The frightening caloric total, how did my body ever handle it?

Just out of curiosity, as I wrote in my journal today, I fished my memory to the best of my abilities and wrote in gory detail a list of the foods I’d typically consume when choosing to succumb to what I used to call a “Junk Food Binge.”  That was my code for anything goes, no food is off the potential list, no attempt to observe or even define certain boundaries (funny how when removing any boundaries always seems to lead to junk food and not, say, “the all-melon binge” or the “any flavor of kefir I want binge”).  I’ve always been aware of the staggering calories I must have consumed, as I still count calories to this day as part of my food plan.  In fact, counting calories is so second-nature to me, by now it’s actually more comforting TO count calories than to try to eat without having that automatic awareness be part of my selection.  Yet, it seems part of my bingeing was rooted in the need to say to heck with rules, and I kept myself mostly ignorant on how much I was actually consuming during these episodes.  “More than 3000” is about as far as I wanted to think about it.  Until today.  Yow.

I’m seriously frightened by what the sum total must have been at my worst.  My poor body, when I think of the load I caused to so many of my organs and systems, it breaks my heart and makes me sick.  At the same time, I don’t know how my body managed to handle it without the degree of weight gain you would have expected.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very active, have always been involved wth athletics and have always been vigilant about jumping back into serious clean eating following a binge.  Even so, surely these measures alone could not have negated the mass ingestion, at least that’s how it seems in hindsight.  I mean, my weight is pretty much the same as it was back in those days, and I can promise you, my net totals over a typical week or a typical month are nowhere near as high.  I exercise pretty much the same, so no change there.  How do I explain the disparity?

I can only speculate, and even then there’s really no point, just an interesting thing to ponder.  Does the body actually hit a point in which it simply can’t absorb more than “X” calories over a given period of time, so once I crossed “X” I couldn’t absorb any more?  Was I simply given the grace of a normal-weight body until I was ready to take action for my recovery?  Was I in fact still exercising more, and doing more restricting on my regular food days than I’m remembering?

Yet another reason why I’m so grateful to be at the point I’m at in my recovery.  I can only pray that I always remember how horrible, awful, panicked, miserable, depressed I was during that time.  How many times did I write the words, “So SCARED!” in my food journal.  How many times did I lay in bed, so sick to my stomach after ravaging it all night with sugar, fat and carbs, that the sound of my poor stomach wimpering (at least, that’s what it sounded like to me) made me cry?

Of course, on a lighter note, it’s still depressing, seeing how quickly those calories can STILL add up.  Anyone check the label on a can of nuts or a bag of trail mix?  Ouch!  Not fair.

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The Mighty Pull of the Habitual Comfort Zone

I’ve been having quite a nice summer (notice I’m not putting that in the past tense, because I’m in DENIAL that the warm weather season is coming to an end!), some ups and downs but overall I feel good about my ongoing growth.  I hate to frame this in terms of weight — life is so much more than just that, but given the theme of this blog, I will go ahead and report that my weight has been generally “steady” to “good,” meaning I’ve been probably 1-3 pounds above where I like my weight during the course of the season.  One wonders what psychological mechanism (and it has to be that) keeps me from crossing that invisible barrier (my working theory is that the brain likes the path of least resistence, and as long as it sees me within a stone’s throw distance from my “fighting weight,” it decides it’s safe and okay to allow me some leeway that day), but I hope that barrier is finally crossed again soon.

Which brings me to today’s topic.  There came a point this summer in which I had one of my infamous “house cleanings,” lifestyle-wise.  I need these every now and then; I reach a point in which I’ve become stagnant in certain choices of foods, of articles I read, of things I listen to, etc., and must abruptly switch gears because all these things seem to be doing is reinforcing my struggle.  So I strip them away and go back to some reliable basics, and almost inevitably see myself returning to “myself.”  And right or wrong, one of the ways I monitor this progress back to “myself” is via my naked body checks.  You know what I mean.  First thing in the morning, give the careful once over, up and down, assess leanness, shape, muscles, etc.  Yes the scale is sometimes used, but by now I know about where those numbers probably are based on certain visual criteria, so the intense body scruitiny remains my measurement device of choice.

So with some of these changes came the results I was hoping for, and I must admit a relief upon seeing them!  I think I’ve said this before, but the way I describe how I feel/behave when my weight is in place is, I can relax and get my mind onto other things.  Ironically, as much as this morning “assessment ritual” seems counterintuitive to obsession-free conduct, that’s in fact exactly what happens; if my body meets my hopes and expectations upon that first checkpoint, I can let go and NOT think about it for the rest of the day.  If, on the other hand, I awaken with a bloated stomach or a body that clearly reflects some recent “exceeding my caloric needs” days….my clothes don’t fit the same and I feel as though I’m already entering the day compromised, like no matter what I do or how well I perform work-wise, it can’t add up to 100%.  It may seem a harsh way to operate but it’s how I stay on top of myself (sad to say, the call of junk food is still quite loud at times, even as I know I don’t even like some of those things anymore).

OK, so I shook things up, made some changes, and got back to a place that I feel good about this summer.  Only problem:  This was shortly followed by 1) an extended business trip, 2) a personal vacation with my husband, 3) a temporary change in my work schedule, 4) some social events with people who matter very much to me.  These occurrences, while positive — every one of them, would have been challenging enough (on the eating habits) under any circumstances, but making matters harder, they all fell very shortly after I’d initiated my latest lifestyle changes, before (apparently) they’d had the chance to displace the old habits and become my new “default” setting.  So predictably, once I emerged from all the turmoil entailed from working with each of these events……I found myself stepping back not to the more positive habits I had planted shortly before, but the old habits I had successfully shed.  Worse, it took a little while to realize this had happened!

