Right now my life is one big whirlpool of unhealthiness. I'm sleeping 3-4 hours a day (staying up all night), living off lots of sweets (and a little bit of healthier food), and not moving from my house. I'm panting heavily as I even walk up the stairs. This will all be over in 5 days when I submit my final project to the printer, so I'm not exactly going to start exercising. I just want to complain about what I put myself through.
The only thing I have control over is the food. I just do not have the time to bother with intuitive eating, but I'd like to stop eating the sweets for the next 5 days. Normally I would be hesitant to cut anything out because disordered eating blah blah blah, but right now I just have to do what I have to do to get through these next few days, and if that means not eating chocolate in order to not have such big energy slumps that interfere with my studies, then I'll do it. I hope to report back on Thursday night a relatively sane person. Hope.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Response to visual food cues, part 1
I have a problem whereby, when I see certain foods, I immediately want to eat them. For example, when I see KitKats at a 7/11, I want to buy them. When I see people eating chips on a bus, even though I don't really like chips, I immediately want to eat chips. When food is laid out in abundance in front of me, it is like I know no boundaries.
As mentioned in the last post, I don't think this is a result of being on diets or emotional eating, but simply something gone wrong in my brain that contributes to my obesity. I am both a binge eater and a plain old overeater, and I can always tell the difference between the two. The binge eating is what causes me misery and is the manifestation of my emotion dysfunction, but the overeating can create feelings of shame or guilt that feed into the binge eating.
Initial research into how I can counter my propensity to overeat and react strongly to visual (or other sensory, e.g. smell) food cues brought me to this ongoing clinical trial. It suggests that obese people perceive a greater reward when they look at food cues, and so have a stronger reaction to those food cues. Basically, it does not think that that strong response to a cue can be effectively changed; research is more on how to mitigate the eating that follows the response, or the response to the response if you will. (I disagree with this to some extent, but I will detail that below).
There are two main therapeutic means of counteracting this. One is using CBT, which is about delaying the response through distraction - a strategy I mentioned earlier that I don't think works for me very well. The other is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which seeks to get obese people to accept that they will always crave food, but don't need to act on it.
I personally think I can work on desensitising myself to cues. For example, why do I feel overwhelmed when I see so much food in front of me? I think there is scarcity. I think that I have to get in as much food as I can before it runs out. Why do I react to the KitKats? That's tougher, but maybe because I have trained myself to think that chocolate is a 'guilty pleasure', and I have always made a big fuss out of how much I looove chocolate, even when it doesn't truly reflect how I feel. I have trained myself to respond to the smell of chips, hot or cold, because it evokes past memories of how good they taste.
I don't want to completely remove the evocative power of food, but I do deliberately make a big deal out of it, and I do have issues with feeling like there is never enough food, even though I have never personally experienced scarcity or deprivation. I get very angry when I think that someone else is cutting across my food or my access to food. This post suggests that maybe it's about anxiety and feeling like I don't have enough in many areas of my life, and it's just acting itself out in the arena of food. I don't know, I'll have to think about it. But at least I am thinking about it now.
As mentioned in the last post, I don't think this is a result of being on diets or emotional eating, but simply something gone wrong in my brain that contributes to my obesity. I am both a binge eater and a plain old overeater, and I can always tell the difference between the two. The binge eating is what causes me misery and is the manifestation of my emotion dysfunction, but the overeating can create feelings of shame or guilt that feed into the binge eating.
Initial research into how I can counter my propensity to overeat and react strongly to visual (or other sensory, e.g. smell) food cues brought me to this ongoing clinical trial. It suggests that obese people perceive a greater reward when they look at food cues, and so have a stronger reaction to those food cues. Basically, it does not think that that strong response to a cue can be effectively changed; research is more on how to mitigate the eating that follows the response, or the response to the response if you will. (I disagree with this to some extent, but I will detail that below).
There are two main therapeutic means of counteracting this. One is using CBT, which is about delaying the response through distraction - a strategy I mentioned earlier that I don't think works for me very well. The other is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which seeks to get obese people to accept that they will always crave food, but don't need to act on it.
I personally think I can work on desensitising myself to cues. For example, why do I feel overwhelmed when I see so much food in front of me? I think there is scarcity. I think that I have to get in as much food as I can before it runs out. Why do I react to the KitKats? That's tougher, but maybe because I have trained myself to think that chocolate is a 'guilty pleasure', and I have always made a big fuss out of how much I looove chocolate, even when it doesn't truly reflect how I feel. I have trained myself to respond to the smell of chips, hot or cold, because it evokes past memories of how good they taste.
I don't want to completely remove the evocative power of food, but I do deliberately make a big deal out of it, and I do have issues with feeling like there is never enough food, even though I have never personally experienced scarcity or deprivation. I get very angry when I think that someone else is cutting across my food or my access to food. This post suggests that maybe it's about anxiety and feeling like I don't have enough in many areas of my life, and it's just acting itself out in the arena of food. I don't know, I'll have to think about it. But at least I am thinking about it now.
Going mad
Living with my parents is driving me a little bit mad.
Firstly, I don't have control over what food is brought into the house. When I was living alone, I had a gentle process of habituation where I introduced one 'dangerous' food at a time. Now, I have corn chips and pastries and Nutella and cut-up watermelon constantly in my face. Furthermore, at dinner time, instead of being served a portion, we have the entire serving dish on the table in front of us. I find it EXTREMELY hard to be mindful and stop when full when I am being visually bombarded.
Secondly, my family are very watchful of what I eat, and are constantly making comments like "I hear you rustling in the pantry" or "you're a big eater, I don't eat that much" or "dinner is in an hour, do you really want to be eating?. What this does is creates a sense of guilt and shame in me, even if I am happy with the choice that I am making. In turn, this makes it harder for me to trust that what I am doing is the right thing, and build up self-confidence in making choices that are right for me.
Thirdly, and most annoyingly, my family and family friends feel entitled to comment freely on my body, a privilege they truly love to indulge in. We have an absolutely beautiful family friend staying with us for a couple of days now (beautiful in terms of her soul and personality, I mean), who would rather cut off her foot than hurt me. However, she has struggled with her weight all her life, and has no problems with projecting that on me. Just now, she said that "if I lived with Nina, I would have big problems, we would just eat sooo much" because we are gutses, and before that she compared me to a fat fluffy ("cute") cat with my puffy cheeks. She is not alone; my mum (who has also been fat most of her life) will gently slap/rub my arms or my tummy and make comments. I would never say anything to the family friend because she really loves me, and my mum's comments also are from a position of love (she thinks I will never find a partner and therefore never be happy unless I lose weight. She pretends this is about health but then admits this is an excuse). But it is just so trying to have to put up with and really interferes with this process of trying to improve my body image and feel comfortable at any weight.
Furthermore, this family friend and my mum (who grew up together) often talk about food and diets. My mum is not dieting anymore due to her illness but the friend will still talk about how she cuts out this or is trying to do that, sort of making implicit suggestions to me to try things. Their discourse on what is 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' is along dieting lines where food most definitely has a moral value. I don't know if I'm entitled to use the word 'trigger', but this is a massive trigger for me in terms of feeling shame. I know this is a very common thing for people to have to deal with, but I have actually been very lucky in my life in that my friends are bright and beautiful and not caught up with the cultural obsession with weight loss - some do have their own issues but they don't presume to make that struggle a topic of social bonding. So it's my family that really drives me nuts on this topic. However, it's one that I have to learn to adapt to, as I can't expect that everyone else will change their unhealthy thinking just because I ask them to.
How to fix this?
The first topic is one where I can take responsibility and work on my problems. I have actually been lucky to begin my therapy process without being surrounded by 'unsafe' foods, but now I am squarely back in the real world. Tips my therapist suggested:
1. Only eat sitting down at the table
2. Before eating anything, try to evaluate hunger levels (this is hard because when I see things, I go straight for them without any delay! The object here is to extend that delay period from 2 secs to a minute or so) and the reason for eating.
3. Try to maintain mindfulness throughout eating...
4. Try to eat slowly, evaluating hunger at every bite
5. Try to take in the taste, smell, texture of food.
All that is regular mindfulness stuff, but I'm not sure about how to mitigate the instant visual reaction I get ("delay" is not very helpful) when I see certain foods in certain settings. I found this article on visual food cues, and can hopefully come up with some strategies to break that strong connection I have between seeing food and immediately eating it if it is in reach (or craving it if it is a particular kind of food). I doubt this is just a BED problem - I'm sure regular non-emotional obese folks suffer from it too - but overeating then triggers the emotional problems, so it's in my interests to figure out a solution.
As for the other stuff, I have already spoken to my family, but I want to speak to my mum again and make it clear that I don't want her to comment on my appearance or food unless asked in future. my therapist gave me tips on how to ask people assertively for what you want, so I will try to follow those steps. She has these guests hovering around her for the next forever, but I'll try to get a moment to tell her today. (Edit: Asked her and she said of course. She is really supportive, just has to be asked what to do.)
Firstly, I don't have control over what food is brought into the house. When I was living alone, I had a gentle process of habituation where I introduced one 'dangerous' food at a time. Now, I have corn chips and pastries and Nutella and cut-up watermelon constantly in my face. Furthermore, at dinner time, instead of being served a portion, we have the entire serving dish on the table in front of us. I find it EXTREMELY hard to be mindful and stop when full when I am being visually bombarded.
Secondly, my family are very watchful of what I eat, and are constantly making comments like "I hear you rustling in the pantry" or "you're a big eater, I don't eat that much" or "dinner is in an hour, do you really want to be eating?. What this does is creates a sense of guilt and shame in me, even if I am happy with the choice that I am making. In turn, this makes it harder for me to trust that what I am doing is the right thing, and build up self-confidence in making choices that are right for me.
Thirdly, and most annoyingly, my family and family friends feel entitled to comment freely on my body, a privilege they truly love to indulge in. We have an absolutely beautiful family friend staying with us for a couple of days now (beautiful in terms of her soul and personality, I mean), who would rather cut off her foot than hurt me. However, she has struggled with her weight all her life, and has no problems with projecting that on me. Just now, she said that "if I lived with Nina, I would have big problems, we would just eat sooo much" because we are gutses, and before that she compared me to a fat fluffy ("cute") cat with my puffy cheeks. She is not alone; my mum (who has also been fat most of her life) will gently slap/rub my arms or my tummy and make comments. I would never say anything to the family friend because she really loves me, and my mum's comments also are from a position of love (she thinks I will never find a partner and therefore never be happy unless I lose weight. She pretends this is about health but then admits this is an excuse). But it is just so trying to have to put up with and really interferes with this process of trying to improve my body image and feel comfortable at any weight.
Furthermore, this family friend and my mum (who grew up together) often talk about food and diets. My mum is not dieting anymore due to her illness but the friend will still talk about how she cuts out this or is trying to do that, sort of making implicit suggestions to me to try things. Their discourse on what is 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' is along dieting lines where food most definitely has a moral value. I don't know if I'm entitled to use the word 'trigger', but this is a massive trigger for me in terms of feeling shame. I know this is a very common thing for people to have to deal with, but I have actually been very lucky in my life in that my friends are bright and beautiful and not caught up with the cultural obsession with weight loss - some do have their own issues but they don't presume to make that struggle a topic of social bonding. So it's my family that really drives me nuts on this topic. However, it's one that I have to learn to adapt to, as I can't expect that everyone else will change their unhealthy thinking just because I ask them to.
How to fix this?
The first topic is one where I can take responsibility and work on my problems. I have actually been lucky to begin my therapy process without being surrounded by 'unsafe' foods, but now I am squarely back in the real world. Tips my therapist suggested:
1. Only eat sitting down at the table
2. Before eating anything, try to evaluate hunger levels (this is hard because when I see things, I go straight for them without any delay! The object here is to extend that delay period from 2 secs to a minute or so) and the reason for eating.
3. Try to maintain mindfulness throughout eating...
4. Try to eat slowly, evaluating hunger at every bite
5. Try to take in the taste, smell, texture of food.
All that is regular mindfulness stuff, but I'm not sure about how to mitigate the instant visual reaction I get ("delay" is not very helpful) when I see certain foods in certain settings. I found this article on visual food cues, and can hopefully come up with some strategies to break that strong connection I have between seeing food and immediately eating it if it is in reach (or craving it if it is a particular kind of food). I doubt this is just a BED problem - I'm sure regular non-emotional obese folks suffer from it too - but overeating then triggers the emotional problems, so it's in my interests to figure out a solution.
As for the other stuff, I have already spoken to my family, but I want to speak to my mum again and make it clear that I don't want her to comment on my appearance or food unless asked in future. my therapist gave me tips on how to ask people assertively for what you want, so I will try to follow those steps. She has these guests hovering around her for the next forever, but I'll try to get a moment to tell her today. (Edit: Asked her and she said of course. She is really supportive, just has to be asked what to do.)
Friday, October 11, 2013
Bleh
Things aren't going great right now. I have a looot of emotions, but no time to address them until I finish this project in 2 weeks. The project itself is stressing me out, and painfully so - I feel that strong physical burden in a way that I haven't for years. But I just have to suck it up and get it over and done with.
