Clothing, priorities, ACT, and identifying the animal brain

I did some shopping yesterday for bras and walking shoes. I also bought a couple of tops. It’s always a painful experience. I’ve got tons of mental baggage in the clothing/appearance department and I’ve also got several undeniable cosmetic challenges—horrible skin and hair (hirsutism) problems being the tip of the iceberg. It makes me feel monstrous.

I have other challenges that are more run of the mill—finding stuff that is simultaneously age appropriate, modest, and aesthetically pleasing to me can be difficult. I require plus size pants that are petite length; I require wide shoes and will not torture myself with really high heels or with body shapers like Spanx; I don’t show cleavage and in fact cover as much skin as possible, yet I don’t want to dress like my grandmother, either. Most clothing, undergarments, and shoes do not work for me on one level or another, but hell, I know I’m not the only woman that feels this way.

Even though I don’t enjoy shopping, I’m trying to move beyond the sports bras, sloppy hoodies, and baggy jeans that I’ve been wearing the last few years. I’m trying to build a small workable wardrobe and wear jewelry again, something I used to love doing. When my fingers got too big for my wedding and engagement rings, I stopped wearing ALL jewelry. On some level, I think I didn’t feel like I deserved to wear jewelry anymore. I was so ashamed of myself. My rings still don’t fit and I’m still unhappy about that, but I think it’s time for me to move forward as best as I can.

I was planning to do a multi-part series on clothing, cosmetics, and beauty: all the challenges I face, my thoughts on the plus-size fashion industry, my thoughts on materialism, vanity, social class, and identity, where I’m actually shopping now, and so forth. Last night I wrote an outline for these posts.

Then I realized what a big distraction it all was. I can only devote so much of my time and energy to this issue and I’d be better off spending my time a.) actually shopping and finding what I need, even though that’s less fun than writing, and b.) working at normalizing my eating so I can lose weight, because the smaller I become, the easier it is to dress myself. As I go down the scale I have more options, things fit better, my feet are less swollen, “real” bras (meaning bras that are not sports bras) are less painful to find and wear, the inner thigh areas of my pants are less likely to disintegrate, I don’t have to pile on as many layers in an attempt to mask fat rolls, and I could go on.

It comes down to priorities, again and again. There’s a million things we could all potentially do, but which of them are the most important? Is taking pictures of my outfits for this blog the best use of my time? I don’t think so. What’s the endgame there, anyway? Do I want people to stroke my ego and tell me what great taste I have? Do I need people to pat me on the head? With much of what people do on their weight loss blogs, I’m not sure what the point is, what the underlying motivation is and whether it’s truly healthy…but I can definitely get sucked into doing what other people are doing in a mindless way if I’m not careful.

There is so much power in clarity, in knowing what's important to YOU. My thirtieth birthday is this summer and I’m getting clearer about what I’d like to accomplish by that milestone. My two objectives—my two true priorities—are earning money as a writer by age 30 and being further along in my eating disorder recovery and general mental health progress by age 30. That’s it.

The writing I hope to earn money from has nothing to do with this blog, so I won’t go into that now.

As far as general mental health goes, I will be continuing with meditation whilst bringing psychodynamic psychotherapy treatment to a close around my birthday. I’ve been with my current therapist for almost four years now and while it has been helpful, I do not think I can accomplish much more with her or through the psychodynamic model.

If I resume therapy in the future, which is entirely possible because depression tends to recur, I want to seek out someone that specializes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I’m ordering some books on ACT that will allow me to get started on my own now; when practiced without the guidance of a therapist, ACT is called Acceptance and Commitment Training. I’m really excited to learn more. ACT and Buddhism share many concepts and techniques, but because ACT is entirely secular, I think it might be easier for me to work with long-term.

ACT is also very much in line with the Brain Over Binge approach—so much so, I’m going to e-mail the author about it. She doesn’t mention it in her book, but I think she’d find it highly relevant.

General mental health and eating disorder recovery go hand in hand, but what should the next stage in my eating disorder recovery be? Well, I feel like a broken record: I want to feel confident that the binging is behind me. I want to know that I don’t fall for the antics of my animal brain anymore.