So let this be a lesson to all of us:  beware the comfort zone you build for yourself, for in times of discombobulation (even the good kind), this is what you’re likely to turn back to.  I am now working to rebuild my “new and improved” habits from before all of the above took place, and I’m afraid I don’t have a crystal-clear memory of my state of mind from then; I’m having, essentially, to start from scratch and reset my mindset all over again.   I appear to be succeeding, but it’s slow.  My main goal now is to keep building these new habits, and to do so over a long enough period so as to make this mode of action the “norm,” lest I find myself thrown out of my routine and in need of returning to the familiar.  Let’s hope “this” is what becomes “familiar”!

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An early memory: “Mom, does it get any easier to watch my weight when I’m a grown up?”

This one just popped into my head recently.  I can actually remember where I was, what we were doing as a family, when I nervously asked this question of my mom.  I was 14, we were on vacation and out for a hike, and I can remember feeling very troubled at my appetite, and that it seemed to take so much WORK to stay at the weight I was at (normal, not overweight at all, if anything a bit underweight at that point).  That was the summer in which I was now fully into dieting; I had flirted with some dieting throughout that previous year and summer, but now it seemed imperative.   Although I had hoped my “growth spurt” would kick in — I used to watch my friends go through that “get out of jail free card” time period in which they could eat whatever and not gain weight….it seemed this wasn’t going to be my body’s destiny.  Don’t get me wrong, I was always a thin/athletic child, but I never went through that “skinny as a noodle while eating like a man” phase.  Instead, my body seemed to skip over that and right into the (to my perception) “grown up” need to watch my calories like a hawk and say no to foods I wanted to eat in order to stay thin.  I remember at the time feeling gyped, but at the same time relieved, as if somehow even back then I knew that the opportunity to eat anything with impunity could only set into motion some very, very bad habits.

So anyway, I kept thinking, in these early dieting days, “Surely it gets better.  You really mean to tell me that all these women you see of normal body weight live like this?”  It seemed so inconceivable, so unnatural to me.  So I finally worked up the nerve to ask my mom.

Truth be told, I don’t even remember the answer she gave.  (She has always been a disciplined and slender lady, but our eating styles are very different; she seems to have been graced with a relatively small appetite, whereas I have always been of the voracious persuasion.)  What I do remember is, whatever she said did not completely put my mind at ease.  Right from the get-go I felt suspicious that it would never get easier.  And it seemed deep down right from that point, I knew enough about myself to feel worried.  The thought of spending a lifetime in such a state of constant hunger and denial seemed impossible, yet the thought of gaining weight and living a life in a body reflective of my cravings was an even worse thought.

Not much of a useful memory, other than to reflect on having some level of body awareness way back then.

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Update, and may take a break

It’s been a strange month.  With only one stumble, I’ve managed to stick with my initial goal — that of not allowing a separate, “special” trip to the grocery store should I make the decision to binge.  In other words, if I feel the need to eat beyond what I’d planned, it must be foods that I already have at home; no special “treats” or normally “forbidden” items.  The idea is, I wanted to see what would happen if I removed any sense of allure to the binges, at least in terms of WHAT they would entail.  There’s not nearly as much enjoyment from them when they’re simply comprised of foods I’m already including on my food plan!

But I also did make that 90-day challenge for myself, one in which I wanted to see how long I could be abstinent (abstinent, in this case, referring primarily to not bingeing).  Not wanting to evaluate the wisdom of issuing such an ambitious challenge until I gave it an earnest shot, my behavior these last  few weeks has been quite interesting, to say the least.  I would call it a mixed bag, in terms of success.

There have some very distinct differences in my current eating patterns than my norm.  True to the goal, I have not “binged” in the same sense I normally do.  Normally, if I decide to binge, along with the glee I feel in allowing myself access to certain “treat” foods, I typically throw any sense of calorie-counting or even hunger checkpoints out the window.  Basically, I eat until either the foods I’m interested in are gone or until I’ve “had my fill,” which almost 100% of the time means by the time I stop eating, I am extremely uncomfortable.  HORRIBLY uncomfortable.  That, actually, has been among the leading incentives for my wanting to change these days.  I feel mournful, sorrowful, and quite scared, at the awful abuse I inflict on my body by this behavior.

But in the place of the “normal” binges has been a sort of hybrid creature, and I’m not liking it.  In some ways, it’s “good” in that, I have yet to eat completely out of control or to get to that “horrible discomfort” point.  What has happened is, in between days of clean eating, I have days in which I, after dinner, decide to eat extra food.  The big differences are, I’m choosing foods that offer no more enticement than my food plan:  soup, apples, microwave popcorn, etc.  AND I’m still counting my calories meticulously, so that at least I know what the damage is.  And while I still end up eating more than I want, I do stop well before I would normally do so.  Clearly, these strays are not serving quite the same “release the pressure valve” purpose offered by most of my binges.  But I still consider them binges.  They still render me way beyond an amount of calories I need, though nothing like the devastating calorie blitzes I’ve been guilty of inhaling in the past.  And predictably, it doesn’t take nearly as long to recover from these deviations; I find much less “aftermath” to suffer and start to feel like myself again sooner than I do under normal “post binge” circumstances.

