Category Archives: Personal Recovery

The Gray of Storm Clouds, the Tarnished Silver Lining

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In our last episode (OK, the last three), Kate was struggling with her spouse’s recent revelation that he established an account on Ashley Madison two years ago.

So, for any of you who haven’t bailed on this leaky tugboat…here’s an update.  Sorta.  It may just be more blommit.

I love that word.  Blommit.  Super-big puffy heart it so hard.  And I love you guys, too.  MWAH

I am still largely numb.  There are occasional brief bouts of anger, and there’ve been a couple of tears…but apparently, I’m still in shock.  What he did is so incongruous with the behavior of the man I married – the man I THOUGHT I married – that I’m having trouble reconciling the two.

Sometimes, I even forget for a while that this is actually happening.

Emotionally, anyway.

Physically, it’s a different story.

I feel raw.  Hollow.  Like my soul has been in a horrible motorcycle accident;  I’m covered in road rash on the inside, the smashed fragments of my heart staining the pavement a bright red.  My mouth tastes of metal.  My stomach randomly churns and dips as if I’ve been blindfolded and thrown upside-down onto the Gatekeeper at Cedar Point.  I’m exhausted, yet wide awake.  I spend much of my day feeling like one does the day after a bad stomach flu.  Drained.  Empty.

Weak.

Sometimes I am weak, sometimes I am strong.

I am strong because I am demanding the space and time that I need to think this through.  I am weak because sometimes I still want to hug him and hold his hand.

I am weak because I realize this sends mixed signals.  I am strong because I don’t care.  The final decision is up to me, when and if I make one, regardless of how he perceives I am feeling today.  Regardless of what HE wants.

I am strong because I’m getting myself tested, and requiring him to do the same.  I am weak because my gut tells me that this isn’t necessary, because he’s telling the truth.  That he never met any of these women.  That nothing physical ever happened.    I desperately want to believe this is true.  Every fiber of my being tells me he isn’t lying.  But that’s the same clearly faulty intuition that completely missed this was happening in the first place.  IT WENT ON FOR FIVE MONTHS AND I HAD NO IDEA.  (Sporadically, he says.  But the window was open, so SOME sulfur must have blown in.)

I am strong because no one at work has any inkling of the internal chaos I’m carrying.  (I even finished that blasted EEO-1 report – EARLY – go me!  Although of COURSE now that I’m DONE I see they extended the deadline A WHOLE MONTH.  I put in 3 hours on my day off and NO ONE THOUGHT TO TELL ME I HAD 31 EXTRA DAYS?!?  <stabs air wildly and sprouts hissing rattlesnakes from scalp>)

I am weak because I don’t trust any of my family or friends enough to share this burden.  And because saying it aloud will make it real, and I don’t know if my heart can sustain the blow.

I am strong because even though I had previously quit going to therapy, I made some new appointments today.  (And he’s going to pay for them.  OBVS.)

I am weak because I still love him.  And because part of me thinks we can fix this, and a bigger part of me still wants to.

Is there any chance at all that he’s telling the truth?  Is it possible he was just window-shopping, clicking on the pretty things he’d like to have and adding them to his cart, only to abandon them by closing the browser instead of clicking “Complete Order”?

Does it matter?

I am strong because I’m keeping to my exercise routine.  I ran yesterday and today.  Although I am weak because I’m just not eating.  My body simply doesn’t want it.

My run times are suffering – badly.  I’d been doing a 9:20 mile, and this week it’s been 9:45-10.  Ouch.  (Side note:  The fact that I think a 10-minute mile is “bad” is freaking hilarious.  I spent most of my life being completely unathletic, and I am realizing as I’m typing this that I sound like an ex-smoker telling tobacco users that they smell bad.  I’ll slap myself FOR you, so you don’t feel you have to do it.)

<slap>

So, as I write this, it’s Tuesday, and that means…

…it’s time to face the scale.

I mentioned in my last post that I was pretty sure I’d lost some weight this week.  After all this, that’d be a definite plus, right?

I thought I was looking a bit thinner these days.  I mean, I believed I could actually see a difference.  And that NEVER HAPPENS.  This morning I went as far as to take some pictures, because it felt like a pretty dramatic loss, and I was thinking I would have a physique I could actually show off a bit. <strut strut>

But when I looked at the pictures, I saw this fold here and that bulge there, and promptly hit delete.  Must have been an optical illusion.  I should know better than to trust my vision at 6 AM, before I’ve had any coffee.  HELLO.

It was time to face the music.  Numbers don’t lie.  Let’s get today’s.

I went for my slog run.  I came home.  Peeled off the sweaty running togs.

I dust off the scale with the broom (because I have three cats, and hair weighs something.  So does dust.  Can’t be too careful when you’re letting an inanimate object set your mood for the week.)

(Quit looking at me like that.  I KNOW you have your scale rituals, too.  Shave first?  Pluck your eyebrows?  Visit the restroom for one last hurrah?  Yeah, I’m on to you. <points finger-scissors at eyes, then back at yours>)

I step on.

I look down.

HOLY FREAKING FAINTING GOATS BATMAN.

I LOST SIX EFFING POUNDS LAST WEEK.

ALL HAIL THE ASHLEY MADISON DIET!

Seriously, do they need a new spokesperson? I hear they’ve had some publicity issues.   And I have WAY more mass appeal than that Jared ex-Subway clown.  (Especially now.  Couldn’t set THAT bar much lower.)

All kidding aside – I know I need to eat.  After living on swallowed angst all weekend, I’ve been trying to force myself to eat one good meal a day.

But I’m struggling.

I don’t want to eat because I want to lose weight.  (That’s a given.)

I don’t want to eat because starving myself will hurt my spouse.  A sweet, slim revenge for what he did to our marriage, a full dish of piping-hot guilt stew to go with that regret roll he’s been noshing on.

I don’t want to eat, because I normally don’t want to WANT to eat, and eating when you don’t want to ACTUALLY eat seems like a waste of a perfectly good gift horse.

I don’t want to eat because my heart is screaming that it’s hurting.  It screams so loudly that no one can hear it.  Eventually, maybe they will see the screams.

I don’t want to eat because I want to disappear, fading gracefully into the ether, drifting off to a place of peace where no one hurts.

Is that weakness, or strength?

Does it matter?

My spouse says he’ll do absolutely anything to keep us together.  He’s had a taste of what it might be like to lose me, and it’s wrecking him.  I can see he’s lost weight; I can see the anguish in his eyes and feel it vibrating from his very core.

He’s terrified.  Absolutely frightened.

(Good.)

I have agreed to try counseling with him.  I have also insisted (as I said above) that he get physically tested.  He didn’t even hesitate.  Didn’t protest “but nothing happened”- he understands why I might not can’t believe that right now.  He even offered to go to a Christian counselor (remember, he’s been a fairly hostile atheist, so him seeing a Christian counselor is kind of a big deal.)

What else should I ask for?  What would YOU ask for?  What would you need him to do?

Am I an idiot for giving this a chance?

I know that doesn’t matter.

As long as I’m at peace with whatever I decide.

Speaking of peace, here’s a giant chicken.  BECAUSE GIANT CHICKEN.

giantchicken

He lives at the Farmers Market. I have no explanation.

Bawk bawk, homies.  Thanks for hangin’.

You Put One Foot In, You Got One Shoe Out

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Before I start on yet another brain dump on the grenade my spouse dropped on our marriage last week, I want to thank all of you who have reached out, commented, and connected with me.  I don’t have anyone to talk to about this in real life, and I can feel your support seeping through the interwebs like the heat from a camp bonfire, where we sit around and melt away the chill and make calorie-free, gluten-free s’mores with peanut butter and drink wine.  (You are also free to roast hot dogs if you like, but with that as an alibi, don’t ask me what’s on the end of MY stick.  Mkay?)

I appreciate y’all sticking around while the power’s out.  Hopefully the generator will kick on shortly.  Thanks for sitting in the dark with me and keeping me company.  It means more than you know.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been the sort of person that craves both security AND independence.  I think this can be best illustrated by a story my mom likes to tell:  When I was a baby, she would occasionally stick me in the playpen. (This was, of course, back in the 70s, when playpens were actually death traps, and I would’ve apparently been safer playing with a hair dryer in a shark-infested bath tub.  But no one knew this at the time, and I’m pretty certain she wasn’t plotting to kill me.  That came later, when I became a teenager and fully deserved it.)

Anyway, when Mom needed just five minutes to take cookies out of the oven, or use the bathroom, or whatever, she’d plop me in the playpen, pulling the sides up so I couldn’t wander off.  This was my cue to scream, cry, and generally throw an Oscar-worthy hissy fit.  I HATED being trapped in there.  Shortly, she’d decide that neither her sanity nor her bladder could take the wailing, and, resignedly, she’d put the side down and let me out.

