Sick of it

My in-laws are here again this week and I've fallen into old ways yet another time: using sugar as a drug to cope with stress, anxiety, anger, resentment.  I don't need to go into details about how much I hate their visits and why, because the real issue that is plaguing me is my inability to deal with unpleasantness without numbing myself via unhealthy and excessive food.

I no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for binge eating disorder, but I feel despair over my continued emotional eating and overeating (and of course, my weight).  And there are so many habits and behaviors that go into this that I hate.  I hate that I still feel a pull to buy whatever Limited Edition bullshit that is being rolled out each week by the Oreo people, the Ben & Jerry's people, or the Haagen Dazs bastards.  I hate that I'll go weeks without McDonald's and then fall into again, because that stuff is utter trash and when the smiling worker at the drive-thru window hands me my bag, I often sarcastically think "assisted suicide, hooray!"

I hate that today, I went to the supermarket to buy a stash of cheap candy bars to keep in my closet to get me through the rest of the in-law visit--an old bingey behavior and the exact same thing as your average pothead squirreling away his or her stash--and that I bought my 5 month-old organic pureed baby food in the same visit.  I felt utterly ridiculous unloading my cart onto the conveyor belt at checkout.  And I felt like a horrible mother.  I'm looking at my beautiful baby girl in her carseat and she's wearing a onesie that says "mommy loves me", and mommy can't get herself under control enough to ensure that she won't die of a heart attack in the next 10 years and leave her child without a mother.  I feel very much like an addict.

I am an addict, basically.

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I think I need drugs.  I know that's funny, given the statement I just made.  But the bottle of Percocet I brought home from the hospital after my C-section has given me some perspective.

A little over five months ago, I came home with a dozen Percocet.  And I LOVE how they made me feel--they chill you out, block all pain, and make you feel like your limbs are turning into liquid gold.  Because I only had 12 pills and knew I wouldn't be able to get a refill, I typically only used them on nights when physical pain (usually a terrible headache) coincided with extreme emotional pain and severe anxiety.  And they wiped ALL the pain away, physical and mental/emotional.  More than once after taking them I thought, "if I had access to these all the time, I'd have no need to abuse food.  I'd be downright skinny."

I'm not saying that abusing prescription drugs is any better than abusing food, or that I ACTUALLY WANT to trade one addiction for another.  (I took my last remaining Percocet yesterday, incidentally.)  What I'm really trying to say is that Percocet showed me the effect I've been trying to achieve with food, for years and years: relaxed, mildly good-humored, free of pain.  And it showed me that food doesn't do as good a job creating this state as drugs designed for this very purpose do.  No surprise there!

I've been trying to drug myself with food for a long time, when perhaps what I really need is ACTUAL DRUGS.  Appropriate drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist that can help me with the mental states that keep knocking me off my feet.  A few years ago, I took Prozac for a few months, but stopped when it became clear that I'd have to up the dose to continue reaping the benefits of the drug.  At the time, that didn't sound good to me, and furthermore, I was starting to get interested in having a baby and didn't want antidepressants in my system.  But I have to admit that I'm not making progress by drugging myself with sugar and that my current drug of choice has horrible side effects too (can you call "keeping oneself on the brink of diabetes at all times" a side effect?).  I have to admit that my meditation practice has helped, but it's not enough at this point.

The understanding that I'm drugging myself with food and sugar has always been there, but a willingness replace this with actual prescription drugs instead hasn't.  Until now. The hunt for a good psychiatrist is on.

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Maybe a psychiatrist can help me sort out the question of moderation versus abstinence.  That question has spun me around and around, and when it recurs I feel like I've made no progress at all.  I mean, just a post or two ago I spoke about how the  5:2 diet doesn't require you to give up dessert and how that's better for me, given "how I'm wired."  And here I am again, questioning.

ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN!!!

On one hand, there are several people whose intelligence and experience I really respect that advocate moderation.  They say you aren't really at ease and therefore haven't really solved your problem until you can be moderate around sugar and other indulgent foods.  This makes sense to me.