But the mind is tricky, and with these changes — I actually worried that this would happen — I’m straying from my food plan more frequently than normal.  This is disturbing  me greatly.  I worry that if I keep at this, I may be looking at the formation of a habit that will be tough to break.  A habit that could turn disastrous if my momentary “relative” self-control with these eating splurges should ever spiral back in the direction of my regular binges.

So my instinct is to say, this was good, it served its purpose, it helped me swing my eating habits back (overall) to a more healthy schedule, it gave me good insights — insights I would not have had if I had kept my same-old, same-old m.o., but now I need to let it go.  Do I think I could keep going for the full 90 days?  Actually…..yes.  But I’m not sure this is what I want.  If I stop it now, I have a much better chance at breaking this pattern before it has a chance to really become habit.

But how’s this for a monkey wrench?  So far, it seems my weight has stabilized!  Not to where I usually like it — I’m still about 2-3 pounds above my normal weight (I’d gained about 4-5 from the holidays this year, more turmoil than usual, part of the reason for my doing this month experiment).  But, if I’m to believe my weigh-in of a couple of days ago….and a few days before that…..yeah, it appears possible that things aren’t deteriorating on the weight end.  MAYBE.  Two or three weigh-ins are hardly enough to see a trend.

So….. I have some thinking to do.  I’m not afraid to abandon either the 90 day challenge OR the January challenge (actually…..I won’t abandon the latter as there are only a few days left of the month, and I do think this is a good break from certain food habits I’d developed) if it turns out to be not what I feel is what I want.

I also may take a break from this blog (hey, it IS called the *part-time* bulimic, isn’t it? my attempt at humor).  I have so much going on with my work and I worry that concern about blogging is actually taking my eyes off my eating “steering wheel” at the moment.  Then again, maybe I’ll discover I benefit more by keeping the blog going than in taking a break.  I just wanted to let readers know what’s up if I suddenly drop off the face of the earth.

We’ll see!

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Lightbulb moment! I use my dinner to “decompress”!

This month has produced so many interesting realizations.  Initially I simply made it my goal that if I were to binge, I would limit myself to only the foods already in the house.  In other words, no special trips to the store, no purchases of normally “forbidden” options.  Doing this, I speculated, would remove some of the allure, knowing that all I’d be eating are those foods that are already part of my meal plan.  And indeed, it’s amazing how this helped diffuse the urges.  They’re still there, but for sure this helped calm down my eating.

Then I issued a challenge to myself, to pursue 90 days of “abstinence,” abstinence being, a break from bingeing altogether.  I felt I’d reached the point in which I was ready to tackle this, though I also knew that putting it out there would be risky.  90 days is a long time, and more over, the definition of “abstinence” can be massaged tremendously.  Nothing drives me crazier than when a person sets out to accomplish a goal, falls short of it, and rather than own up to it and maybe speculate on what went wrong or maybe whtether the goal was too ambitious or mismatched, they simply skirt the issue, give some general, “Well, at least I didn’t GAIN additional weight” or whatever.  Hey, the idea is to set goals and make an honest effort — and be honest with yourself, not to let things peeter out and avoid confronting the fizzle.  This is something I WON’T do on this blog.  What you read is what is happening.  You won’t see me back down or side step what has actually happened.  What’s the point?  Self-deception and denial are the fuel that keeps us in our current situations.  If you want to change you have to face both the triumphs and the discomforts of tripping.

Anyway, I have a whole lot to say with regard to those two challenges I’d issued myself.  Lots of progress, some stumbles, some imperfections.  But this has been a very different month from December, or really any period of time over the last several years.  It’s scary at times, because I’m not totally sure I like where this is taking me, but it’s also encouraging at times, as it certainly can suggest the opposite:  that I’ve stepped up to a new platform in my growth from my eating disorder.

In any event, the change of eating and restrictions in terms of binge behavior has led to a number of insights and realizations.  Last night (really, this morning) was one of them. 

I have to admit, a large factor in my eating choices has to do with calorie density.  What I mean is, I tend to try to choose foods that I enjoy, but that also provide the biggest “bang” (volume, for example) for the calorie “buck”.  Fruit, vegetables, popcorn, nonfat yogurt, sorbet, fish, fat-free cottage cheese, sugar-free jam, rice cakes, oatmeal.  You get the idea.  Don’t get me wrong, I also include olive oil (love to cook), dried fruit, sunflower seeds, rice (neither very low nor very high in calories), peanut butter, etc.  But by and large, I gravitate towards foods that both fill me up and take a long time to eat, while providing the minimum calories for that amount.  Among the foods I don’t tend to eat:  bread, butter, dry cereal, most meats (just don’t care for), potatoes, pasta, desserts, sugar, chips, crackers, cheese….you get the idea.  I also tend to shy away from certain fruits that, while tasty, are easy to overeat and are rather high in calories.  Grapes, for example, as much as I love them.  Bananas are about a 50/50; I’ll go through phases where I’m eating them constantly, then not at all.

Anyway, I know these aren’t exactly well-kept diet secrets.  I’m sure many people do this as it makes perfect sense.  Why not choose Food A over Food B if Food A is just as enjoyable as Food B, only with Food A you can eat more for the same calories?  Common sense.

