Good With Cheese

Because of this post, over the last few days in the fatosphere, a lot of bloggers and commenters have been posting letters to their 14-year-old selves. The letters have been beautiful and practical, heartbreaking and wise. And of course, they’ve made me think about what I would tell myself at 14.

But the honest truth? I don’t really remember fourteen. I don’t remember much of anything before I was sixteen. Most of what I do recall has a snapshot quality that makes me wonder if I remember it from actual life or from a photo album somewhere. There are a few memories that are jagged and sharp and vivid enough to make my cheeks burn with shame, but not many, and even fewer joyful ones.

I lived my childhood in fear. My earliest memory finds me at three, cowering in a corner of the dining room, my father’s fury burning across me like fire. My first suicide note was written in shaky, freshly-learned cursive in the third grade.

I was a terrified and terrorized child, and certain that I’d earned it.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I could be alone in a room with my father.  I still struggle to make eye contact with him.

He will never apologize; I think his memory of my childhood is as fractured and self-protecting as my own.

He believes he was a good father.  I love him too much to tell him the truth.

But I believe there must be happy things in my childhood, hidden beneath the shifting silt of my fear.  I want to unearth them, to remember what I was like when I wasn’t afraid.

I want to rewrite my history.  Can that be done?

I had today off work, thanks to a government job and a holiday.  I spent it exploring antique shops with my mom, and having our annual Veterans Day lunch of quiche, soup, and baked fudge.  YUM.

After our little jaunt, we stopped by Hallmark because my mom needed a couple of cards*.  While she was looking, I browsed the rest of the store because I’m a sucker for shiny trinkets.  Anyway, amid the address books was something called a “fitness journal.”  Of course, I had to look at that.

Page after page after page, it had places to record your food (plus calories/points), exercise, daily weight, water consumed.  It was, like, my dream journal from when I was dieting.

It looked so innocent, all neatly bound with its precise little checkboxes and pretty, feminine cover.  So discreet, so perfect for tucking in your bag every day.

So harmless.

My first thought was, “Where was this when I wanted it?” 

 My second thought was, “Wow, disordered eating needs accessories.”

Isn’t that just a big bucket of suck?

It makes me sad, how normal and expected it is that we’re all dieting all the time.  I think the feminine print of the cover is what bugs me most of all: as though being a woman means you should have to be trying to shrink yourself down all the time.  That you should always try to be less than what you are.

But it doesn’t mean that, or at least it doesn’t have to mean that.  I want to be more than what I am, not less.  I want to expand, not make myself tiny and undernourished and fragile.

I sit here in my size-12 jeans and my tummy is rolling over the top of my pants and I don’t have a damn idea of how many calories I’ve eaten today, but luckily, none of that says anything about who I am as a woman.

It just says I’ve learned to care about more important things. 

*I think the incredibly specific nature of Hallmark’s cards is freaking awesome.  Cards for being cancer-free for a year?  Check.  Cards for coming out?  Check.  Cards for making Eagle Scout?  Check.  It’s amazing!

This is post #100 here at my little blog, and  I wanted to have something awesome to say, some recap of my journey here.

But then today happened and it’s all gone to hell.

I spent hours with the Weight Watchers today.  I heard about Points, and the fun of losing weight and how grand it is watching the scale move down, down, down, yay, yay, yay.

That, combined with shopping (which is always a giant kick in the head for me) and a too-big lunch, left me feeling shaky and uncertain and too big for my skin.  I came home, rattled around the house, ate a snickerdoodle, a couple of waffles, then fell face first into a 2-pound bag of Reese’s Pieces. 

I don’t even like Reese’s Pieces.

Okay, now a quick flashback: in January 2007, when I decided to see how skinny I could get, I’d been stuck at home for several days due to an ice storm and found myself watching (this is embarrassing) this ridiculous show on CMT about Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders?  And there were these beautiful young women being told to lose weight and something in me just sort of clicked.  And I thought, hey, I can lose some more weight, too.  If I just work hard enough, I can lose as much weight as I want.  And then things went kind of crazy for four months.

Flash-forward to today: So, I’m face-down in the Reese’s Pieces and flipping through channels and OHMYGOD it’s a new season of that stupid cheerleader show.

I was on the treadmill before I even realized what was happening.  I just pulled myself off (with minimal tears) after 4 miles and I’m going to count that as a small victory, because it’s still early and I could have easily knocked out another 10 miles before bedtime.

Now here I sit: sweaty, queasy, tired, anxious, confused, alone, and terrified.  I’m like the seven dwarfs of suck.