Add to this the fact that I've never succeeded at abstinence for more than a few weeks at a time, and that involved much white knuckling, and there was usually crazed consumption of sugar afterwards that undid any good that was achieved.

Add to this my past experience with OA, which preaches sugar abstinence.  I didn't see many success stories in those church basements.  There were a few abstinent people, and they seemed batshit crazy with OA-speak...and the rest had been struggling for years but kept coming back to the meetings, believing it to be their only hope.

And then there are my stints in "treat legalization", which I have found really does decrease my desire for sweets. (ETA: It decreases my desire for the specific treats I legalize.  I wouldn't say it decreases my desire in general.)  And mindful eating has shown me that I can be satisfied with less of something at a sitting: a smaller slice of cake, fewer cookies, whatever. So I have experienced other modes of eating treats that give me some hope.

Taken together, that's a lot in favor of moderation.

But then there's the reality that I'm so often NOT moderate.  I overdo it, over and over again, and I'm hurting my health.  My bloodwork and the way I feel day-to-day is proof enough of that.

And so often, my thought while buying and eating crappy foods is "I hate this.  I'm sick of this."  I'm not even enjoying it, or paying attention to the food...because all I'm after is the high, anyway, and half the crap I buy disappoints when it comes to flavor.  So yeah, I *know* how to eat mindfully, sure, but I usually don't do it, because eating mindfully interferes with the pursuit of a drugged state...which is what I'm after 90% of the time I eat sweets.  Even now, even though I no longer binge like before.  I'm still after that altered state.

Lastly, I've been studying the dharma for a year and half now, and it has helped my life in various ways.   Many Buddhists would advocate giving up anything that makes you suffer--sense pleasures, relationships, pursuit of status or fame...really anything you grasp at desperately that leads to repetitive suffering.  For me, sweets surely fall into that category.  I suffer because of them, in a way that many other people don't.  And so often I think my life would be happier and more peaceful if I could let go of them completely and be free of the suffering they cause.

So taken together, that's a lot in favor of abstinence.

Conclusion: I need help to get out of this confusing abyss I've been in for too long.

Dressing myself

Among the many "shoulds" in my life, there is the notion that I should not read O, The Oprah Magazine when I could be using that time to read Foreign Policy or National Geographic or something. Like all women's magazines, O is filled with beauty ads and spreads that suggest the answer to so many of life's problems is to buy more shit.

But I'll admit it now: I love O anyway.  I have a subscription to O.  I love Martha Beck's articles.  And I also love some of the essays in there.

The most recent issue has a piece by Lauren Slater called "Getting Lighter".  Slater talks about how years of debilitating depression caused her to completely abandon her personal grooming, to the point that she developed a serious infection from dirt working its way under her skin.  While my case of depression and self-neglect has never gotten that serious, I could still relate to her talk of skipped showers, unshaven legs (yes, for months at a time), and sloppy clothes.

Slater makes a decision:

"A psychologist by training and degree, I decided to construct an experiment.  I was a schlump, a frump, due to my depression, which robbed me of the time to spruce up and the motivation as well.  Was it possible, though, that if I spruced up, my mood would follow suit?  What would happen if, during my downtime, my depressed time, I put on makeup?  What would happen if I got some style?  Beauty, after all, is not some trifling effluvium; it's a sought-after state in every culture we know of, this in itself proof of its power."

She hires a beauty consultant, gets a much-needed haircut, and more changes follow from there.  And she finds that, as suspected, changing the way she cares for her appearance changes her internal state as well.  Her work improves, her libido returns, her confidence increases.  And she realizes:

"...entering into beauty did not in any sense diminish me as a woman, an artist, a mother, a wife.  I did not become all preen and polish, with nothing of substance to offer.  I look people in the eye.  I dream I am 12 feet tall."

Wow.