In terms of eating, I've been going so-so. I managed to curb my binge eating, plus snacking, but I feel that I've been over-eating in terms of quantity at meals. I definitely haven't been eating mindfully. I'm still going out of my mind about being so fat right now and my family's comments are exacerbating it. My therapist suggested setting boundaries, for example only eating at the table. I might try keeping a food and thought diary for the next week. I'm just so thrown out by this project that it feels like my sanity is subordinate to it for a while.
In terms of eating, I've been going so-so. I managed to curb my binge eating, plus snacking, but I feel that I've been over-eating in terms of quantity at meals. I definitely haven't been eating mindfully. I'm still going out of my mind about being so fat right now and my family's comments are exacerbating it. My therapist suggested setting boundaries, for example only eating at the table. I might try keeping a food and thought diary for the next week. I'm just so thrown out by this project that it feels like my sanity is subordinate to it for a while.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
On self-worth
After a couple more days of miserable bingeing, mostly in self-pity at how I am at my highest weight ever and my ~*~crush~*~ will never like me and nobody will want to be my friend at my new job and all these relatives visiting us are going to judge me and my family are monitoring my eating like a hawk, I figured a couple of things out.
a) It is normal to oscillate daily between feeling attractive and unattractive. Some days I think I look cute, pretty, even gorgeous. Other days my hair is frizzy and my skin is dry and I look fat and 13 years old. I am fairly confident that most humans experience the same thing. It happens, and I should roll with it without letting it devastate me.
b) There is nothing wrong with enjoying my own beauty when I feel that I possess it. It's okay to be attractive for me and only for me, in the same way that I confidently dress up and enjoy fashion solely for myself. In some ways I actually feel lucky that I have never felt obliged to dress up to attract others.
c) I constantly objectify myself by viewing my physical self through the eyes of others. I imagine (almost unconsciously) how strangers feel irritated at the space I take up, the disgust of new acquaintances, the irritation of men who would find me attractive if I were thinner. Even when I assume compliments at the usual body parts people seem to like, this practice never fails to make me feel weak and unworthy. Which leads to...
d) I will never again see myself through others' eyes. To put it crudely, this gives them the power to evaluate my worth, inevitably resulting in my devaluation and pushing my self-worth beyond the reach of the self. This might seem a naive and hippy-ish philosophy, but if I am going to give myself to other people in love and friendship and respect, it must be the whole of me, as a whole person. Fragments are not enough.
e) Confidence is but a mute glow on a distance horizon for me, but I have a vague sense that this is all about power. For someone who is so aggressive and confrontational, I am constantly giving my power away; to food, to men, to other people. I am only just starting to realise this
f) Whilst full-on burlesque or pinup aren't exactly my style, I really appreciate the confidence that goes with the image, I guess in the same way that all this punk/riotgrrl shit might have were it not super-trendy right now and I not a strident contrarian. I had a friend (who sadly as of last week is not my friend anymore, something else that has been getting me down) who almost exclusively wears printed A-line dresses, and girl just works it.
I sometimes feel embarrassed by how vain I am, always staring into mirrors and reflective surfaces. I now understand that this is a symptom of the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of my own worth. Do I look presentable? How about now? Oh no, my hair has frizzed at the front, nobody will want to speak to me, better go home and try again tomorrow. In articles about therapy, I read over and over again that women felt essentially unworthy of recovery. I scoffed at this notion; how could anyone feel unworthy of recovery? I didn't even know what worth meant. I still don't. But at least, as of today, I'm thinking about it.
I'm glad that I realised this, because I was truthfully on the verge of trying another diet. Body acceptance feels nigh on impossible when a second chin is firmly in the picture and my underwear leaves red welts. This might sound a bit silly, but (probably because my posture is so bad) I hold myself up at the cheekbones, so when they are submerged in fluid and flesh, I feel that I've lost my core.
I'll leave you with a few posts that have led me to the conclusions above.
1. The Fat Nutritionist - You're pretty good looking (for a girl). "Beauty is a cultural construct designed to keep people balanced on a knife-edge of anxiety over the potential loss of status, and the rabid desire to gain it." I will probably quote this another ten times on this blog.
2. Tavi Gevinson's musings on being attractive (I know, Rookie is annoyingly twee, but she is more self-aware at 15 than I am in my 20s)
3. Ami Angelowicz and Winona Dimeo - 10 Better Body Affirmations for Women
a) It is normal to oscillate daily between feeling attractive and unattractive. Some days I think I look cute, pretty, even gorgeous. Other days my hair is frizzy and my skin is dry and I look fat and 13 years old. I am fairly confident that most humans experience the same thing. It happens, and I should roll with it without letting it devastate me.
b) There is nothing wrong with enjoying my own beauty when I feel that I possess it. It's okay to be attractive for me and only for me, in the same way that I confidently dress up and enjoy fashion solely for myself. In some ways I actually feel lucky that I have never felt obliged to dress up to attract others.
c) I constantly objectify myself by viewing my physical self through the eyes of others. I imagine (almost unconsciously) how strangers feel irritated at the space I take up, the disgust of new acquaintances, the irritation of men who would find me attractive if I were thinner. Even when I assume compliments at the usual body parts people seem to like, this practice never fails to make me feel weak and unworthy. Which leads to...
d) I will never again see myself through others' eyes. To put it crudely, this gives them the power to evaluate my worth, inevitably resulting in my devaluation and pushing my self-worth beyond the reach of the self. This might seem a naive and hippy-ish philosophy, but if I am going to give myself to other people in love and friendship and respect, it must be the whole of me, as a whole person. Fragments are not enough.
e) Confidence is but a mute glow on a distance horizon for me, but I have a vague sense that this is all about power. For someone who is so aggressive and confrontational, I am constantly giving my power away; to food, to men, to other people. I am only just starting to realise this
f) Whilst full-on burlesque or pinup aren't exactly my style, I really appreciate the confidence that goes with the image, I guess in the same way that all this punk/riotgrrl shit might have were it not super-trendy right now and I not a strident contrarian. I had a friend (who sadly as of last week is not my friend anymore, something else that has been getting me down) who almost exclusively wears printed A-line dresses, and girl just works it.
I sometimes feel embarrassed by how vain I am, always staring into mirrors and reflective surfaces. I now understand that this is a symptom of the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of my own worth. Do I look presentable? How about now? Oh no, my hair has frizzed at the front, nobody will want to speak to me, better go home and try again tomorrow. In articles about therapy, I read over and over again that women felt essentially unworthy of recovery. I scoffed at this notion; how could anyone feel unworthy of recovery? I didn't even know what worth meant. I still don't. But at least, as of today, I'm thinking about it.
I'm glad that I realised this, because I was truthfully on the verge of trying another diet. Body acceptance feels nigh on impossible when a second chin is firmly in the picture and my underwear leaves red welts. This might sound a bit silly, but (probably because my posture is so bad) I hold myself up at the cheekbones, so when they are submerged in fluid and flesh, I feel that I've lost my core.
I'll leave you with a few posts that have led me to the conclusions above.
1. The Fat Nutritionist - You're pretty good looking (for a girl). "Beauty is a cultural construct designed to keep people balanced on a knife-edge of anxiety over the potential loss of status, and the rabid desire to gain it." I will probably quote this another ten times on this blog.
2. Tavi Gevinson's musings on being attractive (I know, Rookie is annoyingly twee, but she is more self-aware at 15 than I am in my 20s)
3. Ami Angelowicz and Winona Dimeo - 10 Better Body Affirmations for Women
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Binge eating is back
... with a vengeance. Stuff at home has been hard in the last few days so I know why. Fighting this is going to be my battle. I am definitely not at the intuitive stage; instead, I'm back to the delay/preventing bingeing stage. All I can think about is chips or spinach-and-fetta filling (in pastry or calzone maybe?). We only have crappy wholemeal bread in the house, which to me tastes like white bread. I could go up the road to get a sweet potato and lentil mix or I could just make do with whatever we have in the house. I have to just white-knuckle this until I get more time to pay attention to the emotional stuff.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Paradoxes are painful
But the frustrating thing is, I really didn't want this to be about weight loss. I have read weight loss blog after weight loss blog where people showed off what good, new, self-disciplined people they were, only to lapse back a year later. I have read even more blogs where it's pretty clear that their motivation is how awful they feel about being fat. The guilt, the shame, the disgust and self-loathing. I was so happy to be past all of that.
So I vow now that I will never write a blog about my weight loss efforts. I genuinely love food. I love cooking, I love the social aspect of it, I love sharing recipes with mum and my friends, I love the slow ritual of eating something truly delicious, I love eating out, I even love (if we're going to get cliched here) travelling to all parts of the world without leaving my house. I am not going paleo or primal or sugarfree or low-carb unless I am truly medically mandated to, and at present I am not. As before, this is going to be a blog about learning how to deal with emotions in a healthier way. I'm just going to put more of a focus on the health component. To some people, that might read as bullshit. I don't care.
This whole thing about my family member dying has made me think about what I do and don't want in the life I have now. (Most of those contemplations are way too personal for the Internet.) They have no regrets, but if I were to look at their life and change one thing about it for my own, it is that they have spent most of their adult life on the diet yo-yo cycle. Those periods of obesity affected their self-confidence, their happiness, and of course their health. They say that their mother was the same, always regretting her size and feeling that it held her back, wistfully wishing she could squeeze herself into her old outfits.
There is a good chance that my life won't be long either, so I have no desire to follow in their footsteps. I don't want to be on any diet that is temporary in its lifespan. I refuse to feel horrible about my own sense of attractiveness, and to let it affect my personal relationships and self-esteem anymore. As I wrote two posts down, life is too short for that; more specifically, my life is too short for that. I had never felt that I was worth fighting for before, because failure would be the inevitable result. Yet now, finally, the stakes are too high to let apathy dictate the days that will make up the rest of my life.
So I vow now that I will never write a blog about my weight loss efforts. I genuinely love food. I love cooking, I love the social aspect of it, I love sharing recipes with mum and my friends, I love the slow ritual of eating something truly delicious, I love eating out, I even love (if we're going to get cliched here) travelling to all parts of the world without leaving my house. I am not going paleo or primal or sugarfree or low-carb unless I am truly medically mandated to, and at present I am not. As before, this is going to be a blog about learning how to deal with emotions in a healthier way. I'm just going to put more of a focus on the health component. To some people, that might read as bullshit. I don't care.
This whole thing about my family member dying has made me think about what I do and don't want in the life I have now. (Most of those contemplations are way too personal for the Internet.) They have no regrets, but if I were to look at their life and change one thing about it for my own, it is that they have spent most of their adult life on the diet yo-yo cycle. Those periods of obesity affected their self-confidence, their happiness, and of course their health. They say that their mother was the same, always regretting her size and feeling that it held her back, wistfully wishing she could squeeze herself into her old outfits.
There is a good chance that my life won't be long either, so I have no desire to follow in their footsteps. I don't want to be on any diet that is temporary in its lifespan. I refuse to feel horrible about my own sense of attractiveness, and to let it affect my personal relationships and self-esteem anymore. As I wrote two posts down, life is too short for that; more specifically, my life is too short for that. I had never felt that I was worth fighting for before, because failure would be the inevitable result. Yet now, finally, the stakes are too high to let apathy dictate the days that will make up the rest of my life.
HAES and disease: A catch-22
Recently I've been forced to re-evaluate Health At Every Size. I don't dispute that as a slogan it may be true for some people; however, it has emerged that it is not true for me.
In the past I would dismiss arguments about health as a reason for weight loss on the basis of the fact that I am in my twenties and still healthy. Now, the facts are different. A close family member has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, which was triggered by their 25 years of obesity even though they are now in the normal BMI range and at a visibly good weight. This is genetic and the specialist has asked me to lose weight immediately. On top of this is the insulin resistance I have from PCOS which has a strong chance of continuing into full-blown diabetes, and the medication I take to manage PCOS symptoms which increase my risk of the genetic disease even more. Either way, no matter how young or healthy I am, death is staring me in the face.
I discussed this with my therapist, who is naturally reluctant to advocate a non-HAES-based approach. She basically said that I would have to come to my own conclusion. So here is my attempt to reason out a conclusion.
Diets don't work for me. I know from the PCOS diagnosis that the fear drives me to binge eat.
Eating whatever I want won't work for me. It may make me feel better mentally, but certain foods affect my insulin production, and it is my weight rather than my diet that is the problem with the cancer risk. I cannot stay at the weight I am now and be healthy.
This is the approach I am deciding to take:
- Undertaking a sustainable exercise programme that should be lifelong
- Adopting the suggestions made by the nutritionist for PCOS, which mostly involves swapping high-GI foods for lower-GI options, although it doesn't rule anything out
- Making an effort to include vegetables with lunch and dinner
- 'Desensitising' myself to binge foods, including potatoes, chocolate, and baked goods. This will take exactly the same form as the pasta experiment did: eating that food enough so that I physically (and mentally!) get the message that it is not 'banned' or a 'bad' food. This way, I naturally find myself eating less or craving it less. In the short term, this will not help my plans one bit. However, I think it is the only way I can reconcile intuitive eating and a gradual but permanent weight loss - reducing the fear that surrounds certain foods.
- Not focusing on weight loss. No scales, no goals, no calorie or carb counting.
- Fighting the 'diet mentality' where food has a moral value
- Being 'stricter' with intuitive eating. At present I'm doing OK, but if I were truthful with myself, some emotional or non-hunger-based eating does slip in. I know that intuitive eating is NOT an 'eat when hungry, stop when full' diet, but I can't lie to myself.