I want my disordered behaviors back so badly today.  I want them; I want to feel disciplined and controlled and strong.  I also want to keep this all a secret, because I don’t want to disappoint anyone. 

But no secrets has been my rule for these past 99 posts, so I’m going to put this out there, send these anxious, horrible feelings out into the ether and out of just my head, and hope for the best.

Tomorrow’s a new day.

My mom and I eat lunch together most days because we work in adjoining buildings and we’re both die-hard brown-baggers.  Every day, there’s cookie exchange: I bring two Chips Ahoy! and she brings two Fig Newtons (they’re fruit and cake!) and we swap.  That way, we get both chocolate and figgy goodness.

About once a week, we splurge and get a cookie from the snack bar instead; they bake these double-chocolate cookies fresh every day, and while we’ve agreed they make an excellent treat, we don’t have them every day because that would make them feel less…special.  Yeah, we’re dorks.

Anyway, on Tuesday this week, she said she thought it was a double-chocolate cookie day.  I just wasn’t feeling it; I really wanted the Fig Newton, so I told her she should go ahead and have the special cookie, but I was gonna go with the Newton.  She became…well, pouty, and said if I wasn’t going to have the cookie, then she didn’t need it either.

And I just thought, “This is where it comes from.” No wonder I’m weird about food.  It’s a lesson I learned at my mother’s knee.

I was telling my husband about this little exchange, about her inability to give herself permission to eat what she wanted without me participating, and he gave me this raised eyebrow kind of look.  He said, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like anyone I know.” 

I may have punched him.  Or I may not have.  But he’s right; that’s been me for pretty much our entire relationship.

But it’s not me anymore.  And I said that to my husband and he agreed that these days, I’m having what I want whether he joins me or not.  I want an apple fritter for breakfast and he’s just going to have eggs and toast?  Hey, I’m worth a trip to the bakery for the fritter, and fritter-eating is not a team sport anyway, so  I can do it alone.  He wants pizza and I want a bowl of cereal, then I wish him and his pizza well, but I’m having my frosted mini-wheats, thank you very much.

This most basic form of self-care, the ability to choose something and eat it regardless of what others may or may not be eating, is so hard.  It’s hard for my 58-year-old mother and it’s hard for me here at 30 and I know it’s hard for scads of other women, too.

Let’s just stop already.  Eat what you want. 

We don’t need anyone’s permission to take care of ourselves.

If there’s anything more delicious than iced coffee, I don’t know what it could be.  But it’ll be a miracle if I sleep at all for the next three days.

I went out to dinner with my sister last night and we talked about the Weight Watchery.  She said she basically just felt really out of control about how she was eating and wanted structure; she talked about binging, about secret eating, about all those deprivation-driven behaviors I know so well. 

Oh, I hooked her up.  She left my house with four books about emotional eating and body acceptance and learning to eat intuitively.  I gave her the lowdown on how diets like WW can teach you how to ignore your hunger and satiety cues, and that until you get in touch with those, food is always gonna be more complicated than it needs to be.

She seemed really receptive and eager to look at the books.  I just love her so very much and think she’s beautiful, and damn it, she should get to think she’s beautiful, too.

I’m taking a road trip this weekend to visit my husband while he’s on a special assignment (because I am a sucker for staying in hotels), so I won’t be around until probably Tuesday. 

Have a great weekend!  And drink lots of iced coffee because it’s fantastic!

So, I’m back from dinner with my mom and sister, and nary a Weight Watcher word was uttered.  We all even shared dessert.  My sister, she’s good people.  She knows diet-talk is hard for me to hear, and I think she’s making a concerted effort not to trigger The Crazy. 

You know, any time I go out to eat, order what I want, eat it, then come home and don’t eat the contents of the kitchen?  Still feels like a victory.  During the dieting days, eating a meal that wasn’t planned or calorie-counted kicked off that blown-diet mentality.  I’d feel like that particular day was shot, so it didn’t matter anymore, and I should eat while the eatin’s good.  I’d graze through the cabinets, the pantry, the freezer.  Even if I was so full it hurt, I’d keep forking food in because I knew that the soon enough, I’d have to live with feeling hungry all the time again.

This evening, I came home full of a really awesome chicken salad and 1/3 of a brownie fudge sundae, and I just felt…full. Not like I’ve failed.  Not guilty or regretful.  My stomach is full and that feels comfortable and cozy, but more importantly, it doesn’t make me feel anxious or scared that this is the last time I’ll be full for a good long while. 

I’m not even heading straight to the treadmill to put in a hour or two of running.  I’m going to park my full, contented self on the bed with Little Dog, watch TV, practice folding origami cranes, and work on my list of three things to do this weekend that aren’t about my body.