My classic binges are gone and what remains are behavioral episodes that could be considered overeating, but perhaps could also be considered a new, milder form of binging. No matter what you call it, the animal brain is getting its way in these episodes and I don’t want to reinforce such patterns. So I’m drawing an (admittedly arbitrary) line to gain some clarity, some certainty that the lower brain isn’t running the show: on an average day with no special social events, any urge to eat more than one sweet in a sane portion size will be viewed as neurological junk emanating from my lower brain. As both Kathryn Hansen has said on her blog and a helpful commenter has said on mine just the other day, it’s good to decide the portion size in advance, before you start eating. That way, if you eat more than you set out to, you know your animal brain has won that round. It’s important to face that reality when it happens.

Yesterday, I had a rich almond croissant for breakfast. In the afternoon, I had a candy bar. And at night, I had two little boxes of Nerds candy. With the new "line" in place, any urge to eat sweets after that croissant would have been viewed as silly mental chatter to be ignored. It was a regular Thursday, after all.

However, when I travel to visit my family for Easter in a couple weeks, I might have more than one dessert on a given day. Normal eaters do this sometimes during travel and during the holidays. I know many different people will be having us over for lunch and dinner and will be offering us baked goods and holiday candy. I just have to decide how much is reasonable before I start eating, and stick to that. It’s the mindless and compulsive shoveling of food that is the problem.

Note that I’m not making hard and fast rules, exactly. This is slightly different. I’m trying to establish definitions more than anything else: what behaviors do I define as normal and healthy and acceptable and coming from my higher brain, and what behaviors do I define as stemming from my lower brain’s tricks and antics? If I cave to the urges emanating from my animal brain, I need to figure out why it happened and how I can prevent it from happening again. This is not on-the-wagon-off-the-wagon stuff. I’m sick of crafting programs and systems with rules that are practically made to be broken. They make ME feel broken when I inevitably screw up, and it's too discouraging. I like to think that I'm not broken, but I am undergoing a re-wiring or re-programming of sorts so that I can function better.

Celebrating a total of 20 pounds gone, and a 6 book giveaway!

First, the books. I've read each of the books I'm giving away and they have helped me understand what approaches will and will not work for me personally in the long run. I'm ready to let these titles go and I hope they can be useful to someone else.

Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop by Cynthia M. Bulik
Potatoes not Prozac by Kathleen DesMaisons
The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program by Kathleen DesMaisons
The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous
Food for Thought: Daily Meditations for Overeaters by Elizabeth L.
For Today (another OA daily readings book)

If you are interested in any of these titles, simply send me an email at too.much.input.blog@gmail.com with your name and mailing address by March 7. I'll mail up to two books per person, anywhere in the world. Whoever requests a particular book first will receive it. All books are like new: no marking or highlighting, covers in great condition, etc.

Since I am such a bookworm, I'm celebrating my loss of 20 pounds with a new office bookshelf I've been wanting for a long time. :D

I'm certainly losing weight slooooowly:

Get your own graph at skinnyr

I started graphing my weight on August 15, 2011 at 275 pounds. I joined a gym and experimented with Paleo and low carb eating, and lost ten pounds by mid-September. Then I stalled out. I determined I wasn't going to do Paleo all the way and my gym activity slowed down too. I felt pretty lost and dejected. My triumph throughout Halloween-Thankgiving-Christmas-New Year's was simply maintaining instead of gaining it all back and then some. After reading "Brain Over Binge" in mid-January of this year, I got going again in earnest and now a month and a half later, I'm down another ten pounds. I hope to keep going now with no more four-month "breaks"--slow and steady is fine by me.

More than reaching any particular number on the scale, I want to change my brain and banish all binge eating. And I'm happy to say that things are heading in that direction! New lows on the scale give me excitement, but binge-free days give me peace and functionality.

The answer isn't out there

For years, I’ve tried to figure out the right way to have sweets—the foods I have historically overeaten and binged on. I wanted to know how could I eat them--or NOT eat them--without feeling tortured. I’ve written about this before. Sometimes I tried to come up with my own system, and sometimes I’ve looked to others for help.

I tried the no-S diet for some time, which says you should only have sugary treats on “S” days—Saturdays, Sundays, and Special Days, defined as major holidays and personal events like birthdays and anniversaries. (There were other components to the diet, which you can read about *here*.) The creator of this plan is a sensible guy and in no way condoned binging on S days, but I personally couldn’t stop binging and ultimately abandoned the plan.

