Finding Wisdom in Dog Walking

Last night our friends (and neighbors) invited Mabel and me to take our puppies on a walk with them and their dog Ollie (who they got the same day we got our dogs). I got the leashes on them and off we went, but what a disaster! While both Pearl and Bruno tugged and pulled against the leashes, Bruno was fighting it so hard he wound up making himself throw up! (I had fed them right before our friends called, which was definitely a mistake, but who knew they would call?)

"Wow," I said at the end of our walk, "It's obvious we haven't been walking these dogs on the leash enough!" I felt bad, because I had every intention of getting these dogs leash trained ASAP, and it fell by the wayside with Hubby off at baseball games almost every night and Mabel busy doing her thing. Since I figured I couldn't do it by myself, it didn't get done.

But this afternoon when I got home from work I looked down at the doggies and said, "All right, let's go for another walk!" I got them both on their leashes and we took off, and it went so much better. They only gagged themselves on the leashes once when we got close to some horses in a field, but no one puked, and they actually walked together pretty well for young untrained dogs.

I figured out a couple things:
1. The dogs do better when there are less distractions-- my friends went the "social" route where every couple of houses there was someone outside to talk to (or in the dogs' case, try to jump on). I took them down the country road behind our house and didn't stop every 30 seconds for neighborly chatter.
2. The dogs did better when they were closer together -- last night I took Bruno, and Mabel charged ahead with Pearl. I'm convinced Bruno fought against the leash so hard last night because he was trying to catch up with her.
3. I was wrong to think I couldn't do it myself. Today with just me holding the leashes, they weren't being pulled in different directions and several times fell into a nice steady rhythm with me.
4. They definitely need to do this regularly to get used to it. There was definite improvement from last night, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

All of these things can be related to my work with Intuitive Eating. I need to cut down on distractions, especially when I'm eating, but also pushing out the diet mentality that always wants to invade my brain. It really helps to be in contact with other people who are going through the same thing I am, which right now is a variety of IE web sites and forums (check out my new side bar for IE resources I'm exploring). I am strong enough to do this myself, and just like the puppies, it's going to take practice and patience to gain progress.

I have to tell you I found a lot of comfort and validation last night reading some posts on Karen Koenig's blog. The one about after a binge made me realize I was on the right track; her post about the struggle made the internal conflicts I have seem normal and part of the process of change; and when she writes about feeling bad before feeling good, it taught me that I need to learn to accept the challenges and the bad days and not struggle against them, because that is a crucial part of recovery.

Gee, learning not to struggle against what is new and unfamiliar? There's a lesson both the puppies and I need to learn. If we keep focusing on fighting the leash, we may miss out on all the great things going on around us -- like rabbits hiding behind fences, or in my case, a life without dieting and bingeing.

Letting Go: Stinkin' Thinkin'

Taking a break from house cleaning. I've got my friend SS coming to stay this weekend, and I want the place to look at least halfway decent and livable.

Of course, our chaotic life isn't helping matters. My friend is coming Friday night; on Thursday morning a crew is invading my house to fix our leaky basement. They claim they will be done and everything will be cleaned up by the end of the day Friday. I sure hope so. Talk about cutting it close.

After a quick lunch I had to empty said basement of our canned goods and other pantry items and lug them upstairs. One of the reasons we're fixing the basement is so we can build a big pantry down there, because my kitchen just can't contain all the items my husband must buy in bulk at the mega-mart. So where to put everything, you ask? My downstairs shower stall is now packed full of cans and other miscellaneous foodstuffs. Thank goodness we've got another shower upstairs.

I threw one of my martyr fits this morning as I surveyed the clutter and garbage strewn around my house, 80 percent of which was dumped by my loving family. I told Hubby last week I'm going to have "She picked up other people's socks" carved on my tombstone. He laughed, so I know he heard me, but it still didn't stop him from leaving various socks lying hither and yon throughout the house.

Anyway, I grumbled and cursed under my breath this morning, not sure how in the span of two days our house can get so disheveled when we spend half the weekend running all over the countryside and aren't even here! I think when we do get home everyone just dumps everything on the floor and goes to do their thing -- mainly, watch TV. Leaving me to put everything away, clear up dishes, you name it.

The one good thing my martyr routine and my subsequent "suck it up and clean the place already" plan this afternoon did was distract me from the worries I've been having the last 24 hours. I guess it's fallout from the Saturday binge which has let the diet mentality creep back into my head, but I don't like it. Like the TV news shows, I have this scroll bar running underneath my regular thoughts that keeps repeating "You're gaining weight. With all this eating you're going to gain it all back." I felt out of control and sad, and with that came the anxiety.

It didn't help that Hubby announced to me he's now lost 12 pounds on Meridia. This got the diet mentality really revved up. "He's losing weight and I'm going to gain, and before you know it he's going to weigh less than me," the scroll bar said in an update. I don't know why the thought of that horrifies me so, maybe it's a gender stereotype that men should be bigger than women.

Plus I went blogging yesterday afternoon and found myself reading about people reaching or getting darn near their "goal" weight, and it just made me feel awful. "Why can't that be me?" the little brat in my head whined. "Why do they get to be 150, 180, etc., and I don't? It's not fair!"

So then the doubts started creeping in about IE, that maybe I was just kidding myself that this would ever work. "I'll just wind up gaining 20 or 30 pounds (or more!) and have to go back on another diet to lose it, only this time it'll be even harder!" I bemoaned. I couldn't believe that I would ever be able to get sane around food; I was sure all of my bad habits would come back and I'd be right back where I started.

To add fuel to the fire, this weekend in the middle of all this running around I took all my fat clothes to the Salvation Army and gave them away. Everything in sizes 22, 24, 26, 28, and even those dreaded 30/32s, is now gone. And my thought last night? "Oh no, what have I done? Now I'm going to gain a ton of weight and won't have any fat clothes to wear!"

As Stuart Smalley would say, "That's just stinkin' thinkin'!" I let every negative thought and belief invade my head and send me into one of those catastrophic tirades (again, to quote Stuart, "I'm gonna die homeless and penniless and twenty pounds overweight!").

I guess the good news is, as bad as these thoughts were, and as bad as they made me feel, I didn't for one second seriously consider stopping IE and going back on a diet today. The rational part of me knew that I needed to hash out these doubts and fears to get rid of them. Just like I am finally letting go of those fat clothes, I'm learning to let go of the diet mentality. And like letting go of any important thing in our lives, there's usually a grieving process involved.

In amongst the stress and the cold and the time of the month, there was one thought that also helped to trigger the Saturday binge and subsequent anxieties on Sunday: I remember thinking on Friday that I am saying goodbye not only to the dieting, but to the bingeing, too. And that thought scared me. Because there is a part of me that still enjoys escaping into food. It's a coping mechanism I created as a child that got me through a lot of difficult times in my life, and letting go of that is frightening. It was my main means of self-comfort and nurturing for many, many years, and giving that up makes me feel scared, and surprise, surprise -- deprived.

So it isn't shocking that the little rebellious child in me said, "Oh no you don't! You're not taking this away from me! I'll show you!" Hence my binge.

Today, with the sun shining and a clearer head on my shoulders, I know that it is extremely early in my journey, and these second thoughts and the inner turmoil I'm going through as I enter new and uncharted territory is probably very normal. I'm going through some major changes, and that's not easy. I'm going to have emotional days, even painful days as I adjust and adapt. But I'm also going to have wonderful days, moments of victory and elation as I grow and learn.

And it helps to write all this down. If I hadn't been writing throughout this weekend and today I may have never made the connection between the binge and my thoughts of saying goodbye to my emotional dependence on food. I would have just written it off as being stressed, sick and being hormonal and not realized what else was going on. When I write down my thoughts and feelings I can look at them with a more objective eye and spot what's irrational and uncover the wide range of emotions I'm experiencing, not just the anxiety.

So I apologize if this post wearies you with its load of stinkin' thinkin' and feeling sorry for myself. But I needed to let go of it, and this was the best place I could think of to deposit it.

Dissecting a Binge

Recovering from yesterday. I'm sad to say I binged. Not a small, fizzle-out snacking on sweets, not the Mother's Day overeating. A full-blown binge.

I would have loved to have come here and reported how I vanquished it, broke it down and defeated it with all kind of relaxation techniques and cognitive therapy skills. And I did try. But it just didn't happen. It was like a switch got flipped on and once that current went through, there was no turning it off.

I'm doing my best to see the positives here, the morning after. Taking May 1 as the starting date of my IE journey, I'm pleased that it's taken three weeks to have another binge. Since I was bingeing pretty much two days a week every week for several (way too many!) months, I know this is real progress.

Every IE book I've read has told me that the binges won't magically disappear. It takes time to recover from (in my case) the many years of using food to comfort myself, as well as the last few years of diet mentality that had been taking over my life. And the point was made that even if you master the IE techniques, you will never become a "perfect" eater, because no one is. Almost everyone overeats once in a while; a lot of people occasionally eat for emotional reasons. But they don't do it all the time, and they don't berate themselves and consider themselves bad, morally bereft people because of it. And it doesn't make them spiral into binge eating.