But then, a couple of hours later, a funny thing happened.  I’d creep over to the playpen and, noting the sides were down, crawl RIGHT IN and blissfully play with my toys.  Putting the sides up turned it into a torture chamber, but with the exit wide open, I was perfectly happy to hang out there all day.  (Even as a baby, I drove my poor mother nuts.  I’m sorry, Mom.  I love you.  Thank you for letting me live.)

And this is, historically, how I have approached relationships.  I want you to stay, but I can’t be confined.  And, now that I’ve been forced to reflect, I see that this has been true with my current spouse – even though I thought he was the love of my life*, I’ve kept the escape hatch propped open.

*He may still be.   Or he may meet the fate of the aforementioned hot dog.  Jury’s out yet.

For one thing, when we got married, I didn’t take his name.  Well, I did, but I hyphenated it with my ex’s name.  It made sense at the time; I had 12 years of professional experience under my previous name, plus I wanted to share a last name with my kids.

Lately I’d been toying with the idea of dropping my ex’s name from the two.  It’s part of my legal name, but I never actually USE it, and incidentally, hyphenating is a royal pain in the keister.  (Don’t ever do it, ladies.  JUST PICK ONE NAME.  Otherwise you’re constantly wondering which name (or names) you’ve used on which credit cards and internet sites, and you’ll never remember which company’s systems use hyphens, which use spaces, and which just shove both names together into an intimidating tangle of letters, and you’ll have to spell every possible permutation of your name EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME anyone has to look you up.  By the way, no two airlines handle hyphens the same way.  This keeps you on the short list for free invasion of your personal space.)

Anyway, I haven’t dropped the prior name yet.  Just didn’t get around to it.

Hmm.

Another example that perhaps I wasn’t all in:  My spouse and I keep separate finances.  Remember how I said I was a math geek?  Well, every month, he pays the mortgage, and I pay the rest of the bills.  I enter everything into a spreadsheet, and we “true up” at the end of the month.  We even buy a lot of our own food.  I know it SOUNDS ridiculous, but we never fight about money.  And in my last marriage, I was the sole breadwinner while my spouse stayed home buying old watches on eBay.  I was NOT having any of THAT again, so I control my own funds.

It’s always seemed to make sense for us, but with the current filter on my lens, it seems to suggest that I was keeping the sides of the playpen down.

Oh, another thing.  I have this tattoo (I swear it’s less crappy than this photo makes it look):

tattooIt’s a kokopelli – he represents the spirit of music, and he’s also a prankster.  Even if you’re not terribly spiritual, you can usually hang with a fun musical deity.  There are three music notes beside him – one for me, one for my son, and one for my daughter – symbolizing our survival of the divorce.  (And to further drive that point home – I bought this tattoo with the money I made hocking my first wedding ring set.  Heh.)

My current spouse wondered aloud why there wasn’t a note for him.  We were engaged when I got it…surely he’d be a permanent part of my life, right?

But I didn’t add a little note for him.  I’ve thought about going back and doing it…but….

(Yeah, I know, you never ever EVER tattoo yourself with a relationship.  Not ever.  Here’s another reason why not to, I guess.  I mean, don’t be this guy):

(By the way?  Don’t bother sending this to your friend Brenda.  Trust me, she’s already seen it.)

One more thing.  I have a backup plan.  I just wrote about that a week ago.  I SAID it was in the event of my spouse’s death.  But perhaps I was keeping my parachute packed not just in case of sudden engine failure, but also in the event that I didn’t like where the plane was going.

Given all this, maybe I wasn’t truly as blindsided by this as I originally thought.

When I’m poking around my brain, it’s definitely one of the tender spots.  For some reason, I keep rubbing it to make sure it still hurts.

One positive to this whole mess is that it’s been a super-effective weight loss plan.  Based on my complete loss of appetite, and my stomach’s reaction to stress*, I’m sure I’ve dropped a few pounds.  I won’t actually know until Tuesday, because in order to keep from being obsessive, I’m only allowed to step on the scale on Tuesday morning.  (Perfectly logical, yes?)

*When I’m stressed, I normally eat.  However, when I peg the meter – divorce hearing, child illness, or, apparently, your husband flipping the “Available” light on the commitment taxi – my stomach pulls the evacuation alarm, and suddenly there just aren’t enough lifeboats on the Titanic, if ya know what I mean.

About 2-3 years ago, I was at my lowest weight since my anorexic high school days, due to some stomach issues and recurrent mononucleosis.  Since then, I’d put on ten pounds and just haven’t been comfortable in my skin.  So when I put on another five recently, I stepped up my game.  My weight loss has been…slow (which is expected, as I wrote about here.):

  • Week 1:  six pounds (Whoa. Clearly I was retaining water like the Hoover Dam.)
  • Week 2:  zip
  • Week 3:  one pound
  • Week 4:  donut
  • Week 5:  GAINED A F%(^!N& pound

Week 6 is Tuesday.  I think I crushed the plateau like Godzilla in a bad Japanese movie.  ROWR <stomp stomp stomp>

Ironically, my low weight hits the same time frame as the rest of this whole debacle.  Which would lead a normal person to NOT want to be that weight again, right?

But then, if food and I were normal, I wouldn’t have started this blog in the first place.

Sigh.

In the meantime, since food doesn’t appeal, I’ve been binge-shopping.  I stocked up on new workout gear on Friday, and today visited the local farmers market and treated myself.

In addition to veggies, I bought myself flowers:

FarMktFlowersAnd because flowers die, I bought some jewelry, too.  BECAUSE I DESERVE IT.

Silver and clay ring:

RingClayAnd a couple of pieces from Mind of Madness Design:

Red agate/silver on braided leather

Red agate/silver on braided leather

Necklace

Hot pink and gold. LOVE THIS

Necklace2

Here’s what it looks like on. Bold, eh?

I may be all scrambled up like a smoothie on the inside, but I’ll glam up my game face and keep my brave on.

Fake it ’till ya make it.

Food Issues Aren’t Child’s Play

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Remember the playground?

When your parents parked the car, or when the bell for recess FINALLY rang…where did you run first?

I was all about the swings.  Unlike the monkey bars, they didn’t require much athletic ability, and they didn’t scald the skin on your thighs like the metal slide did on a hot summer day.  Didn’t we all pinch our fingers in the chains at least once when we were lost in the challenge of swinging hard enough to fly all the way around the bar?

(I recognize that some of you are too young to remember a playground that had actual safety hazards.  But back in MY day <hitching up suspenders> we didn’t have plastic coatings over the chains.  We had shiny metal slides that heated up to skin-blistering, egg-frying temperatures in August.  Seat belts on the swings?  You have GOT to be kidding.  And we had NONE of that sissy-boy recycled-tire mulch at the bottom of the monkey bars.    We had good old-fashioned DIRT.  Soft landings = soft adults!  Got a boo-boo?  Pop that sucker back into joint, rub some gravel on it and get back outside!)

Anyway.

As adults, I think we look for that same thrill that the playground used to give us.  We all need to find our fun, right?

Some of us look to extreme sports (100-milers.  The Ironman.)  Others look to death-defying activities.  (Bungee jumping, anyone?  Skydiving?  That’s a big helping of NOT ME.  But you go on with yo’ bad self.)  And a few get way too absorbed in the drama of politics, Big Brother, or Facebook.

Some of us get a little lost looking for that playground thrill.  That’s where things like gambling and alcohol come into play.  And for me, obviously, food.

Recently, the hubs and I went to our local State Fair, where they historically feature diabetes and obesity “on a stick.”  (Delicious, delicious diabetes.  OMNOMNOM)  You can find something for every palate – pickle juice Popsicles, chocolate-covered bacon, funnel cake, and deep-fried everything from candy bars to cookie dough – even butter.  (But butter sort of terrifies me, so we are NOT having any of THAT.)

I joke occasionally that the State Fair is “the one day I allow myself to eat.”  Now, I’ve been trying desperately to get these last ten fifteen five few pounds off, and I’ve been trying to not go all eating-disorder starvation crazy about it.  For the last four weeks, I’ve conscientiously eaten 1200 calories a day and gone for a run 3-4 times a week, with long bike rides on the weekends.  Balanced.  Healthy.  Right?

So I knew the fair was coming up, and I know I like to eat fair food, so I decided to just have a day of “screw it” and eat what I felt like eating at the fair.  One planned afternoon of once-a-year treats.

