Wellness Program at work

These things are very triggering for me and it’s happening today. 

I’m so thankful this actually takes place in another building and far away from me.  The flyers have been posted all over our building for this “wellness program” for a couple of weeks.  They boast of helping you with fitness and weight loss. 

The ones I’ve been to in the past do not really care about fitness or overall health but of losing weight.  When I walk in, I feel like (and I know this isn’t always true) they see a fat person walking toward them who is desperate to lose weight because then all her problems will be solved.  It’s almost like a personal goal for some of them to lasso me to their table so they can “save” me.

Our HR person called me earlier this morning and said, “where is everyone?  You need to encourage them to come over here to the wellness program.”  I said, “I can’t make them go if they don’t want to.  I’ve had the flyers posted and they’re aware of it.”  This didn’t satisfy her so she went to my boss and told him the same thing to which he replied the same as I did.  “You can’t force someone to come over there and participate if they don’t want to.

The flyers are coming down this afternoon and this is one more wellness program I’m avoiding.  Skipping this event is how I choose to take care of myself and love myself today!

~sas

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Going backward

AARRGGGHHHHHHHH!!!

Yes, I’m going the wrong way and at times it seems the speed at which I’m going can only lead to me crashing and burning. I think I’m dangerously close to that happening so I’m here bearing my soul once again. (And just as a sidenote, thank you so much to my co-blogger AGR who keeps me on track!)

I’m going to put out there a list of the feelings I’m dealing with right now…and I’ll be honest…I’m not dealing with them well.
self-contempt, self-loathing, uncertain, doubting, sad, hurt, controlled, disappointed, tired, lonely, alone, distrustful
Those are just to name a few.

I sometimes have days where I feel I’ve made great strides in my recovery and in my own self-acceptance but those days are becoming fewer and farther between nowadays. It seems that the headway I’ve made is slipping away a little at a time.

The headway I speak of is the fact that I had gotten to where I was trying very hard to live intuitively and to listen to my body and love it. Along with that came the self-acceptance and self-appreciation that comes with a healthy recovery. I didn’t do the IE thing all the time every day but it was getting to be easier and easier as time went on.

If you’ve read us for very long then you know I’ve been having a struggle with my husband the last few months with “sharing” food. It all came to a head yesterday and I’m still actually quite mad about it.

A little background is that my husband has an addictive personality and when he began treatment for one addiction, his new obsession became exercise and weight…not only his weight but MINE. He has gotten to where he seeks out exercise magazines or online, he has set up his shed to be a home gym and he watches everything he eats. Now that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Where it turned toxic for me was when he started trying to control my recovery.

For the past few months he would ask me to share meals with him and he would tell me it was helping HIM watch HIS weight. He made it seem like I was doing him a favor and he would make me feel guilty if I didn’t do it. I’ve confronted him about it before and told him that sometimes I’m just hugry and he needs to let me order what I want, him order what he wants and he can take the leftovers home. He told me that if he orders it and it’s in front of him he will eat it (see the guilt?).

Saturday night he asked me if I would take him out to breakfast the next morning and I knew he meant McDonalds so I said “sure”. We got up Sunday morning and got dressed and we went to our local McDs. We headed up to the counter to order and I asked him what he wanted. He said, “well will you split a big breakfast with me?” I said, “no, I’m really hungry today.” He got furious with me. I took my happy ass up to the counter and ordered my own big breakfast with pancakes. He ordered an egg mcmuffin. At that point I don’t know if I was really hungry or if I did it just to prove a point…I ate the whole thing!

When we got our food I looked him square in the eye and told him I refused to feel guilty because he didn’t order what he truly wanted and because I wanted to get my own meal.

There have been days where we have split every meal and I would sometimes only have 800 to 1000 calories a day. Sometimes I went to bed hungry. Most times it made me feel like I couldn’t trust my own body to tell me what or how much to eat. Other times it only reiterated to me that my husband didn’t accept me the way I am so why should I? My recovery has suffered because of these actions.

The conversation which resulted from his behavior at McDs did have him finally saying he was trying to control my recovery and he realized it. I don’t trust that he really sees his controlling of me. He agreed to stay out of my recovery but my thought is that I have to “prove” to him that I can make the “right decisions” for myself before he stops trying to control them for me. I have an uphill battle ahead of me.

To say what I expect others to want to hear is that I’m going to stand my ground, work my recovery and take care of myself but what I’m going to say instead is the truth…I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting this battle with myself and now I’m fighting the battle with my own husband. My mind is no longer clear. I’m struggling and it sucks.
~sas

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intuitive eating should come easy (?)