I've also read that it can take a long time for your body to recover from the deprivation caused by long-term dieting. In the "Intuitive Eating" book they explain that when the body is faced with long term calorie restriction it creates a "primal hunger," which creates a drive in the body to eat everything in sight, because it has recognized starvation conditions and is instinctively trying to prevent death. This doesn't go away immediately; in the famous World War II study it took their test subjects months to recover normal eating habits, and that was only after a few months of restricting. I've been doing it for the majority of three years.

Of course, I'm not totally writing this off as an involuntary drive that was completely out of my control. Over the course of the day I tried my best to chip through the "eat, eat, eat" chant in my brain to get at the feelings coursing underneath. I know it was a stressful week at work and I was sick with a cold and dealing with my time of the month of top of it. And Saturday was the final straw: I was nervous for my daughter who was having her big dance recital, and I was stressing trying to get her ready and at the auditorium in time. And my husband was stressing me out with a situation that really had no bearing on our relationship, but on dealing with other people. It was making me anxious because I knew what my husband was doing would upset these other people, some of whom I deal with regularly, and I just knew I would somehow wind up getting stuck in the middle of it. And Lord knows I can't stand upsetting people and having them angry at me.

So I was stressed, anxious, depleted, and tired. I was afraid of dealing with other people's anger and rejection. Those old feelings of deprivation were running wild, and even though I realize now that I felt deprived from rest and relaxation and nurturing, I focused only on being deprived of food. It didn't matter that I kept telling myself "You're not being deprived anymore! You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. Just stop when you're full." But that little wild child inside of me didn't want to hear the word "stop" in any shape or form. So I binged.

Today I'm a little remorseful about it, a little worried about weight gain and my clothes not fitting. But I realize that even though I don't like the binge, it has its usefulness. Now that I'm aware of what I need to look for, I was able to use this binge to get to the bottom of what I'm really feeling underneath the top layers of deprivation and rebellion. I'm starting to learn what the real problems are and what I really need to focus on in my life. And even though I didn't win the battle this time, I'm gathering more information, more insight, and hopefully next time I'll be more prepared and have more strategies in place to take care of myself in other ways than eating.

And the good news is, I didn't get on the scale this morning to asses the damage. The numbers at this point are irrelevant to the mental and emotional progress I'm making, and I don't want to add insult to injury by focusing on a number instead of what I've learned.

On a good note, my daughter kicked a** yesterday at her recital! She is such a talented gymnast, and I was so proud of her I nearly burst. I brought her a bouquet of flowers after her routine and I could tell she was really pleased. Today we're continuing her celebration by taking her to the matinee to see Shrek 3. But right now I need to go shower for church. Hope everyone has a good Sunday!

Tag, I'm It

OK, Lori finally cornered me and tagged me with this blog thing going around.

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here goes:

8. When I went to Florida as a child I was in an elevator with Jan and Dean. My first brush with greatness.
7. When I eat multicolored food (m&ms, for example) I have to have an equal amount of all colors. I then eat one of each color until they're all gone. Did I mention there's a lot of OCD in my family?
6. My biggest guilty pleasure is The Monkees, both the show and the music. Mike Nesmith is by far my favorite Monkee.
5. I almost always sneeze in threes. I've been told that's a sign of luck. I call it seasonal allergies.
4. The most surreal two minutes of my life occurred when I lived in Boston. I walked out of my apartment and literally bumped into Peter Wolf; as I walked away I proceeded to pass a little person, then two transvestites. By the time I reached the end of the blog I wondered if someone had slipped something in my drink.
3. I had a serious dream of becoming a musician. I attended Berklee College of Music for one year and realized my real talents were in my writing, so I transferred.
2. As a child I had two imaginary friends, Patrick and Patricia.
1. Since we were little kids my best friend and I have always had a bizarre psychic connection. If either one of us thought of the other, the phone would suddenly ring and it would be one of us. One time I was traveling through her town and tried to arrange a get-together, but our schedules weren't working. I stopped at a department store there before leaving, and in the parking lot I saw a car drive by with her in it! We managed to hang out for 10 minutes as she bought a birthday card for the party she was going to. The oddest thing of all: I invited her to my 15th class reunion (she went to school with me from grades 3-7). At the reunion she hooked up with one of the guys in our class, and three months later she arranged for me to meet his brother. We both married the brothers, and now we're sisters-in-law!

And now, I’m tagging Beula, Debra, Helen, Lynette, Jen S., Michele, Tree Lover, Ty
If any of you have already done this, my apologies.

Just A Muffin

Still fighting whatever it is I have-- I'm still not sure if it's a cold or allergies. But my throat's better today, which is good.

A few minutes ago I did what up until, oh, today, was the unthinkable: I walked away from a half eaten double chocolate muffin, one of my current favorite foods to "indulge" (i.e. binge) on when I'm "bad." I'm still kind of amazed and dazed by it. But I really paid attention to my body, and halfway through I knew I had eaten enough to satisfy me.

It was almost like someone else was steering the controls as I watched myself put the muffin down on the table and walk away. I am a charter member of the Clean Your Plate Club, so to leave something behind is working against a behavior I've had since childhood.

I purposely didn't throw the rest of the muffin away, pour dish soap on it, etc., because that would have smacked of diet mentality to me. Besides the fact that I can't stand the thought of "wasting" food, tossing it or soaping it makes me think I've done something wrong by eating it and I'm now either hiding or destroying the evidence. Knowing that I can go back and finish the muffin when I'm hungry again was half the reason why I could walk away.

I feel kind of silly posting about eating half a muffin, but this simple act is revolutionary to me. Before IE, this muffin probably would have been the start of a binge that would last the rest of the day, even the rest of the weekend. The following Monday morning I would promise myself I'd never buy those muffins again, declaring them evil and off limits. But of course, a few weeks or months down the line, after a lot more dieting and deprivation, I would be driven to buy them once again. Now, it's just a muffin.

Yesterday in my comments, Tree Lover asked, "Are you sure you have only been at this IE thing for a few weeks? Every time I read your blog I am amazed by your insights."

I may have only been following IE for a few weeks, but the truth is I've been reading about it for at least 15 years. Each time I'd read another book I would nod my head, intellectually getting what the author was trying to say. But each time I was nowhere near ready to put it into practice. Before I lost my weight I was still too dependent on the eating and shut down to my emotions and body signals, and when I was dieting I kept telling myself "When I lose xx more pounds, then maybe I could try this as maintenance." (If I've posted this before, I apologize for repeating myself)

I suppose I could compare it to the way my weight loss happened; I had tried to lose weight several times before, but in 2004 all the elements came together and clicked, and I shed the weight. Of course, as you know, by 2007 I'd dieted myself into a diet/binge cycle. I hate to say that it was this series of events that made everything click for me with IE, because I certainly wouldn't recommend everyone mess up their heads with dieting in order to "get" IE. But I suppose in my case I did need to "hit bottom," so to speak, to reach that desperation level when I knew I had to find another way to deal with eating and food.

But the most crucial thing I've learned in the last couple weeks is this: the actual food we eat is truly secondary. This is all about our bodies and minds. So many of us learn to shut down our emotions and ignore what our bodies are trying to tell us. I definitely have, and I'm learning a lot of the why and how of that through Karen Koenig's "The Food & Feelings Workbook." Every time I pick it up I think, "Yep, that happened to me," or "Oh yeah, I do that all the time." And best of all, I'm learning how to work through these issues and replace all the screwy beliefs in my head to more rational and nurturing ones.

Do I still have my fears and doubts? Yeah, sometimes. I'm still holding on to some concerns about gaining weight, although they are decreasing. I'm realizing more and more that my sanity is more important to me than my clothing size, and this is the only way I know of that I can find that sanity when it comes to food and eating. While I'm still proud of the weight I've lost, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the idea of being content where I am. All the books I've read say that if you follow IE you will most likely lose pounds and get to your "natural" weight, whatever that may be. However, I'm not going to hang all my hopes on that possibility. If I would happen to lose weight, so be it. But it's going to be much more of an accomplishment to me when I can reach the day when I can't remember the last time I binged. Now that would be truly wonderful.

Hard Work

I never got back to post again last night. It turned out we had tickets to a Cash Night held by a local fraternal organization. You buy tickets with a number that corresponds to a numbered ball. They pick each number in random and you've got a chance to win cash or a door prize. There were also other games of chance: 50/50 (where the winner gets half the money collected from ticket sales) and chances on a grandfather clock.

My sweet, absent-minded husband never told me he bought these tickets, and he must have forgotten about them completely, because his mother called me at work yesterday to remind us about it. At first I really didn't want to go, but a bunch of our friends were going, and my daughter had an invitation to spend the evening at a friend's house, so I surrendered and went to the dinner.