And eat I did.  I had:

  • a blueberry/honey/chipotle muffin (they were gluten-free, so I had to try one)
  • a scoop of chocolate raspberry wine ice cream (fabulous)
  • a beer-battered fried brat (also gluten-free!)
  • a “triple peanut threat” milkshake (peanut butter, Reese’s pieces, and Butterfingers, which probably aren’t gluten-free, but my throttle was jammed firmly into don’t-give-a-s#it gear at this point.
  • a chocolate-coated pecan nut roll (gluten?  WHO CARES SUGAR SUGAR SUGARSUGARSUGARSUUUUUUUGAAAARRRR)

Now, that’s a lot of food, but trust me, in past years, when I didn’t need to worry about not eating wheat, I’ve done a LOT worse.  (Add not one, but TWO, orders of deep-fried cheese curds, and probably a chocolate sandwich, which YES, is as good as it sounds, and maybe some sweet potato fries with a small lake of ketchup.)  So, given that this was a planned indulgence, this wasn’t TOO bad for a full day of food, especially when you’re walking all day, too.

Right?

Right  If I’d have STOPPED there.

I had been having quite a time on the monkey bars, enjoying the view up high, until I slipped, fell hard, and whacked my elbow on the unforgiving pavement.  THUD.

Unable to do anything halfway, I gave moderation a hostile middle finger and ate half a king-sized pillow bag of popcorn once I got home.

And, despite sticking religiously to my diet for the rest of the week – zero weight loss.

Well, what did I expect, exactly?  I guess I should feel lucky that I didn’t gain from my dalliance with debauchery.  I know that one day off from diligence – one bad meal, actually – will cost me (I wrote about why here.)

But I also know it’s dangerous to dance close to the edge of that oh-so-slippery slope.  Because with eating disorders, there is no “just once.”  There’s no minor diversion.  No day off.  It’s black or white.  All or nothing.

It’s kind of ironic, actually.  I mean, when you’re starving yourself (alternating with periods of stuffing yourself senseless) you spend a lot of time on a scale.  And if you’ve ever waded in past your knees in the eating-issues pool, you have a food scale, too.

The scale.  A symbol of balance.  A precise measuring device calculating, gram by gram, the distance of an object from zero.  Calculating the mass between the amount of space you take up and the amount of space that’s acceptable to occupy.

Physically, you’re constantly working with this instrument to find balance.

Yet, when it comes to the food?  Mentally, we can’t get off the seesaw.  Up.  Down.  Back up.  Quickly down.  One minute, you’re briefly at the top, and in the next moment, you’re bouncing painfully off the ground when your partner bails from the ride.

It’s all or nothing.

And we all know how it SHOULD be, right?  Mentally, we should strive to be balanced, aiming mightily for that elusive “moderation” bullseye, while physically, the scale should be an occasional, twice-a-year checkup at the doctor’s office.

My relationship with food, and my weight, should look like this:

But it feels more like this (except picture the elephant tumbling @ss over teakettle to the ground in a thunderous crash):

Or this:

Or, more accurately, this:

Somehow, I need to move myself to the center of the seesaw.  It doesn’t HAVE to be all-or-nothing, right?  Most people eat when they’re hungry, stop when they’re not, and don’t burn up so much freaking mental energy on this stuff.

They just DO it.  It’s like breathing.

It’s not so automatic for me.  I have to keep reminding myself to find my balance.

Keep shifting to the center.

Try to balance.

Fall.

Get back up.  Rub some dirt on it.

Try again.

<sigh>

Anyone wanna go back to the swings with me?  Let’s leave all this food baggage in Mom’s purse on the ground, and just rock back and forth for a while.

If I lean back, and point my toes to the sky, I’ll go higher and higher, alternately reaching for the moon and gently floating back to earth, not having a care in the world.

For a moment.

See Saw, Margery Daw

Katie shall have a new master

But she shall lose just two ounces a day

Because she can’t starve any faster

The Future’s So Right…. I Gotta Get Weighed

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I love a good challenge…gets me off the inertia couch and writing…SOMETHING.  It generally ends up being a word salad, but salad is good for you, right?  I like to think my word salad has lots of crunchy, salty bits, a bit of sweet, and a deceptively creamy dressing that is miraculously fat-free.  But I may be dreaming.

Speaking of dreaming…fattymccupcakes, who is going to be my new best friend if she ever moves here (that’s not creepy, is it?) nominated me for the Future Challenge.  So thanks for the mental shove, chica.  (And if you haven’t picked up her blog – she is freaking hilarious.  So you need to totally go read her.)

DA RULZ:

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you.
  • Next, link back to the original creator of the challenge, Dreams and Movie Screens, so they can see how far their challenge has spread.
  • Then, share 5 things about your future.
  • Finally, nominate 5 bloggers to share their own future.

So, about my future….

The challenge didn’t say I had to be totally realistic.  (Not that I’m a great rule-follower, anyway.  Speed limits?  MERELY A SUGGESTION.)  But I think it makes sense to chuck your desires at the universe.  You can look at it as a goal to reach for, or a dream to follow, or some woo-woo hippie-dippie full-bore shot at The Secret.

Either way, I can’t help but believe that thinking positively does me more good than embracing gloom-and-doom.  (Remind me of this in the middle of the night when my mind is racing maniacally to the tune of “the EEO report is due this month and I have to read 500 reviews and book flights for November before the holiday traffic takes all the good seats and someday my cats will die, my parents will die, and what if my kids or the hubs dies, they’ll ALL die someday or maybe one of my flights will crash and none of this will matter except then how will my kids buy shoes and why can’t I sleep EVER and my run tomorrow morning is gonna SUCK if I can’t get more than four hours of sleep and will my knee hold out, because if it doesn’t I am totally doomed to be fat forever and….” Do you know this one?  Sing along when we get to the chorus.  Anxiety always suckers me in to attending the after-party, and there’s no mental Uber to give me a ride home at 3 AM.)

Side note:  I’m one of those peeps who copes by attempting to take control by taking action.  (Which kind of explains the whole eating disorder dealio.)  So, for example, if I’m having a craptacular day at work, I peruse job boards and send out a couple of resumes.  To that end, I actually have a plan in place should something happen to my spouse:  I’m selling off most of my belongings and moving somewhere warm – probably Arizona – but I’ve been eyeing this little town called Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. There aren’t many jobs there – most of them are entry-level – but housing is cheap, and I’d use this as an opportunity to simplify and scale back.  Plus, the neighboring town is called – get this – Elephant Butte.  Which makes me giggle, because mentally, I’m still twelve.

Barring tragedy, though…given the canvas I own and the paints I have, here’s how I’m sketching out my future:

Financial Health:  I’ll have sufficient funds to retire more than comfortably by age 55.  (OK, admittedly a stretch.  65?)  And by “comfortably,” I mean I’ll have enough to both travel AND to make Christmas really special for the kids and grandkids.  (Of which I’ll have four.  NO PRESSURE KIDDOS.)

Physical Health:  I’ll be in excellent shape (relative to most of the US – not planning on doing an Ironman or any of that cray shiz) and quite active.  Since I’ll be retired, I’ll have plenty of time to work on my landscaping, as well as go hiking and biking as weather permits.  And I’ll still be able to complete the airport sprint (when you have 15 minutes to get to your gate 1.2 miles away) at a dead run if I need to.  My knees and hips will be in top form, and my bones will be strong.  People will marvel at my energy level, and won’t add “for your age”, because they know they’ll get a fierce roundhouse kick to the cranium.  BOOM.

Spiritual Health:  I’ll be at peace with myself and with the universe.  I’ll still read a lot, and talk up the issues, because that’s how we learn, right?  The grandkids will seek advice and guidance from me because of how grounded and non-judgmental Grandma is:  cool and calm, untroubled and relaxed, dynamic and feisty.  (See “roundhouse kick” above.  I don’t ever think I will suffer fools well.  That ain’t in my DNA.)

Mental Health (#1):  I’ll have found my voice and stood up to the bullying taunts in my  head that tells me I’m not enough.  I’ll know that I AM enough.  I am whole and complete and have value.

In the future, I’ll be able to believe it – and I’ll live my life that way.

Mental Health (#2):  I will finally be at peace with my body.  I will have forgiven myself for taking up so much space, and will issue my thighs a pardon for their genetic makeup.

No.  Wait.

Forgive?

What was the crime, exactly?

I guess I have a way to go before I get to this Future place.  But I knew that; that’s kind of why I’m here.

But, try as I might, I still can’t envision a future without a scale in it.  I can’t wrap my mind around how to exist without it.  It’s easier to picture other what-ifs, like my relocation contingency plan above.

I’ve made some attempts at getting better – I’m working on some healthier habits, and tried therapy. Well, for a while.  I haven’t been totally consistent, other than when I fall, I’m trying really, really hard to get back up. And I usually do.

The funny thing about failing at life?  If you look outside your lane, you see you’re not the only one sprawled on the cinders.  There’s camaraderie in life’s pileups.  That’s why we lean on each other in the blogosphere, right?