So when I first heard about “intuitive eating”, I thought it was a crazy concept.  Now, a couple of years into it, I’m seeing where it is the natural way to live and it’s actually how our bodies were designed to be nourished and cared for.  We as humans, with our constant desire to better things and sometimes go against nature to do it, are the ones that have screwed up the way we feel about food and weight.

Over the years I had been so terribly brainwashed about my weight and the food I ate, that I ended up living according to other people’s standards, policies and plans…whether it be a diet plan, a cleansing technique or just listening to people bad mouth me for my size, it all affected how I saw what I ate or how I felt about myself.

For me, eating intuitively is basically “going back to eating the way nature intended in the first place.”   Your body will naturally tell you when you’re hungry and when you’re full.  If you have never fallen prey to society’s judgments and the barrage of advertisements to go on a diet then you should feel very blessed. 

But for those of us who have suffered the abuse of people calling us names and making us feel “less than” just because of our size, then sometimes we have to re-learn how to live naturally and how to listen to our bodies.  AND IT’S NOT EASY!   If you’re like me, you’ve spent years living (and eating) according to everything and everyone other than myself.  I’ve kept food logs, I’ve cut out particular food groups, I’ve taken diet pills and I’ve been very close to suicide because I no longer trusted my own body, but put my faith and trust in things other than the “natural”.

I was taught not to trust my hunger signals and to starve even though I was sometimes famished.  I was taught that I was “bad” if I binged but I only binged because I was trying to cope with an emotional hardship or I was physically starving myself. 

I was really hungry today at lunch and I was craving chinese food from a local restaurant so I left work with my money in my pocket and drove to the restaurant.  I got a “to go” plate and filled it to the top with the foods I love.  I got fried rice and sesame chicken and some buttered potatoes and crab rangoon.  I even got some egg drop soup and an egg roll.

I took my plate home and set it on the table with a napkin, a fork and spoon and some soy sauce.  I dug in!  It was delish!  But I got full.  I got full and caught myself thinking, “there’s just no way I can eat all of this.”  I thought about saving the rest for another sitting but I decided I had had enough chinese food and I had quenched that desire so I threw the rest away.  This is monumental for me.  I mean I do this more and more every day but it’s still amazing to me that I can do it.  I don’t have to finish everything on my plate.  I don’t even have to keep it for later if I don’t want to.  I have the choice to do whatever I want with it.  That is eating intuitively.  I’m not living by anyone else’s instructions or models.  I’m trusting my own body to tell me what to do and it’s working.

If you haven’t experienced intuitive eating or haven’t tried it, I would whole-heartedly recommend it!

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Size Thoughts

Somehow it is still surprising when old patterns of thinking show their scary faces again.  At least, I am pretty darn good at dealing with them. 

Today, I was surprised at how thoughts on size that had nothing to even do with fat (our national obsession) could effect self-image.  I am speaking of my feet.  Maybe there are folks out there whose feet get fatter as the rest of them does, but this isn’t the case with me.  My feet stay slender, but they are long.  Normally, I fit into a size 9.5.  Now, I know this isn’t the largest size out there, but it can still be difficult for me to find shoes that fit.  Many stores stop around size 8 or 9. 

While trying on some snow boots today, I was reminded how important a small shoe size was to me… as if I couldn’t possibly be feminine with feet any bigger than an 8.5.  So, I’d cram my feet into shoes that didn’t fit and grit my teeth through all the blisters and cuts from shoes that were too small, but made all the difference to my body image to fit into. 

I found a pair of boots that I liked, but could only find them in a size 11.  On a whim, I decided to try them on anyway, because they looked like they might fit… and they did!  There was even enough room in the toe to wear some extra thick socks to keep my feet warm in the freezing winters of Chicago.  And… I remembered how in the past I would’ve been horrified to even consider trying on size 11 shoes.  Fit didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that number that was some feminity score or something.  And, I know I’m not the only woman who has thought that way.  Many still do, I’m sure. 

It certainly IS sad enough that we obsess (as a culture) on fat so much, but I am reminded how we get messages every day on how tall we should be, how our hair should look, what kind of nose we should have and how big our lips should be.  Trying to measure up to these standards can easily be a full-time job and there are so many more important things in life.  How sad that I have spent so many years of my life worrying about the length of my feet! 

It’s not even Christmas (in my experience the diets start at New Years, yes?) and the dieters have started visiting my cafe in hordes.  A 200 calorie drink is a horror.  Whip cream on a holiday latte is a crime!  I am tired of being crabbed at by offering teeny sample cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream about how the one or two ounce drink is a meal unto itself.  I am constantly tempted to remind these people that it is possible to say “no thank you” without giving me a 15 minute summary of their current diet efforts and how “evil” full fat treats are. 