The meal that went with this event was prepared by the same group that made the Mother-Daughter banquet meal I went to a few weeks ago. They're all about the comfort food -- mashed potatoes, corn, dressing, gravy. The meat this time was Swiss steak -- basically floured meat covered in gravy. Real healthy meal, if your idea of healthy is consuming a meal almost entirely comprised of carbohydrates. There was the meat, of course, and we did have applesauce, but otherwise? An utter Starch-tacular.

Of course that doesn't change the fact that it was completely delicious, and I definitely dived right in. I observed during the meal that I pretty much ate the same amount as those who I consider "normal" eaters. However, that meant we all overate. While I knew when I hit the satisfaction level on my new hunger/fullness scale, the taste of the food kept me going past that. When I reached the full mark, I did recognize it and knew to stop before I got to the uncomfortably stuffed stage.

That didn't stop me from feeling a little guilty about it, at least for a few minutes. That's definitely something I'm trying to learn as I explore intuitive eating: how to remove guilt when I overeat and accomplishment if I deprive myself. Because that sense of achievement from "going without" always winds up twisting into resentment, which then leads me way past overeating into binge territory. And then I really feel guilty. So I reminded myself that it was just one meal, and I had been able to use it as another chance to read my body's signals.

The good news about the event is that Hubby won the 50/50 drawing, and I won a $10 gift certificate! Plus I got to talk and laugh with my friends, so overall it was a good night.

This morning I woke up with what I'm thinking is not allergies but a cold. I'm really stuffed up and my body's dragging. I'm drinking lots of tea and trying to take it easy, although work isn't helping much with that.

I got home for lunch today and didn't have any real plan for lunch. I looked around the kitchen and wound up having a serving of Guiltless Gourmet tortilla chips and salsa, but after that portion I didn't want any more. But I knew I hadn't reached my level of satisfaction, so I then had two apple flautas, and then I felt good. My head quite isn't there, and I know it's that "I'm sick, so comfort me with food" syndrome. But since my stomach's content, I'm not going that route. After I'm done posting I'm going to lay down and take a short nap until I have to get Mabel and take her for her allergy shot.

While I'm glad that I'm not dieting, I'm realizing that this Intuitive Eating has its own hard work behind it. It's hard to break the diet mentality. I'm still checking out food labels on new foods, but it's mainly to see what the portion sizes are. Most of the IE literature talks about recognizing portion sizes and learning that smaller amounts of your favorite foods can often be just as satisfying, if not more so, when you learn to fully enjoy and savor them without guilt or fear of gaining weight. Before I started IE I found it interesting to see what fuzzy math these food companies do to make their labels look good. Yeah, there's only 100 calories per serving of Brand X, but they don't tell you that the single package you hold in your hand is 2.5 servings! Tricky buggers.

There's also the scale factor. After yesterday's weigh-in, I'm going to try to go for a whole week again. I almost made it last time, so I think it ought to get easier as time goes on.

But the hardest work is the effort it takes to stay in tune with my body. After spending most of my life ignoring it, whether I was overfeeding it or starving it, it's difficult to reconnect to the hunger and fullness signals it was trying in vain to send me. There are days I just don't want the extra work. I realize that this is sad, because for truly intuitive eaters, it comes as naturally as knowing when you're tired or when you have to use the restroom.

I realize now that I'm the one who has made this so difficult. To continue the simile above, when I'm sleepy I don't feel guilty about it, I know my body needs rest and I do my best to get it. When my bladder's full, I don't second-guess it and tell myself I'll be a better person if I hold it an extra hour. I'm the one who has added all the negative connotations to a natural process. I'm the one who has judged my worth as a human being on an involuntary physical need.

So now I need to get rid of all of that mental clutter I've collected around hunger and eating. And there's where the hardest work truly is.

Can Your Head Really Explode?

What a morning. I don't know if it was the TOTM headache I woke up with, the rain, or the fact that I'm getting backed up at work and everyone and their uncle has been calling my office, but I really thought for a few minutes that my head might actually explode.

Fortunately, the ibuprofen I took is kicking in and I'm starting to feel a little better. I'm chipping away at the piles of work around me, but I'm still wading through it and trying to figure out how I'm going to get it all done.

In a sick twist of fate, my deadline week for the monthly church newsletter, entitled "The Visitor," has been coinciding the last several months with my monthly visitor. I swear this adds to my aggravation levels each month as I wait around for my regular procrastinators to get their information to me, or else the other people whose psychic powers propel them to call me with all kinds of crazy, last-minute requests when my workload is already at its maximum. Today for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes, the phone seemed to ring every two minutes. Included in this chaos was two calls each from my husband and his mother. No emergencies or urgent reasons, just odd things that really could have waited until I got home. Can you say OVERLOAD?

I should be working right now, but I had to take a few minutes to collect myself and decompress. I'm kind of disappointed a little because I ate my morning snack earlier during the phone call madness and didn't get to enjoy it much. I was legitimately hungry then, so I wasn't eating it for emotional reasons, but there were too many distractions going on and it took away from the enjoyment of it. I should have put it away and saved it for later, but the physical signs of hunger were there and I didn't want to get in the "too hungry" category, which would have made things even worse.

Well, this morning I finally broke down and got back on the scale. I wanted to wait until Friday, making it a week, but I'm pretty pleased I made it five whole days. While the lingering diet mentality thoughts had made me hope for a lower number, it was exactly what I expected it to be, just by judging how I felt. This is actually a good sign because not only does it mean I'm pretty in tune with my body, but that I'm basically in a maintenance mode right now. That's a huge relief to me, because in the days that I didn't weigh I kept having these concerns that eating what I wanted was going to shoot my weight up astronomically.

While I know it's a good thing to back off on weighing myself, I did discover that as time went on I was actually afraid to get back on the scale, because of these fears of gaining weight. While I don't want to be obsessively weighing myself three times a day, I don't want to be in avoidance mode because I'm filled with worry and dread, either. Hopefully in time I will reach the point that what I weigh just doesn't matter to me anymore. It seems very difficult, however.

Well, I better get back to work here. I have more to say, but I guess it will have to wait. At least my head feels better. Maybe this afternoon I'll try to get back online in between loads of laundry and other housework. An AFG's work is never done...

In The Moment

Yesterday was such a long day. Between having Mabel sick at home and PMS/beginning of my time of the month, it was a stressful and tiring. Then there were some other little irritants that built up until I was pretty strung out. It was interesting now in hindsight to feel the emotions churning in me and how they gel into this heavy vest of anxiety across my chest.

It was an opportunity to start using some of the techniques I've been learning in my IE reading. One relaxation technique that really works for me is a breathing and counting exercise. You get in a comfortable position (seated, lying down, whatever works best for you), then you close your eyes and slowly inhale and exhale through your nose. The first inhale and exhale, you count to four each time, then for each set you increase to five, six, seven and eight. Then you go back down to four. This borders on meditation, I suppose, because you're focusing on your breathing and the numbers instead of the thoughts that are causing your emotions.

Once I did this, the anxiety eased and I was able to break it apart into the separate emotions that were at the cause of it. I could then look at each of these and find the thoughts behind them. Like yesterday's post, I could then pick apart what was irrational about these thoughts and replace them with more rational statements.

What's great about this is that I'm not avoiding the emotions or distracting myself, which is what I've always done in the past, whether it was with food, cleaning, TV, you name it. That worked to calm me down at first, but the issues never got resolved and would linger around to bite me in the hind end later down the road -- namely, compensating later with compulsive overeating.

This new way is great because I don't have to be afraid of feeling these "scary" emotions; I now have the tools to really explore them, and I'm pleased to find out that these techniques really deflate the impact and make me feel so empowered instead of feeling out of control and helpless.

So, the good news is, last night when I got hungry for an evening snack, I wasn't propelled by my feelings (or the avoidance of them) to eat a whole box of cookies. I ate three, savored them thoroughly instead of inhaling them in a compulsive need to fill myself up, and I was completely satisfied.

The other big thing I did yesterday was pay close attention to my mood at meal times and how it affected my eating. Before lunch I was particularly stressed trying to juggle taking care of my daughter and my responsibilities at work. This rushed feeling carried over into my noontime meal, and I realized I wasn't enjoying my salad because of this keyed up feeling. I put my fork down and made a conscious effort to slow down my mind, and this helped to get back into the moment.

At supper time I was still coming down off the anxiety that had taken over me, and I noticed I wasn't thoroughly enjoying my meal then, either. Again, I stopped and did my best to clear my mind before I continued eating, and again, this helped.

I realize today that what I was doing was trying to become a Conscious Eater. Tree Lover talks about this a lot on her blog, and I didn't truly "get it" until yesterday when I made these observations. When we use food for emotional purposes, or let other distractions cloud our eating experiences, it takes away from the satisfaction and enjoyment of the food. When that happens for me, I usually wind up eating more, thinking this will help. But now I understand that what I need to do is stop and make sure I'm in the moment. I don't want to be fretting over the past or worrying about the future, I want to be in the now, living in the present and staying in touch with my body. This will lead me to eating intuitively.