I think the key is to keep going.  And if we don’t like the direction we’re headed, we can always turn around.  Or start over.

We can only really start from where we stand right now, right?

I’m putting on my sneakers, my knee brace, and my zaniest running capris.

The door’s open.  I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, visualizing the finish line so I have a better chance of crossing it.

I’d like to invite these five bloggers to step into the TARDIS* and share their own futures.  Have at it, ladies!  🙂

*This isn’t my typical genre, but the kiddos got me hooked, and for the record?  I am TOTALLY TEAM TENTH DOCTOR.  In fact, I had a dream about David Tennant the other night that was so <cough> detailed and explicit, I couldn’t look the hubs in the eye for two whole days.  Anyway, if you haven’t watched, take a gamble and add it to your Netflix queue.  At the very least, you’ll understand all these vague pop-culture references that erupt on your Facebook feed.  And you’ll never look at angel statues the same way again.  <shudder>

Liebster, Revisited: Part 2 of 3: High School Never Ends, Cars, and Christmas Trees

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This is a continuation of my last post, where I started responding to sonofabeach96’s  nomination of me for a Liebster Award:

liebster3Because I’m the verbal equivalent of Niagara Falls, I couldn’t get it all into one post.  So here are three more of the questions…and three more long-winded answers:

What were your high school days like?  Good, bad, or indifferent and why?

On the surface, high school wasn’t that bad.  I wasn’t really bullied.  I had friends.  I was involved in every music activity our small district had available.  I got excellent grades.

But it’s hard to reminisce about high school without noting, as a point of reference, where I was with my eating disorder.  It’s like having a sterile, undisturbing stock photo of a smiling family set inside a dusty, chipped, weather-beaten picture frame.

The story’s in the setting, not the scene.

Ninth grade started with a bang, because <dramatic pause> I met a boy.  When you’re fourteen, this is typical.  When you’re fourteen and chubby, and he likes you back, it’s life-changing.   He was older (by one year – oh, the SCANDAL!) and was (of COURSE!) as thin as a rail with a sky-high metabolism.  (Seriously – weren’t they all?)  I coasted through most of freshman year with a lot of “firsts” – first kiss, first date, first formal – and, for the first time since fifth grade, didn’t focus too much on my weight.

I ended my first year of high school wearing a size 11 and weighing about 145.

And then summer hit.  And with the heat came last year’s clothes that were way, way too small.  And by August, I was appalled to discover that my marching band uniform had shrunk.  Significantly.

Now, as an adult, I can objectively look back and see that truly, I was pretty much “normal.”  Probably a bit chubby, especially compared to the track stars and cheerleaders.  But surely I didn’t stand out as the fattest kid in the class.  I understand intellectually that I didn’t look all that different from my classmates – to this day, when I occasionally page through an old yearbook, it never fails to strike me how downright NORMAL I appear.

But at the time?  I was FAT.  And Something Had To Be Done About That.

I knew all too well what worked.  I quit eating.

I started tenth grade a good 25 pounds less than I had ended freshman year.  I walked into my first day of my sophomore year with my size 7 jeans hanging off me.

Bolstered by success and compliments from my classmates, I kept going.  I kept going despite occasional blackouts.  Despite a blood pressure of 80/40.  Despite lectures from the school nurse.  Despite missing family meals.  Despite peer praise turning to worry.  Despite bodily functions ceasing to exist.  Despite my (new) boyfriend begging me to eat.

I finally settled in at just barely over 100 pounds, logging every calorie and measuring every morsel of food (including mustard and Crystal Light – I was hardcore, bro).

This was my existence for the next two years.

Outwardly, things looked to be great – I was thin, I was active in music stuff, I had a boyfriend who loved me dearly and was going to take care of me ALWAYS, and as long as I controlled my body and the food I put into it, I was safe and secure.

Then, during my first semester as a senior, my boyfriend – my first love, the boy who swore he’d marry me one day and would love me forever – unceremoniously dumped me.  (Because college, ya know.)  Suddenly, after over two years of coasting in the shade, the sun was beating down on me, burning off the fog and forcing its bright, harsh light directly into my eyes, commanding my pupils to constrict as my eyes ached from pained, constant squinting.

With absolutely no idea how to cope, I started to eat.

Once the dam broke, it was impossible to stop the flood.  I gained fifty pounds the last half of senior year, as I filled the time with extracurricular activities (read: boys) trying to find my self-worth while simultaneously feeding my starving soul with anything I could get my hands on.  (Unfortunately, I was feeding it the equivalent of onion rings and Twinkies.  But I had to start somewhere.)

I left for college in the fall with the Bright Future of weighing 170 pounds and having absolutely no idea what to do with my life.

So…yeah.  High school was…high school.

KatieSeniorPic

And here I am, twenty-five over twenty years later, still wrestling the same pigs and getting just as dirty.  True, I have cuter shoes and no boa.  But still….

What was your first car? 

The first car that was actually MINE was a 1991 Chevy Lumina.  I’d love to say it was a sweet ride, but the only people to say that about this car is the bluehair-and-Bingo set. 

I mean…just…gaaaah: 

Really makes a statement, doesn’t it?  In addition to its edgy, bad@ss look, it also featured a speedometer that pegged at a hairnet-blowing 85mph.  Which is totally un-American, and un-German, and un-everything-under-age-seventy.

So why did I have this?  Well, as is the case with most first cars, I wasn’t actually involved in picking it out.  It actually came into my possession courtesy of my now-ex-in-laws.

See, my former mother-in-law cleaned houses for a living – generally for the elderly.  Consequently, they often paid her in either quarters, baked goods, or castoff clothing.

Still, she persisted.  We think she was hoping that someday, one of her clients would kick the bucket and mention her in the will.

That never happened.

But, since most of her customers were in their late eighties, they did hop the heaven bus to harp lessons on occasion.  And, as the stereotypes dictate, they often left behind an older, low-miles vehicle – which she’d then volunteer to buy, at a bargain price, from the grieving family.

I kid you not.

(I guess it’s a small reward for choking down loaf after loaf of soggy, well-intentioned pumpkin bread.)

At the time, my then-spouse and I were newlyweds – and I had finally, after years of resistance*, learned to drive.  So we needed a second car, and this one met all of our requirements and qualifications (read:  it ran and it was cheap.)  It wasn’t exactly hip and trendy, but it was only a couple of years old with less than 15,000 miles on it.  SOLD!  I drove that sucker into the ground, tooling around in it until we eventually popped out some offspring and traded it in for a minivan.

*Side note:  I didn’t actually learn to drive until I was 24.  Why?  Well, if you asked me directly, I’d tell you, as I flipped my hair and narrowed my eyes coyly, “I always had a boy or two to drive me around.”  That was partially true; I also had an older brother and a younger sister who were more than happy to play chauffeur.  But the truth?  I’m hopelessly uncoordinated, easily distracted, and a champion procrastinator.  Plus, I wanted to spend my babysitting dinero on clothes and shoes, not gas and insurance.  Priorities, ya know.

What is the one thing that grates on your last nerve?

OK, there is NO WAY I can only pick only one thing.  I talked about a few Things I Hate in the Love/Hate Challenge (which took me SIX posts.  I am ridiculous.)

But out of all those posts, there was one thing I missed that absolutely drives me to shoot fire from my face holes and rant in unholy tongues.

It’s Christmas lights that BLINK IN SECTIONS.

They don’t twinkle.  They don’t flutter off and on to music.  They just ALL flip on and off AT THE SAME TIME, like some idiot minion is half-wittedly turning the switch off and on, off and on.

Off.  On.  Off.  On.

These are usually at the house that’s hung just one string, usually lining a roof or a window. Or part of a roof.  Or half a window.  Or until the string of lights just ran out.

THEY’RE LIGHTS THAT DON’T EVEN TRY.

And please note – when I say “you didn’t try,” I have a pretty high threshold for what I consider gallant effort.  Witness our family Christmas Tree a few years ago:

frogpoolnoodletree

Shout out to Problems with Infinity (http://problemswithinfinity.com/) – see? SEE?!?

Yes.  It’s a stuffed frog and a pool noodle.  BUT IT SAYS “TREE” SO IT’S LEGIT.  And I didn’t have to step on a single needle.  I WIN.

This tree is creative and unique (and affordable, I might add!)  But lights that blink in sections?  It’s like Christmas just gave up.  It’s Christmas sadness.

Don’t be that house.  Don’t be the Holiday Spirit Slayer.  Leave your lights on, in all their energy-sapping, glowing glory.  Your neighbors will shovel your walkways and bring you cookies, and there will be world peace and harmony.