The holidays are about love and togetherness and all that… but how much of that is lost because the energy is instead funnelled into diet obsession and the moralizing of food. 

Yesterday, hubby and I went to World Market… a store with, among other things, all sorts of foods (and many sweets – sweets are my fav) from all over the world.  I found myself marvelling at how I didn’t want to buy every sweet thing I saw like I used to.  Back in those days, I knew I could not possibly eat all the things I wanted to buy, but I couldn’t help myself from filling my basket and spending way more money than was necessary because I was so obsessed with the forbidden and “bad” foods.  Instead, I just found three little things and was quite happy with those.  Nothing else tempted me.

Then I think of these people who come to my cafe with their big eyes and compulsive appetites fueled by food moralizing and I feel very bad for them.  It is usually women who I hear complaining that they’d want one of every pastry we sell, but they “must” restrict themselves to some low calorie choice, because they “need” to lose weight.  Rather they are compromising their health with this obsession, when they could put this energy into so many better things…

 –AngryGrayRainbows

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Feeling Ready…

It has felt like 10 years since I got the call about my step-father dying and all the ensuing drama though it’s been only a month or so.  Posting has felt like far too much to ask from myself.  I suppose I’ve been grieving.  My step-father is actually still alive and doing far better than we had ever hoped he would, but all the revelations about his secrets that came out when we thought he was dying and we went on an easter egg hunt around the house to find legal paperwork has been a lot to deal with.  As I posted before, I feel like he’s died already, because the man I thought I knew is gone.  I did know he was a hugely messed up person… but I had no idea he’d leave my mother with nothing but lies, secret debt and no will for protection against his four children from a previous marraige that he has had no relationship with for the last THIRTY YEARS.  Sheesh.  At one point, my mother was seriously considering (with my support) a quickee divorce from my step-father before he died, because being married to him when he died with all the secret debt and no will would financially strap her hugely and in ways she might not be able to recover from.  That was a fun load of drama, let me tell you.  <<barf>>  Thankfully, my stepfather capitulated, got a will written and gave my mother power of attourney so the divorce option was no longer necessary and my mother is willing to stay with my stepfather until the end.  I have been trying to keep my distance from all the drama, but it has still felt overwhelming.    Thankfully, my mother’s siblings have stepped up to support her, so that she is not clinging so much to me… which is very good, because my mother is very toxic to me… very, very toxic…

In other news, our little feral friend, Mr. Orange, has found a home.  Through a connection at a cat shelter I am connected with I was put in contact with a lovely woman with a horse farm and a heart big enough for an unpettable orange cat.  She has another feral that has become fairly people-friendly and she was willing to take on another feral fur-child.  Mr. Orange will spend the winter with his new horse roommates, a heated cat bed and top notch cat food.  She’s even discovered that Mr. O likes catnip!  He was always too nervous in my small apartment to play with any toys or catnip.  Mr. O’s new mom says she will send me updates on how he’s doing and she’s agreed that if (for some reason) she cannot keep him that she will give him back to me and hubby, so we can make sure he gets another good home.  We don’t want him to end up in the pound.  As a hissy feral, it would be very unlikely that he would be adopted, so finding him a home is a big project, but a project that we would rather take on than leave him abandoned.  We love the little guy.  I miss him…. but I’m also so happy for him.  I have a feeling this situation will work very well for him.  

Body acceptance has been on my mind, as it ever is.  New Years is around the corner and I work in a job where I sell a lot of full fat coffee drinks and pastries, so the folks who worship at the alter of thin have  been extra loud and annoying lately.  On the up-side, it’s given me a lot of practice in diplomacy in the face of willful ignorance.  My feathers are hardly ruffled when faced with a woman who is very thin complaining that 200 calories is an entire meal and wayyyyyyyyyyy too much to eat even though she’s very hungry.  Neither do I accept this thinking as normal or healthy.  Maybe I’m finding a little peace in a world full of people that I find crazy the vast majority of the time.

But, you know… fat is just so evil.  It makes everything worse, of course.  Take my fat girl cat for example.  My sweet little piglet.  On a lark, I decided to see what would happen if I fed all the cats the high fat food that normally only my cat with kidney failure eats.  My sweet little piglet had very bag skin allergies.  Her rump and tail was covered in scabs and where there were sores he hair would fall out in clumps… the poor girl.  On the high fat food, my little muffin’s skin allergies are gone.  She might have gained weight from the new food.  I’m not sure, but she looks a little bigger.  Big whoop.  She is so much happier.  The bank half of her is growing in new and healthy fur!  She’s even felt good enough to start grooming her rump properly.  I’ve never seen her so well groomed and healthy looking.  I am so happy for my little girl.  Of course, her vetrinarian is going to give me a hairy look, because I’ve been such a horrible cat mom in letting my fat girl not only to continue to be fat, but to perhaps even gain weight.  Talk about missing the forest for the trees…. are we so obsessed with one small detail that we miss the overall picture of health and happiness?? 