Too Much

If you don't mind, I'm going to write out my IE work in my blog today. Here's the internal dialogue I had with myself this morning:

"I really screwed up this weekend. I blew it because I ate too much and didn't stop when I was satisfied. This IE thing is never going to work if I don't get my butt in gear. I haven't weighed myself and I just know I'm going to gain tons of weight. Because I ate so much this weekend I should really watch what I eat today and should really eat light."

Let's break this down, dissecting each irrational thought/belief and replace it with a more rational, reasonable one.

I really screwed up this weekend.
Being an intuitive eater is not about being perfect, so I can't have "screwed up."

I blew it because I ate too much and didn't stop when I was satisfied.
Each eating experience is a chance to learn about my body's responses and the mental processes going on around it.

This IE thing is never going to work if I don't get my butt in gear.
"Getting my butt in gear" is diet mentality rearing it's head. This IE thing will work if I have faith and patience in myself and my ability to access what my body needs. This is not going to happen overnight.

I haven't weighed myself and I just know I'm going to gain tons of weight.
More diet mentality. I am doing the right thing avoiding the scale. It does not define success or failure. I have to give IE a chance, and over time my body should naturally settle at a weight that's right for my body.

Because I ate so much this weekend I should really watch what I eat today and should really eat light.
Major diet mentality! I may have overeaten over the weekend, but if I keep on course with intuitive eating, my body will naturally compensate for this. Fiddling with this process by restricting and depriving myself will only backfire and lead to more rebound binge eating.

Now I just have to keep telling myself these things!

Yesterday was a great day with my Mom. We drove to Pittsburgh and hit a lot of cool places. Mom and I picked up vegetarian sandwiches at the Whole Foods deli and ate them in my car, people watching and chatting. Mom got the Mediterranean wrap with artichokes, green olives and feta cheese, while I got the grilled eggplant sandwich with spinach, mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes. I realized I could have been at the big resort buffet with my husband and his parents, where I would have been way too tempted to eat until I was stuffed and uncomfortable. While I did eat a lot throughout the day-- grazing on the cookies I bought at Whole Foods, trying samples at Sam's Club -- it wasn't a sit-down, secretive binge and was broken up by lots of walking around. At the end of the day I knew I had eaten more than I usually would have on a "normal" day, but I definitely ate less than I would have on one of my old binge days.

Later we went to Barnes & Noble and I checked out the IE books and found some new ones I never heard of, as well as some I've spotted online. I had one book tucked under my arm to buy and was skimming through another one when I stopped and realized I didn't need these books. I have a whole mini-library of disordered eating/IE books now; how much more can I possibly learn?

How many people out there have wound up eliminating one compulsion only to substitute it for another? The recovering alcoholic who starts gambling; the former smoker who becomes a sex addict; the abstinent compulsive overeater who becomes addicted to shopping. I have been wrapped up in the diet mentality, and now I'm becoming too absorbed in the IE literature.

I have definitely become very sensitive to this "too much" mentality, whether it's collecting too much clutter, watching too much TV, or eating too much food. It's so hard (at least for me and a lot of people I know) to find that right balance of moderation in our lives. I weigh myself too much; I'm too hard on myself; I depend too much on the validation and acceptance of others. How do you turn down the intensity of the "wants" in our lives?

I realize part of this recovery is not fixating on it too much! I need to get in touch not only with my body and it's range of hunger and fullness, but with my mind as well. If I didn't spend the majority of my free time thinking and reading about eating and food (whether it's binge eating, dieting or now intuitive eating), what would I really love to do?

The summer my grandfather died, my Grandma Kate taught me how to needlepoint, and a friend of hers taught me to cross stitch. Up until I adopted my daughter I produced a lot of lovely pieces, but since I became a mother that hobby has completely stopped. I have projects that I bought that are sitting in a Rubbermaid box waiting for me.

When I was a teenager I started writing a novel, which in time turned into a three-book trilogy. In college my senior project was writing a prequel to this epic that laid the groundwork for the story. Over the years I have rewritten and added portions to these books as I matured as both a writer and a person. But again, when I adopted Mabel, my fiction writing all but dried up except for a few short bursts here and there.

What if I took the energy that I've funneled into counting calories, calculating pounds lost and obsessing over food into one of these interests? Perhaps if I could get my mind back into something more creative and productive I could quit fretting over what I'm going to eat at my next meal and how I'm going to avoid the next binge.

Of course, again we come back to compulsions and "too much." I have to find a healthy balance here and not neglect the other priorities in my life. I can't cross stitch all afternoon and not get any housework done. I can't write all evening and neglect my family.

As for the IE work, while I don't want to fixate on it all day, I do have work I need to do in this area, and by spreading myself too thin I could run the risk of avoiding difficult issues that I need to resolve to achieve a healthy relationship with food and an acceptance of myself and my body.

Sounds pretty overwhelming, doesn't it? A little too much, perhaps? I think baby steps are in order, and in time it will all add up to a healthier, happier me.

Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day.

Last night I had this moment of melancholy when I talked to Hubby about how Mabel is now taking showers all on her own.

"She's getting so grown up," I sad sadly.

"Isn't that a good thing?" he replied in confusion.


Is it a mother thing to see the sadness in losing those baby years? I know I mourned the loss of rocking my little one to sleep every night in our rocking chair. I'd sing softly to her and she would nestle in and drift off to the sound of my voice. Sometimes that moment would be the most peaceful and calm of my day, and I treasured it.

Once those cuddly, chubby baby days are gone, they don't come back. The smell of baby powder and baby wipes (gosh those things worked great for stain removal!), the round little cheeks, the corn kernel toes. Marveling over each new word and step.

Of course, there are things I don't miss. Lugging around a baby on my hip plus enough accessories to choke a horse -- the diaper bag, the toys, the change of clothes, bottles, baby-friendly snacks, blankets, stroller. My car was always loaded down like a gypsy caravan.

And while I loved rocking little Mabel to sleep, I remember the countless nights of frustration when I'd try to lay her down in her crib after this rocking and she'd scream and cry. And how many countless nights did I have to get up and change the sheets because she'd pee through her diapers and soak every available piece of material in the crib? Oh, the joys.

I watched Mabel yesterday in gymnastics, doing her back handsprings and front limbers and all those acrobatic feats I could never dream of doing. Her body is changing from those rounded, soft baby days. She's getting a gymnast's body -- lean and toned, defined muscles in her arms, legs and abdomen. With her hair pulled back it ages her even more, and I see the young woman she's turning into. It's enough to make me smile and cry at the same time.

So Happy Mother's Day to all of you Moms out there. I hope today brings you more good memories to cherish.

*****

Yesterday afternoon I had another binge-like episode. I say binge-like because again, it was limited in both food intake and duration. I'm wondering if part of it is habit -- for so many months now my weekends have been foodapaloozas, and it's a routine I've unfortunately gotten accustomed to. Now I'm trying to break that habit and we all know how hard that can be.

Also, I realized that this weekend is the dreaded PMS weekend. This might be a contributing factor to that "need to feed" that's been hitting me. I've also been a little emotional, but not nearly as much as last month. I definitely think last month's breakdown was me hitting bottom with the diet-binge cycle, so it's a good thing that I'm now on this IE path.

I have noticed one big thing about these past two days in comparison to binge weekends of the recent past. Before, for two or three days I would eat and eat and eat some more. I never seemed to get full -- in fact, my body didn't seem to register at all on my radar. I might be a little uncomfortable the morning after -- bloated, a little indigestion -- but once I got the feedbag back on it disappeared again.

These past two days, the extra food I have eaten lays in my stomach like a brick. It doesn't feel right. And both nights I have definitely eaten much less because of that feeling.

So I'm taking these episodes as a blessing in disguise, because it's alerting me to the fact that I am getting more in touch with my body. My stomach is communicating with me again like it probably did 30 years ago, before the dieting and bingeing took over my life. That's progress in the midst of imperfection, which is what this whole process is supposed to be about.

Before I go, I have to reply to Beula's comment from my last post. She asked if I thought I would have been able to go the IE route before losing my weight. I don't think so. But please, don't take that as my recommendation that everyone should go on a diet before they try IE. Looking back at my weight loss, in the beginning I really did try to do it in an intuitive way, along with cognitive-behavioral therapy. And at first that was really working for me. But here's what happened: the allure of that big of a weight loss was so seductive that bit by bit the diet mentality slowly took over my life. I wanted to lose more -- I wanted to be perfect. I got greedy.
And in the end, I think it's made it doubly hard for me. Because now I'm stuck dealing with my split personality of dieter/binger, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if you will. I have two sets of issues -- the deprived restricter and the compulsive overeater -- to now work through. I don't wish it on anybody.

Okay, I must finish getting ready for my Pittsburgh trip. Everyone have a great day!