- Continuing to work on body image and self-acceptance.
This is going to be hard. I can sense resistance in myself at the idea that my chocolate will be "taken away from me". I just have to break that siege mentality and reassure myself that I can have chocolate whenever I want, only if I truly want it. This will take time, but I think it is the only way that I will become healthy - which for me, yes, does mean losing weight. I am sure it will take years, and will be made insurmountably more difficult by the years of painful weight loss scripts playing over and over in my head. In the end though, I am devastated that my family member is not going to be with me for years to come, and I know it would equally devastate my family if the same were to happen to me because I failed to look after myself. HAES at its core is a philosophy of self-care. It is time to give myself the care I deserve and need.
In the past I would dismiss arguments about health as a reason for weight loss on the basis of the fact that I am in my twenties and still healthy. Now, the facts are different. A close family member has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, which was triggered by their 25 years of obesity even though they are now in the normal BMI range and at a visibly good weight. This is genetic and the specialist has asked me to lose weight immediately. On top of this is the insulin resistance I have from PCOS which has a strong chance of continuing into full-blown diabetes, and the medication I take to manage PCOS symptoms which increase my risk of the genetic disease even more. Either way, no matter how young or healthy I am, death is staring me in the face.
I discussed this with my therapist, who is naturally reluctant to advocate a non-HAES-based approach. She basically said that I would have to come to my own conclusion. So here is my attempt to reason out a conclusion.
Diets don't work for me. I know from the PCOS diagnosis that the fear drives me to binge eat.
Eating whatever I want won't work for me. It may make me feel better mentally, but certain foods affect my insulin production, and it is my weight rather than my diet that is the problem with the cancer risk. I cannot stay at the weight I am now and be healthy.
This is the approach I am deciding to take:
- Undertaking a sustainable exercise programme that should be lifelong
- Adopting the suggestions made by the nutritionist for PCOS, which mostly involves swapping high-GI foods for lower-GI options, although it doesn't rule anything out
- Making an effort to include vegetables with lunch and dinner
- 'Desensitising' myself to binge foods, including potatoes, chocolate, and baked goods. This will take exactly the same form as the pasta experiment did: eating that food enough so that I physically (and mentally!) get the message that it is not 'banned' or a 'bad' food. This way, I naturally find myself eating less or craving it less. In the short term, this will not help my plans one bit. However, I think it is the only way I can reconcile intuitive eating and a gradual but permanent weight loss - reducing the fear that surrounds certain foods.
- Not focusing on weight loss. No scales, no goals, no calorie or carb counting.
- Fighting the 'diet mentality' where food has a moral value
- Being 'stricter' with intuitive eating. At present I'm doing OK, but if I were truthful with myself, some emotional or non-hunger-based eating does slip in. I know that intuitive eating is NOT an 'eat when hungry, stop when full' diet, but I can't lie to myself.
- Continuing to work on body image and self-acceptance.
This is going to be hard. I can sense resistance in myself at the idea that my chocolate will be "taken away from me". I just have to break that siege mentality and reassure myself that I can have chocolate whenever I want, only if I truly want it. This will take time, but I think it is the only way that I will become healthy - which for me, yes, does mean losing weight. I am sure it will take years, and will be made insurmountably more difficult by the years of painful weight loss scripts playing over and over in my head. In the end though, I am devastated that my family member is not going to be with me for years to come, and I know it would equally devastate my family if the same were to happen to me because I failed to look after myself. HAES at its core is a philosophy of self-care. It is time to give myself the care I deserve and need.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Continuing with the blog
I don't really feel like writing, but once you start something, I think you need to follow through.
An (ongoing) event has occurred that has drastically changed my life for the worse. My spell of about 2.5 weeks of intuitive eating was broken because I just did not know how to cope. I saw my therapist today and she has given me some tips on how to live and deal with this horror in a way that does not involve binge eating. Unfortunately this event has taken me away from my therapist as I need to move back home with my parents in a different city, but I hope to continue sessions with her by phone for at least the next month. Probably next year when I move cities I will start with another therapist (not because my current one has done anything wrong, on the contrary, but it is an 8 hour round trip between my city and the clinic) who will continue to help me deal with this as well as working on those background issues like anger and body image/self-esteem.
It will be a long process I'm sure, but life is precious and I am just not willing to devote any more time than is necessary to feeling bad about trivial things, treating people poorly, or holding back from life. My own life may not be long but I am determined to make the next few years good ones. It's about quality of life, not length of life.
An (ongoing) event has occurred that has drastically changed my life for the worse. My spell of about 2.5 weeks of intuitive eating was broken because I just did not know how to cope. I saw my therapist today and she has given me some tips on how to live and deal with this horror in a way that does not involve binge eating. Unfortunately this event has taken me away from my therapist as I need to move back home with my parents in a different city, but I hope to continue sessions with her by phone for at least the next month. Probably next year when I move cities I will start with another therapist (not because my current one has done anything wrong, on the contrary, but it is an 8 hour round trip between my city and the clinic) who will continue to help me deal with this as well as working on those background issues like anger and body image/self-esteem.
It will be a long process I'm sure, but life is precious and I am just not willing to devote any more time than is necessary to feeling bad about trivial things, treating people poorly, or holding back from life. My own life may not be long but I am determined to make the next few years good ones. It's about quality of life, not length of life.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Sarah Wilson and binge eating
We need to talk about Sarah Wilson.
For those who aren't familiar with her, Sarah Wilson is a well-known Australian media personality and a former editor of Cosmo magazine who is the face of the wildly popular no-sugar fad. She used to have a column in Sunday Life magazine where she would try 'tips and tricks for daily living' every week and write about them. One of her assignments was to cut out sugar for a week; the concept obviously sat well with her, because she began writing about her attempts to cut out sugar on her personal blog. What started as a one-woman quest quickly burgeoned into an empire of diet plans (sorry, "challenges"), cookbooks, and TV appearances galore, abetted by pseudo-scientific claims endorsed by one man, David Gillespie. Like thousands of other suckers, I avidly followed her blog, snapped up her first cookbook online, and attempted one of her no-sugar challenges. Anyway, long story short, I went to a therapist, realised that all diets are stupid, and stopped reading her blog. The end.
Today I returned to her blog in a fit of procrastination in the vain hope that she might have returned to writing about something other than no-sugar (I like her funny yet gently self-effacing tone, and used to also enjoy her life philosophies before they became extreme), and came across this post: I Ate Sugar. After about two and a half years sugar-free, the poor lady ate two chocolate croissants.
Let me make this clear. She is not a fraud because she ate sugar. Instead, I admire Sarah for writing that piece, because it so clearly illustrates why cutting out food groups or creating rigid rules will never 'cure' us emotionally. Her angle on this fad has always been health rather than weight loss, as she suffers from an autoimmune disease. If she cut out sugary foods purely for this reason, then I don't think she would have a problem. However, lurking under the surface has always been the emotional aspect. She tells us that eating the croissants was a deeply ingrained way of dealing with strong emotions, as it is for so many of us. She acknowledges in her books that one of her motivations for cutting out sugar was to feel "cool" around sweets, because she felt out of control around them. Instead of working through these emotions, she has tried to control the food. This is a common strategy for those of us with disordered eating. Yet she has never recognised it as such.
The alarm bells start to ring when she speaks of being overwhelmed by "vile guilt" about eating the croissants. As many people commented on the blog piece, this behaviour was familiar to them as binge eaters or people with disordered eating. Rather than allowing herself to feel the emotions fully, or even eating the croissants and then sitting with those emotions, binge eating for Sarah did what it always does- redirects the focus from the emotions to the food. She says that it took her all day to feel 'normal' again. That suggests that maybe her definition of normal is too tightly controlled, either in terms of food or emotionally.
The real problem is not Sarah's personal struggle, but that she has a large readership of people who will read this piece and take from it that the response to a binge should be 'getting back on the horse' to avoid future dieting failure. Some of the comments I read were lovely messages on nurturing the body and soul and treating oneself with love and compassion. However, many others spoke of their guilt and frustration of their inability to "conquer" sugar and carbs, "failing" at diets, and even binge eating. One commenter wrote of her failure to adhere to the sugarfree regime, "Stress has stopped me from being focused". It has probably never occurred to her that the stress is what she should be focusing on, not the diet. Furthermore, by adopting aforementioned pseudo-science to claim that sugar is as addictive as cocaine (remember when carbs were the enemy? Or fat?), Sarah has moralised food and so moralised the eater of food. If you follow the diet, you are good. If you slip up and eat cake, you are bad.
Ultimately, I can sit here on my high horse and feel smug that Sarah and her readers are dumb for believing that cutting out a food group will end all their worries, but I struggle just as much as they do. Sarah's public persona is not that of someone who propagates lies to make a quick buck; I am sure that she wants an end to the binge eating/restricting cycle as much as I or her readers do. However, this has convinced me more than ever that restrictions of any type will not ease your emotional pain. Dieting truly does not make you happy, because a binge is always just one strong emotion anyway. If you "slip up", either from intuitive eating or otherwise, treat yourself with kindness and compassion. At the end of the day, you are only human.
For those who aren't familiar with her, Sarah Wilson is a well-known Australian media personality and a former editor of Cosmo magazine who is the face of the wildly popular no-sugar fad. She used to have a column in Sunday Life magazine where she would try 'tips and tricks for daily living' every week and write about them. One of her assignments was to cut out sugar for a week; the concept obviously sat well with her, because she began writing about her attempts to cut out sugar on her personal blog. What started as a one-woman quest quickly burgeoned into an empire of diet plans (sorry, "challenges"), cookbooks, and TV appearances galore, abetted by pseudo-scientific claims endorsed by one man, David Gillespie. Like thousands of other suckers, I avidly followed her blog, snapped up her first cookbook online, and attempted one of her no-sugar challenges. Anyway, long story short, I went to a therapist, realised that all diets are stupid, and stopped reading her blog. The end.
Today I returned to her blog in a fit of procrastination in the vain hope that she might have returned to writing about something other than no-sugar (I like her funny yet gently self-effacing tone, and used to also enjoy her life philosophies before they became extreme), and came across this post: I Ate Sugar. After about two and a half years sugar-free, the poor lady ate two chocolate croissants.
Let me make this clear. She is not a fraud because she ate sugar. Instead, I admire Sarah for writing that piece, because it so clearly illustrates why cutting out food groups or creating rigid rules will never 'cure' us emotionally. Her angle on this fad has always been health rather than weight loss, as she suffers from an autoimmune disease. If she cut out sugary foods purely for this reason, then I don't think she would have a problem. However, lurking under the surface has always been the emotional aspect. She tells us that eating the croissants was a deeply ingrained way of dealing with strong emotions, as it is for so many of us. She acknowledges in her books that one of her motivations for cutting out sugar was to feel "cool" around sweets, because she felt out of control around them. Instead of working through these emotions, she has tried to control the food. This is a common strategy for those of us with disordered eating. Yet she has never recognised it as such.
The alarm bells start to ring when she speaks of being overwhelmed by "vile guilt" about eating the croissants. As many people commented on the blog piece, this behaviour was familiar to them as binge eaters or people with disordered eating. Rather than allowing herself to feel the emotions fully, or even eating the croissants and then sitting with those emotions, binge eating for Sarah did what it always does- redirects the focus from the emotions to the food. She says that it took her all day to feel 'normal' again. That suggests that maybe her definition of normal is too tightly controlled, either in terms of food or emotionally.
The real problem is not Sarah's personal struggle, but that she has a large readership of people who will read this piece and take from it that the response to a binge should be 'getting back on the horse' to avoid future dieting failure. Some of the comments I read were lovely messages on nurturing the body and soul and treating oneself with love and compassion. However, many others spoke of their guilt and frustration of their inability to "conquer" sugar and carbs, "failing" at diets, and even binge eating. One commenter wrote of her failure to adhere to the sugarfree regime, "Stress has stopped me from being focused". It has probably never occurred to her that the stress is what she should be focusing on, not the diet. Furthermore, by adopting aforementioned pseudo-science to claim that sugar is as addictive as cocaine (remember when carbs were the enemy? Or fat?), Sarah has moralised food and so moralised the eater of food. If you follow the diet, you are good. If you slip up and eat cake, you are bad.
Ultimately, I can sit here on my high horse and feel smug that Sarah and her readers are dumb for believing that cutting out a food group will end all their worries, but I struggle just as much as they do. Sarah's public persona is not that of someone who propagates lies to make a quick buck; I am sure that she wants an end to the binge eating/restricting cycle as much as I or her readers do. However, this has convinced me more than ever that restrictions of any type will not ease your emotional pain. Dieting truly does not make you happy, because a binge is always just one strong emotion anyway. If you "slip up", either from intuitive eating or otherwise, treat yourself with kindness and compassion. At the end of the day, you are only human.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Body image, part two: Action
I've been mostly ticking the intuitive eating box, and mostly ticking the 'feel your emotions, don't eat them' box. However I am not doing ok on the self-esteem/body image front. I suppose it's a sign of progress that I am even thinking about body image as a problem instead of a hilariously ridiculous concept propagated in preteen magazines, but I still feel frustrated and upset.