Off I go to spend some quality time with my x-box and my new books today… 

And, thank you to my co-bloggers, readers and friends for their patience  in letting me be a hermit for a while with my grief.  There is no doubt that the grief isn’t over, but for now I am ready to let life back in a little even if some part of me feels bruised and like it hasn’t stopped crying since I got that call about my step-dad in November. 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Just fat or could it be something else?

The first thing I’d like to do is apologize to my co-bloggers and our readers for not being here lately.  I’ve hit a snag and it’s brought me back to a mild depression that, if I don’t get a handle on it soon, will only get worse.

My depression has been spawned by non-stop pain.  It’s that vicious cycle of self-abuse when you say to yourself, “well, if I wasn’t so fat, I wouldn’t be in this pain.”  You know, the crap that goes around in your head when you only want to beat yourself up and degrade yourself just a little more every day?  (as if the physical pain weren’t enough…let’s just top it off with a bit of self-disgust)

I’ve experienced this pain and occasional swelling for, I’m guessing, around a year and a half, maybe a little longer.  I’ve been told it’s muscle strain and to not exercise.  I’ve been told it’s a matter of needing to exercise.  I’ve been told it’s sciatica.  At one point I was told my foot was probably broken with a stress fracture.  I’ve had x-rays and taken pain pills, muscle relaxers, sleeping pills, gone to the chiropractor regularly, used heating pads, ice packs, etc…

This latest bit of depression really hit on Sunday.

My husband recently got a promotion and as a gift to himself and from me, we decided to get him a spiffy new briefcase.  We got up Sunday morning and showered and had breakfast  out.  It was a rainy day but I was with my hubby and we were having a good day.  We shopped for a briefcase from 9:00 that morning until about 6:00 that evening…pretty much non-stop.  That means standing and walking all day.  We went to a huge mall and walked all through it and we went to Target, Sams Club, Office Depot and some other stores.  (I know there’s a whole other post in here about how I should’ve known better than to try to shop all day and that I should’ve done a better job of self-care but that’s for another time.)

By 7:00 (within an hour of getting home) I was in bed in pain.  I didn’t go to work Monday or Tuesday.  I stayed in bed both days.  As the physical pain eased up, the emotional pain didn’t budge. 

I had done some research on the internet last week and I found out that a lot of what I’m experiencing (almost every symptom) is exactly what fibromyalgia looks like.  There is no known cure and the cause is unknown at this time.  There’s really not much in the way of medicine to help people with this either.  But it was still a diagnosis and it sounded right to me.  I know that self-diagnosis is not always right so I had planned to make a doctor’s appointment to see if this was a possibility.

After the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I had this week, I called my general physician and made an appointment for 3:00 yesterday.  Before I went, I typed up a list of the symptoms I was experiencing so he would be able to read it and so that I would remember to mention everything.  I didn’t mention believing that it was fibromyalgia because I wanted him to tell me what he thought I had based on the info I had given him.  The paper I handed him had about 20-25 symptoms on it.

Now this doctor has come a long way in fat acceptance since I started seeing him in the 90’s.  He’s seen me go through my depressions and has seen how I handle myself when it comes to self acceptance.  I guess I was so beat down by this doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t even rally enough to get my point across.  And for some reason, this visit seemed to be a reversal for my doctor because he was definitely weight focused.

I was sitting on the table when he entered the room and had my paper in my hand.  I could tell he was in a good mood.  He asked me what was wrong and I proceeded to tell him about my constant pain and he saw my paper.  I handed it to him and he read the whole thing before saying, “you know what this is saying to me?  This is saying you’re way out of shape and you need to lose weight.  You need to exercise.”  (He did tell me to purchase some Mucinex D, gave me a prescription for cough medicine and a z-pack and diagnosed me with bronchitis.)

He did not even consider looking further than my size.  I am fat.  I don’t deny that.  But I wonder what he would have said to a thin woman who had walked into his office with the same list of symptoms.  Would he have been so quick to say, “you’re out of shape”?  Or would he have maybe said, “we might need to do some blood work or an MRI on you”?  Or maybe even, “does anything like this run in your family?  Arthritis?  Muscle issues?”  Would he have immediately said, “you’re out of shape” to a woman who APPEARED healthy?

Having said that, I will concede that I don’t have enough movement in my life and that exercise has always made me feel better physcially and emotionally.  I will even go so far as to say I’m not as healthy as I would like to be and my choices have not always been to the betterment of my body, but STILL!!!  Those things I can change.  But what if, just what if, I were to lose all the weight that my doctor suggests and I start a healthy workout routine and STILL HAVE THESE SYMPTOMS?  Then what?