But I discovered something REALLY interesting last night!

I had a good day yesterday overall.  Work went very well.  However, given my nature, I tend to get “wound up” by the end of the evening.  I work a job that demands long hours, usually quite late.  And as much as I adore my job, what ends up happening is I get so excited and jubilant as I work, by the end of my day I’m literally ready to run a 5K.  I can’t even listen to music en route home, settling instead for talk radio that I don’t even care for, just because I need to hear someone talking; I’m too wound up to concentrate/”relax” enough to listen to music, even though I normally LOVE listening to music.  This I’ve known about myself for many years.

And I’ve also known that part of the force that drives my binges is this very trait; I get wound up and it predisposes me to make impulsive, bad choices with my eating.  I can have my normal plan in place for the whole day, only to have some weird metamorphosis occur within those final two hours of the evening, leading to my making (almost always foolish) last-minute changes that almost always leads to disaster.

Knowing this about myself, I’d made some recent (as in, within the last 4 months or so) attempts to mitigate this effect.  Since I can’t seem to change the way I go about my work, my thought was, maybe there’s some intervening activity I can perform between driving home from work and arriving home for dinner.  Because once I’m home, it’s like this ticker clock goes off, and I can’t make my dinner fast enough.  So for a little while there, I was stopping off at the gym, not to exercise so much as to do other things:  sauna, sit in the Jacuzzi, stretch, sip some tea at the cafe, get a manicure, etc.  Just *something* to help diffuse my hyperactivity.  And lo and behold, it definitely helped.  I not only did better with my eating, I also loved these indulgences, began to look forward to them.

Admittedly, as the holidays approached I began to stop doing this.  Why?  Not sure, actually.  Without a doubt, it’s a bit exhausting.  My days are long and this additional activity demands its own extra effort.  At this time of the year especially (cold, snow, ice), it becomes more of a hassle.

Okay, so last night I had a good evening at work, but a few (normal) stresses as well.   I was doing okay with my eating this week — some issues, some of them scary, but overall well.  I had no reason to believe last night would be anything but a success in terms of my sticking to the meal plan.

So I got home, cooked my dinner, which was delicious.  Healthy, warm, nourishing.  I emerged very happy and content.

But then…. I kept going.  Oddly enough, I literally almost exactly repeated my day’s food.  In other words, nothing exotic, no treats, I had almost exactly the same foods I’d eaten on my meal plan yesterday.  Definitely well in excess of what my body needs (great….back to “damage conrol” mode), but not a single “woo hoo I’m eating this!” forbidden pleasure-type foods.  Vegetables.  Soup.  An Asian apple-pear.  Sugar-free dietetic mousse from a mix.  No out-of-control portions, though by the time I stopped it was definitely enough to cause a great deal of stomach distress.  I went to bad extremely angry at myself.  What the HELL?

It wasn’t until this morning that I realize what I do.

I use my dinner to decompress.

And last night….. I had more stress to “vent” than normal.  And guess what.  My dinner didn’t “last” long enough for the full decompression to take place.  Because it was weird, the impulse to eat more came out of nowhere.  It was as though I felt a certain let-down upon finishing my dinner, like, “But I’m not READY to be done with this yet!”  I didn’t feel hungry per se, just wanted to keep eating.  But I didn’t want to undo the progress I’d made this month or gain weight (well…at least not gain so much weight that I couldn’t get back on track quickly), so I fastidiously avoided any foods that would constitute my “treat” foods.  By keeping my foods within my “normal” options I avoided initiating that “what the hell, I’ve already eaten this, may as well go for the things I’ve been craving!” switch.  But still, I ate.  And well in excess of what I needed.  But I had no problem stopping long before I might normally have stopped with my “regular” binges.  So something was definitely different here.

And that’s when I realized this this morning.  I had more on my mind last night.  More “stuff” to release.  The safety valve was my dinner, only the safety valve was not opened for long enough to fully release the pressure that had built.  I had to re-open the valve and keep it open until all pressure had released.  I could then stop and relax, albeit now with a whole new stress in its place.

So here I sit, with a bloated stomach and this realization.  Which means I have to do something about this.

Clearly, I have to figure out how to release that steam, that built-up energy (which by the way is often positive, which makes it even worse as I feel like I’m truly abusing food for NO good reason!) in some other way.  Yes, I’ve become good at sitting with my emotions and not letting them sway me the way they used to.  And yes, I’m valuing my body and my sense of worth more than ever, which is one reason I made these challenges for myself this month.  But I don’t think any amount of recovery from the ED will negate the fact that I’m inclined to work myself up when I’m at work (or anything — I get excited and happy and sad and intensely passionate in so much of what I do).  I need some additional strategy to take that edge off of the pressure, so that dinner becomes the tail end of that unwinding process.

What to do?  Not sure yet.  I could resume my hit-the-gym-after-work routine, but I also need something I can do at home.  Last night, for example, would have been out of the question for that strategy as the temperatures dropped below zero, with windchills even worse.  I need to keep it practical and accessible enough that I’ll readily be able to follow through with it.

Got some brainstorming to do!