Or, at least, I won’t have to violently hurl the Fruitcake of Christmas Past through your front window.

You…Should Take the Segway….

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As far as earworms go, this is a decent one to have.  🙂

So in my quest to get outside of myself a little bit and try new things, I stumbled upon the opportunity to try out a Segway.

Wait…a what?

A Segway is basically an electric scooter – except it doesn’t have a seat.  You stand on this contraption and lean backward or forward to make it go or stop.  The thing is designed with computerized sensors and gyroscopes that somehow sense your motions and respond accordingly.

Which I read as “the computer will SMELL YOUR FEAR and laugh maniacally as it pitches you violently to the ground.”

The Segway whistles innocently as it searches for a place to bury the body.

It looks pretty menacing.  And, for the record, the dude who bought the company in 2010 was promptly thrown off a cliff by one of his products.  TRUE STORY BRO.

But, on the other hand, thousands of people ride these things every year.  I see Security zipping around the airport and the mall on Segways all the time.  And many major metropolitan areas have local tours, given while riding Segways.

So…how bad can it be?  If you can chuck a group of jet-lagged novices on these, and generally have a reasonable expectation that you’ll end the tour with the same number of people you started with, it’s gotta be somewhat safe…right?

I located a local Segway tour and signed myself and my son up.  (My daughter wasn’t all that interested.  Plus, this way, if my son and I perished in a terrible Segway fire, there’d be someone to inherit my jewelry.)

My son was mildly interested in trying the Segway. He was decidedly less interested in the tour itself, however.  (He’s 15.  Can you blame him?)  Most of the available tours feature historical sites – “historical” coming from the ancient Greek word meaning “boring crap your grandpa won’t shut up about” – so I decided to sign us up for the sculpture tour, instead.  I figured that was our best bet – buildings might not be all that exciting to a teenager, but an unusual sculpture might get at least a “blink and shrug.”  Or just a blink.  (Like I said, he’s 15.  I set my expectations accordingly.)

The day of our tour was hot – it was about 90.  (Which I actually love, because I’m always cold.  I recognize that pretty much everyone else is dying when it gets that hot, but I just stand outside and soak that shiz up.)  Because it was stupid hot, my son and I were the only two people signed up for the tour that day.  BONUS – undivided attention!

There are a few things you have to do before they’ll let you tool around on the Segway.  Those bad boys can zoom up to 12.5mph, so safety first, right?  You have to watch a safety video, put a helmet on, and…um…something else I think I missed because I was finishing level 432 on Candy Crush.  Then you can take off on the official tour.

But before they make you invest all that time in safety, they give you a quick trial on the thing, to make sure you aren’t a complete lost cause on the balance front.  (Which is nice, because generally, gravity hates me, and sometimes, when I’m trying something completely off the rails like, I dunno, WALKING, the ground jumps up completely at random to slap some sense into me.)

(Hmm. I wonder if someone called ahead and warned them about me.  Maybe that’s why no one else was on this tour.)

So I was introduced to my Segway.  Her name was Eunice.

SegwayEunice

After a quick primer, they had me hop on and try some quick maneuvers.

I got on, and enthusiastically leaned forward.

And promptly ran over the instructor’s foot.

My son was not amused.

You can HEAR the eyeroll....

You can HEAR the eyeroll.

My son is a natural athlete (with a KILLER arm, by the way #mombrag) so he was fearlessly flying around on the thing in no time.  Being a world-class klutz, I wasn’t quite as confident.  But, after a few minutes, I was deemed passable.  (Clearly, the bar was so low, I ran THAT over, too.  And I never fully got the hang of standing still, so every time we stopped for a quick explanation on a sculpture or sign, I sort of coasted back and forth.  Sometimes gently into a wall or a stop sign.  I’m sure I appeared mildly drunk.  I’m sure they’ve seen worse.  I mean, tourists.  Right?)

The tour was pretty cool.  I’ve lived in this city for nine years (!!) now, and saw a million things I’ve never seen before.

We crossed historic bridges:

SewgayBridgesegwayintocityexplored some of our city’s many bike trails:

segwaybiketrailand checked out some…art, I guess?

segwaysonspooncherryYeah…this is called, creatively and literally, “Spoonbridge and Cherry.”  Because it’s a bridge that’s a spoon, and there’s a cherry on the end.

SegwaySpoon

This is located in an 11-acre sculpture garden outside a local “modern art” museum.  Now, I don’t pretend to know anything about art – but some of the displays are…well….Last time I was there, they had a wall of salt and pepper shakers.  Like Hell’s Yard Sale.  Which I would have understood if they had CALLED it that, but it had some other lame name like “Modern Salt Shakers of the Century.”  And the time before THAT, there was a whole room dedicated to the variant shadings of cubism and graphite.  Which means SOMEONE DOODLED ON GRAPH PAPER WITH A PENCIL.

I will never understand art.

I tried, I really did.  I studied the sculpture for a moment, cocking my head and squinting intellectually.  Cupping my chin in my hand, I pondered aloud how the tonality of the structure might be modified if the artist had chosen to represent the cherry with, let’s say, an olive.  I remarked that the timbre would quickly shift from whimsical and insouciant to somewhat disillusioned, yet sophisticated.

Glare from my son.  “MOM.  No one eats olives with a spoon.”

(Actually, I do. At midnight.  When no one is looking.  But apparently, that’s still a secret.)

The rest of the tour passed without incident.  And by “without incident,” I mean that we had to take an off-road, unplanned detour down a pedestrians-only, bar-lined street, DURING HAPPY HOUR, due to road construction, and I crashed soundly and resolutely into a bridge.  Which caused the tour guide (YES, the one whose foot I flattened) to solidly rearend me, sandwiching me between himself, Eunice, and the wrought-iron guard rail.

Hil-freakin-larious.

In my son’s words: “Dude.  You were going straight, and you just didn’t TURN, and BOOM!”  Soooo descriptive.  And helpful.  I cannot WAIT until you get your permit, buster.

I suppose he may as well learn that I never go out with anything less than a bang.  <takes bow>

P.S.  Yes, that’s me in the pictures.  (Well not the maroon T-shirt; that’s my son, obviously.)  I’ve added and deleted these photos several times. I may delete them again after I hit “publish.”  Because I hate pictures of myself; I can’t look at one without scrutinizing what’s too big and too lumpy and too much and too everything.  And then I wasn’t going to point OUT that it was me, because that’s calling attention to the whole thing, which means you are totally going to go back and click on the pictures now.  Right?  But part of the reason I’m here is to deal with my food and body issues – and normal people wouldn’t think twice about posting what SHOULD be perfectly innocuous pictures of something fun they did, because it’s NOT about the size of my azzmatazz, but about the event, and if I hadn’t SAID anything, no one would even have THOUGHT to check out the width of my thighs.  So this whole paragraph is mental anxiety vomit about me TRYING TO BE NORMAL, which defeats the point entirely, but there ya go.  I get a Participation Trophy for showing up, right?  :-/ 😉

Losing Weight Is Hard. Because Math

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If you’ve ever embarked on a weight loss journey, you’ve probably encountered several  folks who have attempted to provide tips and advice.  I bet you’ve heard – or even uttered – some of these gems:

“Oh…just cut back on the carbs/fat/sugar.”

“Eat less processed food.  That’ll do the trick.”

“Walk for an hour a day.  The weight will fall right off.”

“Drink more water.”

“Lift weights!  That just melts the fat away!”

“Don’t eat after 8 PM – those calories stick right to ya.”

I’m going to tell you right now that most of these folks are well-meaning (OK, maybe just nosy) – but entirely unhelpful.  Because while these tips are certainly useful if you want to incorporate healthier habits, they won’t take anyone from obese to svelte.  And they certainly won’t take twenty pounds off any female.

If losing weight were as easy as taking a daily walk, we’d all be in shape.  Yet nearly 35% of Americans are obese.  Let that sink in a minute.  THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT of us aren’t merely overweight – we’re obese.  And if you’re between the ages of 40 and 59, that figure rises to nearly FORTY PERCENT.  40% of that age group is obese.

Because I like pictures, here’s where all the fat people live:

Courtesy of http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html

<insert obvious joke about moving to West By-God Virginia so I can be the slimmest woman with the best – and most – teeth.  I’d be a freaking SUPERMODEL, yo.>

So now I’m going to tell you why losing weight is so dang hard.  And I’m talking about women – especially women over 40 – here.  (If you’re a dude, yes, I KNOW you can lose 5 pounds this week by replacing six of your french fries with a banana.  GO AWAY before I bite you.)

This actually came up in conversation this week while I was talking with my company’s CFO.  He mentioned his wife’s weight struggles, and his “helpful” suggestion of exercise.  (Fortunately for him, we have good dental insurance.)

