super depressed, which led me down a somewhat destructive eating path, really just piling on top of a weekend that already had a theme of overindulgence. I was mad at myself for letting my weight get away from myself so badly again (I haven't weighed this much in three years), but I was also upset because I even weighed myself. I like how I look, and now I'm letting some stupid number ruin that for me. Of course, this does reinforce the fact that health wise I need to really stick to the changes I decided to make at the beginning of the month and truly work harder at eating mindfully.

But it also reinforces that this issue I have with food is truly an addiction, truly something in my head, something that goes beyond not have "willpower." I'm not trying to detract from my own faults in this weight gain, I mean, I did purchase, cook, and eat the food that has caused my weight gain, but I can't tell you how many times I've eaten an outrageous amount of food, rationalizing it the whole time, then, when it's gone, looking back, almost as if I had woken from a dream, unable to believe I had actually done that.

I've spent the last 24 hours feeling so full of self-loathing, and then feeling angry that I'm so full of it. It's like these two parts of me are battling each other, and I don't know who to let win, or if I even have a choice in that. While I'm often thankful I'm not significantly affected by my eating disorder (I mean, I would say I have a "mild" case), and I've not been hospitalized, I haven't had a significant binge in a long time (I'm just chronically overeating, sometimes to the point where I feel chronically ill) and I haven't started eating straight bags of sugar or something (as can happening with binge eating disorders), this all still super, duper sucks. I'm in this weird place where I just don't want to think about food any more, but I can't think about anything else.

I sometimes wonder how much more I could get done and how much better I'd feel if I just stopped eating.

But I know I can't do that, like physically can't. I like eating too much. It elicits too much pleasure for me to not do it.

Ugh. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.

Scary Territory

The idea of intuitive/mindful eating (paying conscious attention to what and how you're eating) is so incredibly frightening to me. I'd rather be on a restrictive diet than eat mindfully. I literally hear the words, "But the whole point of eating is to not think about it." That line of thought just conjures itself up naturally, but when I really listen to what I'm telling myself or type it here I realize how bizarre that sounds.

I spend a lot of time trying to avoid thinking about my food when I eat. I watch TV. I read. I work. On the rare occasion we're all at the table together with the TV off or NPR not going I will ask my husband and kids to just talk. I just want to listen. I can't even listen to music when I eat in the car, because it's not stimulating enough to distract me from thinking about my food, so I'll switch to talk radio. I will choose Glenn Beck (I'm a diehard liberal) over thinking about my food.

When I eat, whether for emotional or physical reasons, I want to eat mindlessly. On the face of it, I feel it's because I'm bored. I don't like just sitting there, eating. I want to listen to something, to unfocus, to let my mind go somewhere where I am not. I guess this is why eating is an escape for me. The eating fills me up, physically and emotionally while I also get to escape my reality for a little while. I cannot express the calm and joy and I feel in parking somewhere with food, turning on my radio or pulling open a book, and eating in my car.

Thinking about it now makes me feel that is really strange. Like, really fucked up.

My absolute biggest challenge in life is learning how to cope appropriately with negative emotion. I don't have healthy coping mechanisms for stress and depression, clearly, and I also don't have them when it comes to handling my anger, but that, as an issue, is somewhat separate from this one. I don't eat when I'm angry or anxious, at least when I'm not in the midst of it.

I feel like if I could just find a better way to destress, a better way to make myself feel as calm and good as eating while tuning out does, then I could get a handle on this. And I know that I need to start eating without anything else going on, when possible, but I just don't want to. I'd rather eat plain salad for the rest of my life if it also meant getting watch Real Housewives or read Outlander at the same time.

Beauty of my Body

I'm like almost any other woman out there - I have some serious qualms about my body. There are parts of it and moments in my day where I'm sort of just disgusted with it. I feel shame, sometimes, and I make lots and lots of comparisons. I pass judgements on other women, and I interpret their glances and whispers behind hands as judgements of me. I can sometimes value myself based on if I think other men think I'm attractive, if I think my husband is still being truthful when he says I'm beautiful. I can be incredibly insecure.