Does that mean that I could’ve been diagnosed correctly in 2009 instead of waiting until 2011 or 2012 when (or if) I lose down to the prescribed weight and continue to exercise?!?  What if I never lose the weight?  Do I remain undiagnosed and just wonder if I’m crazy and are these pains really real?

But then what if it really is all about my weight?  What if I do lose the weight and keep up a regular exercise routine?  What if my pains do actually go away once I’m down to XXX lbs?  Does that mean I won’t ever be sick with anything again?  Does being a certain weight guarantee me to be healthy?  No.

But does appearing healthy mean I might get better treatment by my physician?  Does it mean I’ll be listened to more intently?  Does it mean I won’t be pre-judged and diagnosed based on my symptoms and not my appearance?  I say yes.  Sadly, yes.

I went home after this visit with my doc and talked to my hubby about it.  He felt so badly that the doc had talked to me like that and saw every point I made.  He even suggested I go to another doctor which I very well may.  I do want to get an MRI or something on my spine because I may actually have some disk degeneration or rupture.

One would think that after a visit like this with my doc, I would sink deeper into depression but it’s actually kind of renewed my faith in myself and my own body.

Again, I’m sorry for my absence lately.

~sas

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Big Fat Irony

Recently, I went to the gyno and listened to my first “weight talk.”  Fun.  What I find most apalling is that I didn’t realize how ironic all this was until a couple of months after this appointment…

When I was a normal weight (or thin depending on the eye of the beholder), my doctors were very happy with my condition.  Never mind that I was falling apart.  I was painfully cold all the time.  I couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag, due to the malnutrition due to extreme restriction.  Almost any food or drink consumption caused painful indigestion.  For some reason, I was constantly in the bathroom cuz even just a little liquid in my bladder caused a feeling or urgently needing to pee.  I had migraines three or four times a week on average.  My lips turned blue during my workouts.  My complection was often grayish.  I couldn’t help but binge on a regular basis from all the restriction.  My hair was thinning.  A paper cut would take weeks to heal.  Walking to school in even a sprinkle of a rainshower WITH an umbrella almost always caused me to catch a cold.  Colds almost always turned into bronchitis.  Bronchitis generally lasted six months each bout.  My asthma symptoms were often painful and I used my inhaler several times a day. 

The only concern I remember any doctor voicing was about the copious amount of caffeine that I drank.  No one cared about the restriction or the sypmtoms that went with it.  Perhaps they just thought I was sickly… if so, they were naive. 

I got treatment for my eating disorder and my weight has gone up and down depending on what anti-depressant I’m on.  The one I’m on right now caused me to gain about three dress sizes…. and now the doctors wanna talk to me about weight loss.  I wanna smack these doctors in the face with a shovel.  I am HEALTHIER than ever… but of course that doesn’t matter, cuz I’m fat.  Wha…?

My asthma hardly ever makes a peep.  I don’t even catch all the colds that my husband catches and walking outside in wet weather no longer causes the default cold or flu.  As people go, I’m still pretty cold blooded, but I’m no longer painfully cold all the time.  Doctors keep mentioning that my weight must be causing horrible blood pressure problems for me.  Yeah… then they check my bp and find that my bp is LOW.  My bp is low AND I take ritalin… a med that increases blood pressure.  Yeah, my weight is really sending my bp sky high!  Everyone get your helmets – I could explode any minute from this extremely high blood pressure! 

My stomach no longer gives me all the trouble it used to.  I still have a sensitive tummy, but I no longer dread eating or drinking anything for fear of some nasty indigestion that could potentially last for hours.  I no longer have daily acid reflux.  My hair is beautiful again.  Maybe some of the thinning is permanent, but whatever.  I’m not about to beat myself up for spilled milk that I have worked very hard to mop up over the years.  I seem to have been one of the lucky ones who got some of their hair fullness back after years of restriction though.  My complexion looks healthy today.  No more gray.  Paper cuts heal so much faster now.  I’m no longer covered in mystery bruises.  I haven’t had bronchitis in a few years now.  Whooo hoooo!  Migraines are now rare for me. 

But, now, all of a sudden, I’m getting all these health lectures when I’m healthier than ever… and when I was starving myself and at a normal weight, I felt like I was constantly screaming for attention to my numerous health issues and still doctors ignored me, because I LOOKED healthy (to them) merely because I was thin.  Everyone knows that thin equals healthy, right?  😛

I suspect my weight is about to go back down again due to changes in the anti-depressant that caused my weight to go up.  My feelings about all this is mixed.  I’m not sure whether to be pissed for being (potentially anyway) treated differently and escaping the fat = unhealthy rhetoric or relieved not to hear that ignorant stuff anymore from ignorant doctors when I feel vulnerable enough wearing paper clothes and maybe even having my lady parts poked at with ouchy instruments.  Meh. 

