Feel the burn.

Just like, oh, 10 out of 7 Americans, I’ve been on antidepressants.  I thought I was just dark and intense like a brooding 19th century poet, but apparently daily considering offing yourself for 20 consecutive years is not normal.  So, along came a prescription for meds.

I loved them, loved feeling stable and serene and disconnected from the ups and downs of my life.  After a while, I learned ways of dealing with my negative behaviors and felt ready to live without my meds. 

One thing that really helped me transition off the meds was working out.  A good, hard, sweat-drenched workout gives me the same feeling of…lightness.  Of being above the hubbub, instead of underneath it.  Coming home after work and spending an hour lifting or running or whatever separates me from the stress of the workaday world. It lets me forget the names I’ve been called, the tears I’ve witnessed, the broken parts of lives I’ve been handed and asked to fix.  It moves me out of my mind and into my body and in my body?  There’s not a lot of thinking.  There is only one foot in front of the other, one more rep, one more mile.

I let working out get really intertwined with my dieting behaviors, but I’m ready to reclaim it.  While physically I may not need an hour-plus of exercise a day, I need it mentally.  I need it to stay off the antidepressants, to forget about the 440 cases sitting in my file cabinet at the office, to feel powerful and centered. 

I know my body and I know that working out more will likely result in some weight loss, but I can’t even care about that right now. 

I just want to be strong.

Don’t stop…believin’…

I am stronger than this.

Today I ate each time I was hungry.  I exercised as I planned, no extra running snuck in for good measure.  I didn’t call myself cruel names and I didn’t blame my current little black rain cloud on my thighs.

What I have decided is this: I must learn to separate urges from symptoms.  At this point, I can’t help the urges.  I can’t help wanting to tabulate calories and I can’t help sighing over pants that get too tight, but I can choose not to act out in response to those urges. 

It’s only a symptom of my disordered habits if I act on it.  As long as it just stays in my head, then it’s just an echo. 

I’m not letting an echo tell me what to do.

Thank you all for your supportive comments and for not, you know, finding me and punching me in the head and telling me to get my act together, no matter how much I’m asking for it.

I promise I’m not giving up.

Go through to get through.

Sweet merciful pants, this has been a hard weekend.

I can’t pinpoint what’s going on with me.  I’m anxious and uncomfortable, lonely and antsy.  Dark clouds are gathering, covering me, pressing me down. 

I feel lost right now.  I know I need to soldier through and keep a stiff upper life and all that, and that’s very much what I want to do, but there’s that little siren song of my old habits calling me toward the rocks.  I can’t listen, I know I can’t listen, but that doesn’t keep me from hearing.

All I can do is keep going through the motions.  I’ll get my exercise (and try not to do too much), I’ll eat when I’m hungry (and try to ignore the calculator and the clock), I’ll make food choices based on my stomach and body, not my mouth, and I’ll hope that things will get back to normal soon.

Cross your fingers for me.

Saboteur Trifecta.

If you’re going to fall off the wagon, do it in a big way.

 Today I counted calories, weighed myself, and actually calculated my frickin’-frackin’ BMI to see if I was still in the ‘healthy’ weight range.  Son of a motherloving goat!

I can’t call it a slip.  It was more of a face-first tumble down the stairs.  But, much like Miss Beyonce, I’m picking myself up and getting on with things. 

The weird part is, it’s not at all about my body.  I’m feeling absolutely fine about my body.  I think I just needed a way to kind of hate on myself today. 

But to heck with that.  It happened, but I’m stopping it right here.  The scale has gone back on its high shelf in the closet, the Post-It note with my calories for the day has gone in the trash, and the new contract is looking more and more like the old contract.

I’m a little bit annoyed with myself, but honestly?  Only a very little bit.  I’m still eating when I’m hungry, still committed to not dieting and letting my body find its natural weight. 

Today was just one day.  Tomorrow will be a new one.  And I’m still moving forward and for now, that’s good enough.

Re-up.

I’m kind of wonky today.  I stayed up far too late last night finishing the new Harry Potter (normally, I’m all, “Respect the bedtime!” but books sometimes trump sleep).  So, 5:25 came way too early and all day I’ve had that feeling that my brain is trailing about 10 feet behind my body.

Because of the wonkiness, I’ve just got two things to say today.

First, I’m working on a new contract.  Like the brilliant commenter from yesterday said, there’s no harm in renewing it, but there could be in not renewing it. I’m definitely including calorie-counting as an area to work on, but I’m tossing around a few other items that I may need to pay attention to. I’m not hopping on a scale seventy times a day any more, but I may be doing some other subtle monitoring that I need to give up.

Second, I’ve never been a fan of cats.  At all.  The word ‘hate’ may have even been used.  But this cat? Scares the bejesus out of me.  Spooooooky…

Contractually obligated to be awesome.

So, the 3-month contract expired last week and, after a bit of insanity, I was going to renew it.  But I didn’t.

Here’s the thing.  There were five major headings on the contract (each had three or four subheadings and that’s just one of the many reasons I am, as they say in Latin, a dorkus malorkus), but four of the five?  I’m totally over them .

I’m not overexercising.  I’m not weighing myself or measuring my body with my hands.  I’m not engaging in diet talk.  I’m not wearing clothes that feel snug or too close-fitting.  The only one I’m still up and down with is the calorie-counting.

So, do I need the contract?  I don’t know.  The calorie-counting of late hasn’t been about my body.  Even as I’m hunched over the calculator trying to remember how many calories are in a miniature Twix, it’s not about my body.  It’s about reverting to a familiar habit to deal with uncomfortable feelings, feelings that are really and truly not about my chubby bits or a number on the scale.