For so long, I have wanted to improve my appearance.  Weight aside, I have wanted to dress better, figure out hair and makeup, all of that stuff.  A few things have stopped me, but chief among them are irritation and frustration over how much work it seems to be to figure it all out and make an effort every day--that's probably the depression at work, because others find this easy and enjoyable--and a concern that I would get too into my appearance and become vapid.  I'm sorry to say that the most polished women I know are generally not the brightest women I know, and I value intelligence immensely.  (I know, I know, there are lots of women out there that have both things going for them.  Obviously I need to widen my social circle, because I haven't encountered enough of them.)

I would like to value good self-care more than I do.  Furthermore, Stacy London has finally convinced me, via her book The Truth About Style, that there is nothing intelligent about presenting yourself to the world as a slob.  In the end, Slater and London have shown me that I've been theorizing about a false choice--looks vs. smarts.

So, for what feels like the millionth time, I have recently re-started my efforts to learn how to dress myself correctly.  Every time I do this, even when I end up quitting and going back to men's hoodies and ill-fitting jeans, I learn something new that brings me a little bit closer to putting the puzzle together.

This is what I'm working with:  I do have a hard-to-fit body.  I am 5'5" and plus sized, but I have a long waist and shorter legs.  That means I need petite length pants--most women my height can wear regular length--and I need longer shirts.  Maybe even Tall shirts, but I will probably have to get the sleeves hemmed if I start buying those.  Plus-size petite-length pants are not easy to find.  I have yet to find a great pair of jeans.

I carry fat in my lower stomach, so many shirts fall at the most unflattering spot possible.  Shirts need to be long enough to cover my stomach, but not so long that they hit my thighs, because that makes my short legs look downright stumpy.

I have a large bust, and only in the past two years did I figure out that the ONLY kind of bra that works for me is a full coverage bra with underwire support.  No demi cups or whatever for me! I can wear sports bras, of course, but I'm talking about what bras I can wear with regular clothes.  Prior to figuring this out, I wore sports bras all the time, even with regular clothes, leaving the straps visible and me with a case of mono-boob because I didn't know what else to do.

I have wide feet.  Most stores do not carry attractive wide shoes for young women.  It has finally sunk in that I need to order my shoes online 99% of the time.

Actually, most of my clothes shopping is done online too.  That's where most of the good plus-sized clothes are to be found.  I have a few Lane Bryants near me, but I am less than impressed with them.  Bless them for their bras, though.  Those are the bras that finally worked for me; a small miracle.

Then there is the question of finding items THAT I GENUINELY LIKE that takes all of the above into account.  This is the hardest part and the reason that for most of my life, I just bought anything that fit me, whether I liked it or not.  Because of desperation and lack of choice.  This situation is getting a little better as the plus size market expands, but it's still a challenge.

A separate question from "what do I like?" is "what looks good on me?"  I think I need some third party input on this, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get that.  I'm thinking about paying for consults with a stylist and makeup artist. (I need help in that area, too.)  I've never visited a makeup counter because it intimidates me and I don't want to feel pressured into buying specific products.

I took one tiny step towards change by signing up for something called Gwynnie Bee, after seeing it mentioned repeatedly on Skinny Emmie's blog.  I'm glad I did for three reasons.  It helped me figure out why so many shirts look horrible on me (The long waisted issue.  Somehow, before this, I understood I needed petite length pants but did not understand that I was correspondingly long waisted).  It made me realize that I consistently overestimate my size, which is why I often end up with things that are too big for me.  And that, in turn, caused me to go to a tailor to have measurements taken by someone besides myself for the first time ever.

I really like Gwynnie Bee.  They have excellent customer service.  Because I'm at home all the time with the baby for now, I may discontinue my membership soon and then pick it up again later when I'm working or just out of the house more.  For now, though, it's an educational experience getting these clothes in the mail, trying them on, and sending them back!

More on dressing myself in future posts. :)  Advice is always welcomed!

Lost. And fat.

On Friday, March 1st, my baby turned 8 weeks old.  I weighed in at 260 that day.