Still thinking there was an answer somewhere “out there”, I went on to try Overeaters Anonymous for several months. My sponsor and the vast majority of people I met there advocated total abstention from desserts. My dislike of OA probably calls for its own series of posts at some point, but for now, it’s enough to note that a philosophy of total and lifelong abstention (even if viewed through the lens of “it’s not forever, it’s just one day at a time, tee hee!”) didn’t sit well with me.

(A classic OA’er response would be that I couldn’t handle total abstention because I’m incapable of honesty, or because I haven’t truly turned my problem over to a Higher Power, or because I’m too deep into my addiction, or whatever other thing they’ve heard parroted a million times in OA books and meetings. And my response to THAT would be: Sure, alright. Have fun attending meetings several nights a week for the rest of your life, and remaining obsessed with food and eating--albeit in a different way than you were before joining OA. Enjoy feeling that catastrophe is one missed meeting or Reese’s cup away. Enjoy not thinking for yourself. Enjoy the concept of powerlessness. Hey, is that sugar free Kool-Aid over there?)

Ugh. See?! On the topic of OA, I just can’t help myself.

So, more time passed. I started to read Mark’s Daily Apple and explore the paleo/primal philosophy and online community. I took some steps in that direction, but before long the whole thing struck me as too extreme and, perhaps ironically, too reminiscent of my days as a vegetarian. (Again, another post for another day.) Anyway, Paleo proponents tell you to kick sugar and wheat flour (and sometimes dairy, depending on the expert) to the curb, and Paleo dessert recipes sounded more like punishments than treats to me. So that wasn’t going to work much better than outright abstention.

When I wasn’t trying out someone else’s suggested plan or solution, I was asking myself questions like:

1. Should I stick only to gourmet and homemade treats? Maybe the cheap junky stuff I grew up with is the real problem because of the convenience factor and emotional ties I have to things like Little Debbie snack cakes.

2. Should I try having a tiny treat each day? Many people advocate that.

3. Or would it be better to have a normal or even large amount, but only have it once a week? Lots of people talk about weekly “cheat days” and it seems to work for them.

4. Should I modify no-S and keep sweets just for holidays and personal special days, which don’t occur weekly, and not have sweets on regular Saturdays and Sundays since that’s too much and I failed at regular no-S in the past?

5. Should I give myself permission to have one treat from each “category” of dessert, spread out over the course of the month? As in, choose one dairy-based thing, one baked good, one kind of candy, and one sweet drink to enjoy, once apiece, and that’s it for the month?

6. Should I not make any specific resolutions about the amount or type of dessert, and just let myself have anything I want during PMS week, since that’s when I crave crap the most? Maybe if I behaved the rest of the month, it would even out.

On and on this went--the musings of an obsessed person, desperate for answers. Desperate for something between binging and total, lifelong abstention.

These questions subsided for a short while after reading “Brain Over Binge.” Suddenly, it didn’t matter what the treat was, or how often I was having it, or for what occasions, as long as I wasn’t binging on it. I could have a little, or an average amount, or even a bit more than average, as long as it wasn’t a binge. What a relief!

Now, however, I’m a month into not binging, and the question of the “right” way to have sweets has resurfaced. The cessation of binging is the basic foundation I needed, no doubt about it. But I do have a significant amount of weight to lose as well as a problem with emotional eating, and how much/how often I eat sugary treats is going to affect my progress on those fronts. The author of “Brain Over Binge” doesn’t give specific dietary recommendations, so I can’t look to her for the answer on sweets. (The lack of such recommendations is only appropriate, given the focus of her book, the arguments she’s making about binge eating recovery, and her credentials. I respect her as much for what's in the book as I do for what she left out of it.)

Hmm, so if that author doesn’t have the answer…where to look next?

Then it dawned on me. The long-term answer regarding sweets is not “out there” somewhere. There is no magic pattern of specific days, specific intervals, specific treats, and/or specific amounts that will make everything easy for me. The answer lies in me and the development of my own self-control.

I know, I know. Facepalm in 3…2…1.

What I really want is to be able to trust myself in ANY scenario. It’s what I’ve wanted all along: the ability to make a rational decision that takes my normal human desire for pleasure, my desire for weight loss, and my other health concerns into account, backed up by the ability to stick to that decision. Whatever the situation, I don’t want to be swayed by my lower brain in the heat of the moment.