Oh, and this is the third day in a row of general awesomeness — consider the streak started!

After Friday and yesterday and the accompanying hurtiness and teeth-gnashing and what-not, the universe gave me a little gift of an excellent Sunday.

There was easy grocery shopping that was finished by 7:15 AM, an effortless 5-mile run completed before 10 AM, a delicious lunch of fish tacos with my parents. S’more Cookie Bars  were baked and then taken over to my parents’ house where we drank good coffee while we ate them and watched golf.  I even saw my nephew who gives the World’s Best Hugs and got at least three out of him before he had to go home. 

All in all, today was a gift.  And I enjoyed every last minute of it because I wasn’t sucking all the joy out of everything Dementor-style with my anxiety about food/exercise. 

It was all so balanced.  There was exercise, but not too much.  There was risky food, but I chose exactly what appealed to my appetite and ate the exact right amounts, not so little I felt deprived but not so much I felt sick.  There was some socializing, some solitude. 

And now I’m facing a heck of a week (I have about 20 appointments scheduled this week which very well may kill me and my lady-time is expected), but I feel very Zen about everything right now. 

Thanks, universe.

My husband got to come home unexpectedly this weekend.  We had a lovely visit and he should get to come home again the middle of next week for a few days.  Yay!

We went to the grocery store together yesterday morning, and we were in line behind a fat man doing his shopping.  It’s hard not to look at what people buy when you’re piling your stuff on the little belt behind their stuff, but I’m pretty good at making no judgments about groceries.  Grocery purchases say nothing, after all.  The week I’m buying only lettuce and fruit might not mean I’m Super Nutrition Girl that week; it might mean I’m planning on thinking outside the bun for seven straight nights.

My husband, though, was apparently wearing his judge-y britches and they must have been riding high.  As we were walking to the car, he commented that he didn’t think that guy ahead of us needed the Twix he was purchasing.

I just looked at him.  I then looked at the sack he was carrying from the in-store McDonald’s that was filled with his hotcakes, sausage, and hashbrowns.

I then broke it down for him thusly:  First, FAT WIFE STANDING RIGHT HERE.  Second, that Twix?  No one, fat or thin, needs a Twix.  It’s not full of vitameatavegaminy goodness.  It’s candy.  Fat people should get to enjoy candy, too, and also?  That might have been the first Twix that guy had bought in 10 years.  Or it might have been the 10th Twix he was eating that day.  But happily, until that guy asks us to pay for his Twix, we don’t actually have to care.  I then pointed out that, if my husband were fat instead of skinny with a hummingbird’s metabolism, someone might point at the bag o’ pancakes he was carrying as the reason for his fatness, and that it’s hardly fair that he is judging someone else for eating the exact damn stuff he eats every single day.  An inefficient metabolism does not grant moral authority.

Because he’s not an idiot, he said I was right and that he wasn’t intending to be a jackhole, but acknowledges that he was.

My husband is a smart guy.  He’s got an advanced degree, he’s trained in critical thinking, and he’s, at heart, a good, kind, decent person.  And you would think the 6 years he’s had a front-row seat for my disordered weight-control behavior would have at least demonstrated that fat is about so much more than food.

But that kind of thinking, it just goes so deep, you know.

And that’s why we have to keep disagreeing with it, especially with those who should know better.

Today was an excellent day, both in my body and outside of it. 

I took a mental-health day from work (which is both awesome and reckless on the first day of the month–I’m anticipating 86 voicemails tomorrow) and spent it with my mom. 

We went shopping for an outfit for her to wear to a wedding in a few weeks.  My mother hates shopping, but it went incredibly smoothly.  We found her something she loved  and I got some adorable shoes (that are not sneakers which is quite rare for me), so everyone was happy.

We went out to lunch (I never go out to lunch because I’m a born brown-bagger so this was a Big Deal), and later in the afternoon we shared a yummy pastry from a local bakery and drank a ridiculous amount of coffee; then we hung out at her house and took naps with her little dog and my Little Dog.

I came home, went for a 5-mile run that felt so good, and now the evening is still young and I’m already showered and ready to make dinner. 

I know I can’t skip work every day (yet!  Some day that Powerball is mine!), but once in a while is still pretty darn good.

My husband is home for the weekend.  We went out for pizza (grilled chicken, bacon, tomato, and spinach–yum!) and then had ice cream (brownie fudge sundae for me, rocky road and butter pecan waffle cone for him), then came home and took the dogs for a walk.

Now we’re just hanging out, watching TV and chatting.  I miss having a normal married life, so I’m going to try to make the most of this while he’s here. 

 See y’all Monday.