Since he’s the CFO, I thought laying out the numbers might help him understand what women truly have to go through to make any noticeable dent in their weight.

We’re going to do some math here, folks.  Bear with me, though.  This is gold.

For my food and activity tracking, I like to use the free tool MyFitnessPal.  It has a huge database of foods and the calories they contain, and it syncs nicely with MapMyFitness, so my calories burned and calories eaten are all in the same place.

So let’s open up MyFitnessPal and see what it has to say.

I enter my age, my height, and my weight.  Next, I input my activity level.  I have a desk job, and a 45-minute commute, so I guess “sedentary” will cover it.

And my results….

To maintain my weight, I can eat 1450 calories a day.

<blink>

If you know anything about calories, you know that ain’t a lot.  I’m of pretty average height and pretty average build, and my daily caloric allowance to MAINTAIN my weight can be consumed in one moderate meal:

McDonald’s:  A Bacon Clubhouse Grilled Chicken sandwich (610), medium order of fries (340), and a small chocolate chip frappe (520).  (1470.  I didn’t even get any ketchup.)

Red Lobster:  a half-order of the Crab Linguini Alfredo (1030!! for half!!), a Cheddar Bay Biscuit (160), and a garden salad (70) with French dressing (180).  (1440.  I had to skip the drinks…I guess I could afford a lemon wedge in my water.)

These are not unreasonable meals.  I certainly know I can pack away a heckuva lot more in a day.  But by selecting one of these, I’ve spent my ENTIRE caloric allotment for the day IN ONE SITTING.  (And yes, I know there are better choices available.  The point here is that these are not inappropriately obnoxious plates of food, and if you’re not absolutely militant about knowing what you’re eating, the fat ninjas will jump you and tattoo themselves to your backside.)

Isn’t this FUN?!!  Let’s try going on a date.  How about:

Applebee’s:  Split an order of Spinach and Artichoke dip (980) and a Blue Ribbon brownie (1670).  Drink one light beer.  (Which is kinda pointless, right?  But that brings you to about 1430.)

Don Pablo’s:  Eat no more than eight tortilla chips (191 calories for 13) while waiting for your order.  Split an order of Buffalo Wings (752) and a plate of Chicken Cantina Nachos (1059).  Drink two Slenderitas.  (211 each.)  It’s not a very interesting date, but you munched 1445 calories while listening to him drone on about beating his mother on World of Warcraft.

That’s an entire day’s worth of calories right there, folks.  IN ONE DATE.

Depressed yet?  Because there’s more.

Let’s now shift our focus to actual weight loss.

Remember, to MAINTAIN my weight, I get to eat 1450 calories a day.  That means that if I want to LOSE, I actually have to eat less.

But how much less?   Well, we know you need a 3500-calorie deficit to lose a pound.  So, to lose a pound a week, we’d need to cut 500 calories a day.  (3500 / 7 = 500.)

<beep beep> Back up the truck here.  I get 1450 calories to MAINTAIN my weight.

1450 – 500 = 950. (Or a medium Chocolate Xtreme Blizzard at Dairy Queen.  BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS YO)

But wait a sec….we’ve all heard the guideline that you shouldn’t eat fewer than 1200 calories a day.  Frankly, it’s extremely difficult to get the recommended nutrition you need on 1200 calories – not to mention most of us get dangerously hangry and will bite your head clean off the clavicle.

Let’s be real – for most of us, a daily allowance of 950 calories is just not gonna happen, at least not on a regular, sustained basis.  You might be able to keep it up for a week or so, but eventually, your body will force you into survival by shoving you face-first into a deep dish pizza.  So let’s try to be somewhat moderate here.

1450 – 1200 = 250.  250 * 7 = 1750.  So by eating 1200 calories a day, I can expect to lose a half pound a week.

Yippee.

If I have five pounds to lose, that means I have to stick to 1200 calories a day, EVERY DAY, for TEN WEEKS.  (Two and a half months.  Pretty much an entire season.)

I don’t think I have to explain the level of discipline required to stick to this for ten weeks straight.

But let’s interject some real life here.

How many of us have gone into the weekend with steel resolve, only to be swayed by the mental chant of “I worked hard all week, I deserve a TREAT!” on Friday night or Saturday?

Because we’re being moderate, let’s allow ourselves a small indulgence.  How about, after resolutely following our diets for six days straight, we have a little Saturday treat? You know I like ice cream – let’s get a two-scoop sundae from Culver’s.

There goes 1040 calories of the 1750 deficit.  (And it was delicious.)

So now, I have a 710-calorie deficit for the week.  (1750 – 1040 = 710.)

Which means it will take me NEARLY FIVE WEEKS to lose ONE pound (3500 / 710 = 4.93) ….and to lose five pounds?  TWENTY-FOUR AND A HALF WEEKS.  (3500 * 5 / 710 = 24.65)

Yes, folks.  If I eat 1200 calories a day, with the SOLE exception of ONE two-scoop sundae cheat a week, it will take me SIX FREAKING @#($@#$ MONTHS to lose FIVE POUNDS.

Oh, wait, though – I can add exercise!  Ooh, that’s gotta help!  Right?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a runner.  Four days a week, I have a not-insignificant run of 3.5 miles. And I’m not slogging along, either – I’m doing a 9.25 minute mile.

So…3 miles at a jog, with a quarter mile warm-up and cool-down walk. Let’s put that into MyFitnessPal.

303 calories.  (1 1/2 Pop Tarts.)

So if I manage to get out of bed and DO this four days a week, I’ll have burned off the equivalent of one pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.  (Which, according to the label, has 1200 calories and is designed to serve four people.  To which I say HAHAHAHAHAHA)

In other words – if I run four days a week, I can eat 1450 calories a day + one pint of ice cream and MAINTAIN my weight…or I can lose ONE pound in just under three weeks by eating 1450 calories a day and RUNNING FULL TILT four times a week.

Are you seeing how freaking ridiculous this is? 

And we haven’t even added any complicating factors.  Thyroid issues.  Hormones.  Water retention.  Leftover Happy Meal fries.  Muscle loss and the metabolism slowdown that comes with aging.  And the fact that the more weight you lose, the fewer calories your body needs.

Is it any wonder that so many of us struggle with our weight, and with food? 

So, fellas?  If a woman you care about is frustrated with her weight, don’t tell her to hit the gym.  Don’t remind her that ice cream is fattening.  And for the love of all that is holy and good, do NOT tell her that she is anything but absolutely beautiful.

Just tell her that you love her, no matter what.

And give her a hug from me while you’re at it.  Because I’m right there with ya, chica.

The Love/Hate Challenge! Part 3: Ride Away from the Fat Wagon

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So about…uh…two weeks ago, Chelise from Caterpillar to Butterfly nominated me for the Love/Hate Challenge:

lovehatechallengeDA RULES:

  1. List 10 things you LOVE
  2. List 10 things you HATE
  3. Nominate a few suckers to do the same

And this challenge has dragged on for awhile, partly because I procrastinate, partly because it’s summer, partly because I haven’t been traveling (so I haven’t been stuck in an airport with absolutely nothing to do but dodge creepers, germs, and crappy food), and partly because I can’t keep it short once I DO start. (Like here in this post I already have over 100 words and I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED ACTUALLY SAYING ANYTHING YET.  Man, I am exhausting.)

Part of the problem:  If I feel passionately enough about something to LOVE or HATE it, there is NO WAY I can explain that in less than a bound dissertation.  I mean, if you truly HATE something, how on earth do you adequately describe THAT in under 200 words?  Or under 500?  If it’s only one page, isn’t it more like “slight irritation”?

Anyway.  Taking another swing at the verbal piñata and makin’ it RAIN, baby….

10 THINGS I LOVE and 10 THINGS I HATE (in unranked order) – PART 3:

6a.  I hate butter.

I can hear the <whoosh> of people rushing to click “unfollow” now.  Yeah, I know.  It’s pretty much un-American to not like butter.  But hear me out.

It’s Oprah’s fault.

I was a fairly normal, butter-loving kid, who grew into a butter-eating teenager (well, when I was eating at all; at that point, if I remember correctly, I was in the middle of my 900-calories-a-day diet.  So I was quite aware of the calorie bomb that is butter – but I still ATE it, because sometimes ya gotta.)

It was November 15, 1988 when everything changed.  That was the fateful day that, despite a schedule chock-full of band, choir, AP classes, and boys, I just happened to be home from school, and just happened to be watching TV, when Oprah strutted out on stage with a black turtleneck, size 10 Calvin Klein jeans, and…this.

Anyone else remember this? (If your answer is “No, I wasn’t born yet” – shut it.  You can watch the clip HERE.)