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Why “intuitive eating” does not work for losing weight

If you’re not familiar with the concept of intuitive eating, it’s basically an approach that suggests if you learn how to eat according to your body’s natural signals — to have such a connection to your own appestat and a willingness to decipher true hunger from cravings that connote something else (emotions, boredom, etc.), you will naturally gravitate towards a diet that is reflective of your body’s natural weight.  And assuming the human body “knows” it does not function at its best when overweight, this means your body’s natural appetite will be for an amount of eating that will cause you to lose (or gain, if you are underweight) weight until you reach this “natural” weight for yourself.  The theory behind this is that we lose touch of our built-in biological mechanisms that turn our hunger on and off through dieting and years of poor relationsips/attitudes with food, but that this can be retaught if you’re willing to work at it.

It sounds so wonderful in theory.  The notion that you can reach the point where you’re always eating whatever you want (after all, if you’re truly zeroed in on your body’s natural appetite, then indeed, that’s what this means) and still maintaining a fit and healthy body…..is almost breathtakingly seductive.  And to hear it explained, it MAKES so much SENSE, doesn’t it?

Here’s the problem (and you knew there was going to be a problem, didn’t you?).  Actually, there are several problems.

Firstly, any notion of any accuracy to your body’s “natural” biological signals went out the door the minute society introduced one thing into the mix:  processed foods.  The playing field is no longer level.  If somehow the only foods that were available to eat were “real” foods — fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, basic dairy (meaning, no triple-cream mocha caramel cheesecake bliss ice cream), unmilled grains (rice, oats, millet, etc.), beans, honey, tea, etc., sure, then I can see how one could make the argument that connecting to the body’s “wisdom” for our nutritional needs could be plausible.

However, this is obviously is not the case.  No, instead, these foods are competing against the kind of culinary bombs that tickle the senses almost frighteningly.  Let’s be honest, who of us has not taken that first bite of a delicious brownie or some other over-the-top treat and found our head practically swimming in awe-struck delight?  There is simply so much MORE to the eating experience than mere biology/nutrition, there’s just no way to allow what you choose to eat to be dictated ONLY by what you “feel” your body wants.  Suppose your body decides it never again wants to eat a fruit or vegetable?  Some people just plain don’t like them very much (thankfully I’m not one of them).  What then?

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt and allow the possibility that a person actually very much enjoys eating healthy food, even if they also enjoy the “bad stuff” as well.  Why shouldn’t intuitive eating work for them, in terms of being able to eat what they want and somehow normalize their weight?

Because the other problem that I don’t think intuitive eating answers is that we are creatures of habit.  For anyone who has attempted intuitive eating and claimed to not see much change in their weight (up or down), I suspect it’s because they’re probably gravitating towards the amount of calories/portions they have been accustomed to eating within recent times of attempting the intuitive eating.  So while they may not gain a great deal of weight, they’re also not experiencing enough of a consistent calorie deficit to cause weight loss.

But the other problem I see with intuitive eating lies in the presumption that the body’s idea of “natural weight” bears any resemblence to what most of us would see as a fit, “optimal weight” body for ourselves.  Let’s remember that the human body is designed for survival, not to look like a supermodel when in our underwear (or, speaking to my own bias, to look like a “superathlete,” be it in street clothes or naked or anywhere in between).  And while I appreciate that this is a good reminder that what a person thinks of as “fit” isn’t necessarily compatable with good health….I remain unchanged in desiring a lean body.  So whether intuitive eating were to bring me to a “natural weight” while being able to eat whatever I “want” or not, I’m not interested in being at the likely “natural weight” the human body probably would be inclined towards.

Thus, in my opinion, to look the way most of us want, especially in the face of the foods available and the ever-present realities of habit and routine, means we have to have some form of a structure to our eating, and we WILL have to at times override what we “want” and sometimes deny our body’s cravings.  Honestly, what’s the big deal?  Don’t we have to endure periods of discomfort and discipline ourselves in pretty much all areas of life?  What makes having to do this with our eating such a terrible thing?

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Can there REALLY be a happy medium? Do moderation AND body contentment really co-exist?

I think one of the reasons I remain, at least on some level, eating “disordered” (meaning, I maintain rules of eating that sometimes run against what I would “want” at a given moment and/or that require I sometimes deny or ignore my hunger — physical, emotional, or otherwise — and yes, I still stumble from time to time, though I’m not convinced the two behaviors are necessarily related) is because, quite frankly, I’ve yet to find enough evidence that a happy medium between the two extremes — moderation and body contentment — is (for the most part) attainable.  I read about recovery stories, blogs, and posts from individuals who are attempting to move past compulsive eating or bulimic behaviors, and what I often see are either people who forever remain bogged down in examining their emotional reasons for their problem (trust me, that’s a pit that is probably bottomless…..if you think you must wait before you resolve all of those before you embark on the physical end of recovery, my friend, you’re going to be waiting a long time), or people who have recovered from the destructive eating behavior (they no longer binge or engage in dieting, purging, etc.), but now feel expressedly sad, miserable, etc. about their body, which almost inevitably is considerably heavier than it was when they were engaging in restricting/dieting/etc.  Or, they’ve recovered in that they neither engage in eating disorder behaviors and they have made their peace with having a body that isn’t necessarily society’s definition of “fit and buff,” but are now faced with the dilemma of being told by their doctor that they have some health issues (hypertension, cholesterol, borderline diabetes, etc.) that really need to be addressed in part with their diet.  My heart goes out to these people; they seem genuinely caught between the rock and the hard place, honestly believing that to impose any dietary changes or restrictions is a Bad Thing and will send them back into the throes of their ED…..yet to do nothing means they’re quite possibly putting their health at risk.  Plus…..and this may sound terrible…..I’m not sure what I’m reading in their posts is that their life has become better now that they’ve systematically removed any sense of desire to “fare la bella figura” — to put forth their best physique and appearance.