Given that I only have a month left with my therapist, I think body image is something I have to fix myself, using the tools I've been taught. I realise this is going to be much harder than it looks, but gotta give it a stab! Summarised from this fantastic document:
Body image is a part of self-esteem. Having poor body image will contribute to having low self-esteem, meaning that you will feel worse about yourself overall. (Self-esteem is just how you feel about yourself.)
Body image has four components:
- The way you see yourself and your body (perceptual)
- The way you feel about how you look (affective)
- The thoughts and beliefs you feel about your body (cognitive)
- The things you do in relation to how you look (behavioural)
- Cognitive
- Working out what core beliefs I have in regards to my body
- Reframing those beliefs (focusing on the positives of my body and my skills beyond my body; setting goals around health and wellbeing rather than weight)
- Behavioural
- Positive self-talk
- Avoiding comparing myself to other people
- Avoiding body images 'triggers' as much as possible (I can't avoid shopping!)
P.S. I went out with my friend today. She commented on "massive" the dish I'd ordered was a couple of times (she wasn't eating at all), but otherwise left it at that luckily.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Friends and PCOS
I am a little bit worried about seeing one of my friends. Most of my friends are pretty good with their body image, or don't talk about these things with me, but one has some issues. She always comments on other people's bodies and claims that various acquaintances have an eating disorder (a bit of 'projecting'), and she is very ostentatious about eating certain foods that she perceives as 'healthful', or eating particular quantities.
I strongly dislike drawing attention to myself on the topic of food. I haven't really wanted to speak to my friends about the GI thing, but I did mention it to some friends when I was first diagnosed about a year ago.
I don't think I've written about that yet. Basically what happened was I watched a TV show about PCOS in late 2010 and thought that the symptoms sounded like mine when I was 15, but I was overseas and couldn't really do anything about it. I vowed to see a doctor when I returned home to Australia in September 2012. Meanwhile, in July 2012 I stopped taking the contraceptive pill, which I had been using to battle the acne I thought was caused by teenage hormones, as I assumed that after six years I didn't need it anymore. Wrong. The acne returned straight away, along with that thick coarse body hair. However, my newly re-frizzy hair also started falling out (much to my distress), my period stopped completely, I couldn't lose weight despite following a very strict diet and working out three to five days a week, and my moods swung dramatically. It was a pretty bad few months. I cried a lot for no reason whatsoever, which frustrated me even more.
It took me ages to get the incompetent GPs at my local bulk-billing clinic to get me a referral, and then I had to wait two and a half months to get an appointment with the specialist. As mentioned in the last post, she is the loveliest lady ever, and really knows what she is doing. She diagnosed me correctly, performed surgery on me to make me healthy again after not menstruating for six months, and then told me to come back in to see her. In the meantime, she had mentioned that there was no cure for PCOS, but weight loss on a low GI diet was recommended. I was supposed to go back to see her, but a week later I was due to move cities for my final year of university, and so thought I could manage it on my own.
Wrong again. The mistake I made was not booking an appointment with a nutritionist specialising in PCOS straight away. Instead, I just Googled 'low GI diet'. Protip: the Internet is full of batshit insane dieters with fully-fledged eating disorders disguised as paleo dedication. What I took away from that is that carbs are bad, and in order to ever get healthy, I would have to go on yet another low-carb diet. As previously discussed, low-carb diets are my binge kryptonite, and are guaranteed to send me crazy within 30 minutes of embarking on one. Needless to say, the first half of this year was one giant daily swing from no-carb no-sugar to miserably eating cake, convinced that not only was I a failure, but I would be a sick diabetic infertile failure (diabetes and infertility being the two major issues to come out of untreated PCOS).
In a way, this extra layer of misery was the final push I needed to start seeing a therapist. One of the first things therapists give you is a generic meal plan to try and regulate your eating mechanically and get you off the diet/binge cycle. My therapist acknowledged that she didn't know much about PCOS and gave me the name of two nutritionists. I resisted for about two months, convinced that I would have my precious carbs and chocolates taken away from me after being allowed to eat them in the intuitive eating programme.
Finally, unwillingly, I trudged off to see one. She was also a very nice lady, but I was firm with her: I had NO interest in knowing what my weight was, I was NOT there for weight loss, I would NOT be cutting out anything that I had been given in my meal plan because a clinical psychologist gave it to me and what would you know you're only a dietitian. Luckily for me, she was also a very kind and tolerant lady. Even more luckily for me, carbs turned out to be the most important food group for PCOS (which requires a low-GI way of eating). I was taught that a well-balanced meal is about half non-starchy vegetable, a quarter protein, and a quarter lower-GI carbohydrate, but even a third of each would be fine.
All my fears were laid to rest. Nothing was being cut out, everything was on the menu. My way of eating wasn't going to result in a loss of limbs. There are certain foods that are high GI and so are processed quickly (e.g. potatoes, bagels, watermelon, polenta, most white breads, jasmine rice), but you don't have to cut them out, just pair them with low-GI proteins and carbohydrates, or swap them for lower-GI options when possible. Basmati rice was low-GI. My favourite bread was low-GI. Rice noodles were low-GI. Pumpkin's GI rating was pretty moderate. Desserts of all varieties were allowed in small doses, just as my therapist had told me. Likewise, the odd serving of deep-fried chips was not going to close my womb forever. I could breathe again.
Anyway, this brings me back to my social fear. This one friend always makes a big deal of people's dietary restrictions, whether they're real or not. When planning to catch up she made a point of saying that we could go to a place that was 'dairy free' or 'gluten free' - knowing that I don't have a problem with gluten or dairy. In reality it will probably be fine, I just don't want to have to deal with it at all or have it raised. I don't want to have to deal with her unacknowledged issues when I have my own (does that make me a terrible friend?), I either want her to work her problems out - with my support - or for her to stop mentioning these things. She is a good friend otherwise and I don't have any other problems with her, so I doubt I will ever mention this. It's just something to have to deal with.
I don't really feel this way with other friends, it's just her. For example, another friend was complaining the other day about how preparing and planning healthy food takes a lot of time she doesn't have and her current living situation makes it hard for her to eat what she wants. Even though this friend is not fat and doesn't have disordered eating, I had no problem sympathising with her and was totally fine to listen to her. I think it's the lack of honesty in the first friend that irks me a bit; if she pointed out her own issues with food just once then I could understand why she is so critical of others.
I also don't want to have to re-explain low-GI to the people I'd originally (mistakenly) explained it to as low-carb. To be honest none of my other friends will even care as they only care about my wellbeing, so this fear is a bit irrational, but I'm just going to sit with it nonetheless.
I strongly dislike drawing attention to myself on the topic of food. I haven't really wanted to speak to my friends about the GI thing, but I did mention it to some friends when I was first diagnosed about a year ago.
I don't think I've written about that yet. Basically what happened was I watched a TV show about PCOS in late 2010 and thought that the symptoms sounded like mine when I was 15, but I was overseas and couldn't really do anything about it. I vowed to see a doctor when I returned home to Australia in September 2012. Meanwhile, in July 2012 I stopped taking the contraceptive pill, which I had been using to battle the acne I thought was caused by teenage hormones, as I assumed that after six years I didn't need it anymore. Wrong. The acne returned straight away, along with that thick coarse body hair. However, my newly re-frizzy hair also started falling out (much to my distress), my period stopped completely, I couldn't lose weight despite following a very strict diet and working out three to five days a week, and my moods swung dramatically. It was a pretty bad few months. I cried a lot for no reason whatsoever, which frustrated me even more.
It took me ages to get the incompetent GPs at my local bulk-billing clinic to get me a referral, and then I had to wait two and a half months to get an appointment with the specialist. As mentioned in the last post, she is the loveliest lady ever, and really knows what she is doing. She diagnosed me correctly, performed surgery on me to make me healthy again after not menstruating for six months, and then told me to come back in to see her. In the meantime, she had mentioned that there was no cure for PCOS, but weight loss on a low GI diet was recommended. I was supposed to go back to see her, but a week later I was due to move cities for my final year of university, and so thought I could manage it on my own.
Wrong again. The mistake I made was not booking an appointment with a nutritionist specialising in PCOS straight away. Instead, I just Googled 'low GI diet'. Protip: the Internet is full of batshit insane dieters with fully-fledged eating disorders disguised as paleo dedication. What I took away from that is that carbs are bad, and in order to ever get healthy, I would have to go on yet another low-carb diet. As previously discussed, low-carb diets are my binge kryptonite, and are guaranteed to send me crazy within 30 minutes of embarking on one. Needless to say, the first half of this year was one giant daily swing from no-carb no-sugar to miserably eating cake, convinced that not only was I a failure, but I would be a sick diabetic infertile failure (diabetes and infertility being the two major issues to come out of untreated PCOS).
In a way, this extra layer of misery was the final push I needed to start seeing a therapist. One of the first things therapists give you is a generic meal plan to try and regulate your eating mechanically and get you off the diet/binge cycle. My therapist acknowledged that she didn't know much about PCOS and gave me the name of two nutritionists. I resisted for about two months, convinced that I would have my precious carbs and chocolates taken away from me after being allowed to eat them in the intuitive eating programme.
Finally, unwillingly, I trudged off to see one. She was also a very nice lady, but I was firm with her: I had NO interest in knowing what my weight was, I was NOT there for weight loss, I would NOT be cutting out anything that I had been given in my meal plan because a clinical psychologist gave it to me and what would you know you're only a dietitian. Luckily for me, she was also a very kind and tolerant lady. Even more luckily for me, carbs turned out to be the most important food group for PCOS (which requires a low-GI way of eating). I was taught that a well-balanced meal is about half non-starchy vegetable, a quarter protein, and a quarter lower-GI carbohydrate, but even a third of each would be fine.
All my fears were laid to rest. Nothing was being cut out, everything was on the menu. My way of eating wasn't going to result in a loss of limbs. There are certain foods that are high GI and so are processed quickly (e.g. potatoes, bagels, watermelon, polenta, most white breads, jasmine rice), but you don't have to cut them out, just pair them with low-GI proteins and carbohydrates, or swap them for lower-GI options when possible. Basmati rice was low-GI. My favourite bread was low-GI. Rice noodles were low-GI. Pumpkin's GI rating was pretty moderate. Desserts of all varieties were allowed in small doses, just as my therapist had told me. Likewise, the odd serving of deep-fried chips was not going to close my womb forever. I could breathe again.
Anyway, this brings me back to my social fear. This one friend always makes a big deal of people's dietary restrictions, whether they're real or not. When planning to catch up she made a point of saying that we could go to a place that was 'dairy free' or 'gluten free' - knowing that I don't have a problem with gluten or dairy. In reality it will probably be fine, I just don't want to have to deal with it at all or have it raised. I don't want to have to deal with her unacknowledged issues when I have my own (does that make me a terrible friend?), I either want her to work her problems out - with my support - or for her to stop mentioning these things. She is a good friend otherwise and I don't have any other problems with her, so I doubt I will ever mention this. It's just something to have to deal with.
I don't really feel this way with other friends, it's just her. For example, another friend was complaining the other day about how preparing and planning healthy food takes a lot of time she doesn't have and her current living situation makes it hard for her to eat what she wants. Even though this friend is not fat and doesn't have disordered eating, I had no problem sympathising with her and was totally fine to listen to her. I think it's the lack of honesty in the first friend that irks me a bit; if she pointed out her own issues with food just once then I could understand why she is so critical of others.
I also don't want to have to re-explain low-GI to the people I'd originally (mistakenly) explained it to as low-carb. To be honest none of my other friends will even care as they only care about my wellbeing, so this fear is a bit irrational, but I'm just going to sit with it nonetheless.
Disconnected thoughts
These last few days have been weird. In terms of eating, I've felt pretty intuitive, not overthinking things. I've turned down so many things, just because I knew that I didn't feel like it. However, today I passed a bakery that had been recommended to me, they had sample brownies, and I bought one. I wasn't hungry at that time, so I waited until I felt like a snack, and then I ate it. But I still feel bad, because a brownie is not an ideal snack nor one that people should eat every day. Have I failed somehow?
I visited my doctor, who is a leading PCOS specialist in this city. I was so stressed that she was going to berate me for not losing weight, but she was so nice and gentle that I came out feeling a lot better. I haven't seen my therapist in two weeks because she was sick and that made me anxious, but I think I'll be OK. I have been bursting to see her, feeling like a raw nerve, or like I've been broken down and am awaiting being built back up. I've had other moments of anxiety, comparing myself to others, feeling like I've lost the race. I feel the anxiety and move on. Kind of.
I'm at my parents' home for the next week. Weight and food is a touchy topic here and that is frustrating to deal with, even though I love being here otherwise. One family member has strong views that are totally incorrect - weight loss is everything etc, fat people are undisciplined etc etc, stop eating etc etc etc and refuse to see that what they are doing is shaming. I guess in my life I'm going to encounter a lot of people like this, so there's nothing I can do. I just wish there was a way I could educate people. There probably is, I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Today has been weird, too. I felt pretty and stared at my reflection constantly, coquettishly winking at myself. Surely that's doing body acceptance wrong; if I enjoy my beauty, then I will hurt ten times more tomorrow when it is gone. (Also, if I value beauty, then I have no value.) My beauty is fleeting and arbitrary, depending on the light and makeup and hair and day and hour. I've come to realise how often I look at myself, with baited breath, holding myself in position after position trying to will myself thin. Even though I have almost always been fat, I have never accepted myself as such. It sounds stupid but I would feel scared that people would 'discover' that I was fat if I wore a certain outfit. Now I know that I am fat, and I have no other choice but to accept that reality and own it.
