8 Months

It's been 8 months since my last post. A lot has happened since and it's been a rough road.

I gained the weight back that I lost when I first started this blog, and then packed on some more poundage. I ballooned to 276 - my highest weight ever.

I think there are many reasons that I lost my motivation and focus on weight loss (and I'll be writing about them in my next few posts) but the important thing is that I've been able to turn things around.

As of today, I'm at 254.4 and I've managed to lose 21.6 pounds since late April. I'm back in the game, people!

Change

I listened and cried.....

Change

If you knew that you would die today
Saw the face of god and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low that you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good, does it need to get?
How many losses? how much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change
Makes you change

If you knew that you would be alone
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That would bring a pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good, does it need to get?
How many losses? how much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change
Makes you change

Are you so up right
You can't be bent
If it comes to blows
Are you so sure you won't be crawling
If not for the good why why risk falling
Why risk falling?

If everything you think you know
Makes your life unbearable
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow
And hard times come to bring you down
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and loved
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you saw the face of God and loved
If you saw the face of God and loved
Would you change?
Would you change?

Tracy Chapman

The Beast

My therapist, K, gave me a new assignment last week. I am to draw a picture of “The Beast.” She has asked me to visually express on paper what the bingeing and self loathing feels like. I’ve been challenged to drum up an image of the guilt, dependency, comfort, disgust, pain, anger, disappointment and sadness that this eating disorder creates in me. Is there enough paper in the world?

This assignment came at the perfect time. For the first time since I joined WW two months ago, “The Beast’s” grip was too strong for me. I fell off the wagon, was bucked off my horse (insert your favorite expression here). For many reasons, I experienced an intense amount of stress this weekend and I left WW and the point system behind. I ate and ate and ate. I spent Monday in a food coma/hangover and just decided to shut down. I stayed in bed nearly all day – something I haven’t done in a very, very long time. I was so disgusted and disappointed in myself. I was in pain, yet numb. I couldn’t even cry.

I got out of bed in the afternoon – I knew I had a 4:30 pm appointment with my trainer at the gym. I didn’t want to go. I made a deal with myself though – I would call up my trainer and if her voicemail came on, then I would leave a message saying I wasn’t coming in. If she answered, I was going to ask for help and a little encouragement to get myself to the gym. I really wanted that voicemail to come on.

She answered. It didn’t take long before tears were rolling down my face and I was telling her how much I needed her to help get in my car and make my appointment to see her. To be honest, I barely remember what she said because I was so relieved to be talking to someone who understood – so relieved to be able to finally cry. I do know that whatever she said was kind and compelling to the part of me that was listening. I showed up at 4:30 pm and made it through my workout.

It’s Tuesday and I still want to hide under the covers, but the world isn’t going to wait for me – everyone and everything is going to keep moving forward and I just can’t afford to get left behind one more time. The last thing I want to do is start my menu plans and tracking points, but I absolutely have to.

I’m not about to sugar coat it – this just plain sucks. It’s really, really hard. Everyone has those struggles in one form or another and this is  the challenge I’ve been faced with in life. I have to believe that reaching my emotional and physical goals surrounding this eating disorder and weight loss will be so much sweeter because of the hell I went through to get to them.

Slugs and Butterflies

I was at my WW meeting on Thursday and the woman sitting next to me had reached her goal weight. The leader announced her accompishment, we all hooted and hollered, and she was asked how much weight she had lost.

"I don't really remember," she said.

Everyone looked at her with shock - including myself. I know how much I've lost at all times! Everything tenth of a pound I've that I've lost floats around in my head waiting to be acessed for encouragement when I feel like I'm not succeeding. From the looks of it, everyone else in that room knew their stats at all times as well.

The leader had to tell her that she had lost 28.6 pounds. It was interesting to me that she hadn't focused on the actual amount of weight  - eventhough I know she weighed in every meeting.

The leader then asked her what she noticed most from her loss. She said:

"I used to feel like a slug all the time. Now I feel like a butterfly."

That's what meant the most to her. What a beautiful thing.

Danger Zone

This will be my fourth week on WW.  It's usually about one month into my dieting that things get shaky. I'm entering the danger zone.

I was feeling it this weekend. Nervous about screwing up. I'm a very "all or nothing" person, so normally screwing up, either big or small, on my diet usually means it all falls apart. I know I can't continue to think this way if I want to be successful, but it's hard to retrain the brain!

I've been doing well on WW. Making good choices, staying within my points range, and excersising. Some days are easier than others. The hard days are when my mind isn't convinced that this is going to work. My self talk isn't so pretty. I start worrying before I've even done anything wrong. Oye.

As the days go by, it's becoming painfully clear how much I've used food to cope with almost everything in life. Sadness, stress, joy, boredom, anger - you name it. As I'm trying to turn food into a fuel source for my body, rather than a security blanket, I'm feeling this huge, nasty void opening up around me. It's so uncomfortable and so scary. What do I do with it? How much longer before I give into it? Can I hold on and sit with it and it's ambiguity until I find some answers to ease it all?

I went to see K today and talked to her about all of this. She's trying to help me understand that if I fall off the WW horse, that the small victories I've won and the goals I've set won't dissapear. They'll be patiently waiting for me to dust myself off and saddle up again. As for the big nasty void (I need to give this thing a name at some point), sitting with it is exactly what I'm supposed to do. Yuck! I'm supposed to explore it and really think about how it feels. And I thought getting 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day was going to be hard. 

Good Point!

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/060606/whats-better-than-a-cookie.gif

What Will 31 Bring?

I turned 31 this weekend. Some people find the New Year as time for reflection on what has happened and what's to come, but I always seem to do that on my birthday instead.