Fair to Middling

Last night Mabel wanted Chinese for dinner (again), so we went to Johnstown (yes, home of the famous flood). The Chinese buffet nearest to us is kind of limited, plus I wanted to take Mabel clothes shopping since almost all of last year's summer clothes are too small, so we made the 35-minute trek there.

On the way Mabel brought her teeny bopper CDs along and we listened to several songs. One of them by Vanessa Hudgens really struck me, and I keep thinking about the lyrics and how it relates to my new enterprise. I know, you can put any interpretation to song lyrics, but I'm in an interpretive frame of mind right now.

I won't say last night was perfect, but of course perfect isn't what I'm aiming for anymore. Chinese is what it is -- loaded with sodium and oily, depending on which dish you get. I ate until I was full -- not stuffed to the gills until I was ill, but I didn't stop at merely "satisfied," either. I guess you call that "fair to middling." Which is all right. I didn't eat anything else the rest of the evening, although the old voices of binges gone by did beckon. But my body just didn't want it.

And today has been going pretty well, too. It's definitely better than some Saturdays when I've already crammed two days' worth of food into my gullet by this time of the day. Hubby is finally home after a week full of baseball games, so he's outside planting the garden right now (or at least trying to before the rain starts), and we've already decided we're cooking supper tonight. He hasn't had a home cooked meal in a week, and I'm glad we can make some healthy yummy things (BBQ chicken breasts, baked sweet potato fries and salad) together for a change. Then we're all heading for the drive-in movie theater to see a double feature of "Ghost Rider" and "Spider Man 3."

It's looking doubtful that I'll post tomorrow, because I'm taking my mom shopping for Mother's Day in Pittsburgh. She's jonesing for a trip to Barnes & Noble and Panera Bread, plus we'll hit some other fun places, too. Should be fun!

On a last note, I didn't weigh myself this morning. While part of me is curious about what the scale would have said after my Chinese last night, I have to admit that it was nice to not have a number assigned to my day for once. I might just get used to this...

A Glimmer of Hope

I have to tell you about this afternoon.

I ate my lunch and was overcome by this need to eat candy/junk food, and I was on a mission of sorts until I did. But the damage was minimal -- half a candy bar, half a pecan turtle we saved from last week's trip to Kennywood, and four 0reos -- and surprisingly, my urge to binge just fizzled right out, and I have no desire to continue it.

Why? Good question. Maybe because during it I did the following things: 1. Gave myself permission to eat what I wanted; 2. Savored each bite; 3. Thought long and hard about why this was happening; and 4. Knew there was no deadline (i.e., I didn't think "I better eat as much as I can today, because it's back to the diet tomorrow")

Still working out #3. It's funny how my brain sort of went blank and it all turned into primal urges to eat. I wanted the sensations, flavors and textures of food in my mouth. I didn't want to think about any rules, including any IE principles of checking in with my fullness. Was it because it was a Friday, the end of a long week, and that mindless eating was my "reward" for surviving it? Nothing seriously bad happened to trigger any big emotions. There were no fights or run-ins with friends or family, no major crises at work. The house is clean and the puppies are behaving themselves.

And maybe because I went through this laundry list and realized there was no good reason for me to binge, I realized I didn't need to. So it stopped.

I'm telling you, it was an amazing moment. It was like really getting into a good album at top volume, and all of a sudden the power goes out and the record player just slows to a stop. I kind of looked around, confused, wondering what happened. I even went into the kitchen, looking to see if anything else might appeal to me (old habits!) and I said out loud, "No, I've had enough."

It was a powerful statement. I didn't say it because I knew I was exceeding my calories for the day. I didn't say it because I was worried about the scale reading tomorrow. I said it because my body was telling me I had enough food in my system and I didn't need anymore.

Is this what "normal" eaters feel? It's so sad I have to ask that, but for almost 30 years I just haven't had a clue.

I really think this is working. I have tears in my eyes right now because I feel a real glimmer of hope that I'm beginning to heal. To recover. It's an amazing thing.

Falling In Love

This morning I read bigassbelle's post, and she had this link to find out what Tarot card you are.
I've always been fascinated by Tarot cards; I did a speech on the history of them in college. I own a couple different decks, each one with its own unique style and artistic interpretation of the symbols on the cards. Years ago I used to actually "do" the Tarot. I had a friend I read the cards for, and we were always amazed at how well it applied to what was going on in her life. Of course, that could be contributed to our gullible natures and interpreting what we wanted out of the cards. But still, it was fun.

Anyway, I completed the little test, and the results were:
You are The Lovers
Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.
The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.
Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

Did you notice the word intuition up there? I sure did. In fact, there were several phrases -- "growth and maturity," "radical change in perspective" and the big one: "You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path." -- that really hit home.

Does that mean I'm in love with Intuitive Eating? I know I am inspired by it and have surrendered control (given up dieting) because of it. I know it's helping me to find my true self and reveal my true needs. It's definitely changing my perspective and goals as far as weight loss is concerned. And while I know there will be challenges ahead as my old habits rear their head, I know that I will never be complete unless I do this.

It's funny how quickly my attitudes are changing. Last night Hubby was talking about how much protein, carbs and fat the experts say you should eat, and instantly my brain threw up a red flag -- caution, diet mentality! I'm absolutely sick and tired of every expert telling me how much of this, that and the other thing I should eat. I'm not going to sit at the dinner table with a calculator figuring out what percentage of my daily calories came from protein! It's been so wonderful the last two weeks not wasting precious energy adding and re-adding my calorie totals in my head throughout the day.

Exercise has also been affected by this new perspective. When I wake up in the morning I check in on my body: am I tired, am I achy, what kind of exercise do I feel like doing? This morning I decided I wanted to sleep in a little and do Pilates this afternoon when I'm more flexible. So that's what I'll do. There's no more rules that I have to exercise at 5 a.m. every Monday through Friday, or that I have to have so many days of cardio and so many hours of toning every week. I want exercise to be something I want to do because I like the way it makes me feel, not something I have to do if I want to lose weight.

I know this sounds like I've had this miraculous turnaround and I'm magically "cured." Believe me, I'm not. I still have moments of worry at meal times; I'm mentally waving away the pesty thoughts of how many calories I'm eating and the fear of gaining weight. At least once a day the thought of binge eating crosses my mind -- "I can have anything I want, so let's eat it all right now!" But then I remind myself there's no rush, that I can have whatever I want to eat today, tomorrow or the next day. There's no more need for Last Supper eating. I also still have my anxieties about weekend eating. But those fears can only be alleviated by forging ahead and doing the best I can. And if I do overeat? Use the experience to learn and apply it to next time.

And of course I've got my scale issues. This morning after I weighed in I silently announced that this was it, after today I'm not getting on for a week. It sounds very similar to the Chronic Dieter who on Sunday night tells herself that once again she's starting another diet on Monday morning, only to blow it again Monday night. So I'm not going to scold myself for breaking the rules if it doesn't go a whole week. Even if I can skip one whole day, that will be progress.

Scale Back

I've been exploring the 'net and finding new resources and blogs about Intuitive Eating. A reoccurring theme I'm finding from a lot of people is having trouble letting go of the diet mentality.

I know I'm one of them. The scale, for one thing. I'm still weighing in a lot, and although the news has been good -- great, even -- I'm starting to fully realize how much of a compulsive habit it's become. It's become an anxiety-reducing measure I've adopted, because when I don't do it I start getting nervous, and I start thinking, "I don't know where I am!"

Very telling. The scale has become my Global Positioning System, and the numbers on it are different locations in my life. Life was very different when I lived at 310, and it's a location I really don't want to move back into. The scenery was pretty bleak gloomy. While life in the 210s has been very satisfying, you know the old saying: "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." I can't help but drive by that exclusive neighborhood called the One Hundreds, admiring the landscape and dreaming of moving in permanently. Even though I'm living right on the border of that Promised Land, I'm still looking in from the outside.

That's the mentality I have to get rid of. Almost, but not quite good enough. It doesn't do me any good to think that way, when there's really absolutely nothing wrong with where I am. I'm like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who needs to be taught "there's no place like home." That magical land of Onederful may be all alluring in brilliant Technicolor from where I stand, but if my house lands smack in the middle of it one day, will it feel hollow and empty? There are no happy endings there; you still have to deal with the wicked witches, con man wizards and those freaky flying monkeys. (Those things scared the bejesus out of me when I was little!)

Yesterday I felt myself teetering on the edge of the IE/dieting fence. One good thing has been a lessening of my fear of certain foods and a renewed interest in cooking. It's helped that Hubby has been at baseball games every night this week, forcing me back into the kitchen.