The anti-depressant that caused my weight gain worked well in helping my depression for quite some time.  Even as it made me fat, I didn’t care.  I was HAPPY!  My psychiatrist seemed to not understand how I could go from “normal” to fat and actually get happier.  He offered to change my meds simply to help me lose weight.  For those of you who have never been on psych meds, I will explain what a ridiculous offer he made.  Changing psych meds is a big deal.  It can takes weeks, months or even years to find a med that works and doesn’t cause horrible side effects for you once you and your doc decide a med change is in order.  Changing anti-depressants is not like changing from Advil to Tylenol for your headaches.  Changing psych meds can be a long and painful journey.  If you work full-time, it can be even more difficult, because changing meds (even changing onto a med that works really well for you) can cause weeks of symptoms in getting used to the new med and withdrawling frmo the old meds.  For me, this generally means nausea, migraines, a short fuse, forgetfulness and being very easily flustered for at least two weeks.  It is no freakin’ joke…. and I’m supposed to volunteer for this merely because an otherwise lovely anti-depressant made me fat???!!!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I made it clear to my psychiatrist that I’d far rather be fat and happy than be a normal weight and depressed or going through unnecessary psych med change difficulties. 

The rebellious part of me would like to stay fat (even though I’ve quit the med that caused my fatness because it stopped working for me) just to make my psychiatrist uncomfortable and to avoid the “you’ve lost weight!  how did you do it!?!” talk from my co-workers.  But, that misses the whole body and size acceptance point.  I believe in letting my body be what it wants to be…. and so, I will… whether that means weight changes or not.  Whatevs.  I’d rather be fat and happy and sane and healthy… or whatever size my body naturally is and happy/healthy/sane.  To my pdoc’s chagrin, I won’t be chucking future potential meds either if they make me fat or fatter.  Maybe I can teach him a thing or two myself.  He does seem to be fairly receptive…

If and when your doctors get ignorant on you, I hope you remember that you’re not alone and just cuz a doc is a doc doesn’t mean that they are always right.  Hang in there, friends.  I’m rooting you on… as I hope you root me on in my own journey. 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Self-acceptance & deprogramming, part II

 

I wanted to continue my blogging on the issue of  Self-acceptance and deprogramming/reprogramming that I started ealier  and see where it leads me (us).  It may very well be that a part III and IV will follow.

The last post dealt with the fact that it’s very possible I was a part of a cultish religion until I was about 20 (although it’s stuck with me deeply up until now).  I’ve done some online research and found that it’s very possible I may need to undergo some sort of deprogramming or reprogramming to see any normalcy in my life.  This “religion” has had an emotional hold on me for over 40 years and although I’m not actively a part of it anymore, the core beliefs and dysfunction I have stem from that time in my life. 

As a very young child I remember our family dynamic.  Dad first and foremost, mom second in line, my older sister was next and I was last.  Now grant you, I don’t really know what this had to do with anything because EVERYTHING was decided by my father…EVERYTHING.

Where did he learn this?  He was taught by his parents and extended family who all were members of the same church.  They believed they were members of the only one true heaven bound church anywhere.  I learned this very early.

Our religion was based on baptism and perfection.  If you make a death bed confession but were not privy to a baptism, then you are going to hell.  If you married someone, the spouse left you and you remarried, the only way you could go to heaven was to divorce that second spouse and remarry the first one.  You also have to repent of your sins to your elder and then get rebaptized.  (because if you got baptized the first time and then did the heinous act of remarrying, then you weren’t serious about the first baptism and it was null and void)  If you were staring at a big mack truck headed right for you and you scream “oh shit!” just before he clobbered you and smeared you on the pavement….if at that time, you didn’t have an elder there to repent for the foul language and to baptized you, you were going to hell.

Ok, flash up to me being 7 years old.  As if the pressure of staying sin free and getting baptized and constantly repenting wasn’t enough to show I wasn’t good enough, my mom totes me 45 miles one way to go to my first Weight Watchers meeting.  I’m 7 years old thinking, “how am I ever going to be good enough for god” and then my parents (ina backhanded way) say I’m not good enough for them because I’m too fat and I need to be “fixed”.

If you zoom forward to 2009, you see me in bed typing on my computer with my four legged sidekick laying at the bottom of the bed.  I’m sitting here still entrenched in the throes of the “not good enoughs”.  I’m now 46 years old and the years of horrible, not to mention non-Biblical, teaching and the years of dieting are still enough to drive me insane.