I want to be able to eat a little bit every day, or a little bit rather frequently, if I decide that’s appropriate. I want to be able to eat a normal-sized amount but then not have anything for awhile afterward, if that’s the rational choice I’ve made beforehand. I want to be able to completely abstain from dessert for as long as I deem necessary, if I deem it necessary. I want to know that whether it’s the cheapest shit out there or the most gourmet, I won’t lose control. That I can trust myself.

The ability to do all these things is important because I expect different approaches to be useful at different times. For example:

During the holidays, when there are social gatherings and rich foods at every turn, it would be good to have confidence in my ability to savor a small amount of something every day (or most days). I’d like to know I can enjoy 3-5 bites of something and stop there. The same thing applies to travel and vacations. People often gain weight when they go someplace new because they are eager to enjoy as many local specialties as possible. I want to try new things when I travel too, but eating a full serving (or multiple servings) of dessert every day for a week or two could very well result in weight gain. Daily sampling is a good compromise between total abstention and gorging. Believe me, I have gorged on gelato in Italy, stroopwafels in the Netherlands, chocolate in Switzerland, and pastries in Austria because I couldn’t bear the thought of missing out, and also couldn’t be satisfied with just a little. I understood my options to be EVERYTHING or NOTHING, because I wasn’t capable of anything in between at the time.

Different scenario now. Say my bloodwork comes back and I find out I’m prediabetic or diabetic. Or I get pregnant and develop gestational diabetes. Or I have a special event coming up and want to drop a few pounds to look as good as possible. Whatever the reason--if the route most aligned with my current concerns and goals is to completely abstain from desserts for awhile, I want to have confidence in my ability to do that…and in my ability to NOT go crazy when the period of abstention ends.

Or, say that I simply want to have an entire ice cream cone or a big piece of cake once in a while (not a few bites, but the whole thing, perhaps on my birthday?), yet I don’t want to gain weight or harm my health by initiating a downward spiral of overeating. I’d like to know I’m able to eat the whole serving and move on, skipping treats for some time afterwards in order to balance everything out.

As time goes on, my husband and I tend to go the homemade or gourmet route for our desserts. But when I’m with the rest of my immediate family, which happens a few times a year, I’m confronted by the Pop-tarts and Nutty Bars of my youth. And I want to trust myself around everything. Even within the category of homemade/gourmet, I currently have more confidence around baked goods and candy than I do around ice cream and other dairy treats. I ultimately want confidence around it all.

The only way to develop these abilities and this confidence is to practice. Practice periods of abstention, practice having a little bit many days in a row, practice having an average or even large-ish amount at more spaced out intervals. Practice with crème brulee, practice with Lucky Charms. So that’s what I’m going to start doing. I will write more about it as I'm doing it.

I wonder what other answers are staring me right in the face each time I look into the mirror?

Christmas at 265 pounds

My weight fluctuated around the 265 pound mark over the holidays. I want to capture a couple of things before the new year gets underway and I forget.

I wrote about my hopes for Christmas 2011 in this post. To be honest, most of the things I hoped to accomplish did not happen. I did eat crappy, packaged, processed treats throughout the month. Yet I am certain that without keeping records on this blog and making something of an effort, I would have done far worse (eaten far more junk, and likely every day).

I did put on a nice Christmas for my family, including a lovely meal and homemade cookies and eggnog. The house looked nice. But I want to be honest here: my ankles and back hurt like hell from standing in the kitchen. At this weight, I have very little stamina and my body aches when I exert myself more than usual. I also wore lounging clothes and the apron I cooked in during Christmas dinner because I didn't have the energy to fix myself up. I don't say these things to berate myself, but to get real. I tend to look at pictures of the cute little cookies I made and forget the rest of the story--that I looked and felt miserable making them. Others enjoyed them, but was it worth it to mess with sugar and eat scraps of damaged cookies and taste test and generally hurt my health? I'm not so sure.

The day after Christmas, I took my guests grocery shopping to stock up for the rest of their visit. They threw TONS of packaged junk into the cart: cheap ice cream bars, brownies, snack cakes, spice cake, sugar cookies. I'm not used to having that amount of stuff in my house and I'm trying to give that crap up for good, so I'm ashamed to say I ate more of it than anyone else. I have more difficulty than they do eating it moderately; for whatever reason, it's more stimulating to me. When they left a few days later, I did pack what was feasible for their road trip and threw the rest away. But not the remaining ice cream bars. Those I ate, when the house was finally quiet and I was alone. I did it to de-stress and promptly felt sick and depressed the rest of the day.