Finally, I feel guilty for not exercising and practicing 10min mindfulness regularly. I know that exercise is part of Health At Every Size, and one of the intuitive eating principles. My therapist recommends it, my doctor recommends it. I love running and it always makes me feel better. Sometimes I'm not fighting against my emotional issues, I'm fighting against my laziness, and I always know the difference.
I shouldn't be dumping this stuff on the internet, but it's the easiest avenue for me, so as long as people don't find out that I'm writing here.
I visited my doctor, who is a leading PCOS specialist in this city. I was so stressed that she was going to berate me for not losing weight, but she was so nice and gentle that I came out feeling a lot better. I haven't seen my therapist in two weeks because she was sick and that made me anxious, but I think I'll be OK. I have been bursting to see her, feeling like a raw nerve, or like I've been broken down and am awaiting being built back up. I've had other moments of anxiety, comparing myself to others, feeling like I've lost the race. I feel the anxiety and move on. Kind of.
I'm at my parents' home for the next week. Weight and food is a touchy topic here and that is frustrating to deal with, even though I love being here otherwise. One family member has strong views that are totally incorrect - weight loss is everything etc, fat people are undisciplined etc etc, stop eating etc etc etc and refuse to see that what they are doing is shaming. I guess in my life I'm going to encounter a lot of people like this, so there's nothing I can do. I just wish there was a way I could educate people. There probably is, I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Today has been weird, too. I felt pretty and stared at my reflection constantly, coquettishly winking at myself. Surely that's doing body acceptance wrong; if I enjoy my beauty, then I will hurt ten times more tomorrow when it is gone. (Also, if I value beauty, then I have no value.) My beauty is fleeting and arbitrary, depending on the light and makeup and hair and day and hour. I've come to realise how often I look at myself, with baited breath, holding myself in position after position trying to will myself thin. Even though I have almost always been fat, I have never accepted myself as such. It sounds stupid but I would feel scared that people would 'discover' that I was fat if I wore a certain outfit. Now I know that I am fat, and I have no other choice but to accept that reality and own it.
Finally, I feel guilty for not exercising and practicing 10min mindfulness regularly. I know that exercise is part of Health At Every Size, and one of the intuitive eating principles. My therapist recommends it, my doctor recommends it. I love running and it always makes me feel better. Sometimes I'm not fighting against my emotional issues, I'm fighting against my laziness, and I always know the difference.
I shouldn't be dumping this stuff on the internet, but it's the easiest avenue for me, so as long as people don't find out that I'm writing here.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Body image
Bit annoyed at myself today. I really craved mud cake after someone sent me a picture of one they made, so I thought I'd pop down to the local bakery (yes, the same one that produced the crappy caramel slice) as I've seen one they have in the window. Impulsively, I bought a croissant as well (I have a real problem with impulsivity). Surprise surprise... it was absolutely terrible. I took a few bites then threw the rest in the bin. The croissant was basically just white bread, but I did end up eating it with jam, which is what frustrates me. The jam made me feel a bit sickly. It definitely wasn't a binge, and for that I feel grateful and relatively relaxed about it. But still, would be better if I didn't do that.
Body image
In the last year or so, I've completely repressed thoughts about what I look like because it just distressed me too much. I was in a place where everyone was obsessed with their appearance and dieting and beauty, and the girls were so beautiful that it crushed me. Meanwhile my weight was shooting up, my skin was awful, and my hair had been mutilated in a horrible haircut.
I seem to read two perspectives. One says that everyone is beautiful and everyone deserves to feel beautiful. The other says that beauty is an outdated social construct and we should ignore it altogether. If I didn't have to attract a partner I think I could live pretty happily on either of those principles. However, the reality is that eventually I have to find someone and get married, and to do that I have to attract a partner, and to do that I have to think about my own physical attractiveness.
I've started to try and look through the fat acceptance movement, but it all seems to be focused on internal confidence. That's great, but then I get smacked in the face by real life: friends who make fun of fat girls, documentaries on online dating that tell us that women fear meeting a serial killer whilst men fear meeting a fat girl, TV show after TV show makes it clear that the way I look is viewed as disgusting. Comments I read claim that if I were just more confident, just more bubbly and outgoing, someone would be willing to look past my size. That clashes strongly with my experience, where men are only willing to have anything to do with me as a last resort because they are desperate.
I am not morbidly obese, but fat enough that I can't get away with being cute or chubby or curvy, about 30kg above my set weight. And I'm not one of those girls whose fat squeezes itself in ways that make their stomachs a bit flatter and their busts a bit bigger, I am fat all over, from a round high stomach to wobby arms to thighs that stick together and a double chin. To be honest, when I don't have to be accountable to anyone, I feel comfortable. I don't care about any of these things, and if anything I like my sturdy legs and the arms that I sometimes nap on. Furthermore, I'm not ugly; apart from my weight I am probably quite pretty. I'm vain about that sometimes, especially when by myself.
I don't really know what to do. I suppose there's nothing I can do other than improve my own self-confidence and kind of ignore this whole issue. I feel a bit sad though that I have to miss out on what my other friends get to enjoy. Part of me wants to hope that I'm being self-pitying and that I'll meet someone who couldn't care less about what I look like, but it feels like false hope.
But you know, I'm watching a story on TV now about a person who suffers from a disability that affects his legs and created facial deformities, who has completely gotten past all that through the strength of his personality alone. It makes me feel embarrassed to have such petty concerns. Also, he had no problem finding a partner, so maybe I need to just chill out and believe people who say that confidence and being a nice person is the most important thing.
Body image
In the last year or so, I've completely repressed thoughts about what I look like because it just distressed me too much. I was in a place where everyone was obsessed with their appearance and dieting and beauty, and the girls were so beautiful that it crushed me. Meanwhile my weight was shooting up, my skin was awful, and my hair had been mutilated in a horrible haircut.
I seem to read two perspectives. One says that everyone is beautiful and everyone deserves to feel beautiful. The other says that beauty is an outdated social construct and we should ignore it altogether. If I didn't have to attract a partner I think I could live pretty happily on either of those principles. However, the reality is that eventually I have to find someone and get married, and to do that I have to attract a partner, and to do that I have to think about my own physical attractiveness.
I've started to try and look through the fat acceptance movement, but it all seems to be focused on internal confidence. That's great, but then I get smacked in the face by real life: friends who make fun of fat girls, documentaries on online dating that tell us that women fear meeting a serial killer whilst men fear meeting a fat girl, TV show after TV show makes it clear that the way I look is viewed as disgusting. Comments I read claim that if I were just more confident, just more bubbly and outgoing, someone would be willing to look past my size. That clashes strongly with my experience, where men are only willing to have anything to do with me as a last resort because they are desperate.
I am not morbidly obese, but fat enough that I can't get away with being cute or chubby or curvy, about 30kg above my set weight. And I'm not one of those girls whose fat squeezes itself in ways that make their stomachs a bit flatter and their busts a bit bigger, I am fat all over, from a round high stomach to wobby arms to thighs that stick together and a double chin. To be honest, when I don't have to be accountable to anyone, I feel comfortable. I don't care about any of these things, and if anything I like my sturdy legs and the arms that I sometimes nap on. Furthermore, I'm not ugly; apart from my weight I am probably quite pretty. I'm vain about that sometimes, especially when by myself.
I don't really know what to do. I suppose there's nothing I can do other than improve my own self-confidence and kind of ignore this whole issue. I feel a bit sad though that I have to miss out on what my other friends get to enjoy. Part of me wants to hope that I'm being self-pitying and that I'll meet someone who couldn't care less about what I look like, but it feels like false hope.
But you know, I'm watching a story on TV now about a person who suffers from a disability that affects his legs and created facial deformities, who has completely gotten past all that through the strength of his personality alone. It makes me feel embarrassed to have such petty concerns. Also, he had no problem finding a partner, so maybe I need to just chill out and believe people who say that confidence and being a nice person is the most important thing.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
BPD
I've decided to add some blogs about borderline personality disorder to my blogroll. I thankfully don't have BPD, but I can relate to some problems that sufferers of BPD have with emotional regulation and difficulty in personal relationships, and it is helpful for me to see how they deal with these problems.
Friday, September 13, 2013
TV shows
I used to devour TV shows to do with weight loss. Not so much The Biggest Loser - even then I felt uncomfortable at the abuse and shaming of contestants - but the pseudo-medical shows of the type usually aired on the Lifestyle Channel. Even when not on a diet, I would watch these shows in the hope that they could give me tips on how to lose weight, or better yet the motivation to do so. These shows inevitably follow the same format, no matter their angle: the fat person is shown stuffing rubbish into their mouths; they are confronted about the way in which they are ruining their health; they cry, chins wobbling; they go on some sort of gruelling diet and exercise regime; they are pictured beaming ten weeks later, a few kilos down, with soft strings playing in the background. This was a few years ago - I haven't had a TV for the better part of five years, and anyway I've lost my appetite for the MTV trash shows and cooking shows I used to love.
A few days ago I started flicking around again to see what's on, probably for the first time since I started therapy three months ago. What really struck me is how many shows there are now specifically on the topic of weight and obesity. Not just on Lifestyle, whose three channels (for home repairs, food, and "health") are a perfect trifecta for guilt-tripping women, but also on commercial TV and public TV. Comedy channels, documentaries, the politics channel, different news streams, you name it and they're fat-shaming. More often than not, I roll my eyes and move on. But the proliferation of these pseudo-medical shows really caught my attention. There are more of them, and they are all focused on one task: shaming fat.
What set me off yesterday was a show on ABC2 on mothers' obsessions. They covered a broad range of obsessions: exercise, compulsive eating, surgery, shopping addictions, "partying", but with such shaming and with such regressive views on what the role of a 'mother' should be (nurturing stay-at-home role models, apparently) that I ended the hour absolutely infuriated. Yes, many of these women had addictions, and their relationship with their teenage daughters suffered for it. But instead of showing us more about the therapy, an exploration of the underlying issues behind their disorders, and tips on how to counter their obsessions, you had "psychologists" berating these women with a smug tough-love approach for being silly enough to have a disorder in the first place. The only time self-esteem was raised was with the woman who controlled her daughter's weight because she hated herself, and even that was cursory, ending in a shot of the lady taking photos of the sea to show her loving herself (???). The fat woman was simply told to lose weight, with one of the fake psychologists commenting condescendingly that she needed self-control. The lady who hadn't set firm enough boundaries with her 16yo was slut-shamed and told that she was 'sick' for pursuing younger men and that she needed to stay home (would this EVER be said to a man? The woman was 34!). The shopping addict barely even got therapy, just a telling-off from her daughter. (There were also weird racial elements to the show, with black therapists used for black families and vice versa - do you think the black families are too stupid to understand standard American English or what?)
How hard is it to understand? If disorders were just a case of 'stop eating so much' or 'stop buying so many clothes' or 'exercise moderately', then we wouldn't have these societal (and public policy) problems. It's true that not every fat person has an eating disorder, but many do, and spending millions telling them to eat less and jog three times a week is akin to throwing taxpayers' money in the bin. Trying to shame fat people thin just multiplies the number of fat people in the population. In my view, the only way to successfully combat the so-called crisis (more on that later) is through a combination of information on basic nutrition principles and mental health therapy, even group therapy. I understand the frustrations of public policymakers, particularly given the fact that such individual treatments are costly and not guaranteed to work, but they must understand that the current approach isn't working either.
Of course, discourse on mental health in this country is woeful as a whole, so I'm not optimistic about the chances of changing our national discourse on obesity. But here's what I would see in my dream world:
A few days ago I started flicking around again to see what's on, probably for the first time since I started therapy three months ago. What really struck me is how many shows there are now specifically on the topic of weight and obesity. Not just on Lifestyle, whose three channels (for home repairs, food, and "health") are a perfect trifecta for guilt-tripping women, but also on commercial TV and public TV. Comedy channels, documentaries, the politics channel, different news streams, you name it and they're fat-shaming. More often than not, I roll my eyes and move on. But the proliferation of these pseudo-medical shows really caught my attention. There are more of them, and they are all focused on one task: shaming fat.
What set me off yesterday was a show on ABC2 on mothers' obsessions. They covered a broad range of obsessions: exercise, compulsive eating, surgery, shopping addictions, "partying", but with such shaming and with such regressive views on what the role of a 'mother' should be (nurturing stay-at-home role models, apparently) that I ended the hour absolutely infuriated. Yes, many of these women had addictions, and their relationship with their teenage daughters suffered for it. But instead of showing us more about the therapy, an exploration of the underlying issues behind their disorders, and tips on how to counter their obsessions, you had "psychologists" berating these women with a smug tough-love approach for being silly enough to have a disorder in the first place. The only time self-esteem was raised was with the woman who controlled her daughter's weight because she hated herself, and even that was cursory, ending in a shot of the lady taking photos of the sea to show her loving herself (???). The fat woman was simply told to lose weight, with one of the fake psychologists commenting condescendingly that she needed self-control. The lady who hadn't set firm enough boundaries with her 16yo was slut-shamed and told that she was 'sick' for pursuing younger men and that she needed to stay home (would this EVER be said to a man? The woman was 34!). The shopping addict barely even got therapy, just a telling-off from her daughter. (There were also weird racial elements to the show, with black therapists used for black families and vice versa - do you think the black families are too stupid to understand standard American English or what?)