Last night I dragged out one of my favorite recipes that I revamped -- it's called Texas Caviar and is basically a cold bean salsa/salad that includes balsamic vinegar and cilantro. I haven't made it in ages because beans became one of my no-no foods. Even though I knew beans were full of protein and fiber and other good nutrients, I stayed away because of the calories. So it was with great pleasure that I opened up those cans of black beans and put it together. My mom came over for supper to help me eat it (she is a huge balsamic fan and a semi-vegetarian), and I told her we could either serve it over a salad, put it in a tortilla wrap or eat it with some of my Trader Joe's veggie flax seed tortilla chips. Mom opted for the chips, so we got out the bag and I took out the recommended serving to eat with my beans.

I ate that, then sat there and realized I wanted more. Here came the anxiety. Chips are pretty much a universal trigger food; what if I can't stop? But I shook those thoughts off and took out three more chips (they're big), ate those, then stopped and checked in again. And I felt good, satisfied, so I stopped.

Later I started thinking about those snack cakes I bought on Tuesday. They kept floating through my mind, and each time I checked in with my body. Since I wasn't hungry, I kept shooing the thought away, saying to myself, "Let's revisit this in half an hour." Finally, at 7:45, I got one out -- leaving the box in the pantry -- then sat down and slowly ate one of the snack cakes. I had to tell myself to enjoy it and push out the guilt of eating "bad" foods or the fear of bingeing. I did savor it, and when I was done I wasn't driven to go attack the rest of the box. I didn't feel terrible, I didn't want to overeat, and I wasn't worrying about the scale the next morning. I was okay.

So here I am where I started -- the scale. I know in the back of my mind this object has become a crutch to me, and there are times that its reading will definitely alter my mood, which means I am giving it too much power. While I realize I eventually need to start scaling back on weighing myself, giving myself grief about it is falling right back into that all-or-nothing, perfectionist mentality. So I'll get there when I'm good and ready. Because I am discovering the easier I am on myself, the better I feel, and I wind up taking better care of myself than when I'm "shoulding" all over the place.

Facing the Forbidden

Yesterday I dealt with a variety of "forbidden" foods. My reactions were interesting (at least to me).

My daughter and I went to the grocery store because we needed some basics (milk, lunch meat, etc.). I decided to let myself browse at foods I'd normally consider verbotten and buy them if I really wanted them. Mabel needed more breakfast food, so we headed down that aisle and after grabbing her cereal she also grabbed a box of toaster pastries. The flavor she picked was one I'd never eat, so I picked up the blueberry ones and gave them a long, hard look. I decided to put them back, not because of fat or calories, but because my reaction to them were just, "eh."

Down the dairy aisle I glanced sideways and noticed the snack cake assortment. I spotted the little cherry pies I used to adore when I was a kid. One year for my brithday instead of cake, I had my mom get me a whole bunch of these pies and other snack cake stuff for my party. As far as I remember the kids thought it was a neat idea.

I held the cherry pie (actually a turnover if you want to be technical) and thought about how much I coveted these things when I was first getting fat and certain foods were becoming taboo. This was one of the main items I would buy when I'd sneak off to the grocery store or gas station to buy contraband. But I also recall that within the last few years I had picked one up for old time's sake, and it just wasn't as good as I remembered.

Then, without even thinking about it, I flipped the bag over and looked at the calories. 480! I didn't even get any farther down the label I was so dizzy. But instead of flinging it back on the shelf in horror and running away, and I stopped and asked myself, if calories weren't an issue, did I really want that pie? Again, my reaction was no.

I did finally pick up something -- another box of snack cakes that are individually wrapped and not so high in calories. Of course, they're smaller, too. But this snack is one of my favorite binge foods -- I can easily polish off the whole box if I'm so driven -- and seemed like a good test of this IE business. When I got up this morning they were still sitting in the grocery bag where I dropped it last night, and I put them in the pantry without even the slightest temptation to tear the box open with my teeth.

After supper Mabel begged me for ice cream. The soft serve place is down the block, so I walked and she rode her bike there. The whole way there I was wrapped in a swirl of anxiety and analyzing. I had just finished supper and was satisfied but not stuffed, so I felt bad about going for dessert when I wasn't truly hungry. I was also worrying about what to order; if I was "good" I'd order a baby cone. If I ordered my favorite, the Katie Sundae (with peanut butter sauce and chunks of peanut butter cups on top), would it send me on a binge? Would I feel stuffed after I ate it and feel miserable and hate myself?

I got in line, looked at all my options, then ordered the small sundae. We sat down at a picnic table nearby and ate, since Mabel couldn't eat her cone on the bike, and I focused on savoring the sundae. As I watched other customers order and get their treats, I told myself that lots of people -- people I would consider "normal" eaters -- get ice cream after dinner, and they don't spiral out of control by emptying their fridges when they go home. They don't call themselves names and feel horrible about it. They eat it, enjoy it, and get on with their evening.

Which is what I did. The small sundae didn't stuff me but was enough to satisfy me thoroughly. We walked home, did our evening routine, talked to a friend on the phone, and visited with the neighbors and their dog before bedtime.

And guess what? The scale didn't scald my eyes this morning; in fact, I was a pound lower. While I do eventually want to greatly reduce my weigh-ins, this was an example where it helped to relieve my anxiety and fears that not restricting and denying myself the foods I want will make me gain tons of weight. So maybe this positive reinforcement will enable me to relax a little and start skipping days, then weeks.

I'm not kidding myself that this process will always go this successfully. I fully anticipate finding myself falling into binge or dieting behavior and having to work my way through it, because those are the moments that will really teach me the most. Because let's face it; mastering intuitive eating is a lot of work, and like anything else that takes a lot of effort, I won't always be at the top of my game. There will be down days, times when I'm sick of thinking about it and checking in on my body and feelings. Those are when the successful days will hopefully pull me through and give me the encouragement to keep trying.

The Road of Recovery

Debra has had two fantastic posts in the last couple days, especially yesterday's on minding your own business. There's a Part 2 today that is awfully insightful, too.

These posts practically leaped out off the computer screen and slammed me against the back of my chair because they hit so close to home.

I definitely grew up with the rules she listed:
* It’s not okay to talk about problems, or really, to have any
* Negative feelings should not be expressed openly; keep negative feelings to yourself
* Communication is best handled by messengers between people, not by direct contact
* Be strong, good, right, perfect and happy
* Make us proud beyond realistic expectations by becoming what we need you to be
* Don’t be selfish
* Do as I say not as I do
* It’s not okay to play or be playful unless we want to
* Don’t rock the boat

And I picked up a lot, if not all, the following personality traits as a result:
* controlling behavior usually disguised as "helpfulness"
* distrust of others
* demand for perfectionism in self and others
* avoidance of feelings
* intimacy problems and sexual confusion
* care taking behavior
* hyper vigilance for threats, insults, mistakes and other "dangers"
* physical illness related to stress

Fortunately, over the years my therapy sessions and self-exploration through self-help books, etc., have helped a lot to reduce these traits and make me a more sane person. But I'm definitely not "cured." I don't know if I ever can.

Debra's one paragraph summed me up to a T:
"These unspoken rules, and ones like them, are reflective of situations in which the children got a double tap: their own needs were not adequately met AND they were expected to fulfill the needs of their caretakers (for peace at any price, super accomplished children, happy kids, a low-maintenance household, etc.). With basic training like this, we frequently grow up to get involved in relationships with people who are unreliable, emotionally unavailable, or needy (just like Mom and Dad!), and then we try to provide and control everything within those relationships without addressing our own needs or desires. It's the perfect set-up for continued lack of fulfillment. It's just never our turn to be taken care of."

Those relationship patterns and corresponding lack of fulfillment has been a reoccurring theme in my life that leads me through a range of emotions: anger, resentment, sadness, hurt, disappointment. And because of that emptiness, I've turned to food over and over again to fill it.
And look how well it's worked! Not.

It's no wonder I could never give up food as my abusive substance of choice. In a life so full of demands (self-imposed or not), food was my one solace, the one thing that didn't demand anything of me or make me feel like a slave or a martyr.

So I have tried to become more selfish in the past three or four years. I quit volunteering for everything. I left a job that made me feel like an indentured servant. I distanced myself from toxic people and tried to let go of situations and relationships that drained the life out of me. And in the process I've also lost 120 pounds. I don't there's any coincidence there; it's all connected.

Lately my new mission is to make my family more responsible and not look to me to be their 24-hour caretaker. My daughter's old enough now to start assuming more responsibility for her own things and her personal hygiene, and I'm slowly trying to teach her how to be more self-sufficient and to help more around the house.

As for Hubby, it's a challenge. He was used to having his mother be his caretaker and take on a lot of his day-to-day responsibilities, and he often looks to me to take over that role. I just can't do this and continue to progress on this journey of mine, and when I buck against this neediness of his, it causes sparks. For example, he often wants me to make decisions about what to do around the house or what he's "allowed" to do; that way, if I complain about something later, he's blameless because it was my decision. When I say I won't do it, he can get ticked off at me. It happened this past Sunday, and I think I managed to get through to him that I would rather make this certain decision together, instead of being put in the role of the sole caretaker/ decision maker.