I like my body as it is.  I’m eating good stuff and I’m working out really hard because I like how it feels and nothing in my daily life is about controlling my weight or renovating myself.  It’s about living a life and feeling healthy, strong, and good on the inside.

So…the contract.  Do I need to renew it? 

Or am I ready to move on?

Let me hear your body talk.

I eat frequently.  Really, really frequently.  I’m like a Hobbit.

 Let me break it down.  Today I ate breakfast at 6.  At 8:30  I had a bowl of delicious frosted mini-wheats with milk.  At 10:30 I had an apple.  Lunch was at noon.  Around 3 I had some cherry-vanilla yogurt.  Dinner was at 6:30.   I’ll probably have my nightly scoop of ice cream around 8:30. 

That’s a total of seven meals and snacks.  Some days it’s more, some days it’s less.

But for the most part, I eat like this every day because, dang it, I get hungry every few hours.  And if I’m hungry, I’m going to eat.  It still feels so exciting, to realize I’m getting hungry and that I can eat whenever I need to.  I don’t have to wait until the clock says it’s okay.

I’m not scared of my hunger any more.  It’s just my body letting me know what’s going on, no different than feeling sleepy or thirsty or like I need to run and jump and dance.

It’s been telling me what it needs for years, but now that I’m listening?  It feels fantastic.

Eat up.

Kate Harding has an interesting post up about jacked-up food morality.  Good stuff, and something I was thinking about today.

 The farther I get from my last diet, the more interesting my food choices are getting. 

Initially, because eating whatever appealed to me was so new and freaking AWESOME, I ate a lot of sugar, lots of processed foods, and fistfuls of Whoppers.  Oh, Whoppers.  Delicious stuff, yes, but honestly it made my body feel sort of sluggish and gooey. 

As the novelty wore off, I started getting interested in other things, but was still consciously avoiding foods I thought of as ‘diet’ foods (such as reduced-fat products, vegetables for snacking, and some lean meats that had been staples of my diet).  They were still too charged for me to bring home without feeling triggered into my disordered eating.

Today I was making my grocery list for my post-work shopping trip, and decided to really focus on what my body was craving.  I ended up with a huge list of fruits and vegetables, and a few other staple items.  I even purchased my favorite ice cream even though it’s “light.”  My food choices have nothing to prove, so I get to eat what I want, even if it’s a lower-fat or lower-sodium or lower-whatever version if it’s what I really want.

My kitchen tonight looks a lot like it did back when I was dieting–on the counter, a huge bowl of apples, oranges, pears, bananas and peaches so sweet they’d make your eyes cross, another bowl filled with zucchini and yellow squash and red peppers and homegrown tomatos, a loaf of whole-wheat bread.  In the fridge, there’s yogurt (the full-fat kind that I love with the white-hot intensity of a thousand fiery suns), orange juice, skim milk, turkey, marinated mushrooms, and Dr Pepper.  In the cabinet, good chocolate, a big jar of peanut butter, and 95 different cans of beans.  Well, okay, that last part is kind of disturbing.

But I think I’m finding my middle path in regards to food.  All foods that I love can live in harmony in my little kitchen and I can eat them in any combination whenever I’m hungry and I can keep eating until I’m full. 

What I eat doesn’t make me good or bad.  Hopefully it just makes me satisfied.

The stars at night are big and bright…

Before I get to anything else, this rocks. Every time I read it, I just want to stand on my desk all Dead-Poets-Society-style and cheer.

Okay, so I think I figured out what set off my calorie-counting.

I have these capri pants that have gotten a little snug.  I love them, and if the stupid store still carried them, I’d just go get them in a larger size.  But alas, they do not.  I was thinking about them and had the passing thought that if I lost about five pounds, they’d fit just fine again.  I’d get my awesome pants back. 

The next day I started counting calories.  Tell me there’s not a connection.

So, pants?  Go suck it.   If I were meant to be five pounds lighter, I would be.  It wouldn’t require effort and attention from me.  And while I do think that, over time, my weight might settle a smidgen lower than it is right now (because my initial break from dieting included a lot of overeating as I was proving to myself that forbidden foods were okay, but now I’m eating in response to hunger instead of deprivation), I’m not going to try to control it.  Because that’s a DIET.  And I don’t do that anymore.

I took the pants out of my closet last night and put them away.  Stupid pants.

And finally, I’m off to beautiful, barren West Texas tomorrow to visit my husband, so I won’t be checking in until Monday.  I’m looking forward to eating everything wrapped in a tortilla (that seems to be the predominate cuisine of West Texas) and sleeping in a dog-free bed. 

What can I say?  I’m easy to please.

Steady as she goes.

I seem to have moved through this phase of calorie-counting.  I started to total things up a couple of times today, and managed to stop before the calculator was even in my hand.  And then when I would try to do it in my head, I was able to shut things down by saying, “Trust yourself.  Just trust yourself,” over and over and over. 

I’m still more aware than I would like to be about the calories in what I’m eating, but not doing the math is huge for me, so I’m feeling very positive about things.

As for what I was thinking about yesterday, I’ve given myself some little treats today.  First, I used my shower gel that smells like cake frosting this morning.  I wore perfume and my favorite pair of Chucks to work, and I gave Little Dog a lot of extra snuggles after dinner.  Later, I’m planning on lounging in bed and watching ‘To Catch A Predator’ because I loves me some Chris Hansen. 

It was a good day.  I hope to have another just like it tomorrow.