As a teenager who, at the time, barely moved the big weight to the three-digit notch on the doctor’s scale (slam some water and wear boots and a sweater so the school nurse gets off your back, you know the drill) – this was life-altering.  I was HORRIFIED.  The Radio Flyer Lardcart was a GIANT DEATH WAGON OF BUTTER that, in addition to being un-heart-healthy and just plain nasty, WOULD MAKE ME FAT.

And ever since then?  Every stick of butter brings me right back to…

Mmmmm…don’t you want some TOAST right now?  <gag>

Looking back on this now – with the perspective and experience of twenty more years of dieting since then – some thoughts/observations:

1. Oprah lost the weight after four months on a liquid diet.  I seem to remember it was Medifast, but I can’t find a source to confirm.  What she DID share:

“I had literally starved myself for four months, not a morsel of food, to get into that pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans,” Winfrey recalls.  “Two hours after that show, I started eating to celebrate, of course, within two days those jeans no longer fit!”

1a.  It took you TWO days to grow out of those?  Color me impressed. I can bust a button in a week, but two days is ACHIEVEMENT, yo.  Not that Oprah is known for doing things halfway.  But still.  !!

2.  It’s a little mind-blowing to realize that you can be one of the wealthiest, most socially dominant women in the WORLD, with every resource and support available to you, and still not have whatever it takes to have a normal relationship with food.

That’s…powerful, yet humbling.  Depressing, yet oddly reassuring.  I mean, if SHE struggles with this…doesn’t that give me permission to, I dunno, maybe not beat myself up quite so hard if I can’t do it?

Folks, this is Oprah.  She can do ANYTHING.

And she’s just as human as the rest of us, putting on her pants (and Spanx) one mortal, flawed leg at a time.

I don’t know whether to high-five her, or give her a hug.

You can read Oprah’s Weight Loss Confession here.  It’s a little stilted, and I detect the faint smell of false bravado from her accounting of it all, but what struck me was this quote from her trainer (Bob Greene):

“She didn’t really learn how to be happy. I think she learned more survival tools and not how to be happy,” he says. “That’s where Oprah has a lot of work to do.”

Well.  Huh.

That’s why I started this whole blog dealio in the first place.

Because that’s where I have a lot of work to do, too.

3.  Size 10?  Are you kidding me, Calvin?  They’re AT MOST a 6, prolly a 4 nowadays.  Gotta love vanity sizing.  <eyeroll>

OK.  On to a “love”….

6b.  I love riding my bike.

Generally, I support the principle of physics that states, “An object on a comfortable sofa stays on a comfortable sofa.”  (Or starts to LOOK like the comfortable sofa.)  Suffice it to say I’ve never really been a fan of exercise.

But I’ve always loved to ride my bicycle.

My first bike was a hand-me-down from one of my cousins.  How it worked in our family was that you learned to ride on THIS bike:

schwinn

Note: Not actual bike. Pic borrowed from http://ratrodbikes.com where some dude named “dogdart” was selling it. But he’s in PA so it COULD HAVE BEEN MINE YO

…and then, on your 10th birthday, you got a 10-speed bike – NEW, from the little bike shop downtown, which incidentally was owned by the dad of a girl who rode my bus and sat next to me in band, and we weren’t really friends because she was popular and I was fat, so she was only my friend on the bus for the four years her parents forced her to play clarinet.  And her dad was also my parents’ tax accountant, and eventually he went to jail for tax fraud or something, and his daughter dated the high school football captain who ended up calling her a slut and breaking her heart, so I guess being popular isn’t all glitter and unicorns.

But I loved that bike.  It looked a lot like this one:

Photo from http://www.sweatershoppe.com/

Also not actual bike. Original is currently mummified in my parents’ basement. Photo borrowed from http://www.sweatershoppe.com/

That bike was my ticket to freedom.  It was my getaway car – I’d hop on that thing and be off on an adventure.  It wasn’t unusual for me to take off for four, five hours at a time, just riding along, stopping to pick wild blackberries on the side of the road or catch crawfish at the creek.

Later, when I got a speedometer, I got to see how far – and how fast – I could go.   I grew up in PA, which is very hilly – those gears came in handy, and the payoff was zooming downhill, at 30mph.  (Without a helmet.  Between that, riding in the back of the station wagon without seat belts, and sleeping in death-trap cribs, how did anyone survive childhood in the 70s and 80s?  Never mind roadside pesticide blackberries, copperheads under the rocks at the creek, and generalized Stranger Danger.)

Once I got to high school, I quit riding so much.  But years later – after college, marriage, two kids, and a painful divorce – I got a gift:

Actual photo. You can tell by the craptacular background.

Actual photo. You can tell by the sucktacular composition and the general lack of housekeeping.

It was another hand-me-down bike…but it was in pristine condition, purchased by a friend who had more money than ambition (she also smoked a lot and drank a lot – while I don’t judge, I suspect this hindered her desire to hop on a bike.)

I didn’t use the bike much at first; it sat largely unused for several years.  But recently, I’ve rediscovered the sorts of things you can explore while you’re escaping from the world for awhile:

Lake1

At the top of a hill in rural Wisconsin. A REALLY BIG HILL. #worthit

bikeflowers.

Like a little firework burst.

bikeflowers2

I love these. They’re like little snowballs. IN SUMMER.

swans

Tucked behind a small bend.

On a bike, you’re not focused on exercising.  The goal isn’t necessarily to burn calories.  (Yeah, I track them.  When an hour of hard riding burns off like four Oreos, you take credit every calorie you can get.)

When you’re standing on the pedals to kick a hill’s butt – when you’re flying down the other side, drinking in the thrill of the speed and the relief of the breeze – when you’re taking in, free of charge, all that nature has to offer – you’re not worried about the size of your thighs and the bulges around your waist.  You aren’t beating yourself up over the amount of space you occupy.

You can just…be.

You’re free.   At least for a little while.

Even if it’s temporary – even if life keeps me tethered to a lot of heavy, messy, cumbersome things –  I’m so very thankful that I can remember what it feels like to fly.

Six down, four to go.  Light.  Tunnel.  ONWARD!

Today’s victim select recipient is Mermaid in a Mudslide – she has such a variety of topics, I suspect she’d be all over something like this.  Plus, her posts make me smile.  🙂

The Courage to Change, The Patience to Persevere, the Guts to Grow

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I am thankful today to have not one, but two, nominations from the gracious Chelise at Caterpillar to Butterfly.  I’m thankful because these awards and challenges give me something different to think about – and therefore WRITE about.  They give the repetitive, demanding voices in my head a new sound bite to discuss.  They’re a nice respite from thinking simultaneously about how fat I am and WHAT IS THERE TO FREAKING EAT IN THIS PLACE YO

Sigh.

This first nomination was super-sweet of Chelise, because while I’ve been trying to pull myself out of a lifetime of food issues, and sometimes I feel like I’m making progress, it’s certainly not been a beeline target.  More often, on good days, it’s like I’ve been sitting on a precarious perch in a dunk tank, blissfully oblivious to the pool of denial swirling below me, until life lobs a hefty, matted tennis ball squarely at the target, sending me plunging back into the muck and leaving me to clutch at any floating debris I can find.  Sometimes it’s a life preserver; others, it’s a crocodile.

Two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes, all we can do is keep treading water and looking for a safer buoy to cling to.

But that’s what makes us courageous – it’s the ability to keep going.  It’s what gets us through the day, worn and weary, but alive.  It enables us to get out of bed the next day to face the same demons and confront the same pain.

Yeah, sure, some days we don’t actually GET out of bed.  And that’s OK – because we’re doing we need to do to recharge for the next battle.  We’re still breathing.  We’re still alive.

Courage doesn’t mean you don’t rest.  Being brave doesn’t mean you don’t admit you’re tired.  I mean, even heroes need to take a break from saving the planet once in a while.

Being strong just means you don’t quit.  Every valiant knight and crusader has felt fear – they just haven’t let it stop them.  And sure, occasionally the bad guys – anxiety, fear, hopelessness – temporarily take us down, but the joke’s on them, because we’re slowly, gradually learning from each and every battle, bruise, and scar just how to throw a carefully placed sucker punch right back.

There are a lot of folks on WordPress who struggle with a variety of things. In reading the challenges of others, you see incredible strength.  It’s inspiring.  It’s contagious.  You also see the heartache – the beauty and the pain in the raw, unfiltered honesty.  And that’s where we all support each other – if we all lean on each other in a circle, nobody falls down.  (Or we all fall down.  Especially if wine was involved.  But at least we do it together.  And it would be freakin’ hilarious, as long as no one spills the wine.)

couragetochangeaward

The “Courage to Change” Award

  • I want to acknowledge that it takes courage to put ourselves out there for the world to see.
  • It takes courage to work through the pain that binds us.
  • It takes courage to make changes in our lives.
  • It takes courage to leave behind everything you have always known (mentally, emotionally & sometime physically) and do things differently.