It feels like a struggle sometimes, standing up for myself, saying no or letting go. But it gets easier and easier to do, and each time I do it I move a little farther down the road of recovery.

Quelling the Diet Mentality

Beula asked in my earlier post about the book I read on Friday. It's The Rules of "Normal" Eating: A Commonsense Approach for Dieters, Overeaters, Emotional Eaters and Everyone In Between! by Karen R. Koenig. I picked up the book last year when I saw the title and realized I'm pretty much a combination of everything listed!

I am now starting the arduous process of getting through her workbook, The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health. I say arduous because it forces you to stop every few minutes and concentrate on your feelings at that moment. It also has other exercises that really push you to feel feelings you may usually avoid or try to forget. I think doing the first chapter yesterday helped contribute to my mini meltdown last night, because I had a lot of emotions churned up that needed some place to go.

I must say, however, that all the books I've been reading have been adding more fodder to this project. They all have slightly different perspectives and opinions, and I don't buy in to every single person's viewpoints, but I'm definitely picking out the best ideas that apply to me.

One thing has been trying to shut down the Food Police in my head. Ever since I started reading about this, I've got my homage to Cheap Trick in my head (my apologies for its cheesiness ahead of time):
"The Food Police, they live inside of my head;
The Food Police, they come to me when I've fed;
The Food Police, they're coming to arrest me, oh no!"

It's hard not to read labels, to calculate calories, to weigh my portions. I still do it a little bit, but it's much less than a week ago. I do it more now because I now those portions usually satisfy me, and I don't want to put a lot of excess on my plate. Again, more food issues-- waste not want not! But I tell myself each time that if I'm still hungry after I eat that, I can have more. It's rare that I do, but having that "permission" seems to help keep me from feeling deprived and restricted.

The most difficult thing that I haven't been able to break yet is my daily weighing. Every single book says to get rid of the scale, hide it, throw it away, even! But I haven't been able to bring myself to do that. There's just too much anxiety there yet about gaining weight. The good news is, my weight has stayed relatively stable, which is giving me a lot of relief. So maybe I can soon start going once a week, then once a month. I don't know if I can ever stop cold turkey, but a monthly weigh in would be reasonable and not obsessive.

I'm going to end tonight's post with two positive things about my body that happened to me in the last 24 hours.
1. This morning I took Mabel's lunchbox to school because she left it in my car. I was in a rush to get back to work so I jogged from the school to my car in the parking lot. When I sat down in the car I realized I wasn't breathless at all. For me, an asthmatic since I was 8, this was a big deal.

2. Last night Hubby reached over to me in bed and after a moment said, "What part of your body am I touching?"
"My butt," I answered. "Why?"
"I don't know if you're going to take this as a compliment or an insult, but it feels too firm to be a butt!"
"Well," I replied with a laugh, "those Pilates must really be working!"

My IE Weekend

I really wanted to post yesterday, but I was just too freakin' tired from the weekend. While everything we did was fun, cramming that much into three days was just way too overwhelming and exhausting.

The IE went really well. On Friday we went to Kennywood Park and while I only rode a handful of rides, I took the opportunity to do a lot of reading. I re-read the "Normal Eating" book that I bought last summer, and this time I was so much more open to it than the last time I read it last summer. Back then I was still in the frame of mind that once I lost x amount of pounds that this would be a good way to do maintenance. I just wasn't ready. But now, I am definitely embracing it as something I can do now.

My emotional reaction to this, however, is interesting. Part of the time I'm excited. I feel so liberated by abandoning the diet mentality and feel like a huge burden has been taken off my shoulders. But then I'm gripped by anxiety. All I've known lately is the two ends of the eating spectrum -- obsessive restriction and compulsive overeating. I'm scared about entering new territory. I'm afraid to trust myself to eat "normally." I'm terrified of gaining tons of weight back without staying vigilant about calories and portions.

But over the weekend, in practice, the IE thing worked. I really paid attention and checked in throughout the day about how my body felt in regards to hunger. I looked at it as a learning experience to see how I felt in the different points in the hunger/satisfaction spectrum, and I saw each meal as an opportunity to figure out my satiety threshold -- the exact point where I'm not hungry, but I'm not stuffed. And even in that range there's the difference between satisfied and full; I figured out that I'm aiming for satisfied with snacks, while I want to go for the full feeling at meals.

I also found myself feeling anxiety when I reached "full" -- I guess you could compare it to driving your car up to the edge of a cliff and trying to get right to the precipice without falling off into oblivion. I kept worrying I was teetering and losing my balance, but I never reached the stuffed stage and crashed on the rocks below.

By the end of the weekend, however, the feelings that I wasn't stuffing down with food were definitely bubbling to the surface. I'm sure my exhaustion didn't help. But instead of giving myself a "break" and "treating" myself with food, I bobbed up and down on the emotional waves as they broke on the shore. In some cases I worked down to the core beliefs behind some of the feelings and figured out if they were rational or not. When it wasn't rational I tried to change my belief. And when I felt the feelings were genuine and not self-created, I rode them out.

By the end of the night I wound up crying a little, but it didn't last long, just a couple minutes. And I realized I felt so much better -- not happy, per se, but calmer. I'm realizing the anxiety that grips me is my body holding those feeling and emotional responses inside and not letting them out. And surprise -- the world doesn't end and I don't become an out of control psychopath if I let myself feel them.

Major progress.

I will post more later, because I've got lots more in my head that needs to get written out.

The IE Challenge

(This morning)
The good news is, I just found a major typo in my Sunday church bulletin. The bad news is I have to reprint 180 copies and now I'm behind, but at least it never made it to the congregation.
I had to go clothes shopping yesterday. I know, most people love it, but those of us who've lost a lot of weight have a lot of trepidation about this. I've talked before about being in that clothing limbo land, where I often can't find clothes small enough in the plus size stores or big enough in the "regular" stores. In addition, I'm at that age (35) where I don't want to dress like a 20 year-old hoochie mama, but I don't want to look like a dowdy old woman, either. It's hard to find clothes in between.

I went to my old stand-by, Fashion Bug, although spring time is always a crap-shoot there because of that hoochy mama/grandma dilemma. But I was lucky this time. I found a couple outfits in the (gasp) regular section, size XL, that looked good, so I splurged. It wasn't all roses and sunshine, though; I had to put a few shirts back because my good ole' tavern ham upper arms wouldn't fit in the sleeves. Despite this, I found myself pleased as I looked in the three-way mirror in these new outfits. I may not be at my "ideal" weight (whatever that means), but by golly, I can appreciate where I've come from and I know I'm the best I can be at this specific point in my life.

I blew through the Intuitive Eating book last night. It was really good, but I felt a little lost afterwards. It was like going through a speed course on driving a car, someone plopping you in the driver's seat, giving you a pat on the shoulder and saying, "Good luck!" Where's my driver's education teacher in the passenger seat with his foot hovering over the second set of brakes? I need guidance!

Fortunately the next book in my pile is a workbook full of exercises to work through this process. It's by another author who has a book on "normal eating" that I read last summer. While I really connected to what she had to say back then, I was nowhere near ready to take the plunge to try it.

*****
(Got swamped at work and I'm finally getting back here.)

What's different now? Well, a year, for one thing. I've basically stalled out on the weight loss, rising and falling around 213 but not making any big progress. February was the third anniversary of my weight loss journey, and I think the diet mentality and the long-term calorie restrictions have finally worn me out. The rebound overeating (mostly on weekends) has gotten more frequent and more intense, and I found myself falling into despair about it and the lack of control and frustration I was feeling.

Throughout this week I've been trying to adopt the IE mind set, and I think I'm making progress. One big revelation is finding odd quirky things I've been doing in the name of weight loss, but in reality were not so good for my health.

Lack of calcium, for one thing. As a kid I used to drink tons of milk (almost always fat-free). And as a result I had good, strong teeth and healthy bones. In the past three years my consumption has decreased a lot, to the point in the last six months that I hardly touch it. The reasoning? I didn't want to "waste" 90 calories a cup on drinking it. To make things worse, I had those calcium chews sitting around the house, but I didn't take them because they were 1. too much like candy, which could be a binge trigger, and 2. added something like 20 calories per chew. How sad is that? I was depriving my poor bones of calcium for what, 110 calories a day?

Here's another one: I've read tons about the health benefits of flax seed oil, but I kept balking at the extra calories of the flax seed meal when put in recipes. Hubby bought me a jar of the flax seed oil gel tabs, but I didn't use them at first because it would have added an extra fifteen calories to my daily total. FIFTEEN CALORIES?!?!

So now I've been taking the flax seed pills every day, and guess what? This morning I drank a glass of milk. Calories be damned!

I still find myself portioning out food, eyeballing portions and even sometimes measuring. But I keep telling myself "you can have more if you're still hungry." And I haven't gone back for seconds yet.