On the Wednesday after Christmas, I took them sightseeing and was hobbling by the end of our tour. Walking and standing for several hours in the cold caused me to be stiff for most of the next day as well. So stiff, in fact, that I couldn't walk down the stairs normally. It's frightening. Getting 70 pounds off my joints (i.e. getting down to 200 pounds) would be a massive favor to my body, wouldn't it?

My dad's addiction to cigarettes really saddened me on the day of our sightseeing tour. He wasn't able to truly enjoy himself because he was constantly focused on when he'd next get to smoke. I couldn't help seeing the parallels to my own food/sugar addiction. I understand the feeling of "IF I DON'T GET MY FIX RIGHT NOW I'M GOING TO LOSE IT", and I know I've failed to appreciate many interesting and beautiful things on trips (and during everyday life, too) because I'm too distracted by my addiction. I want better for myself, and I want to be a better example to others. I also want better dental health than he's got in his middle age; smoking has done a number on his teeth, but how can constant sugar intake be much better for the teeth and gums?

Last thing...I did not complain when people wanted to take pictures and videos of me during these activities, but I know they will be hard to look at. And if I have to watch video footage at some subsequent family gathering in the company of others --even the very people that were there with me, in person-- I know I will feel mortified. I kept telling myself "these are your 'before' photos, this will be your 'before' video too", just to get through it.

My home scale now shows something closer to 270 pounds. It's a basic analog scale that I have trouble reading; I rely on the gym's digital scale for official records. I'm eager to move on and start shedding this weight in earnest. I've got some ideas and plans for 2012 that I will write about soon. I know next Christmas doesn't have to be this way.

Calorie-free holiday enjoyment

Saturday, December 3 food log:
Mixed greens--collard, turnip, mustard, spinach sauteed with onions
Salmon
satsuma mandarin
some brie en croute (I'd never had this before. Not sure I like it.)
cheerios with a banana
mug of Yogi calming tea

I decorated the tree tonight--glad that's done! Gonna curl up by it to read for awhile: one of my favorite calorie-free holiday pleasures. :)

The holidays ahead

Today, the last day of November, was more reasonable than the last two days. I had a coconut-almond Kind bar, a bowl of bean soup, turkey/cheese/spinach on a bagel, a tall caramel brulee latte from Starbucks, and Turkish "pizza" (ground lamb and vegetables on flatbread).

So now December has arrived. Do I have the strength to limit myself to only homebaked goods (made by my own hands) on just a few special days this month? Some family members are planning to travel to my house for Christmas, and I'd like to make a couple kinds of cookies and try my hand at making eggnog from scratch for the first time. Maybe a red velvet cake, too. Homemade goods have become something of a rarity in my family, as most of our parties feature store-bought cakes, cookies, etc. But now that I have a house and the opportunity to play hostess, I'm trying to establish new traditions; when the people I love indulge at my house, I'd like it to be with something real instead of with various combinations of high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Not that I don't dump those very things into my body, but I'm trying to change. I'm trying to create an emotional association between those kinds of cheap mass-produced goods and the phenomenon of people not caring about one another. (Which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense. The companies that make these treats don't care about you or your health. And even though cake shouldn't be equated with love, more effort and care go into a homemade cake than into a package of Little Debbie.) I want cheap sweets to become emotionally repellent so that I don't have to struggle so hard with temptation anymore.

To get through December, I'm going to have to stay busy, engage in exercise for stress relief, and create a new habit like drinking tea each evening (my most vulnerable time for eating sweets). Oh, and remind myself that I'm NOT deprived in any way--that I'm CHOOSING to do something good on my own behalf because I care about myself. Perhaps most fundamentally, my vision of Christmas needs to change, to include a picture of myself enjoying and modeling vibrant health in the midst of all the festivities. My tendency is to fantasize about making the house, the meal, the everything (except me, of course) look like something out of a magazine. To make those things the symbol of a perfect Christmas, and not even think about my own well-being--if anything, to sacrifice my well-being in the service of ridiculous Martha Stewart-esque Christmas visions.

I will still endeavor to put on a lovely holiday for my family, but I want to be able to enjoy it. And I can only enjoy it if I'm feeling good. And that requires decent food, exercise, sleep, grooming, de-stressing...and reasonable expectations for myself and the holiday season in general.