How hard is it to understand? If disorders were just a case of 'stop eating so much' or 'stop buying so many clothes' or 'exercise moderately', then we wouldn't have these societal (and public policy) problems. It's true that not every fat person has an eating disorder, but many do, and spending millions telling them to eat less and jog three times a week is akin to throwing taxpayers' money in the bin. Trying to shame fat people thin just multiplies the number of fat people in the population. In my view, the only way to successfully combat the so-called crisis (more on that later) is through a combination of information on basic nutrition principles and mental health therapy, even group therapy. I understand the frustrations of public policymakers, particularly given the fact that such individual treatments are costly and not guaranteed to work, but they must understand that the current approach isn't working either.
Of course, discourse on mental health in this country is woeful as a whole, so I'm not optimistic about the chances of changing our national discourse on obesity. But here's what I would see in my dream world:
- Explicit emotional education in kindergartens and primary schools - identifying what emotions are and how we deal with them, not quashing them
- Positive body image education in schools (BMI letters for 4yos show that we're moving in the complete opposite direction)
- Nutrition education at schools that doesn't rely on shame or guilt
- A true emphasis on 'health at every size', and education of medical practitioners to this end
- Easier access to subsidised mental health care/more subsidised mental health care
- Campaigns to end the social stigma surrounding fat, from both a society and a state level
- Campaigns to end the social stigma surrounding mental illness and disorders in general!
- (A complete change in culture that ends the sexualisation and objectification of women, and the stereotype of the stoic strong male from whom crying is weakness...)
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Also, whilst the pasta experiment might be going well, the caramel slice experiment didn't go so well. As I had suspected, it was not delicious. However, then I felt annoyed that my dessert for the night had been wasted on something not delicious. Then I ate the rest of the slice, still annoyed. I had been mulling over some other things that were worrying/irking me, and in the end it led to me eating 2 rows of Top Deck and a row of Kit Kat - not the biggest crisis, but I am still a bit frustrated. As for so many other people, sugary things have traditionally been my kryptonite, and it is harder for me to judge intuitively as to whether I want them or not. I am STILL stuck in this gleeful 'wheeee I'm allowed to eat chocolate!!' phase. But that's OK, de-powering one food at a time.
Fat is a Feminist Issue
When I incidentally lost a kilo or two and realised that my joy at being on the path to weight loss was matched by sheer terror, my therapist recommended that I read Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach. Written in 1978, it is considered a classic in the field of intuitive eating literature. The Kindle version bundles together the book and the followup self-help guide that she wrote in 1981; I am yet to start doing the self-help exercises, but they look tremendously valuable.
The premise
Much of what Orbach writes about is familiar to us now, though it was revolutionary at the time. Diets don't work, you must learn to love yourself and accept your body shape, etc. However, she has a strong emphasis on the social and cultural dimension of why women become compulsive overeaters or binge eaters, and believes that women will never overcome their disorders until they understand the function(s) that their fat has for them. (For example, desexualises, reduces competition, projects an image of friendliness, etc.) These function(s) are usually subconscious, so when the compulsive overeater brings them to consciousness, she has a much better chance of reframing those thoughts and challenging them; overcoming them is not necessary, as we are human after all! She provides a number of exercises (devised in the context of her group therapy sessions) to help readers understand what function their fat might play.
Outdated
Written 35 years ago, many of the social inequalities that Orbach writes about are not particularly relevant to society today. Orbach was writing at a time that the first couple of generations of women were entering the workforce and facing discrimination in the workplace, and many of her analyses relate to rebellion against male oppression or the expectation that a woman's primary role is that of homemaker and caretaker. It also relies somewhat on outdated psychological concepts that are reminiscent of something Freud might write - I'm glad that psychology has moved on since then!
... or is it?
In saying that, there are still many disparities between men and women, and in 2013 the expectation that women be either sexualised or invisible is still insidiously pervasive in our society. I personally found that some of what she wrote about fat as a way to desexualise the self 'clicked', and I look forward to completing her exercises and work out exactly what my fears about sexuality are. I am cringing at even having to write the word sexuality, so they are definitely there.
Also, not all of these fears relate to men or sex. I related to a section where she wrote about how intensely competitive our society is, and how fat can be a way to appear non-threatening and 'duck under the wave'. She also wrote about fat in the context of particular difficult food-oriented relationships like mother-daughter bond, which doesn't relate so much to me but might ring a bell for others.
In general, I am somebody who tends to roll their eyes at commentators who blame eating disorders on socio-cultural malaise ("the media! the media!"). I can't say that I look at celebrities and long for their Photoshopped abs; instead I judge myself based on my peers, whose bodies are very much real. I suppose it's true that as a young girl I consumed images of beauty, but that's a topic for another day. In any case, Orbach's exploration of social influences on fat and eating disorders is much more sophisticated than that. Though parts of the book may not be relevant to you, either from being a product of its time or because it also discusses anorexia, I would highly recommend reading it. It has provoked me to start exploring some of the fears around weight loss that I didn't even know existed, which is surely another step on the way to recovery.
The premise
Much of what Orbach writes about is familiar to us now, though it was revolutionary at the time. Diets don't work, you must learn to love yourself and accept your body shape, etc. However, she has a strong emphasis on the social and cultural dimension of why women become compulsive overeaters or binge eaters, and believes that women will never overcome their disorders until they understand the function(s) that their fat has for them. (For example, desexualises, reduces competition, projects an image of friendliness, etc.) These function(s) are usually subconscious, so when the compulsive overeater brings them to consciousness, she has a much better chance of reframing those thoughts and challenging them; overcoming them is not necessary, as we are human after all! She provides a number of exercises (devised in the context of her group therapy sessions) to help readers understand what function their fat might play.
Outdated
Written 35 years ago, many of the social inequalities that Orbach writes about are not particularly relevant to society today. Orbach was writing at a time that the first couple of generations of women were entering the workforce and facing discrimination in the workplace, and many of her analyses relate to rebellion against male oppression or the expectation that a woman's primary role is that of homemaker and caretaker. It also relies somewhat on outdated psychological concepts that are reminiscent of something Freud might write - I'm glad that psychology has moved on since then!
... or is it?
In saying that, there are still many disparities between men and women, and in 2013 the expectation that women be either sexualised or invisible is still insidiously pervasive in our society. I personally found that some of what she wrote about fat as a way to desexualise the self 'clicked', and I look forward to completing her exercises and work out exactly what my fears about sexuality are. I am cringing at even having to write the word sexuality, so they are definitely there.
Also, not all of these fears relate to men or sex. I related to a section where she wrote about how intensely competitive our society is, and how fat can be a way to appear non-threatening and 'duck under the wave'. She also wrote about fat in the context of particular difficult food-oriented relationships like mother-daughter bond, which doesn't relate so much to me but might ring a bell for others.
In general, I am somebody who tends to roll their eyes at commentators who blame eating disorders on socio-cultural malaise ("the media! the media!"). I can't say that I look at celebrities and long for their Photoshopped abs; instead I judge myself based on my peers, whose bodies are very much real. I suppose it's true that as a young girl I consumed images of beauty, but that's a topic for another day. In any case, Orbach's exploration of social influences on fat and eating disorders is much more sophisticated than that. Though parts of the book may not be relevant to you, either from being a product of its time or because it also discusses anorexia, I would highly recommend reading it. It has provoked me to start exploring some of the fears around weight loss that I didn't even know existed, which is surely another step on the way to recovery.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
More pasta
On day 4 of the Pasta Experiment, I have switched from white shell pasta with bolognese sauce to Latina cheese & spinach pasta with its accompanying tomato-based sauce, as I ran out of the former (I actually forgot to freeze the leftovers and they went off - annoyed at myself for wasting food).
In my household, Latina was what we prepared when mum didn't feel like cooking, and it has always felt like junk food to me. In reality it is probably no more processed than other fresh packet pastas, and it has a low GI symbol on it to boot (although I'm dubious, probably the fat content from the cheese has lowered the pasta's natural GI levels). So why not try to accept it as something that is a real meal and not a junk food binge? At the end of the day, it is pasta of a kind, and it is tasty. If I'm trying to reframe my thoughts to say that 'healthy' is not just raw carrots, then I should accept all foods. (And I am eating grated raw carrot on the side, anyway.)
In eating it I realised a few things. Firstly, I got strong food-sensory flashbacks (does anyone else get these?) to eating Latina as a kid. It is comforting. Secondly, half of the reason I find Latina so moreish is because it is a mashup of two of my binge/unsafe foods, pasta and cheese (especially melted cheese). Finally, my habit of chugging a lot of water during my meal was great in the past for persuading myself that I was full earlier than I actually was, but it's distorting my hunger signals. From now on, I will try to limit my water intake while eating meals. I'm not sure what to do about the other two other than just be aware of them.
Food and power
When I went for a walk to buy the pasta, I passed the old-school bakery at the shops, which stocks baked goods of my grandma's generation, slices and buns and lamingtons and whatnot. It struck me that I don't actually love the taste of the stuff there, I just expected that I should love all baked goods and they should be tempting. Why do I give my power to them unquestioningly? And I really do give my power to food, absolving myself of responsibility as if I had no say in the matter. This is partly that conspiratorial 'isn't this naughty, it's so bad, shall I sinfully indulge' script that I doubtless inherited from my culture, and partly my own unwillingness to assert my agency.
I went into the bakery and nothing really appealed. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could take or leave the goods, so I bought a caramel slice, and intend to eat it over three days to show to myself that again I am in power and not the food. I'm not sure if this is the right course of action as it's not quite intuitive, but this week is about pushing myself out of my comfort zone with food, so I'll see how I go.
In my household, Latina was what we prepared when mum didn't feel like cooking, and it has always felt like junk food to me. In reality it is probably no more processed than other fresh packet pastas, and it has a low GI symbol on it to boot (although I'm dubious, probably the fat content from the cheese has lowered the pasta's natural GI levels). So why not try to accept it as something that is a real meal and not a junk food binge? At the end of the day, it is pasta of a kind, and it is tasty. If I'm trying to reframe my thoughts to say that 'healthy' is not just raw carrots, then I should accept all foods. (And I am eating grated raw carrot on the side, anyway.)
In eating it I realised a few things. Firstly, I got strong food-sensory flashbacks (does anyone else get these?) to eating Latina as a kid. It is comforting. Secondly, half of the reason I find Latina so moreish is because it is a mashup of two of my binge/unsafe foods, pasta and cheese (especially melted cheese). Finally, my habit of chugging a lot of water during my meal was great in the past for persuading myself that I was full earlier than I actually was, but it's distorting my hunger signals. From now on, I will try to limit my water intake while eating meals. I'm not sure what to do about the other two other than just be aware of them.
Food and power
When I went for a walk to buy the pasta, I passed the old-school bakery at the shops, which stocks baked goods of my grandma's generation, slices and buns and lamingtons and whatnot. It struck me that I don't actually love the taste of the stuff there, I just expected that I should love all baked goods and they should be tempting. Why do I give my power to them unquestioningly? And I really do give my power to food, absolving myself of responsibility as if I had no say in the matter. This is partly that conspiratorial 'isn't this naughty, it's so bad, shall I sinfully indulge' script that I doubtless inherited from my culture, and partly my own unwillingness to assert my agency.
I went into the bakery and nothing really appealed. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could take or leave the goods, so I bought a caramel slice, and intend to eat it over three days to show to myself that again I am in power and not the food. I'm not sure if this is the right course of action as it's not quite intuitive, but this week is about pushing myself out of my comfort zone with food, so I'll see how I go.
Healthy eating?
The fact that the concept of 'healthy eating' is always in flux drives me insane. When I was a pre-teen in the early 2000s, I started on low-carbohydrate diets because that's what my mother was doing at the time. When my mum was young, low-fat diets were in vogue. Right now we're witnessing the rise of high-fat no-sugar diets. Then there are the people who cut out gluten, flour, dairy, red meat when they don't need to, according to whatever the fad of the day is. This is spurred on by food fads, with protein powder, avocado, sweet potato, and kale this year's drug of choice for many self-proclaimed 'clean eaters'.
As a result, 'healthy eating' always seems to have a vague kind of morality attached to it. There has been much written on the virtuosity of discipline as a reason for why thin and toned is glorified in our culture and in many others, so I won't repeat it here. Fat is lazy, slovenly, and less successful, etc etc. Thin is in control and sexualised, etc etc. These stereotypes are baseless so we should all just get on with the show, etc etc.
Despite knowing all this, I still find myself in knots over the concept of what a healthy, balanced diet should look like. Confession: I hate side salads. I am enamoured of many dishes filled to the brim with vegetables, from stirfries and stews to roasts and salad sandwiches, but when I am eating a meal that does not in itself have many vegetables in it, I dislike having to add a bit of shredded cabbage or tomato on the side to up the health levels. Yet without that bit of green or orange or purple, I feel that my meal is unhealthy and unbalanced and I may as well have eaten a burger with chips.
Part of this kind of all-or-nothing thinking is a remnant from the old diet mentality. Salad is a meal that I forced myself to eat on a string of diets, usually low-carb ones, and right now I blanch at the idea of having to eat ANY kind of salad. It's also partially the fact that I don't like the taste of lettuce, something I didn't accept for a long time because I don't think of myself as a fussy eater. However, thinking back to when I was a kid, even then most salads seemed like an annoying parent-mandated distraction from the main event, like putting on sunscreen at the beach and having to wait 20 minutes before you can go in the water.