30 was such a roller coaster ride of incredibly wonderful developments and incredibly tragic incidents all at once. I sat down and wrote all the major things that happened to me or to those that I love - and therefore greatly affected me - during my 30th year. The list looked like this:

• Got married
• Quit my job
• Started my own business - a dream realized!
• My husband got pancreatitus and had to have his gallbladder removed
• Found out my 15 year old niece had been sexually abused by her step grandfather off and on since the age of four
• Found out my sister started abusing alcohol and prescription drugs, leading to being admitted to a psych ward for overdosing and signs of a mood disorder. She was taken away in front of her four children
• Another sister got pregnant after trying for several years to conceive. A healthy boy is on the way.
• My 9 year old niece was diagnosed with cancer.
• Relations with my younger sister have improved greatly and we talk almost every day now.
• Two of my good friends moved out of state - I miss them terribly.
• My husband's grandmother died.
• An 11 year friendship ended - quite horribly.
• My brother is divorcing his wife of 18 years

When I look at this list -  and all the events that took place, it doesn't surprise me that I gained weight and started bingeing again. It's how I've dealt with the good and bad all my life.

I want this year to be different. I want some peace for myself and my family. I want to focus on healing myself. I want answers to the "why's" and "how comes" that I've been scared to really examine. I want to be good to myself. For the first time, I think I might actually feel like I deserve to be.

What will 31 bring? I haven't a clue, but I do know this: I may not be able to control what life will throw my way, but I can most certainly control how I handle it.

The Mother Factor

I had to deal with the "Mother Factor" this weekend. I have a very complex relationship with my mom, but I'm not sure I know a woman who doesn't.

I love my mom so incredibly much, but she has had a huge impact on me in very negative, ugly ways. She has an eating disorder herself, but opposite from mine. She consumes high quantities of laxatives nearly every day and has done so for as long as I can remember. She also doesn't eat in front of others and hides her food in napkins. It was so embarrassing to me as I was growing up, and still is sometimes, as she does this in restaurants and gets more lax about hiding this behavior as she gets older.

Anyway, I went over to my parent's place last night to celebrate my upcoming birthday. My husband, younger sister and her husband, and my dad were there. Eating in front of my mom is always incredibly stressful for me. She watches what I put on my plate and how much. When there is a dinner in honor of me, the food prepared is always lowfat and healthy - and she makes sure she announces that clearly to everyone - but dinners for others are usually more decadent - celebratory foods laden with fats, oils, creams, etc. This is just a microscopic reason why healthy food has seemed so awful to me for so long.

For years I would come over to my parents, panic about what I was putting on my plate - and make choices I thought my mom would approve of. I would suffer through the meal with my mom watching me and feel awful inside - so angry and sad. After I left, I would drive directly to the store on autopilot, grabbing doughnuts, pastries, mochas, etc., and binge on the way home.

Since I've gotten married, that autopilot response has stopped since my husband is in the car with me on the way home. That's been so helpful, but the anger and anxiety is still there.

When I went to dinner last night, I knew I was going to make good choices because I'm on WW and I've made a committment to myself to lose the weight and battle the fat and pain. As I sat at the table and made a mental plan of what I was going to eat, this wave of anger and frustration hit me: the rebellion of wanting to NOT please my mom by eating what she wants me to was looming over me. Making healthy choices would please my mom to no end and I didn't want that. Normally, these thoughts would win over and I would sneak food when she wasn't looking or binge on the way home. Instead, I sat through dinner, barely focusing on the conversations forming in front of me, and kept repeating in my head: "The choices you are making are for you, not her."

I got through the meal and didn't sneak or binge, but still left angry with my mom. I was still raging inside that she was probably elated by my portion control and choice. That's okay - I had a small victory - because I didn't react to the rage with food.

4.4, Baby!

Today was my first weigh-in with Weight Watchers and I lost 4.4 pounds! I can't believe it. This week has been so hard but it was so worth it to see my numbers go down.

Creating this blog and the feedback from the incredibly supportive people on the WW Message boards made a huge contribution to my success this week. Thank you all!

Session 2

I had my second appointment with K. I was nervous again going in and left sick to my stomach. My husband picked me up and I burst into tears in the car. All of this just sucks. I feel blessed that I have a professional to talk to who can identify with my pain - someone who wouldn't judge me - but it's still so hard. I thought some of the sadness would go away, but I'm having to open old wounds and think hard about what I'm doing. Deeply and without defense. Ouch.

Before I see her next she has asked me to clean out my car. I told her how I often binge in the car. The result of that is piles of pastry bags, latte cups, empty cookie boxes, etc. My ride is thrashed from it. She wasn't surprised. My assignment is to clean it all out - make a fresh start. Cleanse the car and tell myself that eating in the car is NOT going to happen again. I haven't done it yet - but I have scheduled on my calender for Saturday.

I told her that I had a couple disagreements with friends in the last of couple weeks and my eating pattern definitely followed suit. One of these friends told me that I'm too sensitive - which upset me (big surprise!). I really feel like that's such a hard label to give someone. They tell you you're sensitive and it bothers you so you try to tell them you're not and get upset - and that only perpetuates the perception that you're overly sensitive. After that label has been applied, it feels like you're not as credible in what you say - and you start to doubt yourself too. I agree that I'm an emotional person. I do feel things deeply, and I really wouldn't want that any other way. I do think I'm a reasonable person at the same time.

So I asked K about this sensitivity issue and she said that nearly every person with the eating disorder I have is ultra sensitive. It just comes with the territory, apparantly. I was really surprised to hear this. It's strange what is connected to this disorder. So perhaps I am more sensitive than others - and that makes things hard sometimes, but it's a little easier knowing why. Looking back I can see that when my eating has been really out of control, I have also been at a heightened sensitivity with people and things around me.

K is on vacation so I won't be seeing her until the 30th. That's okay - I've got a lot of work to do.