Courage is:

  • the ability to do something that frightens one
  • strength in the face of pain or grief

The guidelines for this award:

  • Award it to whomever you chose and let them know
  • No questions to ask
  • No questions to answer
  • If you receive the award, there is nothing you have to do but KNOW others support and believe in you! However, I hope you to pay it forward and encourage someone who is on their own personal journey to freedom (from whatever they may be struggling with).

My picks for the “Courage to Change” Award:

Nikki at Undiagnosed Warrior and Cass at Indisposed and Undiagnosed – these two young, strong women are very talented writers who have been kind enough to share their quests to get diagnoses for debilitating, undiagnosed illnesses.  Their strength, their perseverance, and their tenacity as they struggle to get well are amazing.  They are brave and show continued courage.

Zoé at gathering the pieces of me – I have said it before; this is some of the best writing you’ll read online.  Her writing is art; it’s poetry, and it’s raw and beautiful.  She has been incredibly inspiring as she outlines her struggles to be well.

THANK YOU, ladies, for putting it out there.  You help me, you help countless others – you make WordPress a better, richer place.  We’re all in this together – lean over when you need to.  I pray for peace, healing, and laughter for you every day!

Next up:  The Love/Hate Blogger Challenge!  (Thankfully.  I can only take so much of this warm and fuzzy goo.  Tree’s dry, no more sap for awhile.)  😉

The Unproductive Habits of Food Disordered People

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We all have bad habits.  Right?

I have a lifelong habit of biting my nails.  Lest you think I’m a freak – only fingernails, and only my own.  And more specifically, I’m really just chewing off ragged cuticles and evening out chips.

But still, I know it’s kinda gross.  It’s unsanitary (dude, hands touch EVERYTHING.)  Plus, I had braces not once, but TWICE as a kid – and I’m sure the gnawing and chipping does nothing for proper tooth alignment.  And, most importantly, try as I might, I can’t seem to find nutritional information for fingernails.  (Most likely because I haven’t looked.  Because if I look, I might find out that fingernails actually HAVE calories. And if this is true, I’ll have to log it on my food tracker.  And heaven knows I don’t need one more thing to obsess over in the eating department.  I can totally see me looking at my hands at day’s end, going, “I bit off FOUR nails today!” and proceeding to run maniacally around the block and frantically doing 50 jumping jacks to burn it off.  Or saying “eff it” and diving headfirst into a bag of popcorn and hating both myself and the fat sad sack I have become.  Yeah, probably the latter, since it’s bikini season.)

The hubs has noticed.  He knows better than to complain about it (Obviously, I bite.)  But one day, we were wandering through a drugstore, and he hands me something and says, “Look, honey – snack chips!”

snackchips

Har dee har har.  <eyeroll>

Part of the problem was that my nails just wouldn’t grow all that much before they made like fashion denim and ripped, chipped, and tore.  Once you have an uneven nail, or a ripped cuticle, you sort of have to address it, right?  I mean, it’s like having your slip showing, except on your hands, and it’s a ratty, tatted slip that really SHOULD have gone in the garbage, but you forgot (read: fell asleep in front of the TV) to do laundry, so….Easiest answer is to bite it off. <snap> <ptoo>

Over the years, I’ve made several attempts at ending the phalangical feast.  And I am proud to say I am doing better:

growingback See that ONE ragged cuticle there?  I DIDN’T BITE IT OFF.   yet  GO ME!

(On a side note – I had some stomach/malabsorption issues a few years ago; I was pretty low on a lot of vitamins, iron, etc.  After over a year of testing, poking, prodding, and biopsying, my doctor threw up her hands and said “Try giving up wheat.”  And after about six months of a wheat-free diet, the above pic is how much the whites of my nails have grown in about eight days.  So, while medically, I very clearly didn’t have celiac….something was glitched up in glutenville.)

As I work toward recovery for a lifetime of food issues, I have come to realize that I have a ton of really unproductive food habits.  I’m going to list them here – one, for self-awareness; two, to hold myself accountable…to some of them, anyway.  (I’m not freaking Mother Teresa – give me a C for effort here.)

1.  Eating in front of a screen.  Yes, I know what all the studies say – if you eat while you’re doing something else, you won’t “notice” your level of satiety.  But, darn it, I LIKE entertaining my mouth when my brain is pigging out on the televised version of junk food.

Plus, during the week, I eat my lunch while I’m working – I can get out of the office a little sooner that way.  Since I often have to work until 7, every minute of daylight counts.  So, in the spirit of full disclosure, I won’t be working too hard on this one.

However…when we bought our house, we actually built an addition on it to make sure we had ROOM for a dining table.  The construction loan’s paid off, so maybe I should use the space for more than storing Kohl’s coupons and scrapbooking supplies.

I don’t cook every evening, but on the evenings I DO make dinner, I’m sure it wouldn’t kill me to sit at an actual table with the hubs and eat, undistracted, and chat about our day.  Heck, it might even nourish our marriage a bit.

So how about I shoot for two dinners a week at the table?

2.  Eating out of a giant bag.  Curse you, Costco, and your ginormous sacks of salty and sweet munchable deliciousness.  Some of your snacks are packaged in such a way that one bag has- wait, lemme look….

ZOMG

TWENTY-TWO SERVINGS.

WHAT.

HOW IS THIS EVEN LEGAL.  Didn’t Obama pass something addressing this with the Affordable Care Act?  I mean these suckers are larger than most airlines allow for a carryon (and NO, I will NOT be checking my popcorn, thankyouverymuch.)

Give me a standard, grocery-store bag of popcorn, and I can EASILY chomp my way through it in a single sitting.  NOT EVEN A CHALLENGE.  Chip clips are for QUITTERS, yo! This means I can do some SERIOUS damage on Costco’s monster face-troughs that I swear I am NOT BUYING THIS TIME but somehow inexplicably make it into my house anyway.

While I haven’t plowed through an entire bag in one sitting yet, I can certainly polish it off in two sessions, and I think the only reason I HAVEN’T finished one in one swoop is because I’m mortified that I actually COULD.  (Plus, here’s what happens when I get dangerously close to doing so.)

So what I’m trying to do is not sit down with one of these things, because that’d be like sitting on the sofa next to Adam Levine and promising to look, but don’t touch.

(Adam Levine…mmmm….did I mention I bite?)

<cough> Sorry.  BUT HE’S SO PRETTY.

Anyway, I’ll measure out a reasonable portion and sit down with that.  One day, maybe I’ll just haphazardly pour out a bowl WITHOUT measuring it….but that will be after the genie grants me three wishes (a billion dollars, the ability to fly, and the ability to cancel out calories on any foods I wish.)

3.  It’s all or nothing.  Ladies?  You’ve done this, right?  Meticulously followed the diet for several days, and then dared to sample a Hershey’s Kiss or a peanut butter cup, and the entire dam broke, flooding your gut with whatever you could rapid-fire throw down your pie hole?

Why do we do this?  I mean, when I get a flat tire, the smart thing to do is call AAA.  The stupid thing to do is pull over, get out my gun, and shoot out the other three tires, the headlights, and the windshield.

BUT WE ALL DO THIS.

While I think AAA has had stranger calls, I won’t plan to bother them with my tales of unharnessed gluttony.  But I do need to find a way to interrupt the broadcast.  I can:

  • Go for a walk, a run, a bike ride.
  • Drink water (see below.)
  • Plan out the next day’s healthy food.
  • Go pull weeds.  (There’s ALWAYS something to rip out of the ground….)
  • Do my nails (hard to eat with wet nails!)
  • Whine about it here.  🙂

4.  Drink enough water.  During the week, I’m pretty good about this.  I drink two twelve-ounce glasses in the morning, adding a third if I went for a run.  I drink 20 oz of herbal tea and 20 oz of hot water (because I’m chronically freezing) while at work.  I’ll try to get 1-2 more glasses at home in the evenings.  Also, I need to keep up the fluids on weekends (besides wine.  WHY CAN’T THAT COUNT <sobs>)

It’s been said that it takes 21 days to break a habit.  Frankly, I call BS on that (and so does this article, which states it can be upwards of 245 days or more.)  And I’ve been trapped in this food funhouse since I was ten years old, so maybe it’s me, and not the habit, that needs breaking.

But if I can do just one thing a tiny bit healthier than how I did it before?  That’s progress.  Some days, I might be hanging by a fingertip from the edge of a cliff – but as long as I don’t let go – as long as I keep hanging on – I have a shot at getting two (well-manicured) fingers up there tomorrow.

I’ll get there one finger at a time.