Truly, at least for myself, I think the carrot stick of desiring a thin and fit appearance, while at times maddening and depressing and craze-inducing, is also quite energizing and electrifying.  I think the pursuit of greatness in ALL areas of life:  career, skills, hobbies, relationships, lifestyle….is part of what makes life interesting, fun, fulfilling.  Taking myself as an example, I work in a highly visual area; my appearance is part of my job and my image/career success is, at least to an extent, hooked into the perception that I maintain a high level of fitness.  And as you might expect, there are times when this really gets to me.  I don’t have the luxury to “hide” behind “safe” clothes on a day I have PMS bloat; I can’t tuck myself into a cubicle and do my job quietly on a day I’m feeling fat from some recent eating indiscretions.  No, I’m on display pretty much every day, and it’s a stress I have to deal with proactively or it can consume me.  Every now and then, I’ll have a week off from my normal schedule, where I will be working primarily out of the house.  And every single time, I look at this week with great anticipation.  A whole week without having to put myself out there!  I think of the joy of just having a nice meal, no need to worry if the foods are inclined to bloat me or if the extra sodium will cause changes that are visible the next day.  Somehow I always expect that my eating will go so much easier without this pressure on my shoulders.

 Well guess what.  It never fails.  Every SINGLE time I have this down time, my eating all but falls apart.  Oh don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m bingeing every night or anything like that.  But as much as I have the best of intentions, without the means of holding myself accountable — in this case, the “instant feedback” of having my body in a revealing article of clothing the next day for all to see, I become way too casual about my indiscretions.  Is this wrong?  Maybe, maybe not.  Are there people out there who don’t need *some* outside influence to keep them on track?  Maybe, but evidently I’m not one of them.  And you know what?  The relief I feel in being able to wear whatever I want and know I look darn fit and trim is WAY better than the angst I feel surrounding the dieting, the restricting, the rules, and yes, even the binges/splurges/falls.

The other thing that makes me skeptical about the whole moderation-meets-body-contentment fantasy (if someone can tell me their story and convince me otherwise, I’d love to be swayed differently), is the fact that of the rare people I’ve encountered in my life who happen to be thin and yet have never dieted (yeah, all 11 of them 🙂 ), they all seem to have an interesting trait in common:  they are fully capable of allowing themselves to become extremely hungry…..and they don’t fuss about it.  If they work super-late and arrive home ravenous….they don’t always respond by eating; they may instead go to bed, in the notion that sleep trumps food at that moment.  And they don’t make a big deal of it.  The next day comes and they’re back to normal.  Or they’ll have a craving for a certain kind of food, and while already ravenous, take the time to spend a couple of hours cooking that meal, calmly, sedately, because THAT is the food they’re desiring.  They have no issue with delayed gratification, and don’t seem to take out their extra hunger by overeating at the meal.  It just doesn’t occur to them.

It’s beginning to make me think what we really all need to do is learn to experience physical, even emotional, hunger, and just be okay with it.  End of analysis.  If you want to be thin, that’s the sacrifice you need to make.  And if you’re overall a bit crankier because of it, well, is that necessarily a bad thing?  If that’s the compromise you’re willing to make, then where’s the harm? 

I was reading Bob Greene’s latest book the other day, and he makes an interesting point in talking about why people don’t keep themselves at their goal once they’ve lost the weight.  Now I don’t completely agree with his over-simplification of a lot of the situation (though I guess such is necessary when you’re creating a program for a mass audience), but he makes an interesting statement that flies head-on into the face of the eating disorder recovery camp.  He says that whenever he asks someone how they felt upon losing all the weight — the eating right, the exercise, etc. — they all say the same thing, that they’ve never felt better!

So who’s right?  Those who believe to be thin and fit and having the diet/exercise to support that is where you’ll feel at your best…..or those who believe you’re at your best when you let go of trying to control your weight, instead embracing wherever your body lands?  Obviously I personally fall into the first group for the most part, but is it possible they’re both right, that it simply boils down to, what do you want?  If you can’t have both, which do you want?

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Holiday Anxiety

OK then, I have posted my novel….I mean, my first post…..to open this blog, it’s time to get down to business.  I’m sitting with my husband on a relaxing Sunday morning, sipping coffee and enjoying the bliss of “down time” (we both work very long hours during the week).  It’s cold outside, but it looks as though a white Christmas may not be in the cards this year, having had much of our snow washed away by recent rain.  Oh well.

Christmas always brings such a dichotomy of emotions for me.  On one hand, I’m excited about the holiday activities.  Always have been.  I love listening to Christmas music, love decorating the house in lights, love to try out new seasonal recipes, love to bake.  Not being one to go out much, I love being able to dress up and attend holiday parties, which is funny because that’s only true to a point; part of me loves being a hermit.  I think it’s a matter of, once you’re there, you’re happy you went, but you drag your feet getting there.

And naturally, there’s the love-hate relationship with the eating at this time of the year.  No doubt about it, the fact that the days are so much shorter, the weather decidedly unfriendly to outdoor activities (for the most part), it’s already a struggle to not feel the siren call of comfort foods.  The thought of nestling into the couch and eating warm chocolate chip cookies, while almost never a temptation in the summer months, suddenly seems a seductively good idea.  I fight more with the depression of seasonal affective disorder, which is one reason I try to get out and run outside on the days when the sun is out and the temperature isn’t too bad. 