But there are also lots of moments where I feel good about my body. These moments tend to occur more often than the other, more negative ones. I've touched on this before, but maybe not so outright, and I'm going to be super upfront right now. I really like my body. I really do. I don't have a problem being naked, seeing myself naked, letting my husband see me naked. My stretch marks and fat and extra skin don't really bother me. Sure, there are moments where I would love to have a magic wand see it all go away, but by and large (Ha. No pun intended.) I enjoy my body. 

It's maybe because I've never been thin. I've always been chubby (and now just fat). It's not as though having children suddenly set me over the edge, so I'm not mourning some "perfect" body I had in my youth that children have now ruined. In fact, I got stretch marks before kids, too. That happened my freshman year of college. And when I wasn't so thin before I started to put on more and more weight (again, college), I really liked my body then, too. Again, I had insecurities, but for the most part I thought I my body was pretty great. 

The problem is now, as a person in her early twenties who's over-weight, I feel like I should be ashamed of my body, that there is something wrong with me for liking what I've got. I'm a smart person who does care about her health, so I shouldn't be satisfied with my figure. I should want better for myself. I should set a better example for my children. I should be healthier. I should be trying to improve things. 

I have a hard time distinguishing between my own thoughts and feelings and what the media says when it comes to all this, but I do know I want to be healthier, if only because I have a lot of shit to do and if I'm not given enough years to do it all in then I'll be pretty upset. But I've also noticed I'm a lot less concerned about how my body looks and what other people think when I spend time exposing myself to truly beautiful plus sized models and advocates on social media. When I see other women who look like me and are proud of themselves and their bodies it reaffirms that it is okay for me to like my body.

What's more, it becomes frustrating when other people don't see my body the way I see it. I'm not looking for universal popularity, but it would be nice to feel like it wasn't just me, my husband, and my toddler who thought I was beautiful. I'm not about to go on a diatribe about the judgement and shaming that goes into being over-weight or obese (or at least not yet), but it does exist and it hurts and can be a constant and consistently causes me to question my validity as a human being (like, literally, I question whether or not I'm worthy of purchasing lipstick or a certain kind of shirt strictly because I'm fat). 

It's a constant conflict, riding that line between loving myself, valuing myself, and battling overwhelming messages sent by society and the media. It's a battle I'm tired of fighting, to be quite honest. I'm really ready to stop caring about what others are thinking. 

Where I'm At

I have been thinking about this blog quite a bit in the last few days. I haven't written in nearly a year and a half, and I feel like that's too bad. Maybe if I had stayed with this I would have worked out my issues. But, then again, maybe not.

My issues with food still persist. I gained back all of the weight I had lost when I was last writing here. It's half pleasurable, half disheartening to see that black and white picture of myself in a purple dress that no longer fits as it should, but still hangs in my closet. I looked great, felt great, but got greedy, first for more weight to come off, and then for the comfort of eating, which I was denying myself.

The new year is coming, and with I always promise myself something, and I always break it. Always. I've even promised myself to not make a promise, and I've broken that promise, too. It's almost as if I can't trust myself any more, because of the constant betrayals. It's very difficult to be in this place where you want to do things differently, but you simply can't find a way to do it, no matter how many ways you try. It's like seeing a big ol' bag of money sitting in front of you, but it's just out of your reach and you can't move from where you're sitting.

This is exactly where I was at a year and a half ago, and it's where I find myself again, only it's worse now because I've lost any sort of traction I've gained (meaning I've gained back all the weight I lost). And I've stopped seeing Dona, which hasn't helped, but can't be helped, due to time constraints (I'm working full time plus taking two grad courses). And every time I try to make an effort, try to curb my eating, or eat mindfully, or even try to make the time to workout, it barely makes it more than a few days.

I can't say I'm determined to do better, to get back on the wagon, but I do want to start taking care of myself in this area again, and do it in earnest. However, I don't want to diet. I don't want to do stupid exercise videos. I don't want to use colorful tupperware containers to portion out all my food. I just want to live my freaking life and not worry about food so much. I just want to eat enough to live, enjoy the food I do have, and take the time to walk or go for a run or use kettle balls (these are the exercises I've found I do enjoy).

This is all I want, I just wish I knew how to get it.

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.