Regina T mentioned in a comment on my last post that reparenting is probably in order.  Reparenting has been some of the hardest yet most rewarding work I’ve done thus far.  I think I’m going to have to step it up to fit this situation and love myself a little more on this one.

But the part that I find so interesting is what Mulberry wrote in her response to me:  “Ever notice how many similarities there are between the cult of weight-loss and the religion you described?” 

Yes, Yes and Yes!  It’s the legalism of it all.  Do this, don’t do that.  Follow this, don’t follow that.  Eat this, don’t eat that.  Drink this, don’t drink that.  Eat this but only in this amount.  Drink water, don’t drink water.  Eat eggs, don’t eat eggs.  Be thin, don’t be fat.  Only blacks and whites, no grays.  Only rights and wrongs, no objectivity.  Rules, laws, punishments and judgments.

So yes it looks like I’m going to be some major deprogramming and reprogramming in the months to come.  I’m going to look at this as a very positive step in my life…one I deserve and one I’m very worthy of. 

Worthy?  Because of this “cult” I was raised in and the constant barrage of society telling me I’m not good enough because I’m fat, I’ve seriously thought MANY times of suicide.  I’ve never actually attempted it but I have had plans and even written some out.  This has got to stop! 

If you have any suggestions on how to re/deprogram my mind from all these horrible voices going on in my head (and heart sometimes), suggestions that have worked for you, please share them with me.  They can be corny or “out there”…I’m open to anything.

I hope you join me and I hope you lean on me as I plan to call out to you guys some.

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Life’s Too Short For FAT THIGHS

I work in a cafe inside a giant bookstore.  Our specialty is coffee (it has been so much fun to learn to make a latte!), but we also have a pretty neat little pastry case.  We have all the sweet basics: cookies, brownies, cake, donuts, cinnamon rolls, etc.  I have been pleasantly surprised at how few people I’ve heard go on about how “bad” they are for buying a cookie or a latte.  By far, the people who talk about fat and/or calories and the like are rare.  I can probably count all of those I have seen in two weeks on one hand.  But, one customer in particular really struck me…

She was on some long road trip and was stopping in to have a snack, so she could finish the last leg of her drive.  She ordered a coffee drink and it was obvious she wanted something to eat with that, so I suggested a cookie.  Sheesh.  Had I known what her reaction was gonna be, I might’ve just held my tongue to avoid the drama.  Who am I kidding?  I’m not usually one to skip challenging someone to avoid drama.  😛 

She started off with some cliched diet talk about cookies and “badness” and fat or something.  I responded about life being too short to make so much difficulty over A COOKIE.  (Seriously.  Aren’t there more important things in life???  Well, aren’t there??!!!)  She snarkily responded that life is too short to have fat thighs.  Sigh.  That comment inspired feelings of sadness for her. 

This was a fat woman, though my guess is that if she knew I thought of her as “fat” that she would be really upset.  Well, guess what?  I’m fat too.  😛  It’s just a word.  Whatevs.  Like me, her weight seemed to gravitate to her thighs.  This made her comment seem even sadder to me.  This wasn’t just some hypothetical fat hate rant.  She seemed to be talking about herself. 

Had it not been really late (near store closing and way past my bedtime) and had I not been really tired, I hope that I would’ve gone on to challenge her more.  Instead I pointed out that food is just food (not bad or good) and that it’s no crime to eat a cookie that you really want.  I advised her to get what she wanted and to take her time and savour it.  She ended up buying the cookie afterall… and three bags of chocolate covered expresso beans that she seemed to guiltily declare were gifts for friends.  Who cares?  You have a right to buy whatever you want.  You owe me no explaination, ma’am.  But… whatever…

Had I been “on,” I would’ve liked to have pointed out that not eating that diets don’t work, that forbidding foods doesn’t work (with some health related exceptions that I don’t know how to deal with, cuz they don’t apply to me, so I am not even going there…) and that what I really meant was that life is too short for all the self-hate and food obsession that comes with restricting the foods we really love.  It’s not just “life’s too short to not eat a cookie”… it is so much more than that… I wish I could’ve expressed that at the time. 

I did manage to mention something to a co-worker (after the customer had sat down with her drink/cookie and some magazines) how forbidding food causes obsession and even binges in some cases.  His snarky reply was, “yeah… cuz you know that’s my problem with heroin.”  Sigh.  Meaning he binges on heroin all the time (joking statement), cuz he labels it “forbidden.” 