(Oddly enough, there is a visual aspect to it too. Last night I ate banh xeo, which is basically a meat-stuffed pancake with some bean sprouts and onion, but because there was a bit of green spring onion in the batter that I could see, I felt like I was eating vegetables. Uh, no.)
Both my therapist and my nutritionist have given me generalised meal plans that suggest that vegetables should constitute 1/3 to 1/2 of lunch and dinner. But intuitively, I wouldn't eat that amount of vegetables. Fruit, sure, I am a fruit junkie (though since I did 'low sugar' last year I've stopped eating as much, which is sad). So do I try to change what my intuition tells me in the name of health? I know that when I don't eat veggies for a while I do crave them, just not that much! Also, I had to actively learn about nutrition after moving out of home almost five years ago, so it's definitely a skill rather than something natural to us.
I think there are really three problems here: a) the guilt I experience when I don't eat the recommended amount of vegetables --> 'unhealthy' --> 'bad' --> 'failure'; b) trying to understand what my body truly needs, which is difficult when 'health' is such a loaded concept; and c) being scared of salad because I associate it so deeply with dieting.
Just another thing to keep in mind. Sigh.
As a result, 'healthy eating' always seems to have a vague kind of morality attached to it. There has been much written on the virtuosity of discipline as a reason for why thin and toned is glorified in our culture and in many others, so I won't repeat it here. Fat is lazy, slovenly, and less successful, etc etc. Thin is in control and sexualised, etc etc. These stereotypes are baseless so we should all just get on with the show, etc etc.
Despite knowing all this, I still find myself in knots over the concept of what a healthy, balanced diet should look like. Confession: I hate side salads. I am enamoured of many dishes filled to the brim with vegetables, from stirfries and stews to roasts and salad sandwiches, but when I am eating a meal that does not in itself have many vegetables in it, I dislike having to add a bit of shredded cabbage or tomato on the side to up the health levels. Yet without that bit of green or orange or purple, I feel that my meal is unhealthy and unbalanced and I may as well have eaten a burger with chips.
Part of this kind of all-or-nothing thinking is a remnant from the old diet mentality. Salad is a meal that I forced myself to eat on a string of diets, usually low-carb ones, and right now I blanch at the idea of having to eat ANY kind of salad. It's also partially the fact that I don't like the taste of lettuce, something I didn't accept for a long time because I don't think of myself as a fussy eater. However, thinking back to when I was a kid, even then most salads seemed like an annoying parent-mandated distraction from the main event, like putting on sunscreen at the beach and having to wait 20 minutes before you can go in the water.
(Oddly enough, there is a visual aspect to it too. Last night I ate banh xeo, which is basically a meat-stuffed pancake with some bean sprouts and onion, but because there was a bit of green spring onion in the batter that I could see, I felt like I was eating vegetables. Uh, no.)
Both my therapist and my nutritionist have given me generalised meal plans that suggest that vegetables should constitute 1/3 to 1/2 of lunch and dinner. But intuitively, I wouldn't eat that amount of vegetables. Fruit, sure, I am a fruit junkie (though since I did 'low sugar' last year I've stopped eating as much, which is sad). So do I try to change what my intuition tells me in the name of health? I know that when I don't eat veggies for a while I do crave them, just not that much! Also, I had to actively learn about nutrition after moving out of home almost five years ago, so it's definitely a skill rather than something natural to us.
I think there are really three problems here: a) the guilt I experience when I don't eat the recommended amount of vegetables --> 'unhealthy' --> 'bad' --> 'failure'; b) trying to understand what my body truly needs, which is difficult when 'health' is such a loaded concept; and c) being scared of salad because I associate it so deeply with dieting.
Just another thing to keep in mind. Sigh.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
The Pasta Experiment, day 3
Day 3 and so far there have been no binges! I've noticed that I still feel that white pasta is a 'bad' or 'unhealthy' food and that I'll never lose weight if I keep eating pasta, etc etc. Soba noodles and buckwheat pasta feel more 'safe'. I've also tried to curtail the behavioural side of things, which in the past has involved just standing there and eating a lot of cold pasta. There has been a little bit of that, but I have been stopping myself. What makes it harder is that white pasta is high GI so I do get hungry relatively quickly after eating it, a couple of hours later as opposed to four hours later with buckwheat pasta.
Eating mindfully is definitely still a struggle; my mind is desperate to not pay attention when I eat, and it will start reading faraway labels on packets of bread or retreat into itself. I also start to feel desperate when I don't eat on schedule, even when I am not hungry. I like breaking up my day with meals, which suggests that I need to find other ways to give myself a quick 20min break. To do: brainstorm ways for a 'break' when my mind craves food.
There has been some added stress because I am seeing a person soon who I want to look good in front of. I feel embarrassed to be fat in front of this person, even though they have seen me at even higher weights before, and they probably could not care less about what weight I'm at. It's a bit exacerbated by the fact that they do occasionally comment on my appearance and that stresses me out! So my first instinct is to go on a diet... but we all know how badly that would end. No, better to stay the course.
Remember:
Pasta does not make me fat.
Pasta is not good or bad, it is just food and it does NOT have a moral value.
Pasta is not unhealthy or junk food.
I am allowed to eat pasta, just as I am allowed to eat anything I want.
Pasta is not a special treat, I can eat it whenever I want. It is always available.
Weight loss is not my goal. Developing healthy behaviour and thinking is my goal.
Eating mindfully is definitely still a struggle; my mind is desperate to not pay attention when I eat, and it will start reading faraway labels on packets of bread or retreat into itself. I also start to feel desperate when I don't eat on schedule, even when I am not hungry. I like breaking up my day with meals, which suggests that I need to find other ways to give myself a quick 20min break. To do: brainstorm ways for a 'break' when my mind craves food.
There has been some added stress because I am seeing a person soon who I want to look good in front of. I feel embarrassed to be fat in front of this person, even though they have seen me at even higher weights before, and they probably could not care less about what weight I'm at. It's a bit exacerbated by the fact that they do occasionally comment on my appearance and that stresses me out! So my first instinct is to go on a diet... but we all know how badly that would end. No, better to stay the course.
Remember:
Pasta does not make me fat.
Pasta is not good or bad, it is just food and it does NOT have a moral value.
Pasta is not unhealthy or junk food.
I am allowed to eat pasta, just as I am allowed to eat anything I want.
Pasta is not a special treat, I can eat it whenever I want. It is always available.
Weight loss is not my goal. Developing healthy behaviour and thinking is my goal.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Speaking of...
... this is what I think of when I hear the word 'depression'. Ironically, it makes me laugh every time.
Just when you think you have a handle on all the reasons you binge eat, therapy brings out more. It's a bit exhausting sweeping the vast planes of my flawed personality only to find that it's full of craters and mountains - depression here, excessive aggression there, trust issues everywhere. I feel a bit sad at the state of my life right now, but it's better than having no perspective at all. I had never really thought about the possibility that I could be depressed, as to me depression sounds as if it involves sobbing in bed to the sound of angry rock music, but my therapist thought it could be a reason for how flat and unmotivated to practice basic self-care I get sometimes. I'm not into labels but it's another viewpoint at least.
This week I'm trying another strategy to bring my binges out of control. Pasta is one of my biggest binge foods, as it is easy to cook, moreish, and quickly sends me into a carb coma. Consequently I tend to avoid it when eating heathily. So in the next seven days I am going to eat pasta every night for dinner - not soba noodles or buckwheat, not with added vegetables, but my favourite white shell pasta with bolognese sauce cooked the way my mum makes it. However there are three limitations. Firstly, I must make salad to go with it. Secondly, I must stop when I am full. Thirdly, I must eat mindfully. By doing so, I'm hoping to build up my self-confidence in my ability to enjoy something without eating to excess. I came up with this myself so I'm hoping to surprise my therapist with some good news next week!
Today:
- The house is moderately clean
- I didn't exercise, but I did carry heavy shopping bags home, so that counts to me
- I am yet to meditate, I will do so after dinner.
- I haven't studied with a focused and productive mindset yet, but I'm hoping to after dinner
I can beat my disease.
This week I'm trying another strategy to bring my binges out of control. Pasta is one of my biggest binge foods, as it is easy to cook, moreish, and quickly sends me into a carb coma. Consequently I tend to avoid it when eating heathily. So in the next seven days I am going to eat pasta every night for dinner - not soba noodles or buckwheat, not with added vegetables, but my favourite white shell pasta with bolognese sauce cooked the way my mum makes it. However there are three limitations. Firstly, I must make salad to go with it. Secondly, I must stop when I am full. Thirdly, I must eat mindfully. By doing so, I'm hoping to build up my self-confidence in my ability to enjoy something without eating to excess. I came up with this myself so I'm hoping to surprise my therapist with some good news next week!
Today:
- The house is moderately clean
- I didn't exercise, but I did carry heavy shopping bags home, so that counts to me
- I am yet to meditate, I will do so after dinner.
- I haven't studied with a focused and productive mindset yet, but I'm hoping to after dinner
I can beat my disease.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Roadbumps
Feeling so sick and anxious right now. The idea of recovery just seems so far away because I have so many character flaws to work through. I'm anxious because I think of all the ways people don't like me, I push people away with what I do or say, I've stopped being an extroverted person, I rub people the wrong way. I'm scared of people judging me not worthy of being with them, which they have in the past (yes, stuck in the past, deal with it). I have a nice time with people, and then I do something and say something wrong, and it all goes away. I live in fear of the next wrong move I make. I wish I could be comfortable with people's unconditional love and support, but the only people who will ever love me unconditionally are my family, and that's not enough for me. Everything feels like a veiled criticism and I can't do enough to meet it or shirk it.
My eating won't sort itself out until I sort out all these other issues. I almost feel like my disorder won't go away until I become a better, if not a "perfect", person - and yep I know there is no such thing logically. I feel overwhelmed because there is so much personality change involved. This is all very self-pitying, sure, but I feel like even being me is a burden to bear because of the stigma attached to it.
The book I'm reading is about trying to work out why women are invested in staying fat. I certainly have a number of fears about losing weight, and I hope to be working through them soon.
My eating won't sort itself out until I sort out all these other issues. I almost feel like my disorder won't go away until I become a better, if not a "perfect", person - and yep I know there is no such thing logically. I feel overwhelmed because there is so much personality change involved. This is all very self-pitying, sure, but I feel like even being me is a burden to bear because of the stigma attached to it.
The book I'm reading is about trying to work out why women are invested in staying fat. I certainly have a number of fears about losing weight, and I hope to be working through them soon.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Self-care
Some days you are so pumped to get healthy and recover, or it feels so easy that you don't even think about it. Other days (or weeks) you have to white-knuckle it. These days I am white-knuckling it, and it is hard. My house is a disgusting mess because I haven't cleaned it in almost two weeks, I only shower if I have to leave the house (which is about once a week right now because I live alone), and I don't even care. I'm past caring about the vegetables I bought a couple of weeks ago and failed to eat. I tried to go for a run yesterday and gave up after three minutes, walking instead. At yoga the teacher repeatedly asked me if I was OK, I don't know why but I must have been emanating not-OK-ness. I am not overly emotional or feeling crazy, but I know this not caring means something is not right. And it's going to get worse because for the next 2 months I have to go into lockdown mode before handing in my final project.
I don't think this will end well unless I commit to self-care for the next 2 months. That will mean:
1. Daily meditation
2. Daily exercise - even if just a walk
3. Daily tidying of the house
4. Daily allocating a set time not to study - just for reading, watching TV, whatever. I know I study best first thing in the morning, and then after dinner. So maybe late afternoon up til dinner can be my time off.
5. Daily looking after myself.
6. Planning meals in advance.
It's a bit hard because in the past I would feel really crazily out of control so I would write lists like this, but then I wouldn't achieve them and feel like a total failure and then spiral further out of control, etc etc, the circle of life continues. But now it's coming from a different place, of self-care rather than bullying myself to try to "be normal".
It's also been hard for me to justify spending so much time and energy thinking about things like mental health, emotional health, self care etc. It feels a) really self-indulgent; and b) a waste of time from more 'important pursuits' like keeping on top of politics, which is something I love but often get overwhelmed about (there is just too much stuff to follow). It feels weird to accept mental health, body image etc as a legitimate area of interest, academic or personal. Maybe this is a sign that I need to think more about what my interests actually are instead of labelling myself. We'll see.
I don't think this will end well unless I commit to self-care for the next 2 months. That will mean:
1. Daily meditation
2. Daily exercise - even if just a walk
3. Daily tidying of the house
4. Daily allocating a set time not to study - just for reading, watching TV, whatever. I know I study best first thing in the morning, and then after dinner. So maybe late afternoon up til dinner can be my time off.
5. Daily looking after myself.
6. Planning meals in advance.
It's a bit hard because in the past I would feel really crazily out of control so I would write lists like this, but then I wouldn't achieve them and feel like a total failure and then spiral further out of control, etc etc, the circle of life continues. But now it's coming from a different place, of self-care rather than bullying myself to try to "be normal".