So I've gained some weight, obviously. My sister stayed with me during a good chunk of February to help me with the baby. I loved having her here!  She's five months pregnant, though, and we indulged in pretty much anything we felt like.  Now she's gone, I feel more overwhelmed with childcare, and I'm fatter than before.

I feel totally lost at sea right now in terms of weight loss and behavioral change.  I'm a terribly inconsistent person; I lack follow-through.  I come up with an idea, a goal, a plan, and I fail to follow through the next day.  Sometimes the same day!  I can't really blame this on having an infant to care for because I've always been this way; however, having an infant does not make this any easier.

My mind slips into all-or-nothing thinking more than I care to admit.  I catch myself faster than I used to and can adjust the tone of my thoughts better than before...so that's something.  But even when I tell myself to simply pick ONE area to work on, ONE habit to change, I freak out and can't pick one.  Or stick with one.  That daily vegetable I mentioned in my last post?  Never happened.

I so want to be a good example to my girl.  I so want to spend this year at home not only bonding with her, but getting healthier month by month.  And more at ease in my skin!  It used to be that photographs were taken of me infrequently enough that I could internally wince when I saw the reality of my body size in pictures, but pretty much let it go, bury my head in the sand, and carry on unaffected.  It's a different story now.  You know how picture crazy new parents go, right?  And aunts and uncles and everyone else?  I have ended up in more pictures during the last 2 months--me holding the baby in all sorts of positions and angles--than in the past two years combined.  I've seen enough of myself that I just can't ignore how bad I look anymore.  I've reached that point where no nice/dressy clothes look good on me; every human body has a threshold past which clever layering, shapewear, and all the other tricks in the book can't really hide the truth anymore.  I've been there for some time, wearing baggy and practically unisex clothes so I don't have to deal with it.  But if I'm being honest, I long to wear lovely clothes that boost my confidence and celebrate the fact that I'm alive.

My mom didn't help me with clothes, bra shopping, makeup, any of that stuff.  Much of that was her own narcissism, but some of it (I have come to realize) was her own incompetence and lack of ease in this area.  I want to help my own daughter, but I won't be able to if I haven't figured it out for myself first.  The same could be said of cooking and healthy eating, of exercising, of so many things.

It feels good to write, even if it's all over the place and mostly a testament to me being lost and going in circles.

More on legalizing junk food

Right after I wrote my last post about legalizing junk food, I discovered I had even more junk in the house than I had listed; I had forgotten about several items.  There were other cookies and a jar of chocolate-almond spread that had slipped my mind, and most of a cranberry-orange cake in the freezer that I didn't realize we had until my husband threw it in the yard for the birds yesterday.  It was several weeks old and neither one of us were interested in finishing it.

To have these things in the house and completely and utterly forget about them is new and amusing to me.  I typically know EXACTLY what I have, EXACTLY how much is left, and EXACTLY how badly I want to devour it all the moment I have a bit of privacy to do so.  I even forgot about a pint of Limited Edition Ben & Jerry's this week, and that speaks louder than me forgetting about cranberry-orange cake, believe me.  I opened my freezer and there it was in the door and I was all "Hey!  Forgot this was in here!"

Keeping perspective

When I start thinking "how can I cook and exercise today when the house needs cleaning SO badly, the car needs servicing, I need to mail that stuff off?" I know that I've lost perspective.

The house exists to serve me, not the other way around.

The car exists to serve me, not the other way around.

The errands are completed to serve my life; I don't live to complete errands.  I don't live to serve the dry cleaner, the post office, the bank, the store.

It's empowering to put things in their place!  The biggest challenge is keeping them there...

The old me wasn't so great, either

I've been having those days where I cook and eat very well, and get nothing else done.  At least it feels like "nothing".  But that's not entirely accurate; I do get some stuff done.  Not as much as I'd like, but still.