Well, the good news is that I am secure enough in my recovery to be really tired and still not buy into an idea like that even if I’m not sure why it doesn’t make sense… cuz I’m that beat.  😛

Now that I’m all rested and perky – heroin is not the same as food.  Food we need to live.  Heroin is not something that every person is born needing and will die without.  It’s not the same.  Not even close.  If we restrict enough (at least in the case of most people), some part of our brains will take over and push us very dramatically to the highest fat/calorie food in our proximity.  This system is designed to override any desires we may have to make our thighs thinner or whatever.  Life is too darn short to live in starvation survival mode.  Life is too short to be self-hating.  Life is too damn short to make judging ourselves (or others) over cookies a top priority (or any priority at all!). 

Yesterday I watched a movie called “Just Friends.”  Ryan Renolds plays a fat teen that goes on to become a super fit and conventionally hansome grown man.  He later explains something along the lines of his not eating sweets for 10 years.  I also remember something from “America’s Sweethearts” that was similar from Julia Roberts’ character who also lost a lot of weight… something about not eating any carbs for the last 10 years.  What bugs me about this is that these characters say these things like it’s nothing.  Like the restriction doesn’t cause self-hate and sometimes even binges.  They say it like they just switched toothpaste brands for the last 10 years and that is so disgustingly misleading.  It just isn’t that easy for the vast majority of people.  Even so, some folks are still going to be fat even if they do restrict food to a large degree.  Some people will get even fatter for their efforts.  And… I wonder where this woman (with the thigh-hate) heard the messages that fat thighs are a) bad and b) easily correctable through restriction…. because they are neither in the vast majority of people. 

What really gets me is that this woman was beautiful and I don’t even think she knows it.  She has very distinct features… such wide eyes and a big smile.  I thought her thighs suited her body shape very well.  And yet she is wasting so much time worrying about fat thighs and the morals of eating cookies… how sad. 

I hope she was able to enjoy that cookie.  I’ve had one of those caramel, pecan, chocolate chunk ones and they are glorious… if one can get past all the brain noise about fat and the supposed morals of fat to actually notice the flavours and textures of the cookie that is.

–AngryGrayRainbows

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I’m not the inspiration I wanted to be

I spoke to AGR today and told her that I really thought I should be taken off this blog.  I told her I had no time, the job was killing me and that I just didn’t feel “recovered enough” to post anymore.  I told her that I felt like I should be much better at this and that I always “wanted to be an inspiration.”

I’m sure you can guess what she told me.  She said, “post about it.  You know others will relate to what you’re going through.”  So here I am.

Part of my recovery from compulsive overeating has been to accept myself…warts and all.  Another part has been to promise myself to never diet again – to take my focus off of food.  A major part has been to “deal with” my past and to move forward as much as possible.   Another main component has been to be honest with me and those around me.

My heart is aching.  I’m not the inspiration I want to be to others.  I’m too embarrassed to post because I don’t feel “good enough” to.  I’m not recoverED, I’m still IN recovery, dang it!  I still focus on food and weight.  I don’t accept myself.  I have some major self-loathing moments.  I let the past rule my present and I just feel like such a failure.

I had a passion when we started this blog to help others who suffered with low self-esteem based on society’s perception of fat people and their misconceptions.  I had a passion about sharing my story and telling others it is possible to be happy, healthy and FAT.   I wanted to put myself out there so people would know they’re not alone in their struggle…and here I sit.  Feeling unworthy, unloveable and disgusting…feeling like fat is a four letter word that describes my whole life as the depths of despair and disappointment.

I wanted to support, not feel like I needed to get support just to get up the next morning.

Here I am, asking for your support.  I feel like I’m where I started in 2005 – -the time in my life where I meant nothing.  I feel like I’m at the door of despair just waiting for someone to let me in so I can wallow full on in my disgust of myself.  I feel like the work I’ve done the last four years has been for naught.  All the therapy, the crying spells, the anti-depressants, the trips to the gym, the books I’ve read, the days I spent online trying to get the support I needed…useless.

I feel like I’m sinking…and then AGR says, “post about it”.

So here I go.  I found out last week at my annual physical that I am indeed starting menopause.  My job is going through some major staff changes right now and it’s taking a toll on me.  My birthday is tomorrow and I’ll be 46 (not so much happy that I’m getting older and older).  My husband is in the process of possibly getting a new job.  My physical set backs have scared me into not going to the gym at all anymore.  I’m “feeling fat”.  I’m letting society’s perceptions get to me.

I’m humbly coming to you asking for support.  I don’t get to come here and blog like I would like and I don’t get to even respond to my commenters like I would like but please feel free to respond.  I’ll do my best to respond because I need your help.  I’m definitely in a pot hole in my recovery.  I try to tell myself that I’m IN recovery and that’s ok but I still expect too much of myself.

I’m open for anything you can send my way.  If you made it through that, thank you for reading.

~sas

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