It's also been hard for me to justify spending so much time and energy thinking about things like mental health, emotional health, self care etc. It feels a) really self-indulgent; and b) a waste of time from more 'important pursuits' like keeping on top of politics, which is something I love but often get overwhelmed about (there is just too much stuff to follow). It feels weird to accept mental health, body image etc as a legitimate area of interest, academic or personal. Maybe this is a sign that I need to think more about what my interests actually are instead of labelling myself. We'll see.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Mindfulness and eating
Firstly, I have made my 'story' private - I got a little bit paranoid as a lot of the traffic has been coming from Australia, and I'm scared that people I know have traced me through my email address, or otherwise recognised me by my story. Yes, I will accept donations for tinfoil hats. I might write an abridged version... or work up some courage and make it public again.
Mindfulness and eating. part one of many
All of the intuitive eating guides tell you that you must eat without distraction, so that you can listen to your hunger signals and any emotions that might be behind your eating. However, I find this insanely hard. I grew up reading books at the dinner table or fighting with my sibling for the best view of the TV, and as an adult who has lived alone for a number of years, I am well used to reading on my Kindle, browsing the internet on my phone, or catching up on an episode of my favourite TV shows.
My compromise to myself is reading at breakfast time, when I am unlikely to be overeating or experiencing any heavy emotions, and then trying to eat without distraction at lunch and dinnertime. 'Trying' is the operative word though. I fume, thinking about how boring focusing on each bite is and how ridiculous it is that I can't just watch some TV like a normal person.
Does anyone else have this problem? What do you do to calm your impatient mind? Has mindful eating helped you in your recovery?
Mindfulness and eating. part one of many
All of the intuitive eating guides tell you that you must eat without distraction, so that you can listen to your hunger signals and any emotions that might be behind your eating. However, I find this insanely hard. I grew up reading books at the dinner table or fighting with my sibling for the best view of the TV, and as an adult who has lived alone for a number of years, I am well used to reading on my Kindle, browsing the internet on my phone, or catching up on an episode of my favourite TV shows.
My compromise to myself is reading at breakfast time, when I am unlikely to be overeating or experiencing any heavy emotions, and then trying to eat without distraction at lunch and dinnertime. 'Trying' is the operative word though. I fume, thinking about how boring focusing on each bite is and how ridiculous it is that I can't just watch some TV like a normal person.
Does anyone else have this problem? What do you do to calm your impatient mind? Has mindful eating helped you in your recovery?
Women, Food, and God
Yes I know, it seems that everywhere you look in the Internet, people are talking about Geneen Roth and Evelyn Tribole as if they are virtual deities. Still, I thought I would dive in to what they have to offer. I have a Kindle and Geneen Roth's original book Feeding the Hungry Heart is not available as an eBook yet, so I opted for her newest book, Women, Food, and God.
This was my first 'ED read' and it was a lot better than the sappy self-help rubbish I had been anticipating. I think the best thing about this book is that it made me realise that I am not alone. Women (and men, though they don't get a look in) from all walks of life suffer. All of us think our problem is the food, and all of us are wrong.
Essentially, she says that everyone has core beliefs about themselves and their world, and those core beliefs play out on your plate and in your relationship with food. Disordered eating is a way to avoid feeling feelings, and also a way to avoid "the freshness of life itself", living life to the full (what she calls the "inclination to bolt").
Basically, the only way to overcome this is to commit to showing up again and again, refusing to escape our bodies when life gets hard and overwhelming. This often involves sitting with our emotions, feeling them completely, and understanding that feeling emotions won't kill us. Many people have what she calls "frozen pockets of pain" within them that they have refused to think about, so when they come to that emotion in the present, they flinch in memory of the past. And eat. Or don't eat.
I wrote down a number of quotes, but the one that really struck a chord for me was this: "Our bodies are the entry point to the essence of ourselves beyond it."
It wasn't perfect. The last two chapters referred incessantly to her 'guidelines', which at least on the Kindle version are on the very last page. Also, not being a religious or explicitly spiritual person, all her talk of God was a little difficult to get past - it seemed a bit sentimental in that typically American way. However, it did get me thinking about my emotions in a way that my therapist had been gently nudging me towards, so I would recommend it.
This was my first 'ED read' and it was a lot better than the sappy self-help rubbish I had been anticipating. I think the best thing about this book is that it made me realise that I am not alone. Women (and men, though they don't get a look in) from all walks of life suffer. All of us think our problem is the food, and all of us are wrong.
Essentially, she says that everyone has core beliefs about themselves and their world, and those core beliefs play out on your plate and in your relationship with food. Disordered eating is a way to avoid feeling feelings, and also a way to avoid "the freshness of life itself", living life to the full (what she calls the "inclination to bolt").
Basically, the only way to overcome this is to commit to showing up again and again, refusing to escape our bodies when life gets hard and overwhelming. This often involves sitting with our emotions, feeling them completely, and understanding that feeling emotions won't kill us. Many people have what she calls "frozen pockets of pain" within them that they have refused to think about, so when they come to that emotion in the present, they flinch in memory of the past. And eat. Or don't eat.
I wrote down a number of quotes, but the one that really struck a chord for me was this: "Our bodies are the entry point to the essence of ourselves beyond it."
It wasn't perfect. The last two chapters referred incessantly to her 'guidelines', which at least on the Kindle version are on the very last page. Also, not being a religious or explicitly spiritual person, all her talk of God was a little difficult to get past - it seemed a bit sentimental in that typically American way. However, it did get me thinking about my emotions in a way that my therapist had been gently nudging me towards, so I would recommend it.
Mealplans
I seem to have gotten new readers already which is really unexpected! Currently in the process of trying to add a blogroll for BED-specific blogs. Please feel free to recommend ones you like. My therapist also recommended some books to read, so I look forward to reviewing them this week.
To mealplan or not to mealplan?
Because in my universe, mealplan is a) one word, and b) a verb.
In recovery, some days I have good weeks, and some days I have bad weeks. This last week has been a bad week where every day has consisted of an unambiguous good old-fashioned binge (think hot chips, burgers, multiple family size packets of chocolates, icecream etc every single day), which is upsetting after roughly six weeks of eating more intuitively. So I find myself returning to mealplanning to return a bit of structure to my life.
For someone who has been on a lot of diets, and is trying to end the diet mentality once and for all, mealplans can sometimes feel restrictive. What if half my plate isn't some sort of vegetable, have I failed? Am I eating too many carbs? What if I skip my morning snack? Is peanut butter healthy? Guess I won't lose weight this way. Guess I'd better try again tomorrow. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. I try to ignore these voices and just get on with it.
A mealplan looks roughly like this: three meals, two snacks, and dessert. Eating roughly every 3-4 hours. Eating mindfully, without distraction, and stopping when full. The main meals should ideally be about 1/2 vegetable, 1/4 protein, 1/4 carbohydrate, but no stress if it isn't. The snacks should be carbohydrate plus protein or good fats. The dessert should be the size of a fun-sized chocolate bar. No portion size specified, but you should record hunger signals, emotions, and thoughts before and afterwards (even if just checking in mentally). After eating like this for a week or two, the idea is that your metabolism stabilises and your natural hunger signals begin to reassert themselves, helping you to start eating intuitively again.
My goal for this week is a binge-free week, even though I have a friend staying with me which will involve a lot of eating out. In the past I have been terrified of eating out, unable to control the choices, and unable to control myself when presented with the choices. I'm going to try my best to listen to what I truly want, and enjoy myself.
To mealplan or not to mealplan?
Because in my universe, mealplan is a) one word, and b) a verb.
In recovery, some days I have good weeks, and some days I have bad weeks. This last week has been a bad week where every day has consisted of an unambiguous good old-fashioned binge (think hot chips, burgers, multiple family size packets of chocolates, icecream etc every single day), which is upsetting after roughly six weeks of eating more intuitively. So I find myself returning to mealplanning to return a bit of structure to my life.
For someone who has been on a lot of diets, and is trying to end the diet mentality once and for all, mealplans can sometimes feel restrictive. What if half my plate isn't some sort of vegetable, have I failed? Am I eating too many carbs? What if I skip my morning snack? Is peanut butter healthy? Guess I won't lose weight this way. Guess I'd better try again tomorrow. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. I try to ignore these voices and just get on with it.
A mealplan looks roughly like this: three meals, two snacks, and dessert. Eating roughly every 3-4 hours. Eating mindfully, without distraction, and stopping when full. The main meals should ideally be about 1/2 vegetable, 1/4 protein, 1/4 carbohydrate, but no stress if it isn't. The snacks should be carbohydrate plus protein or good fats. The dessert should be the size of a fun-sized chocolate bar. No portion size specified, but you should record hunger signals, emotions, and thoughts before and afterwards (even if just checking in mentally). After eating like this for a week or two, the idea is that your metabolism stabilises and your natural hunger signals begin to reassert themselves, helping you to start eating intuitively again.
My goal for this week is a binge-free week, even though I have a friend staying with me which will involve a lot of eating out. In the past I have been terrified of eating out, unable to control the choices, and unable to control myself when presented with the choices. I'm going to try my best to listen to what I truly want, and enjoy myself.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Health At Every Size
I'm sure that many if not most people who have begun to look into intuitive eating have come across the concept of Health At Every Size. It basically means what it says - it doesn't matter what your weight is, as long as you are eating your share of vegetables and exercising regularly, then you are healthy.
As mentioned in the first post, this is a difficult one for me to reconcile, when I have my other health specialist telling me that I am 30kg overweight and will never menstruate without medication, let alone have kids, if I don't get my weight down. I've plugged in the calories that I eat on an intuitive day and find to my horror that it sits at 1700-1800, well above what I think weight loss calories look like (1200-1400 - I'm pretty short). I know that some people are bigger built or whatever but it's pretty clear that I am carrying excess weight, so it feels ridiculous to say that I'm healthy as I am, even though all my tests have come back with great numbers.
So the way I rationalise it to myself is this - diets don't work for me, and I'm not going to lose weight any other way. That leaves HAES and IE as my only path. I know that you are supposed to give up the notion of weight loss completely and accept whatever weight you're at at this moment, even if it does change, but that scares me a lot - to be honest I don't want to look like Golda Poretsky, as horrible and unsupportive and ignorant as that sounds. I'm sure Golda is much happier with herself than I am, but I have to accept how I feel about it, and work on combating that view and becoming more body-positive.
Hopefully I'll look back on this in six months and my views will have genuinely changed...
As mentioned in the first post, this is a difficult one for me to reconcile, when I have my other health specialist telling me that I am 30kg overweight and will never menstruate without medication, let alone have kids, if I don't get my weight down. I've plugged in the calories that I eat on an intuitive day and find to my horror that it sits at 1700-1800, well above what I think weight loss calories look like (1200-1400 - I'm pretty short). I know that some people are bigger built or whatever but it's pretty clear that I am carrying excess weight, so it feels ridiculous to say that I'm healthy as I am, even though all my tests have come back with great numbers.
So the way I rationalise it to myself is this - diets don't work for me, and I'm not going to lose weight any other way. That leaves HAES and IE as my only path. I know that you are supposed to give up the notion of weight loss completely and accept whatever weight you're at at this moment, even if it does change, but that scares me a lot - to be honest I don't want to look like Golda Poretsky, as horrible and unsupportive and ignorant as that sounds. I'm sure Golda is much happier with herself than I am, but I have to accept how I feel about it, and work on combating that view and becoming more body-positive.
Hopefully I'll look back on this in six months and my views will have genuinely changed...
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Beginnings
This is my first time posting, so a bit nervous.
I was recently diagnosed with binge eating disorder, and wanted to start a blog to share my experiences and collate web resources I find, as I'm not comfortable talking about these things with the people in my life yet.
I have been attending weekly therapy for about two months now, and have made a lot of progress, but have not completely stopped bingeing yet, so full recovery is a little way away. In therapy we focus on HAES (Health At Every Size), mindfulness, delaying binge impulses, and working on the core beliefs that can cause binge eating (so cognitive behavioural therapy). Sometimes not focusing on weight is hard, as I also have PCOS and would like to have a family one day, but I try to have faith that if I become healthier mentally then the physical side will follow.
I have found a few websites and blogs, but many are dedicated to recovery from anorexia or bulimia, neither of which I have ever suffered from (fortunately). Binge eating or compulsive eating disorder seems to be treated as a side issue sometimes, so I really hope to be able to find some more blogs that talk specifically about binge eating.
Anyway, let's see how it goes!
Nina
I was recently diagnosed with binge eating disorder, and wanted to start a blog to share my experiences and collate web resources I find, as I'm not comfortable talking about these things with the people in my life yet.
I have been attending weekly therapy for about two months now, and have made a lot of progress, but have not completely stopped bingeing yet, so full recovery is a little way away. In therapy we focus on HAES (Health At Every Size), mindfulness, delaying binge impulses, and working on the core beliefs that can cause binge eating (so cognitive behavioural therapy). Sometimes not focusing on weight is hard, as I also have PCOS and would like to have a family one day, but I try to have faith that if I become healthier mentally then the physical side will follow.
I have found a few websites and blogs, but many are dedicated to recovery from anorexia or bulimia, neither of which I have ever suffered from (fortunately). Binge eating or compulsive eating disorder seems to be treated as a side issue sometimes, so I really hope to be able to find some more blogs that talk specifically about binge eating.
Anyway, let's see how it goes!
Nina
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