But yeah, there’s also that lingering anxiety surrounding the holidays.  Thankfully, my family is extremely tolerant of my insistence on keeping my eating clean; they know I will always bring a “healthy” Christmas dish as part of the dinner offerings, and almost always prepare a “light” dessert for those who would like to try it.  I myself still eat helpings of foods and beverages I truly love — mashed potatoes, a glass of “look at me!” Beaujolais Nouveau, a favorite Christmas cookie, olives (okay, maybe not all at the same time).  But I still keep it to a minimum if possible.  I find that I have a much better time — can concentrate on enjoying the company of the loved ones I’m with — if I retain my calorie goal for that day.  Oddly enough, I’m far more likely to overeat the day AFTER Christmas or even on the 27th, particularly if I happen to be off the next day (i.e. where I don’t have to worry about going to work with a food hangover).  But that’s because such all-night nibbling has more to do with retreating to my private cave and unwinding.  On the holiday itself, I would much rather share and enjoy tiny helpings of lovingly prepared foods with family or friends, and keep the focus on the socializing.

So my goal for the next three days (12/23, 12/24, 12/25) is to eat well but cleanly, deal with whatever stress or excitement (good and bad) comes my way in a constructive manner.  Retain my focus on my deep gratitude to have my family, my loving husband, my friends, a healthy body, warm houses and delicious food to share and savor.  I have not yet even thought of 12/26, nor will I just yet.

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Challenging common thoughts surrounding eating disorders and eating disorder treatment

There are many aspects of traditional eating disorder “recovery” that I do not agree with.  Just the same, there are those philosophies and approaches that I feel are quite valid.  Nothing is black and white.

For starters, be it right or wrong, good or bad, I find my weight is best managed by avoiding certain foods on a daily basis.  On a normal diet day, certain foods are off limits for me.  Unable (more like unwilling) to eliminate certain “treat” foods from my life completely, I instead give in to periodic splurges that almost always go well beyond the point I would have preferred to stop eating.  Most of you reading this will probably immediately think, “That’s wrong.  If you just stop dieting, you’ll stop such extremes in eating,” or, “See, this is why dieting is bad.”  But I respectfully disagree.  I have found that the alternative — to stop restricting and instead allow smaller amounts of all kinds of foods on any given day (in other words, the typical “wisdom” in most weight management and/or eating disorder programs) — to be the perfect way to gain weight, with any attempt at “bodily acceptence” to be just an exercise in epic denial (and woe be to you when that “I’m still happy with this body” bubble bursts).  Call me superficial, but I just can’t reconcile the larger body for myself.  It may look and work okay for others, but not for me.  Honestly, I would rather accept that I will probably always have a skewed relationship with food, if it means I can maintain what I believe to be my ideal physique.  I know that’s not PC but it’s the reality of my mindset.

Mind you, life is too short to not enjoy delicious, decadent food.  But decadent food has no place in my daily eating.  If anything, I personally enjoy it MORE when I DON’T allow it in my regular diet.  And oddly enough, the more I impose certain restrictions on my daily eating, the more creative I get with my cooking.  I love exploring the use of fresh herbs, unusual fruits and vegetables, of making minimal use of fattening ingredients and searching out lower-calorie substitutes.  It forces me to appreciate the more subtle tastes and textures of natural, minimally processed food, in ways I miss out on if I allow certain foods to be options in my daily diet.  My eating habits are NOT about deprivation or virtuousness.  On the contrary!  But I have very specific preferences with regard to my figure, so I’m constantly trying to find ways to strike a balance between those two aspects of myself.

Now I don’t for one moment profess perfection, or to suggest that this method of eating is the best arrangement.  I still get mighty cravings for extremely fattening, sugary foods, and when those cravings hit, as long as I have calculated that I can “afford” the pound or so weight gain that will ensue from the splurge, I allow myself to eat unsensored for a whole evening, and the end results are not pretty.  In fact they’re pretty awful.  I never emerge without huge regrets, and a renewed resolve to “stop this insanity” once and for all.  There’s no doubt in my mind, I still have far to go in striking the right balance for myself.

But I still remain unconvinced that my own personal path to “sanity” is through intuitive eating or related approaches, in which no food is off limits on any given day, with the notion that sooner or later these foods will lose their allure and you’ll find yourself eating very “naturally,” gravitating towards healthier choices as a matter of instinct.  Sorry, not in my case.  I tried that on repeat occasions (and for sufficient periods of time, in one instance over a year), and whatever emotional freedom or “relief” I felt in stopping the cycle…was eclipsed by my misery in having a body that I no longer recognized — that wasn’t “me” anymore.  If I’m going to continue to chip away at my undesired behaviors, it’s going to have to be through another means.  It may take longer, it may mean I never fully extinguish the cycle of extremes (I can live with it if the frequency and intensity continues to go down!), but I’m just not willing to compromise my body, my fitness, at this time.