I've been thinking about this more, and have concluded that I always feel like I'm not getting enough done because I compare myself not only to others, but to my OLD SELF.  Namely, the person I was in college.  I always took a full course load, made good grades, did extracurriculars, worked at least one part-time job, volunteered, etc. etc.  I'm not making this comparison in a very direct and conscious way, but I know it's there because I frequently find myself wondering why I'm not more driven, competitive, and goal-oriented, "the way I used to be."  Maybe worrying about it more than wondering about it, to be honest.

True, I'd like to have some of that spark back.

Always dropping the ball

It seems that in a given day, I'm always dropping the ball in one important area or another.

If I eat right, exercise, and meditate, it seems to take up most of my attention.  I'll drop the ball on errands, housework, and/or career-building activities.

If I run a bunch of errands and clean and so forth, it saps my energy and I find my eating to be sloppy and my likelihood of exercise to be low.

Lots of days it's some mix: I exercise but my eating is chaotic.  I run errands and eat ok but am sedentary most of the day and let the house go.  I work on career-related writing but ignore everything else and binge to cope with the anxiety I feel.

I don't expect my performance in all areas of life to be perfect every day, but I've lived this disjointed, unsatisfactory way for years now.  I've tried all sorts of things to break out of these patterns, and still don't have an answer.  Ultimately, I feel like I'm treading water and getting nowhere: I prevent emergencies and put out fires when they do arise, but I don't feel in control of myself and my life.  I don't feel capable of reaching important, ambitious goals anymore.  I'm so scattered and dissatisfied with myself.

Lately, and by that I mean the last couple of weeks, the only thing I've been consistent about almost every day is taking a walk.  This prevents the kind of guilt I felt throughout most of my second trimester about not exercising (at all, pretty much).  Maybe I can build from here.

When it comes to this scattered rut I've been in for years, I know that there's something to my thinking that's tripping me up, over and over again, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.  Something to do with lack of clarity about priorities, perfectionism, discomfort avoidance (i.e. going after "low hanging fruit" a lot of the time), and not being able to focus on one task at a time but instead ruminating about what's not getting done WHILE I'm getting something else done.  Four years of weekly therapy sessions did not help me with this--did not even directly help me identify all this--and all I can do today is admit where I'm at and vow to keep untangling this mess.

Unhappy and Overwhelmed

I'm already off the makeup kick and more focused on nesting, so I'll pick up my discussion of makeup, clothes, and everything else at a different time.

I've been in a really negative headspace for the past few days.  I'm frustrated with myself.  No matter what I do in a given day, I feel like it's not enough.  That internal critical voice has been so loud lately that yesterday it felt like a separate person and I talked back to it: "yeah?  What do YOU do besides sit around and criticize?"  Definitely a slight case of the crazies.

I have so many problems besides food and weight.  So many.  I don't think or talk about my depression all that much, but it's still there and very much impacting my life.  It's under better control than it used to be, and I've found exercise and meditation to be more effective (at this time) than meds and talk therapy, so I have a plan of action.  But in SO many areas of my life, I desire a total overhaul in my habitual thoughts and behaviors.  When I think about the baby arriving and changing my life in ways I can't fathom, I get anxious.  How am I going to hold everything together?  How am I going to make much-needed changes when I have no time to myself?  Personal progress is abysmally slow NOW, when I have all the time I could ask for, so what does that tell me about my future?

This blog hasn't been incredibly focused so far, but it has been about eating disorder recovery, weight loss, etc. more than anything else.  That's going to change. I want to feel free to talk about anything that I'm struggling with, regardless of whether other people can relate or they find my problems ridiculous.  I may as well be honest and say I blog for myself first and foremost--I do it because it helps me process my thoughts and feel better--and if my writing helps anyone else on some level, that's great, but not something I feel is my responsibility or primary goal.  In other words, I'm not here to provide an "expert voice" of any kind.  It's just me, figuring out what I want and how to get it.  And if I put it all out there, all the worries and dreams and hopes and efforts and failures and experiments and projects, it's going to be messy.

I'm ok with that.  I'm unhappy right now, and feeling overwhelmed, but at least I can accept the mess.