Well, today for lunch I sort of did, but not really. I made myself a sandwich (with real cheese, heaven forbid), ate half of it, then stopped to gauge my hunger. Right at that moment there was a knock on my door; it was the guy we called to give us an estimate on fencing in the back section of our yard. My mother also showed up and distracted me, and by the time they both left it was half an hour later. I went back into the house, and there was my sandwich. I checked in on myself and still felt a little peckish, so I went ahead and finished it. So while I went back for more, it was just the last half of my portioned out sandwich, not a second sandwich.

In the past my lunch would have gone in two different ways: on a "good" day I would have scarfed it all down right away, since I was famished, and knowing that was all I was "allowed." And if it was a "bad" day? I would have already been mentally preparing myself for what I was going to eat next, if I didn't already have it laid out in front of me.

While I feel like it's going well so far, I know the real test will be this weekend, and what a whopper I've got. Tomorrow Mabel and I are going with Hubby and his physics students to Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh for Physics Day. The kids do experiments to determine velocity, momentum, etc., for credit in Hubby's class. I go along as a chaperon, and Mabel gets to ride the rides and get lots of attention from teen girls. Unfortunately I won't be riding much this year since I'm still counting my blessings that my neck surgery went well and the problems I was having with it a week or so ago went away. So I'll be strolling around the park, and you know there will be lots of amusement park/carnival food everywhere.

Then on Saturday we womenfolk are going to Annapolis, Md., to go to my cousin's wife's baby shower. I'm sure there will be lots of nibbles and sweets there. Plus we're stopping at Trader Joe's on our way home.

On Sunday my church is holding its annual Mother-Daughter Banquet, and Mabel and I are going. She's reading a verse about mothers, and we'll both be partaking of the turkey dinner.

So I've got three whole days of food temptations. Can I handle the IE challenge? Eat what I want, without guilt, but stop when I'm pleasantly full (not stuffed). I don't expect to be perfect, but I'm definitely curious about how it will go.

Because the next three days will be so hectic, blogging may be difficult to get to until Sunday. I'll try my best, though. If not, I hope everyone has a good weekend.

Trust Me

Every spare minute I had yesterday I spent reading my new book, "Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works" by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. It makes so much sense to me, and I'm soaking it all up like a sponge. I'm going to try not to turn into one of these converts that annoys people to death by preaching day and night about their miracle cure, so let me know if I reach that state.

In reading this book I'm finding some relief in the fact that my eating behaviors lately are not insanity or a severe eating disorder. It's the simple fact that my body is reacting to this restrictive, depriving state I've kept it in for so long. What started out as an attempt to eat "healthy" has become a strict set of rules, very black and white, and the breaking of those rules leads me to the "what the hell" attitude and rebound eating. The lack of control I'm feeling is my body responding to the restriction of food by consuming as much as possible in case another "famine" comes along, which invariably does each time I start restricting again.

I'm not even "starving" myself -- all the current experts say you shouldn't go below 1,200 a day without medical supervision -- and I probably average between 1,200-1,600 a day. But the book relates a famous study from the 1950s when healthy men were put on a 1,500 calorie restricted diet. This was before the health food craze, before the models and actresses started getting more and more skeletal, before the "obesity epidemic" that's taken over our society. These men displayed all the symptoms that I have encountered: obsessive thoughts about food, mood swings and binges.

So here I am, sick to death of being a Careful Eater (the authors use this title for those who claim not to diet, but who wind up using the guise of "healthy eating" to set up all these food rules and black-or-white thinking), and I'm standing here at the precipice of a new journey: becoming an intuitive eater.

So what's holding me back? Fear and distrust. Not of the authors, but of myself. For years I ate so much that I never gave myself a chance to feel hunger. Then, when I lost the bulk of my weight, I didn't allow myself to trust my hunger and my cravings. I pre-planned my meals and snacks with a certain list of foods that I deemed "healthy" and "guilt-free." I'd set how many hours I needed to wait between meals, and if I got hungry in between, I'd do everything to ignore it or try to turn it off. Once in a while I would get the notion that I could eat what I want, as long as it was in proper portions, but inevitably my guilt and built-up deprivation would turn it into a trigger food and would instigate a binge.

If I'm given permission to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, won't I go crazy and gain 100 pounds? I've spent so long either bypassing, ignoring and rejecting my body's responses to hunger and satiety, how do I now trust myself to listen to my body? There's no universal rule book, there's no list of foods that are safe and which ones should be avoided. It's all individual and honors each person's preferences and bodies. After being "taught" how to eat by every magazine and diet plan out there, you mean I'm now expected to be the expert on how I should eat? How terrifying!

But yet, how liberating. The thought of being able to make endless choices, to eat exactly what I want, when I want it, without guilt, and more importantly, without the primal gorging caused by deprivation, sounds wonderful. I'm not saying I'll never eat emotionally again, but I'd love to be able to say, "Okay, I'm eating emotionally right now. Why not stop for a minute here and sort out what's going on?" And maybe it would last an hour instead of a day, or two, or fourteen.

The past couple days I've been dipping my feet in the water, so to speak. While I'm pretty much eating my usual weekday foods, I've been giving myself permission to throw in things I normally would only eat on the weekends -- fried fish, noodles, the peanut butter crackers Mabel made especially for me for an evening snack. I take a portion, telling myself over and over again in my head that if I want more, to take it. But so far it's been enough.

I'm still pretty leery, but I'm taking it a day at a time and trying my best not to get caught up in calories, carbs, fat and the like. I'm still wanting a lot of healthy foods because I genuinely like the taste of them and like how they make me feel. But I keep telling myself that if the craving for ice cream hits me, I won't reject it because it's "bad" or "unhealthy." So far, so good.

A Different Way

Thanks for all the encouraging, supporting comments yesterday. It really helped pull me out of the funk I was wallowing in and made me see the positives that are there, even if they're hard to see sometimes.

The crazy thing is, as out of control I felt on Saturday and Sunday, I seem to magically return back to sanity on Monday. For example, somebody dropped off some doughnut holes at my office yesterday for the Pastor and me to share; I wasn't tempted in the least and gave the pastor the entire bag when he came into the office. And this morning I had to go the bakery across the street (they recently got bought out and I had to talk to the new owner about getting communion bread); I found myself walking out and realizing I hadn't even taken a good look at what was in the display cabinets and hadn't even considered buying anything.

The only way I can explain it is that my weekday routines are so ingrained that my brain immediately falls into that groove I've created where Monday thru Friday= no compulsive eating. Yet when Saturday and Sunday come it's like a werewolf under the full moon. All my rational, higher thinking processes fly out the window and I revert to some starving animal who must consume everything in my path to survive.

I am learning that I am falling into a common syndrome of dieting and binge eating that becomes a vicious cycle. While I have tried hard not to be a "dieter," I have still adopted the general mindset that involves legalizing certain foods and banning others, which leads to rebound eating to compensate for that feeling of deprivation.

There has to be another way. As luck would have it, my package arrived yesterday full of books on Intuitive Eating. I started in on the first one and I'm already getting caught up in it. I've read other books that touched on this subject before, and I've learned things from each one, but I always felt I needed to lose some more weight before I could really do it. Even though these books say most people will lose weight once they give up dieting and eat in response to their bodies, the skeptic in me was sure I'd wind up gaining a bunch first, and I wanted to make sure I was low enough to give myself some "insurance," if that makes any sense.

I'm still not at that insurance weight, but it's becoming more clear to me that I need to find a better way to live, regardless of what I weigh right now. It's also getting to the point that my mental wellness and a saner relationship with food is becoming more important than a number on a scale.

This Intuitive Eating process involves cognitive behavioral therapy, which I really embraced early on in this journey. But the truth is I got caught up in the euphoria of the weight loss and became more and more of a dieter. I may not have joined WW or followed a specific plan, but I started limiting, started counting, started labeling foods and my eating behaviors as good or bad.
I don't regret this, because I did learn a lot about nutrition, portion sizes and feeling my hunger. The latter was really important, because for years I never quit eating long enough to ever let myself get hungry. Sometimes I let myself get too hungry, but that was a learning experience, too. A lot these intuitive eating methods are based on following a scale of hunger, from absolutely famished to overstuffed. At least now I've gotten in better touch with my body and know what these things are.

The other good thing about limiting and weighing food was coming to the realization that I could often be satisfied with much smaller portions than what I previously ate. I now can do a good job at eyeballing a regular portion of meat or a cup of grains and know that I can often be quite content eating that amount of food.

The problem has been my perfectionism, my all-or-nothing thinking, not to mention my low levels of OCD that drive me to take things to the nth degree.

So I'm hoping I can take these books and make a serious effort to try their techniques. That means letting go of the dieting mentality, which means, at least for now, putting this Onederful Bound goal on the back burner. I'm not totally giving up on the concept of reaching 199, but if it happens, it'll occur in a different way, not with dieting. If my brain can grasp these concepts I'm reading about and my body wants to go in that direction, then it'll happen. But I'm just tired of forcing the issue and putting myself through this rollercoaster.