I make no apologies for having these preferences, but up until now, I have never let on that I even have them, out of fear of coming across as either insensitive to others or somehow in denial.  People love to do that; if you so much as allude to any version of the above, they dismissively say, “Oh that’s the eating disorder talking.”  Is it?  Well then fine, I may just always have some aspect of that in play.  I no longer care how others characterize it.  But definitely this is NOT a judgment against others and their approach or philosophy; if most people feel a better peace of mind by ridding themselves of the behavior while accepting the adjustments their body makes, more power to them.  This simply doesn’t appeal to me, having tried both sides of the fence.  And mind you, I don’t kid myself that this isn’t dangerous or destructive behavior.  Hence, this blog.  I have made great strides in managing the behavior in myself over the last several years, and I plan to continue to do so.  But extinguish it altogether?  At this point I don’t necessarily think it’s possible.  So “minimizing” is the modus operandi here.

What surprises me, considering how many people there are in this world, is how hard it is to find someone else in my specific situation.  When I search out forums and blogs on the subject of eating disorders, I tend to find two groups:  either the set of younger, mostly high school and college-aged girls who are struggling with anorexia and/or bulimia….or I find (mostly) women who are struggling with binge-eating disorder (or compulsive overeating, whatever you want to call it), whose recovery is centered largely on healing their emotions and attitudes — both relating to food and outside of it — while working on steadfastily eliminating any thoughts of desiring a thin/fit body.  Well, that’s fine, but what about those of us who are either far further along in our “recovery,” or who never had that bad an eating disorder in the first place, or how about this:  who work in an industry in which, like it or not, our bodies are part of our career success?  Beyond our personal preferences, some of us can’t afford to have a certain body shape and still retain our job success, and therefore have to figure out a way to make as much amends with our eating and underlying issues, while maintaining a certain physique.  Surely I can’t be the only one in this category, and yet to search the net you would think so.

But even outside of career considerations, it just plain annoys me, the kneejerk reactions to anything that resembles an eating disorder.  If you have bulimia, you’re automatically supposed to want to be rid of it.  This annoys me at times.  Let me see.  I eat extremely healthfully (typically) 90 percent of the time.  My daily diet includes apples, yogurt, cottage cheese, salmon, tons of veggies, rice, peanut butter, and oatmeal.  About once a week, I break out of that mold and open the gates to eat whatever I want (usually sweets — I love bread and dessert!), and almost always go way past the point of fullness when I do this.  I then snap right back to my normal diet, spending the next couple of days drinking tea and watching my sodium intake to help my body deal with the spike of calories and junk food.  Is it right?  No, but tell me, please, how this is so much worse than the typical American daily menu, in which food from all walks of life are consumed without so much as a second thought.  Tell me how this is somehow not equally something that needs to be “recovered” from, especially when you see the overweight, out-of-shape bodies rendered by this way of eating?

I said it before but I’ll say it again (hey, it’s my blog), I’m just not convinced that I can maintain the fit, lean body I enjoy having if I were to adopt the “no food is off limits” mentality common in most recovery approaches.  And I’m tired of feeling like a felon for even thinking such thoughts.  God forbid I should actually admit to wanting to keep a fit body more than I want to be rid of the disordered eating that comes with restrictive dieting!  No, somehow we’re all supposed to sing the chorus of “diet bad, moderate eating good.”  Well to hell with that!  I’ve done the “moderate eating,” and you know what?  I’m happier and healthier when I diet deliberately!  When my choices are limited, I feel free.  I can free up my mind to focus on the rest of my life, my work, my passions.  Without rules, every meal brings an overwhelming decision process; too many choices!  And right or wrong, I like to keep track of my calories.  Having done this for so many years, I know exactly what amount I need to eat in order to keep my body where I like it.  And knowing this, I like to end my day with full knowledge of whether I ate within my body’s caloric needs.  Why is this wrong?  Is it obsessive?  Maybe.  But that’s my row to tow.  The way I see it, if doing so allows me to enjoy that glass of fine wine, to savor that piece of dark chocolate, to get out and take that spontaneous winter snowshoe hike, to feel the confidence of being able to be put in any situation and handle myself with joy and ease….where’s the wrong here?

One thing to keep in mind:  I have never had a particularly severe case of bulimia.  Obviously, none of this musing would apply if I were engaged in truly dangerous and undeniably destructive/disruptive behaviors.  There’s a difference between the once-a-week after-dinner binge, in which there is no purging, only strict dieting and exercise in the days that follow, versus daily binges that are followed by vomiting or the use of laxatives.  To anyone who is doing this, I urge you to seek medical treatment immediately, as I would do the same!  Again, I go back to the point I made that I’m not even sure if my behavior fully qualifies as an eating disorder, anyway.  Where does the disorder end and “stuff that is simply human fallability” begin?  If it’s otherwise not interfering with your life, is it really something that needs to be changed at this time?  I have the luxury of asking these questions expressly because I have never purged and I otherwise lead a happy and full life despite the remnant behaviors I still struggle with.  Just want to be clear on that.

So in short, what I have learned is that right now, even as I renew my commitment to keep up the fight to minimize my disordered eating behaviors, I would still rather deal with the down side of dieting/bingeing cycles in exchange for having the body I want — and yes, the emotional outlet that, right or wrong, is part of the behavior.  It seems counter-intuitive I know, but I actually have an easier time keeping my weight in check when I allow periodic binges, because the rest of the time I can be at peace with eating tasty, healthy, clean foods.  I’m actually curious to see if having a blog as an outlet will provide an emotional release valve that will help me reduce the triggers and better manage my stress.  Wouldn’t it be great if I find this to be the final blow to these behaviors!

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